Modded Android: A Space Odyssey

When I show friends and colleagues the things I’m able to do on my rooted Android device, many of them end up asking me to work similar magic on their hardware. I’ve always been happy to help out, and after a bit of research at home (how to get root, custom ROMs that are available, etc) I usually come to work a day or two later equipped with my laptop and the appropriate software. Unfortunately, I’ve recently come to realize that this doesn’t always work out to the advantage of the other person, or to me for that matter.

The thing I fail to convey to the people who ask me to root their phones is that running a custom ROM and making the hardware do things it was never designed to do all carry with them an inherent risk of failure. If I show you my phone overclocked to twice it’s original clockspeed and sharing my 3G connection to a laptop over WiFi, you only see the (admittedly strong) positives. What’s not obvious is the amount of tweaking and hacking required to get the phone to that point, and the occasional hiccups that arise from maintaining that status.

To Boldly Go…

The last few months have seen me root probably a half a dozen phones for other people...

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