Poll: Who's running a rooted smartphone?

Google puts a lot of time into thinking about Android security, and has developed systems like the way the OS handles app permissions in order to give us control over how software gets to see our data. But that sort of gatekeeping doesn’t just apply to apps, and we’re also limited ourselves in what Android will let us do — admittedly, often for our own protection. And while there are ways around some of those limitations, taking advantage of them isn’t always without consequence.

We’re talking today about rooting your phone, the process by which you manipulate Android into giving you superuser access. There are plenty of good reasons to root, like being able to remove stubborn bloatware, or just modifying the way existing apps run. That said, there are just as many reasons to be apprehensive, from weakening your phone’s security, to risking an outright brick.

What we don’t often think about when it comes to rooting are the consequence it might have for our phone’s existing feature set. For instance, years ago Sony tied the image processing capabilities of Xperia cameras to the phone’s secure DRM key storage. And once you unlocked the bootloader — as you often have to when rooting — that data was erased and the camera would break. Sony finally stopped doing this in 2018, and now it’s the latest Pixel phones that are causing headaches for rooters.

New Pixel 9 owners who have unlocked their bootloaders in the quest for root have been reporting that some of the phone’s AI-powered features no longer operate. It’s not happening universally, and some AI stuff seems to still work just fine, but functionality like Pixel Screenshots just won’t operate with an unlocked bootloader.

In this case, there are a few possibilities for why this could be happening (and as inconsistently across features as it is), and we’re not at all sure it’s intentional — we’ve already reached out to Google in the hopes of shining some light on the situation.

Considering the risks involved, and what you might (even inadvertently) find yourself giving up in order to root your phone, we really want to know: Do you even bother to root? With all the features present in modern Android, and the opportunities for device customization, do you feel the same compulsion to root that you might have a decade prior? Or is it more about principles and control for you, and the appeal of root never faded?

For the purposes of our poll, we’re sort of wrapping up a lot of similar actions here, since the end result is likely to be the same. So, whether you’re after root, unlocking your bootloader for a different reason, or even full-on going the custom ROM route, we’re basically asking: Are you modifying your phone in any way that affects Android’s underlying security model?

If you do make a point to root your phone, after voting, hop into comments and tell us about your experience. Why’d you get started, and why do you still keep it up?