Five Great Reasons to Root Your Android Phone

Five Great Reasons to Root Your Android Phone: "Does your kinda-new Android handset already feel old, slow, and left behind? With a quick hack and a custom ROM, a G1, myTouch, or other Android phone can look and feel fresher and, most importantly, run a bit quicker.

Are you generally averse to messing with a device that delivers sometimes-important phone calls? Let us argue that the process is easy and the rewards are great. For G1 and myTouch owners, especially, there are noticeable stability and speed improvements, a few great backports of software and features from the HTC Hero and Android's 1.6 Donut build, a few unique and new features from the hacker community, and—oh, yeah, did I mention the speed and stability?

Our sibling site Gizmodo took the plunge into 'rooting' an Android phone with one click, and reported back that, yes, it really is just a few clicks and not all that scary to do. The standard disclaimers about the worst-case scenario of a non-functional phone, and T-Mobile/HTC's dislike of you and your warranty, still apply, but this method involves a good backup, no typed commands to misspell, and relatively little time."