What are the disadvantages of rooting a smartphone?

The biggest disadvantage of rooting a smartphone is losing its warranty. Some manufacturers (like Xiaomi) allow you to root the device keeping the warranty active, however, most do not. There are still ways to claim warranty even after you've rooted your smartphone, but they may not work for all the devices.

Rooting allows you to unleash the full potential of your smartphone. It just removes the restrictions placed on the operating system by Google. However, there are some disadvantages associated with it. Some of them can be listed as under –

Bricking your phone

Bricking means your phone is nothing more than a piece of brick. Technically speaking when a smartphone does not boot or does not respond to anything you do to revive it – we say it is bricked. A phone may brick while rooting due to several reasons. It could be due to a step in the tutorial being skipped inadvertently. It can also happen due to a faulty and corrupt rooting tool.

Warranty getting void

Rooting voids the manufacturer warranty. There are ways to unroot your phone if you want, but still the service centres may identify that the device was rooted. I would advice you not to root your phone as long as it is still under warranty.

Virus threats

You never know what is inside when you install custom ROMs. There may be some security breaches that may lead to your phone being vulnerable to virus or malware.

Lower performance

Though the main reason we root our phones is to improve its performance, there may be cases which may do exactly the opposite. Rooting boosts performance, but there is a limit to the load that your processor or graphic card can take. Using third party apps to boost performance can put extra load on them, thereby causing hangs and lags.

Low battery

There are instances of lower battery performance in case of some ROMs which tend to consume more battery. If you tweak the settings to overclock the processor to get more performance, the processor will need more power and thus you will face lesser battery life.

But remember, rooting has its own set of advantages as well. It helps you fully customize your phone. It also helps you install any app that you normally would not be able to. Even if your phone is outdated and does not get updates from the manufacturer, you can get latest updates using different ROMs.

Its a great risk to root a smart device as this process has some disadvantages and they are listed below:

Risk of Bricking your Android

Its not an easy task to root a smart device. It can also lead to buy a new device. But if you root your device carefully then you can easily surmount this problem or you need not to worry much about this problem. If your device got bricked and you reached to the company for its repair then in this case rather then repairing your device company will even charge a lot from you.
Bricking: It means to such a state when your smart device is compared to a piece of brick which can't perform any work. It can be due to some reasons like:

• Skipped any step while rooting your smart device.


• Used corrupt rooting tool or used any wrong file while rooting.



Rooting Voids Warranty


You will lost your warranty if the company finds that your device was rooted but you can surmount this problem by un-rooting your device. But as per my opinion its a great risk to root your device.


Exposure to virus threats


Your device may also get virus while rooting process. While installing different ROM's we are never known what could be inside them.


Slow Performance


Most of the time its found that the device becomes slow after rooting rather than boosting its speed.


Battery problem


Many of the times its found that the battery is consumed more after rooting the device as per the different Rom's installed on it need more battery.

There isn't anything like too risky in rooting a phone. As long as you have followed the tutorials properly, you need not worry. In fact, rooting gives you great deal of customisation. It also helps you remove the bloat ware installed by the manufacturers. Only point is to you need to follow the instruction carefully.

I think people are confused with rooting and flashing. Rooting is just giving admin privileges to the phone. You will install a small zip file on top of the existing OS. So in my experience chances of bricking the phone while rooting is very less. To be frank I never bricked my phone while rooting.

Flashing is installing a new OS in Android phone. Only when flashing the risk of bricking your phone is high. So here you will remove the existing OS and install the new OS. If the new OS zip file corrupted then your phone get bricked. Yes, I bricked a phone in this process so do many.

To flash new OS you need to root the phone. Most of the newbies root the phone only to flash new OS. There are few apps that needs rooting and people won't usually root their phone just for installing an app.

Flashing a new OS give cool look to your phone. You will feel you are using entirely new phone after installing a new OS. You will feel that you are using a upgraded one than the others. I usually flash new OS to get new looks. There are so many disadvantages in flashing process.

1. You loose all your contacts.
2. The process takes almost 3 hours and so people can't reach to your phone.
3. You will get the urge to install every single ROM (OS) available for your phone.
4. You will never satisfy and settle with single ROM.
5. You loose all your photos, videos.
6. You need to install apps and configure them again. For example, installing WhatsApp and activating it.