Quote:
Originally Posted by comrade
So, now that I have my phone and RedMileDj's phone went on the fritz, I was wondering what are some things I should set up on the phone before I commit to it. There seemed to be a lot of talk about how a rooted phone (or just unlocked bootloader?) is easier to recover, is there anything else? What does everyone use for backing up your phone contents?
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Just know that unlocking your bootloader completely wipes your phone that's why if you even have an inkling of rooting your phone you should do it early on. Saves having to copy everything to your PC than back to your phone if you want to do it later in life. You can unlock the bootloader and still not root the phone, they are separate functions.
Rooting is not needed to back up your phone, dropbox, box, drive, copy there are many out there that will back up your files, you just have to be sure they are turned on. Rooting gives you extra flexibility with programs like Titanium Backup but if you don't want to play around with your phone in that manner rooting is not needed.
If you decide to head down the unlocking and rooting path you will need to learn and setup ADB/fastboot. It is pretty simple and can be found on Google's development site. A phone can be completely wiped and restored through a few simple commands from fastboot.
A custom recovery like TWRP allows for all kinds of goodness, much more than any stock recovery. Every now and then I take what they call a nandroid, which is essentially a snap shot of your complete phone, and store it in the cloud or the like. This allows me to completely restore the phone if it buggers up and I need to reset it. Personally I have never had an issue with any of my phones (4) that hasn't been my own damned fault. But as we have seen, crap can happen.
It will take a bit off time to read but it really isn't that difficult. Once adb is setup it is just a bunch of command line code to bang out and away you go. The command to unlock your bootloader is fastboot oem unlock. That's it. If you want a custom recovery download the appropriate one (TWRP is the best) and the command is fastboot flash recvoery recovery.img where recovery.img is the name of the recovery image you downloaded ( I usually rename it recovery). Cyanogen also offers factory images to you can get your phone back to a working state if it screws up. Tonnes of guides available out there.
