Since my old smartphone has reached 4 years old, should I just root it with custom OS or keep using the original OS knowing it will never be supported again. I don't want to buy a new one if my old one still works pretty well.
Well rooting is different than custom Rom so you know. You can do custom Rom with no root for example or the other way around. With that said it depends on how well supported your phone is by the community. If they have a 100% working Rom then yes for sure. I took my old gs1 and put cyanogen mod on it and it flies. Plus more battery life too
Root all the way The original system downloads so many unwanted useless programs and run them in the background without you knowing.. they eats battery like no tommorow.
Depends in your needs, if you have apps that need better os then root, just be careful or it might blow in your face.
Why do you want to change to custom rom? Your OS outdated so you want to change your rom? Did you check that by using that custom rom your OS would be updated or not? If there is a problem with your current rom, is it possible to fix it by just rooting? Like if you want to just delete those annoying bloatware, you can do it just by rooting. I myself always root my phone right after I purchased it, I know what I bought and I want to use it like I wanted to. So I never understand people who are afraid of rooting.
not all people is tech whiz and just using it for convinience only and some people afraid of void warranty ( in case a new phone )
Mine is Samsung Note 4. It has fallen on concrete floor once. It's still usable, but nowadays, if i don't activate the mobile data, the phone won't work, as in cannot accept or make calls. Factory reset didn't solve the problem. At least I got large enough quota that it wasn't a problem.
In the US at least, you warranty can't be voided by simply rooting. Note 4 should have good enough community support, only thing is stylus support may not be 100% and you may need to get some apps to make it even work. XDA would probably be a better place to ask.
Jut use KING ROOT to root in one click. Rooting used to be difficult in the older days, nowdays its too fucking simple. But why is my kindle not supported
Hmmmm... IMHO, rooting is in general always better. Just check the apps you use and see if you cannot use any of them with a rooted phone... If any of them have this restriction, you might want to not root it. My bank's app doesn't work on rooted phones for example... And since I don't have a PC, I can only check how much money I have on my account on a bank or on phone, that was more than enough reason for me to not root it.
I like the power of rooting your phone, especially the tweaks you can add to your lifeless phone. I can enhance and make it powerful, you are lucky if your device is supported with some devs working on customs ROMS and much more. Just be sure that you know what you're into if you don't wanna mess with your unit and put it into the trash.
I forgot the Stock ROM or Original vendor OS. It is boring especially if your device is not supported with their monthly OS updates. Your stock with the factory setting and letting some bugs to lurk around in your current OS like bugs in storage, battery draining quickly, camera issue and much more of it. It's okay to stay on Stock if your phone is supported with updates at least 2 or more years.
As others have mentioned in this thread, rooting and using custom ROMs are two different things. I'd encourage you to unlock your bootloader and run a custom ROM on your phone if there's an active community that's maintaining a ROM for your phone. I recommend looking for AOSP (Android Open Source Project) ROMs, as AOSP is the basic version of Android that's released directly from Google. If there isn't active development of a ROM for your phone, it may be worth just sticking with what you have. Without knowing what phone you're using, it's kind of hard to give a good answer on the custom ROM side of things. Rooting is a different matter. There's a term in computer security known as "Attack Surface". Minimizing the attack surface of a device is one of the best ways of securing it against exploitable vulnerabilities. By default, Android keeps a lot of its system files and configuration protected against attack by locking them away from being changed by the user. Rooting your device escalates your privileges as a user and allows you to change those more sensitive areas in Android's operating system and kernel. There's a lot of malware for Android that only works on rooted devices. So, by simply not having your device rooted, you're minimizing your attack surface and protecting yourself from a wide swath of Android malware. That said, there are plenty of reasons that you may want to root your device. Some simple things only require that you temporarily root your device to change some system settings. Once you're done, you can remove root and still enjoy those changes. For other things, you may need to keep your device rooted. If that's the case, look for solutions that don't require root. If there are such solutions, use those. If there aren't, weigh the danger of rooting your device against the utility you gain from rooting it. And, if you don't have any particular need for root, don't root. Edit: Just reread the thread, and it looks like I overlooked where you said you have a Note 4. There should be active development on a ROM for your phone. You can find custom ROMs and methods to unlock your bootloader and install root here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4 You'll need to identify the hardware version of your phone since there are many hardware versions of the Note 4 made for different areas around the globe. A ROM made for one hardware version of the Note 4 may not work with another hardware version. Also, if your issue is making and receiving calls even after a factory reset, your issue is more likely hardware related, but it never hurts to test a custom ROM to make sure.