Rooting a phone

XDA is a good place to start.

I have a bank app. The installation instructions said app would not work if the phone was rooted.

Magisk will hide rooted status from specified apps; the author always seems to be one step ahead of Safetynet (the part of the OS that detects root) but no guarantee that will continue for ever ...

Isn't the real question not how to do it and get away with it under normal circumstances but whether, if your mobile banking goes itspu and you lose all your dosh, your bank will still pay you compo?

Nick

Thanks. I had a look there but felt like I'd entered another reality. I'm an ex-IT guy but I don't want to learn a new vernacular and spend days or weeks fiddling; I just want the thing to work so I can get on with the more important things in life.

In which case, go back to them and get one that does work.

I don't think you need to root a phone to replace the OS, just unlock the bootloader.

Ditto in that I'm an ex-IT guy and the Android and Linux guys sometimes may as well be speaking Klingon and I wonder how they got to that point.

Of course it's these same guys that write these systems which probably explains a lot. I did root an old Android 4 phone which allowed me to free up memory so I could actually run some apps that I wanted, nothing spectacular. It was no big deal but if I'd lost the phone it wouldn't have mattered that much.

But if you don't want to fiddle then you are stuck with standard fare so just go back to factory settings. If you got your apps from playstore I suspect they'll re-install anyway.

Back in the days of android 2.x and to a lesser degree 4.x I did put 3rd party firmware on my phones/tablets, to get round restrictions of under

Why do you want to root it?

You can root the existing Touchwiz (Android 6) install:

If you're into custom ROMs these work reasonably well on my Note 4:

and this video gives the procedure:

The main annoying bit is installing TWRP which you only do once, once that's done it's fairly simple to flash a new ROM from an SD card.

Be aware that generally it's a good idea to wipe data before reflashing, so you might have to reload apps etc. There are backup apps like TitaniumBackup and Migrate to help with that.

It's probably better not to do it to your daily driver unless you have another phone you can use if you mess up. Generally, a full wipe and reinstall fixes most issues, but no good if you miss that urgent call while doing so.

Theo

I'm considering whether it's worth the time/pain/risk of rooting because I've read that it allows the bloat-ware to be removed and that some ROMs are faster than the standard Samsung ROM - but I'm in the difficult situation of not knowing what I don't know about the subject. The more I delve, the more I'm tempted not to bother.

risky it

That is the question. For most people they have no requirment to have a rooted phone. Changing or upgrading the ROM however can give benefits like giving life back to an old phone/tablet.

It seems complex but it's not really. A lot of the apparent complexity comes from the fact that the software tools and version(s) of the firmware(s) required vary with the hardware you are trying to upgrade.

Basically you use Odin on a PC to replace the phones bootloader with TWRP (device specific) over a USB connection. Then boot into TWRP on the phone to replace the ROM (device specific) from an SD card in the phone.

In summary, you need:

Odin, to flash the bootloader:

If you want root (you probably don't, to begin with), you need Magisk:

1. Install Odin on a Windows machine
2. Use Odin to flash TWRP (requires holding Power+Home+VolumeDown buttons at power up to enter download mode, then connect to PC via a USB cable)
3. Put RR, Magisk and OpenGapps .zip files onto a micro SD card
4. Boot into TWRP (from off, hold Power+Home+VolumeUp)
5. Wipe system partition and cache via the touch menus
6. Install the ROM .zip then the Gapps and Magisk .zips via the touch menus
7. Reboot into your new OS (first boot may take a while)
8. Set up your 'new' phone

Like anything, it's a bit slower the first time but a lot quicker second time around, especially since you don't need steps 1-2 again (although you can use Odin to reinstall the Samsung firmware[1] if you don't like your custom ROM). It's worth following a video on how to use Odin since the UI isn't terribly obvious (it's an internal Samsung tool that's leaked onto the net).

Once you've done this, it's like having a new phone for about 15 mins work.

Theo

Thanks to all (esp. Theo and DaveL) for the info. What I'm still lacking is an understanding of the benefits that would offset the pain. If the newer Note phones had removable batteries I'd probably treat myself but, apart from feeling a little slow, the N4 does everything I need. How would it be "better" with a different ROM (I'd misunderstood the process, thinking that Rooting was a necessary precursor to changing the ROM code) and would everything still work?

If I were you I'd try going back to factory settings and see whether that improves the speed. As others have said, with a bit of luck Google Play Store will reinstall a lot of your stuff.

I rooted a Google Nexus some time ago and experimented with different ROMs. It was interesting (I like techie things a bit) but I've not bothered messing round with any of my devices since. It can be nice to get rid of some bloatware, for instance, but there can be disadvantages as well.

Getting rid of bloatware was one of the motivators, but this

When phones came with limited internal memory and many apps wouldn't run from external SD, uninstalling bloatware was almost essential to free up internal memory for your own apps. This needed root.

But these days it's less of a problem; phones have much more RAM, and apps run happily from external storage. Bloatware is still ugly and intrusive but you can disable it via ADB commands over USB (enable Developer mode in settings, then "USB debugging" but you don't have to unlock the bootloader or root the OS).

After ADB disable, bloatware is still takes up storage but you don't see it in the screen menus and it doesn't run in the background. You can disable system apps via ADB that you can't disable in Settings.

It's a bit subjective, but to me the nice thing is it 'feels like' a new phone. For one thing you get the most recent version of Android, with various new features (although there's nothing super compelling to me, things like night mode are handy, and some of the third party tweaks are nice), for another you get more control over what things are installed. Another thing is you get the most recent security updates, rather than stock firmware which is often years old.

For me, it's being Google-free, via MicroG (reimplementation of Google Play Services, so that many apps work), Yalp or Aurora Store (Play Store replacement without a Google account), NetGuard (firewall to prevent apps chatting to the internet without my permission, eg for spying or to fetch ads) and XPrivacyLua [Pro] (feeds fake data to apps that want access to data I don't want them to have). That's all rather complicated (and a bit fiddly to set up), but an example of the kind of things you can do with a rooted phone.

Like you, I'm less than keen on the newer Notes (and for a long time you couldn't actually buy a newer Note anyway - Note 5 didn't come to Europe, Note 6 didn't exist, Note 7 caught fire...), and even now they ain't cheap. I have two Note 4s - I use one as a daily driver and reflash the other with a new ROM, then when I'm happy swap things over.

Some things don't work as well - the Samsung camera app uses a special backdoor to the camera that isn't on plain Android, so you have to use a different app which isn't quite as good (I use OpenCamera). The stylus works but things like S-Note, S-Command etc don't - but non-Samsung stylus notetaking and drawing apps work fine.

What's nice is you can decouple the hardware from the software - you might have a perfectly working phone, but want the feature from new software. On something like Windows it's easy, just install the new version, but often with phones the vendor gives up after a year or two so you never get a newer version. With a custom ROM you can keep old phones going for a lot longer.

Theo