For Android enthusiasts, rooting and custom ROMs were once the ultimate draw. They made Android exciting and turned every phone into a project worth tinkering with. But the modding scene’s golden age has long passed, and that’s probably a good thing.
A Brief History of ROMs and Rooting
Custom ROMs and rooting have been a part of the Android experience for many since pretty much day one. The T-Mobile G1 was rooted within a few weeks of its launch, and from then on, experimenting with phones became something that all enthusiasts needed to do. It was also a key differentiating point that helped sell the platform.
While iPhone users had the option of jailbreaking their devices to install a handful of apps that Apple didn’t approve of, Android users could completely wipe their software and customize their devices from scratch.
Whatever you wanted your phone to be, you could find it in ROMs like CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, and MoDaCo. Minimalist or feature-packed, speed or battery life, or a whole new user experience: a quick trip to the XDA forums would reveal the perfect ROM for you.
My own ROM journey began with my first Android phone, the HTC Desire. After HTC had spent months failing to provide any information on an update to Android 2.3, I decided to find out what options the community had already created. And so, I flashed my first Gingerbread ROM. I remember it being a bit of a hotchpotch. The camera was as likely to reboot the phone as it was to take a photo, but that was almost part of the fun.
After that, I moved to the Galaxy S3 and replaced Samsung’s gaudy TouchWiz software with various stock ROMs. Then I switched to Nexus phones and had less need for ROMs, so I explored the benefits of rooting instead. I loved the Xposed Framework with the near-endless customizations of the GravityBox app and the battery-saving Greenify. Its replacement, the almost-as-good Magisk, was equally addictive.
Eventually, that fell by the wayside, too. My banking apps stopped working if there was any sign of root software on my phone, so I had to make a choice. My last two phones have remained unrooted, and I won’t be going back.
The Golden Age of Rooting Is Gone
Custom ROMs and rooting were, to an extent, of their time. Android was a new platform, embraced by enthusiastic users. And though there is still a small community around it, the peak has long since passed, and probably for good reason.
It isn’t just about the downsides that we happily overlooked. The security, compatibility, and performance implications, the bricked devices, and how it could be a time sink with minimal benefit. Or that much of the community has moved on. ROMs briefly threatened to go mainstream when OnePlus bought CyanogenMod, but ended up simply showing how vulnerable community projects can actually be.
Or even that it’s much harder to do now that most devices are locked down tighter than they’ve ever been.
The truth is, modding is no longer needed. The most practical benefit of installing a custom ROM was to save your phone from obsolescence. But you can now expect three or four years of updates for a mid-range phone and seven for a flagship, so that’s unlikely to be a problem. Many phones have update policies that will outlast the device itself.
Android, and manufacturers’ customized versions of it, have improved beyond measure as well. The days of ugly graphics and cheesy skeuomorphic designs from Samsung and the like are long gone, replaced by clean, modern interfaces. Bloatware—unwanted pre-installed apps—can still be an issue on some devices. Yet some people like it, and you don’t need to root to remove it anyway.
One thing that kept me rooting my phones for a long time was the ability to add new features. Not big gimmicky things, but small, useful functions that should have been part of the software in the first place. Things like being able to resize widgets, getting more useful volume controls, or mapping buttons to specific tasks. Most of these have now been ticked off, too, as Android has become increasingly polished.
Trading Control for Convenience
The modding scene was an important part of Android’s history, and the platform’s openness was the reason many of us chose it over the iPhone. Its decline does undoubtedly mean that we’ve lost a lot of control over how we can use our devices. And with further limits on things like sideloading on the horizon, the Android world looks quite different from how it was in its first decade.
But I can’t feel too bad about it. ROMs and rooting had their day, and Android, and no doubt many of its users, have outgrown it. Smartphones have become highly commoditized. Where the early Android phones were rough and ready and invited tinkering, they’re now just tools that work exactly as expected. And that’s got to be a good thing.