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Nexus 7 Rooting: why?

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Eug said:
Hmmm... Any drawbacks to the unlock/root? I was thinking of waiting until the iPad mini and the Acer Iconia Tab A110 were out, but it turns out Staples here may have some of these in stock, so I might just forget about waiting.
Click to expand...
Bah. Sold out yesterday at Staples online. I saw some guy at another forum bought 11 from Staples. WTF? I guess he's gonna try to flip them on eBay or something.
 
J&R just shipped mine.

Initial impression. Jellybean is way more polished and smooth than Gingerbread. I know a lot of the Android enthusiasts talked about how great Gingerbread was, but it was not as smooth or polished as iOS4. I'm talking about general usage here and not some missing OS functionality. Jellybean seems like a really slick mobile OS.

Only had it a couple hours but ICS/JB is probably the OS that finally matches iOS in general smoothness. Has a few quirks, but so does iOS. Very easy to get into. Granted I was somewhat familiar with Android setup and usage having beta tested our proprietary apps.

Don't think I will root.
 
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Eug said:
Hmmm... Any drawbacks to the unlock/root? I was thinking of waiting until the iPad mini and the Acer Iconia Tab A110 were out, but it turns out Staples here may have some of these in stock, so I might just forget about waiting.

The iPad mini makes more sense in terms of iCloud, etc. since I'm primarily a Mac/iPhone household, but that's not a deal killer. The A110's microSD is very welcome, but a rooted Nexus 7 with Stickmount is a reaonable compromise, and the Nexus 7 likely has a much better screen and better battery life. (Too bad neither have NTFS support.)

My usage will be mainly:

1. Surfing
2. Yahoo! email
3. Netflix
4. MKV playback
5. Viewing my IP cameras. Apparently there are apps that support my cameras.
6. Angry Birds of course.
Click to expand...

At the price of the Nexus buy one and get the iPad Mini too. 🙂
 
I think anyone that has spent any reasonable amount of time with any Linux distro will tell you that you do not want typical users having root access. The amount of damage you are capable of doing while having root is huge, things that can't reasonably be fixed(they *can* be fixed, but spending several hours because someone accidentally clicked something isn't reasonable IMO).

The Nexus devices are trivial to root. My own devices? Rooted. Kids and wife's? Not rooted, and not going to be rooted until they can explain why they need them that way(those of us who need root, get root rather easily, those that don't need it, shouldn't have it).

Honestly, as a consumer and the person responsible for keeping devices running in my house, I am *very* glad that Android devices don't ship with root and would honestly hesitate buying one that did unless it was only for myself.
 
If Google simply allowed us to play video off external flash via USB, I wouldn't bother rooting.
 
Thanks for the responses. I think I'll be holding off on rooting until I find an application that I need that requires root access, and as of yet I have none.
 
midwestfisherman said:
At the price of the Nexus buy one and get the iPad Mini too. 🙂
Click to expand...
I very likely not buying the mini. I already have an iPad, but the lack of external storage and (good) MKV playback support kills it.

The one other option I'd been considering is a cheap Chinese tablet with IPS screen. There are custom ROMs that have worked out all the main bugs, and they include NTFS support. But it's a cheap Chinese tablet, and the ROMs are ICS, not Jelly Bean.
 
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question: if I root my nexus 7, can i still get OTA updates from google? I am a android n00b coming from jailbroken iphones. Which are annoying because everytime there is a new update, you have to rejailbreak the phone.
 
Hmmm... You can't even transfer 4+ GB files to the Nexus 7 directly. I thought the Nexus 7 was using ext 3 internally, but it seems some are claiming the Nexus 7 actually uses FAT32 internally. Is that true?

Luckily as I understand it, Stickmount support NTFS-read as well.
 
Eug said:
IMO Gingerbread sucked.
Click to expand...

I got a lot of flak before. When i pointed out how big of an upgrade ICS was to GB, certain people wanted to cut my throat off saying GB was already awesome and steamrolled the iOS competition.

But yes, GB sucked. Once you go to ICS I don't see how you can go back.
 
So, why Paranoid Android?

Eug said:
Bah. Sold out yesterday at Staples online. I saw some guy at another forum bought 11 from Staples. WTF? I guess he's gonna try to flip them on eBay or something.
Click to expand...
Yep. Kijiji flipper.

Fortunately, stock is coming into retail stores more consistently now. I bought mine yesterday at retail, and I see a lot of other stores are getting stock too. So, the flippers/scalpers are only making around $20 or so now here in Toronto. That's a 6% or so profit margin off Canadian pricing and tax. What a waste of time.
 
Eug said:
So, why Paranoid Android?
Click to expand...

I can't speak to other custom ROMs, but PA allows you to easily switch between phone, phablet and tablet modes without mucking around editing build.prop files. It also allows you to change DPI and other settings for each individual app which is awesome in the event you don't like the tablet version of email or the phone version of YouTube that the N7 comes with out of the box.
 
So my Nexus 7 is still unrooted, and yesterday I got my Google Play credit, still unspent. When I root, I don't have to do anything for Google Play right? As I understand it from previous posts, Google Play will simply treat the rooted unit exactly the same. Correct? Same goes for the free movie too I gather.

After the root I guess I'll install Titanium Backup, Nova Launcher, and Stickmount.

P.S. Have any of you had problems with Netflix? It seemed a bit jumpy at times. Note this is on Jelly Bean 4.1, not 4.1.1.
 
Eug said:
So my Nexus 7 is still unrooted, and yesterday I got my Google Play credit, still unspent. When I root, I don't have to do anything for Google Play right? As I understand it from previous posts, Google Play will simply treat the rooted unit exactly the same. Correct? Same goes for the free movie too I gather.
Click to expand...

The $25 Google Play credit stays even if you root. I totally forgot about it but then realized it was still available when I purchased two apps recently (also didn't realize it was good for apps as well as other media).
 
Thanks. I've rooted the device now. I'll say it certainly isn't a one-click method, and despite WUG being the simplest, it wasn't a completely simple process IMO, esp. since the instructions are all over the place. I can't imagine the average non-geek doing this at all.

For the uninitiated, the process went something like this:

1. Turn developer options on.
2. Activate USB debugging mode.
3. Attach device to Windows machine (Win XP in my case).
4. Install drivers.
5. Ignore additional repeated requests by WinXP to install drivers.
6. Install PdaNET software. Ignore options for phone tethering and SMS viewing.
7. Run Nexus Root Toolkit
8. Unlock device.
9. Accept option on screen.
10. Turn developer options on again. (I think it was here I did this, but I can't remember.)
11. Activate USB debugging again.
12. Root device.
13. Activate SuperSU
14. Install BusyBox Free. (Ignore all the various options, because there are a bazillion of them.)

---

Thanks for the help though guys. I'm anxious to try Stickmount with some video files on an NTFS USB drive when I get home.

Maybe I'll also try to sideload Flash 11.1 onto the machine, unless you tell me that's a bad idea.
 
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Not a bad idea, though I haven't noticed the loss of flash. Even if flash is installed, it won't work with chrome. Works fine with firefox, I'm sure dolphin as well.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
 
Eug said:
Thanks. I've rooted the device now. I'll say it certainly isn't a one-click method, and despite WUG being the simplest, it wasn't a completely simple process IMO, esp. since the instructions are all over the place. I can't imagine the average non-geek doing this at all.

For the uninitiated, the process went something like this:

1. Turn developer options on.
2. Activate USB debugging mode.
3. Attach device to Windows machine (Win XP in my case).
4. Install drivers.
5. Ignore additional repeated requests by WinXP to install drivers.
6. Install PdaNET software. Ignore options for phone tethering and SMS viewing.
7. Run Nexus Root Toolkit
8. Unlock device.
9. Accept option on screen.
10. Turn developer options on again. (I think it was here I did this, but I can't remember.)
11. Activate USB debugging again.
12. Root device.
13. Activate SuperSU
14. Install BusyBox Free. (Ignore all the various options, because there are a bazillion of them.)

---

Thanks for the help though guys. I'm anxious to try Stickmount with some video files on an NTFS USB drive when I get home.

Maybe I'll also try to sideload Flash 11.1 onto the machine, unless you tell me that's a bad idea.
Click to expand...

You should have rooted it manually. It would have taught you the steps and sequences instead of leaving you in the dark. I'm not a fan of root toolkits and one click programs.

You really shouldn't have installed PdaNET software. It's unnecessary and just adds bloat. All the necessary drivers are here.

Now your N7 is rooted, install OTA RootKeeper. It will make backup of the superuser and allow you to restore and keep root after OTA update. Very useful.

After you install Flash player, install AOSP Browser which is missing on N7. It's the fastest browser and plays Flash better than other browsers. It's my browser of choice. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1780746
 
1. Stickmount rocks. I loaded up a 10 GB mkv movie and it played fine, off a 32 GB NTFS flash drive. Well, actually there was a split second audio lag but I wonder if it's the Dice player. I couldn't install VLC because it isn't supported in my area.

2. I couldn't be bothered to jump through hoops to install Browser.apk, and Dolphin HD beta didn't work, so I installed Firefox Beta instead with Flash 11.1.111.5. It works very well, to my pleasant surprise. Strangely though if I installed the later 11.1.115.12, all the Flash content is all pixelated.
 
I am new to the Android platform.

I have a Google Nexus 7 running 4.2. The device was rooted by someone at my company for the purposes of demonstrating the impact of rogue applications from random Android App Stores.

I am trying to display the screen of the Nexus 7 on my Mac which based on the research I have done appears to require debugging mode be enabled in Developer Options. My challenge is that I do not see Developer Options listed in my settings (under Apps or anywhere else, unless I missed it). Every post I have read assumes I can see the developer settings, and I have not found one which explains what to do if I don't see it.

Does rooting the device remove this option in the setting? And if so, does anyone have advice on how I can get his back in order to screen cast my android display on a Mac?

Thank you.
 
In 4.2 they hid the developer options for some reason, go to the about phone screen in settings and tap the build number 7 times and it'll unlock the dev options.
 
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