unlocking/de-branding/rooting/OSupdating - for Dummies

[Guest Matus Kalisky]

Hello,

I am rather new to the world of Android smartphones (in fact I do not have any yet, but working on that). After reading a little around I quickly realized that one often needs to do of the the following "stuff" to get the phone working he/she wants and to update the Android OS.

I would like to ask a few general questions in this regard - to get an idea about the work and risk involved. I will keep it general, I promise.

I know that the internet is full of very technically specific solutions that are particular to given phone or version of the OS, but before I dive into device specific search I would like to get an idea of what is actually being discussed in those threads. Please do not hesitate to post as answers just links to other threads or pages where given problem is discussed.

So let's just go topic-by-topic:

A ) SIM unlocking

This is as I understand mostly rather trivial and often for free. Phones can often be had new without any SIM lock. Once the SIM lock is removed one is in principle able to use all SIM cards.

Questions:

1) Is the comment above correct?

2) May SIM unlocking procedure lead to troubles with the phone or loss of a warranty?

B ) De-branding

As I understand 'branding' is just additional stuff (applications) that given operator adds to the phone. The usually can not be deleted easily. Also - while *new* SIM unlocked phones are mostly easy to find, there are much fewer de-branded phones and if, then for higher price.

Questions:

1) What are the principal steps (in human readable language) one must undertake to de-brand a phone?

2) What possible negative implications may the de-branding have on the phone?

3) Is the de-branding process reversible? Is it possible to go back to "branded" phone if necessary?

4) Does the de-branding bring any other advantages to the user other than removing the "branded" stuff?

5) Does debranding violates the warranty?

6) Does debranding require rooting of the phone?

C ) rooting

OK - the thread is oriented to us, newbies. So - the rooting should in principle give the user full rights to change more-less anything on the phone. Also the parts that are intended to be accessed or updated by the phone company during updates. One of the obvious reasons to root a phone is to install a new OS which was not made officially available by the phone company for given model. But I guess there could be more reasons to root a phone.

Questions:

1) What are the most common reasons to ROOT a phone?

2) What are the basic steps necessary (please again in a amateur readable language) to root a phone?

3) What are the risk or possible negative implications? Could the phone be "destroyed" in the process?

4) I guess rooting does violate warranty - does it? What is your experience?

5) Once the phone is rooted - is it possible to go back to "non-rooted" phone?

D ) OS update (NOT the official one)

The need to update the OS is mostly driven by new features and/or bug fixes. As far as I understand the phone must be rooted to do so. Of course not in the case if this is an official update. But that is not what I want to discuss here. So - once somebody puts together an OS update for a given phone (I understand this is phone/model dependent)

Questions:

1) What are the basic steps of updating the OS?

2) When would you NOT go for an update even if a recently stable version is available?

3) Can a backup of the phone be made prior the update such that if something goes wrong one can just go back to the old version?

4) What are the risks of OS update?

Thanks to all contributors for their time and effort in advance.

We dummies are looking forward to your answers ;)