Why did you root your Hudl?

[Guest Droibles]

As it seems the most talked about topics on here are about how to root your Hudl, I am curious to find out why people are so eager. 

 

I've owned an original N7 from release and have rooted it/upgraded it over and over and when I look back there was only ever one  valid reason I could find as to why I did this - to use USB on-the-go with a 3G dongle so that I could get 3G network access. I soon realised that it hammered the battery and was so flakey that it just wasn't worth the hassle. In the end I just bought a MiFi device and waved goodbye to root access and hassle.

 

So when I got a Hudl - cos they are great aren't they? - I was tempted to root it, but was struggling to find any reason. From my own experience and various posts on the forum I've listed some fors and againsts, but why do people specifically want root on the Hudl.

 

To be clear I mean just applying the su binary to get elevated rights, not flashing a whole new customised ROM or recovery tool. I'm also aware, unless I missed a memo, that the only way to attain root access on the Hudl right now is to flash a modified Tesco system image with the su binary included.

 

Reasons to root!

 

• "Because it's there". The act of rooting your device is in and of itself a reason to do it. It's a learning exercise, a triumph over those nasties at Tesco/Google that don't give you full access to the hardware you own.
• To allow the removal of the Tesco apps/widgets and the (I agree) annoying [T] button. This seems to be the #1 reason right now. Apart from the [T] button removal, I'm not sure you gain that much additional storage space/CPU cylces or save that much more battery by removing these apps.
• To poke around the underlying Android file structure to modify files such as build.prop . E.g. to allow things such as fooling Android into thinking your Hudl is a phone instead of a tablet and thus allow you to install phone only apps - but there are easier ways around this.
• To allow a 'fix' to be applied for an underlying problem ... I'm yet to see a fix for any of the Hudl 'problems' yet that needs root.
• To allow ad blocker software complete access to block in-app advertising
• Allow you to take a full backup of your apps and data including system apps
• To allow special things to be done with external hardware such as using USB on the go and a 3G dongle - the only reason I've ever had for rooting.
• And... the only reason I currently have to root my Hudl... to turn off the REALLY annoyingly loud and pointless startup plinky plonk!

Equally there are reasons not to root.

• You can mess up your device to the point where the average user can't recover it if you modify too much.
• If you change some low level Android files official updates will often fail when they verify the intergity of your device. This means you have to revert to 'stock' or unroot prior to installing updates
• Rare - but you could inadvertently grant root access to a nefarious app. You'd have to be foolish enough to install a dodgy app in the first instance.
• To remove the mistaken belief that simply rooting a device miraculously fixes various hardware/software bugs. It does not unless you subsequently use the root access to modify files/settings/software to fix the bug.

 

Really I'm just looking for a reason to root my Hudl because I'm actually one of those that does it "Because it's there". I'm also truly interested to find out why people are so eager. Especially as the Huld must be introducing a lot of people to Android and tablet computing for the first time and they may think that they can only get value out of their device if they root it!

 

Shields up. Ready for the barrage of things I missed :ph34r:

 

[Guest greyrider]

To get rid of the annoying boot up sound, trim the Tesco fat, kill the phone apk, use Folder Mount to dump data to the SD card, gain full screen with, umm...full screen and lose the Tesco "T" for starters. Waiting on a way to utilise vold.fstab or somebody to release a nice ROM

[Guest]

Flashing a pre-rooted ROM isn't the only method - other root methods do exist e.g. use of undisclosed android security flaws via kingoapp.com etc..... :ninja:

 

Personally, I hate some annoyances like not being able to set the device network hostname - something I've only managed on the hudl via rooting, being able to turn it on without chiming it's presence......... :wacko:

 

I could go on, but they're personal to me and my use of the device. Give a network/security engineer a hudl and they'll likely want to do those 2x things sooner or later. ;)

 

(if we had some active forum admins, making things easy to find for people who haven't read every single thread/post would be eaiser :blush:)

[Guest Droibles]

Flashing a pre-rooted ROM isn't the only method - other root methods do exist e.g. use of undisclosed android security flaws via kingoapp.com etc..... :ninja:

 

 

OK, I missed a memo :unsure:  Was aware of the Kingo app, but wasn't aware of how it applied root.

 

Only have Windows in a VM at home so might try it out.. if only to get rid of Hudl startup tinkling! Whoever makes the decision to have a device that makes a loud sound at startup needs to be removed from the decision making process.. permenantly. They're the type of person that would make a fridge that every time you opened it, says "Hello Dave". :angry2:

[Guest hippy dave]

I'd love a fridge that did that :)

Definitely disabling as much crap as possible does benefit performance, and I need to tweak the hell out of everything because I'm a geek.

[Guest Droibles]

I'd love a fridge that did that :)

Definitely disabling as much crap as possible does benefit performance, and I need to tweak the hell out of everything because I'm a geek.

 

"Thank you for replying Dave."

 

[Guest j92]

I mainly bought the tablet just for browsing the internet, but when I found out I couldn't install some apps because my device wasn't compatible... I looked on Google and found out about this "market helper" which requires a rooted device, from there it all went south lol but I finally rooted it after many attempt's lol now its rooted I just lurk this forum for new content :)

[Guest Droibles]

To get rid of the annoying boot up sound, trim the Tesco fat, kill the phone apk, use Folder Mount to dump data to the SD card, gain full screen with, umm...full screen and lose the Tesco "T" for starters. Waiting on a way to utilise vold.fstab or somebody to release a nice ROM

 

Finally got round to rooting my Hudl this weekend. I did it because I heard that startup jingle one too many times.

 

I didn't use Kingoapp, as I couldn't get it to work and after 15 mins of trying on my Windows 7 VM, gave up and resorted to reliable Linux mechanisms instead.  Why people think things are easier to do on Windows is a mystery to me - there's more talk and wasted time on forums about Windows USB drivers not working for tablets/phones than anything else!

 

I thought I'd share my reasons now for rooting my Hudl

• So that I now have a nice, silently booting Hudl
• To use Folder Mount - which after seeing greyrider's post mentioning it, I researched and now use to get circa 9GB of BBC iPlayer data onto the external SD card.

So thanks to greyrider for the nod towards Folder Mount

 

:)

[Guest DarthB]

lol, droibles most of the reasons you give not to root are the swan songs of the scared ppl who know nothing about rooting! if you root a device and backup the original rom there is nothing you can do to that device that cant be fixed by reinstaling the backup of the original rom!

i have a htc wildfire s and appart from the fact that the android (2.3.5) isnt good enough to instal some interesting looking apps the phone is perfect for me because i have rooted it. originaly i rooted it to get rid of the anoying facebook/twiter/flickr social media apps that were fixed into the phone and couldnt be removed unless i rooted. facebook was the worst! i shut down my facebook account a long time ago cos if you are really honest it is a waste of time and a fad that should have died out a long time ago, and even though i didnt have a facebook account linked to the phone it was still constantly working in the background taking up runtime and collecting data about everything i was doing on my phone.

so after less than a year from when i bought the phone i bit the bullet and decided to try rooting it. it took me a few hrs cos i had never done anything like that b4 but thankfully i found a really good blog with a step by step on how to do it,  i tried a few of the replacement roms and quickly discovered that unless you know enough to create your own rom they a mostly pointless cos they only do what the person who created them wanted their phone to do!

so i started modifying the original rom and had great fun doing it, at one point i had deleted the htc sense and installed go launcher and was customizing my widgets/icons with my own icons, when youre on the home screen looking at a sea of comic book charecters that are your icons you cant help but smile like a simpleton! but i did end up going to far with my modifictions and having to reinstal my original rom. after that i decided to see what else i could do with the phone without modifieing it to a stupid point.

i found there are sites where you can get apps that only work on rooted phones, for instance now i have aldiko premium, all-in-one toolbox, x-plore, whats app+, smart toolbox, gem miner 2 and a hoast of other apps and games that you would normaly have to part with hard earned cash to use but as my phone is rooted i get these payed for apps for free! so if that isnt a dam good reason to root your phone/android tablet then getting it to work exactly the way you want it to should be! i would recomend rooting to anyone and have hepled quite a few friends root phones and tablets

[Guest hedgehogabc]

Like Droibles, I also used my root access to turn off the loud start up jingle. I did this by renaming the file 'boot.ogg' to 'boot.ogg.disabled', which can be found in the /system/media/audio directory (I used the 'ES File Explorer' app to rename it).

 

But the real reason I rooted my Hudl was to get rid of the navigation bar at the bottom, which I replaced with the 'LMT Launcher' app. The navigation bar annoyed me, not only because I wanted to be able to use apps in full screen mode, but also because my young daughter would sometimes accidentally hit the navigation buttons when she was playing games on the Hudl. I have posted a separate thread on how you can hide the navigation bar.

[Guest Thomas J Marshall]

To get rid of the annoying boot up sound, trim the Tesco fat, kill the phone apk, use Folder Mount to dump data to the SD card, gain full screen with, umm...full screen and lose the Tesco "T" for starters. Waiting on a way to utilise vold.fstab or somebody to release a nice ROM

I got rid of the Tesco T and replaced it with the first letter of my name! :D

[Guest flurry]

I got rid of the Tesco T and replaced it with the first letter of my name! :D

 

how did you manage this?

[Guest]

how did you manage this?

I think the clue is in his name, that aside, you just have to replace systemUI.apk with a modified version found in this forum.

[Guest flurry]

I think the clue is in his name, that aside, you just have to replace systemUI.apk with a modified version found in this forum.

 

Yeah, I'll admit I didn't notice that! I was hoping it was possible to assign something else to the button/modify it visually. I've already got it hidden using the modaco xposed toolkit module

[Guest Thomas J Marshall]

Yeah, I'll admit I didn't notice that! I was hoping it was possible to assign something else to the button/modify it visually. I've already got it hidden using the modaco xposed toolkit module

Sorry about that!  The tesco icon doesn't bother me at the moment, I am happy enough to get rid of bloatware.  Hopefully there will be a nice new shiny rom shortly!

[Guest Rob987]

I am firmly in the 'because I can' camp. But once it's done, a world of fiddling and messing about is opened up to you.

 

So far I have:

• Got rid of the startup noise
• Experimented with alternative startup animations
• Enabled multi-user appshare support
• Installed alternative desktop UI/launcher apps such as full!screen which is great but doesn't work too well with multiple user profiles, also hides the upper status bar which I didn't really want - so I uninstalled it in favour of the next 3 in combination
  • Novalauncher which is pretty, and removes left hand Google bar;
  • LMT Launcher which is plain old useful;
  • Ultimate Dymanic Navbar which hides the standard navbar (including the 'T' button) and replaces it with one that appears when needed, thus giving full screen estate without losing upper status bar. UDN also supports multi-user profiles where each user wants to deal with the navbar differently.
• Installed ES File Explorer and used it to explore the filesystem (just out of interest) but also alter system files (carefully!)
• Probably some other things which escape my memory for the moment...

 

What I don't understand is, why would you *not* root your Hudl?! For me, the main reason to go Android over IOS is its flexibility. You can make it your own.

[Guest aerostar]

I rooted mine like others to remove bloatware and the Tesco stuff, as a side effect I found today that I can now use a mobile dongle (not mifi) in it.

 

Whilst MiFi is probably a better solution, if you have a dongle and do not want to buy MiFi then this is a reasonable solution.

 

 

 I installed PPP widget (must be rooted device)  and USB Host Viewer app, for diagnostics.

 

Using  an OTG cable, connected the dongle and  checked with USB hostviewer to make sure it had been recognised.

 

Ran PPP widget which recognised a modem was connected, went into configure, entered just the APN name - which in my case was 3internet, and then clicked connect on the PPP widget, and after a short delay it connected and I could browse and do normal net stuff including emails etc.

 

 

I have tried 3 dongles (unlocked)  1 Huawei and 2 ZTE and all worked.

 

To reduce battery consumption switch off the wireless.

 

PPP widget info http://www.draisberghof.de/android/pppwidget.html

 

USB Host Viewer https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synchack.android.usbhostviewer&hl=en

 

[Guest Michal Misiu]

Why I have root in my Hudl? Simple. Rockchip3188 is litle bit slow ... but if you change in set CPU to this settings : min 312 max 1,6ghz ,pefromance, deadline then Hudl will be fast like hell! (battery -20% cos in idle is ~800mhz, but UI and games are going perfect, 20k in antutu) + delete all tesco sh.t and unused app by Titanium Backup. All games are running perfect (RR3\Dark Knight\Deus Ex eg) Without it hudl is using 99% of time only 800mhz on 4 cores, even in games :\

Edited January 26, 2014 by Michal Misiu

[Guest ifstar]

Rooted to allow me to run apps that wouldn't install on the Hudl (main one being the Assassins Creed 4 companion app). Since doing this, I've managed to do other bits and pieces. Kingo app worked fine for me after a little bit of fiddling with the driver in windows but very quick and easy.