Every day across forums including KTalk I see people say stupid things like “rooting or flashing custom roms is not good, will ruin your device, I just want a phone that works, tweaking is for youngsters…” and many more. I just laugh at their ignorance. if you cannot control your phone do you really own it?
On our desktops Os’ like Windows, Mac or the various Linux distros, we have Admin control over them, we can install any software we want or remove them, customise and play with them as much as we want. On Mobile phones such privileges do not exist, to get admin access you have to root your phone if it’s android or Jailbreak if it’s iPhone. Speaking about Android, rooting allows you to control every aspect of your phone like remove those stupid apps/bloatware that come with your phone, block adds, theme your phone if you don’t like the skin, use a firewall, mess with the kernel and many more. Also custom roms and Kernel give us different flavours, Like if you have a Oneplus phone, but you Like Motorolla’s skin, why not a rom with that theme? Just like with our desktops if you dont like Windows you can use a linux like Ubuntu and the rest, so why not have such freedom with your phones? With custom roms you can have the latest Android update even when your OEM stops providing updates for your phone
Most of these manufacturers also don’t allow for minor repairs, They want you to take the phone to their service centres for simple things you can do at home. Example 1, os updates, sometimes during these updates your phone can brick or the phone can brick due to other reasons. A soft brick is simply fixed by flashing the stock rom and the phone is fine, takes about 10 minutes. but most of these OEMs don’t have dedicated pages with the software files there for you to download and flash. So if you have such issue you have to go to their service centres and you will be charged if the phone is out of warranty for simple things you can do at home. Example 2 Phone batteries degrade with every charge, with time they need replacement. However most phones these days come with non-removable batteries. Let’s be honest, a new Processor will last 3-5 OS updates, or Snapdragon 820 cannot handle android Oreo or even P? Apple themselves admitted that once the battery starts degrading they reduce the phone’s performance. Minor fixes on phone are not that hard, www.ifixit.com has lots of free guides on that.
so why pay 100k or even 150k(iphone x at safaricom shop) for a phone you cannot control in any way while your computer of similar price you can mess with it as much as you want? Shit happens, people go broke but does that mean that the Samsung Note 4 that you bought 3 years ago should continue using Kitkat with a weak battery while simply changing it’s battery and flashing a custom rom to it will give it a new lease of life? Or should you buy an iphone 8 because your iphone 6plus got slowed down by updates while simply changing it’s battery will fix the issue?
watu wa summary: Consumers deserve the right to repair their devices and don’t buy a stupid device that you cannot control, jailbreak or root that shit. Life is too short to use boring devices.