Taking A Leap of Faith, Kinda....

Finally getting around to a bit of customization of my Sony phone. This is my 3rd Android, but it's only my 1st Sony 'droid. I love it, it's an amazing device. And just like the Samsung & Toshiba before it, rooting time has come. It's the first step to really taking control of the device. I always put it off for a bit because [every time] there is such a huge learning curve for this kind of task.

Rooting has become insanely simple.So why the hesitation? There is so much that needs to be considered:

Will I brick my device?
Will I void my warranty?
Will I loose DRM capabilities?
Will I loose customer support?
Will my battery life degrade?
Will the device loose speed/ run slow?
Will my actions cause it to boot up slow?
WiFi problems? Network Problems?
Will some of the device capabilities be lost [forever]?

The list can go on and on. This Sony model is the perfect example. It's camera is THE biggest selling point of the Z1. In fact, it's camera is one of the biggest topics in the Android world right now, and probably of all time [since the beginning of the smartphone revolution, that is] And... everyone who unlocked their device, lost the use of their camera... of all of the things on that device to lose function, they lost the use of the one thing that sat it apart from other phones... the very reason they bought it....irreversible gone. This would eventually be fixed with a firmware update, but what if it hadn't? And here's the kicker, many of these people had their phones unlocked using the Sony official software, not hack tools. Sony themselves were inadvertently doing it.

There is so much difference between Android makers & models, and most importantly of all... most of the Android hack world is a perpetual experimental work-in-progress. The level of misinformation is staggering. The opposing opinions on what is good, what is safe, and what is right is legendary. To those of us who are not fanboys or even enthusiasts... to those of us that just want to play with our new toy, none of this is common knowledge. We aren't driven to hack or exploit or program...it doesn't interest us, and the time spent negotiating this learning curve is a labor of love, the relevance of this new knowledge has a fleeting shelf life, diminishing by the month or week instead of year.

The bulk of people who run, moderate, program, and "help" on the Android forums around the web are often impolite, unhelpful, offensive, and even contrary to the spirit of teaching/helping. This leads to non-participation. Which then leads to people making decisions without having attained full understanding of what they need to know.

People who are senior members of the 'prestigious' Android hacking communities often post information as fact, that often turns out to be false... to the sorrow and loss of the naive. Additionally, you may get perfectly legitimate information, however, one, or more, vital facts will be left out. A fact that changes everything.

The truth is, these people running the websites are just like us. They know little more than we do, they are just passing off information that someone else posted else-where. Often they are driven by the "thanks" that they shamelessly beg for in every post. Meaning: They aren't experts, and post-count or seniority has no affiliation with experience, knowledge. nor even wisdom. If your goal is gratification, then it can't be teaching, because it shouldn't be about you.

That's the learning curve of which I speak. There are 10,000 [yes, I counted every one of them], permanently bricked Androids that belong to people that trusted these very same experts. We can never fully know for sure of "what's fact", but if you read enough testimonies on a wide-web scale [not just a few popular web-sites] it's possible to gain a fair amount of confidence.

Even with all the Android roots, unlocks, and CFW flashing as well as iPhone/iPad jailbreaking/unlocking that I've done, I admit that I have little confidence starting out. I want to know as much as possible before I take an active role into phone hacking. And every time it starts out just like this. It's an absolute confusion that will only increase, at first, but with diligence, it will certainly begin to make sense. Regardless of what I learned with previous devices, the device industry changes so fast that past knowledge will play only a small part in any present operations.

The difference between the various Androids out there is staggering. Sony is a perfect example, so much is different about this company, and this particular phone, that most of what I learned from Samsung & Toshiba devices is irrelevant. Sure, the general basics are identical, but all of the specifics are not. It's like the difference between being asked to find a sea shell on the beach and being asked to find a specific species of shell on the beach. So, now that I've made this even more confusing, I begin...