woot! My Phone has Root!

I’ve spent the past few weeks debating whether or not to attempt this whole “root” thing with my Android phone.  You see, I have an LG Optimus V from Virgin Mobile.  Love the battery life, love the performance and I love all the crazy and wonderful things I can do with it.  What I’m not crazy about is the lack of space and I sincerely hate the idiotic bloatware Virgin throws on it.  There are so many things I’d like to do with the phone, but couldn’t because I kept running out of room.

Now you could say all I needed to do was ignore the apps, make sure they don’t automatically update and I’d be fine.  I tried that for a couple of weeks, but being I like having the latest and greatest on my PC’s, I also get annoyed when I see this list of apps that are begging for updates on my phone.  Most of which I don’t use, don’t like and don’t want.  I’m also a big fan of freedom to do what I like with the things I build, buy or what-have-you.  Dammit, it’s my money, I bought that freedom.

So, last night I finally searched around and found this video on YouTube talking about rooting the Optimus V and then turning it into a hotspot.  Since I can already do the hotspot thing using PdaNet and Foxfi without having to root my phone, I only paid attention to the rooting portion.

Only took a few minutes and my phone was rooted and ready to go!  Using Titanium Backup, I backed up the phone and then proceeded to rip out the useless Virgin bloatware.  Managed to squeeze an extra 25MB of space when all was said and done and I feel much better not having to stare at useless crap on my apps list and when I check for updates.

Also, note that the Avast! mobile security flipped out on the Gingerbreak used to root the phone.  I let it eradicate the offending app since I was done rooting and all seems to be happy.

Granted, I only did this last night.  So far, the phone is proving to have no issues.  I shall keep an eye  on it to see if what I did bites me in the ass later   If it does, it gives me an excuse to get a better phone.