The process of rooting an Android device has, well, rooted itself in the Android culture, with manufacturers trying different methods to prevent users from cracking devices open and modifying them to their heart's content. Today Google tackled the topic of rooting on the Android Developers Blog, and they made some pretty good points. Nick Kralevich, an Android security engineer, points out that the Nexus One and Nexus S are intended as enthusiast and developer devices, and as such, have intentionally been made easy to root and customize rather than force users to utilize security holes so that they can personalize their phone. Kralevich says that he hopes that, in the future, manufacturers will make it easier for end users to unlock their handsets rather than forcing them to forfeit the protection of the network, content providers, and devs.
As we've seen in the past, no matter how hard manufacturers like Motorola and HTC try, it seems that the Android hacking community eventually manages to root an device thrown their way. I'm sure that device makers could better spend their time actually improving devices and addressing other issues rather than slaving away, trying to block their users from rooting, so why not just let them do whatever they'd like with their handsets?
