rooting android phone

[Wombat]

I've had my Sony Ericsson Xperia pro for 18 months, and whilst I'm very happy with it, the presence of silly apps I will never use, such as "lets golf" and Facebook, is annoying.  These won't delete, so does anyone know of a simpler and less drastic method than rooting it?  I'm wary of rooting destroying features I actually want, such as the widgets for WiFi etc, and the gallery app. Is rooting akin to wiping the HDD of my PC, flashing the BIOS and then installing a new OS?  I'm nervous of wrecking my phone...

[Charlotte]

No - "rooting" is just gaining root administration rights on your own phone.

You need to root a phone prior to flashing a new OS (like cyanogenmod) but you don't need to install a new OS once you have root access - this may be enough to allow you to make the changes you need.

[Andrew]

You need to root a phone prior to flashing a new OS

Do you? I thought you could flash a new OS without rooting. I've not done it myself (yet!) so I don't speak from experience.

[Charlotte]

Well I did.  I also needed to gain S-OFF status as well, but that's an HTC thing.

[Andrew]

In which case, I'm kinda stymied. I can't root my phone, and have tried a few methods.

I have exactly wombat's problem; too many pre-installed apps that I have no intention of using and just take up valuable space. I want rid of them.

Since I couldn't root, I thought flashing would achieve what I wanted, albeit somewhat brutally.

[tiermat]

If your phone is the MK16i, wombat, try these instructions:

http://theunlockr.com/2012/11/28/how-to-root-the-sony-xperia-pro-mk16i/

Pretty clear what needs doing.

The options are:

1) Root then install a uninstaller (no that isn't a typo).  An uninstaller should allow you to remove the cruft from a rooted phone (and allow you to use something like TimeSync to keep your date/time correct, among other things)
2) Root then flash with a new image (cyanogenmod or the like, as previously mentioned)
3) Do nothing and just live with it.

From experience the easiest ones to root and flash are Samsung and HTC (even with the S-OFF issue Charlotte mentions), I have re-flashed several SIIs and a HTC Wildfire.

[Wombat]

Thanks chaps.  My only slight concern with that link tiermat posted is that it refers to the MK16i with ICS.  Well I'm pretty confident it was never made with ICS.  Mine's got gingerbread, and I'm fairly sure they all have, its never had an update made available.  I'll give it a go anyway, and hope I don't brick it...

[Andrew]

I've flashed my phone to Cyangenmod without having to root it first, so I'm a happy bunny. I was then able to root it successfully and remove some of the apps I didn't want and move others to the SD card. This has freed up a lot of space on the phone and it is noticeably quicker. Fingers crossed that it's resolved the 'sleep of death' crashes too!

There's heaps of configurability in CyanogenMod too (arguably too much!) and so there's a bit of a learning curve... should I be bothered!