After the news cycle recently exploded with the announcement that Google would require every single Android app to be from a registered and verified developer, while killing third-party app stores …
I used to root every phone, but by 2025 I’ve given up. Hard to unlock bootloaders, random apps (especially banking) thinking you will get hacked and stops working, the entire community around rooting and mods is like 10% of what it used to me, hardly any modern phone still gets custom roms, etc… Recently saw some statistic about custom roms - on average, around 50 phones 5-8 years ago had support for custom roms. By 2025, that number has fallen to 4.
You said it like banking apps will be happy to work with a Linux phone lol, the banks always have their interests inherently conflict with user control anyway. And rooting and getting a custom ROM (one which exists or otherwise) are two completely different things that have nothing to do with each other, and you shouldn’t support manufecturers who choose to make it difficult to unlock bootloader anyway.
By 2025, rooting still empowers you to make your own Android device however you like it to be.
Also not many people care about custom ROM these days because Android stock ROM got much better in average, so there’s much less a need for creating a brand new ROM just to get basic features. Why making a brand new ROM instead of modding the pretty good one you already have now. And root empowered ROM modding tools that are developed as Magisk module or Xposed modules still have a pretty big community, there’s a long list of pretty big repos with hundreds of modules each, and with how sophisticated Magisk and Lsposed have evolved it’s easier than ever to write your own mods
I used to root every phone, but by 2025 I’ve given up. Hard to unlock bootloaders, random apps (especially banking) thinking you will get hacked and stops working, the entire community around rooting and mods is like 10% of what it used to me, hardly any modern phone still gets custom roms, etc… Recently saw some statistic about custom roms - on average, around 50 phones 5-8 years ago had support for custom roms. By 2025, that number has fallen to 4.
Android is not what it used to be
You said it like banking apps will be happy to work with a Linux phone lol, the banks always have their interests inherently conflict with user control anyway. And rooting and getting a custom ROM (one which exists or otherwise) are two completely different things that have nothing to do with each other, and you shouldn’t support manufecturers who choose to make it difficult to unlock bootloader anyway.
By 2025, rooting still empowers you to make your own Android device however you like it to be.
Also not many people care about custom ROM these days because Android stock ROM got much better in average, so there’s much less a need for creating a brand new ROM just to get basic features. Why making a brand new ROM instead of modding the pretty good one you already have now. And root empowered ROM modding tools that are developed as Magisk module or Xposed modules still have a pretty big community, there’s a long list of pretty big repos with hundreds of modules each, and with how sophisticated Magisk and Lsposed have evolved it’s easier than ever to write your own mods