Rooting a phone provides the user with full, unrestricted control over all aspects of the operating system. Prior to rooting, many configuration options are deliberately unavailable to the user in order to prevent possible damage to the operating system or even the hardware. Sometimes functions are disabled to ensure that certain preinstalled apps or settings are not tampered with by the user. This is similar to the concept of ‘Jailbreaking’ on iOS, although Android imposes far fewer restrictions on the user by default and therefore rooting is usually required only for very specific tasks.
