Questions about something called Rooting a cell phone???

I have a relative that is temp. teaching in China. They have emailed and asked me for help in "rooting" their cell phone. I am unfamiliar with what this is so I don't think I am going to be much help. I will past some of the info from their email here and if you can figure anything out from that, and you think you may have some info for me, that would be great. If not...oh well..

Here goes:

1. I am trying to root my Android 4.0 phone. I am having a great deal of difficulty seeing as how i have a super slow and unreliable landline. Also, I think the Chinese may be monitoring and shutting me out of websites I could use to root my phone. Rooting the phone would allow me to bypass all restrictions placed on my phone. So I could then download the Google applications For instance, I can only download Chinese Android applications, and all of them are in Chinese.


2. I have an HTC One SU specifically designed for Chinese people. It is not a phone that Super-One-Click can verify as a tested model that would work (although the program will probably still successfully root my phone if somebody can email me a zipped file of it). Note that I have previously tried downloading Super-One-Click unsuccessfully. Not sure if that is my connection speed or if I got blocked by the Chinese or if my phone just cannot run it.

ok guys, lets see if you have anything.

 

While rooting a phone is not that big of a process, it will limit the phone's capabilities somewhat. You can go to YouTube and find a gaggle of procedures. Googling "rooting HTC One" may turn up more hits. I have never seen the benefit here in the states to root a phone, but it seems people are doing it mainly to move from one carrier to another seamlessly. For instance, my Atrix2 is not compatible with Verizon, since I am on AT&T. With rooting, I believe it is possible to use the phone on a verizon/Tmobile/etc. account.

 

Okay. Some backstory.

In UNIX-based operating systems, "root" refers to the superuser on the system, the administrator account. Many modern cell phones running software from Apple or Google's Android use a user security scheme similar to those UNIX operating systems (and themselves are derived from the UNIX model), so "rooting" a phone or other device is an attempt to go from an unprivileged account to using the administrative level account. There are several reasons for wanting to do this; some vendors install crappy software on the phone that can't be deleted as a normal user, some users want to install software or features on their phones that won't run without full access to the hardware on the phone.

As to network compatibility, in the United States there are two kinds of cellular networks. One is called CDMA, which is generally only used in North America, and the other is called GSM, which is used throughout most of the world including by T-Mobile and AT&T in North America. The two types of networks are generally mutually exclusive, a GSM phone, by and large, simply won't work on a CDMA network and vice-versa, though there are a few CDMA phones that also have GSM capabilities so that the use can roam outside of the United States.

 

Due to various restrictions the Chinese have placed on internet activities in their country, your relative could end up in deep doodoo by trying to bypass their rules.