What is root in a mobile and what does it mean?

Rooting means to have administrator rights, gaining root access, or ability to access and change, system root files. This is like accessing and changing Windows operating system files and registry items.  So, some apps (which are a lot), need root access to work. This could be called in other words having administrator rights to use this app. (which sometimes might use a system file, and sometimes even harm your device. So be caucious what app to install).

                 There are far more benefits to root a phone than there are to leave the phone as is. Disabling many of the ads if not almost all ads showed in your apps is a huge benefit, and even saves money over the ad-free version of the same app. You can remove carrier installed apps that otherwise could not be uninstalled, giving more space back on the phone and possibly memory as it won’t run any more. Under-volting and overclocking the processor can improve performance while improve battery life. There are tons more benefits. Plus, if you want to unroot the phone for sending the phone in for repairs is much simpler to do.

Having a rooted device you can install custom rooms, create partitions in your sd card and a lot more. In my opinion, the best thing to do, is to google more info about rooting. I stayed about one week reading only about rooting and its good things!
You can read even this english wikipedia post, if you want:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_rooting

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Viewing Telugu in Mobiles and Smart Phones

You might already know that iOS4 comes with a Telugu font and supports Telugu out of the box. So, you can view Telugu perfectly in iPhones and iPads that are running iOS4 and above.
Now, let us see what options we have on other mobiles and smartphones like BlackBerry and Nokia E71 E67 etc. The problem is that these phones do not come with a Telugu font pre-installed. Even otherwise, I do not think the browsers in these smartphones are smart enough to render Telugu text yet. When you visit a Telugu website, you see it as below:

A screen shot showing a Telugu web page in the default browser in Nokia E71, when Telugu text is appearing as boxes

However, there is a way to see Unicode Telugu on these smartphones. And, the way is to use Opera Mini with bitmap fonts setting on.

A screen shot showing a Telugu web page in Opera Mini with the ‘Use bitmap fonts for complex scripts’ setting Yes

Here are the steps to set up Opera Mini for Indic and other complex scripts:

1. Download Opera Mini in your smart phone, if you do not have it already.
2. Open Opera Mini and go to opera:config
3. Scroll to the end of the page to find Use bitmap fonts for complex scripts
4. Select ‘Yes’ in the drop down for that setting.
5. Hit ‘Save’
6. Enjoy Telugu websites on your phone.

Since Opera Mini renders the font in their servers and sends to the client, we do not need to have a Telugu font installed in our mobile. (This might be a privacy concern for some, though.)
Other potential options:

• BOLT browser: As per this press release from Bitstream, … the BOLT cloud computing browsing platform now also supports the following Indic languages -Hindi (India’s official language), Bengali ,Gurumukhi , Telugu , Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati , Malayalam and Oriya. But, it has not been made available to general public yet. When I contacted BOLT support, they said:
  

  Indic version of BOLT is currently available for network carriers and mobile phone makers only. We request you to recommend BOLT to your favorite network carrier or mobile phone makers so that they can make BOLT Indic version available to their users.

• Firefox Mobile: Firefox Mobile is available for Android and Nokia N900 phones. I guess it supports Telugu. If anyone has tried, please share the experience.
• NewsHunt: There is an app called NewsHunt for mobile phones that delivers news items from popular Indian dailies. Users can access latest news in regional languages on their mobile phones. I think that application uses proprietary encoding and not Unicode. And, it is not for general purpose browsing.

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Viewing Telugu in Mobiles and Smartphones

You might already know that iOS4 comes with a Telugu font and supports Telugu out of the box. So, you can view Telugu perfectly in iPhones and iPads that are running iOS4 and above.
Now, let us see what options we have on other mobiles and smartphones like BlackBerry and Nokia E71 E67 etc. The problem is that these phones do not come with a Telugu font pre-installed. Even otherwise, I do not think the browsers in these smartphones are smart enough to render Telugu text yet. When you visit a Telugu website, you see it as below:

A screen shot showing a Telugu web page in the default browser in Nokia E71, when Telugu text is appearing as boxes

However, there is a way to see Unicode Telugu on these smartphones. And, the way is to use Opera Mini with bitmap fonts setting on.

A screen shot showing a Telugu web page in Opera Mini with the ‘Use bitmap fonts for complex scripts’ setting Yes

Here are the steps to set up Opera Mini for Indic and other complex scripts:
Download Opera Mini in your smart phone, if you do not have it already.
Open Opera Mini and go to opera:config
Scroll to the end of the page to find Use bitmap fonts for complex scripts
Select ‘Yes’ in the drop down for that setting.
Hit ‘Save’
Enjoy Telugu websites on your phone.

Since Opera Mini renders the font in their servers and sends to the client, we do not need to have a Telugu font installed in our mobile. (This might be a privacy concern for some, though.)

Other potential options:
BOLT browser: As per this press release from Bitstream, "… the BOLT cloud computing browsing platform now also supports the following Indic languages -Hindi (India’s official language), Bengali ,Gurumukhi , Telugu , Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati , Malayalam and Oriya". But, it has not been made available to general public yet. When I contacted BOLT support, they said:

Indic version of BOLT is currently available for network carriers and mobile phone makers only. We request you to recommend BOLT to your favorite network carrier or mobile phone makers so that they can make BOLT Indic version available to their users.
Firefox Mobile: Firefox Mobile is available for Android and Nokia N900 phones. I guess it supports Telugu. If anyone has tried, please share the experience.
NewsHunt: There is an app called NewsHunt for mobile phones that delivers news items from popular Indian dailies. Users can access latest news in regional languages on their mobile phones. I think that application uses proprietary encoding and not Unicode. And, it is not for general purpose browsing.

Read More