A note to Andrew. Android is an open sourced operating system that is fair game for anyone to improve or modify. Nothing posted here can get your marsupial loving ass in any kind of trouble in any way.
And as I recall, you're an iPhone user, so this wouldn't interest you anyway. 
If you do any of the things described below, you can void the warranty of your device. Some reparable, some not.
I've posted on Facebook about what a big piece of crap my phone is. It's a Samsung Intercept. It's underpowered for it's purposes. You can read the reviews and see what I'm talking about. I got it for free with the contract, so I shouldn't complain. You get what you pay for.
Anyone that doesn't know what "rooting" means.. It's giving the user access to the very most primary, root directory of the operating system. If it were DOS, it would mean the C:\ prompt. Android is based on Linux, which is based on Unix, and I believe their most basic prompt is >. But, for our purposes, let's just say, it removes the user restrictions of your phone. That gives you the ability to remove applications that you don't want that the phone was shipped with that are, otherwise, not removable.
I had things on my phone like Sprint Navigation, Sprint Zone, Nascar Sprint Cup, GMail and such. Stuff I never used. A lot of these applications would run in the background, grinding the phone to a halt. I could go into the Application Manager and force them to close, but they would just restart after a brief period of time, taking me back to the same situation. There were times when people would call and would be sent to voice mail before my phone could free up enough resources to even ring. Of course I've added my own software, games and such that contribute to that, but that's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? Evidently, not with this one.
So I dug into the internet and found out how to gain root access, which for my phone is exceptionally easy. I removed the junk I didn't want on there and it made a huge difference.
If this post makes you want to root your phone, I need to say this. The rooting instructions and rooting programs are written by hackers. I'm not slighting any of their talents, because some of them are just as good as any other software writer, if not better, but there are others that might leave out one detail that will "brick" your phone. "Brick" means the phone is as useful as a brick for anything you would want to use it for. So there are risks, if you're willing to take them.
So I guess I got a little too carried away with removing stuff. I removed the stock internet browser and Android Market. Most all things you remove are easily reinstalled if you want them back, but these two aren't. I'm sure a smarter person could have done it, but I couldn't. So I dug a little deeper into the internet and found a stock ROM, or so they call it. What they call a ROM is actually an operating system installation package. The one I found would take my phone right back to the way it was shipped from the factory. It worked like a charm. I had to redo all of my own customizations and such, but was glad to do so.
That made me even a bit braver.
The aforementioned hackers have written their own ROM's for these Android devices, several specifically for my phone. So I figured, why not, right? I saw a ROM called UbuntDroid. Ubuntu is a Linux based operating system that I've had some experience with. This ROM they created for my phone touted a lot of improvements, mainly graphical, along with what some argued were performance enhancements, others argued otherwise. I had such great success getting my phone all fixed that I took the chance and installed it. It booted up and worked well. There were differences, mostly in graphics and others in the user interface, but it wasn't such a difference that I wanted to keep it because I was more used to what I had. But it was sure fun to try out. There are many other ROM's ported for my phone, which by all means is a very unspoken player in the smart phone arena. I can't imagine what's out there for the better, more popular droid phones.
If you're a frustrated Android user, like I am/was. There are many, many resources out there, if you're just a bit tech savvy and want to try it out.
Please remember, your service providers are, for whatever reason, vehemently against the practices I'm talking about here, so don't employ them if you don't want to void your warranty. Otherwise, I say do whatever you want.
I honestly never thought I would see this kind of stuff in my lifetime.
