[quote name='bubbagumper6']I've done both rooting and jailbreaking and rooting is far easy/safer. It depends on the method you used to jailbreak but the one I used had plenty of room for error and bricking. Rooting is fairly easy and can be undone in a snap if needed. As far as whether or not it's worth it, I'm not sure it is. You gain an extra level of control over the phone but one of the main reasons people do jailbreaking is so they can install pirated apps, which you can do on a NONROOTED android right out of the box. So if you're looking to throttle your CPU or access some root directories (can be useful if you use snapchat...hehe) then go for it.[/QUOTE]
Actually, you can do pirated apps right out of the box. It's called Aptoide and I've set it up for a few people who MUST have their apps for free. It's just not a personal preference of mine to do so since you don't know how else those apps have been tampered with and, assuming you're rooted, you're granting those apps free reign on your OS and hardware.
To answer your question above,
@myjaja ; AOSP does indeed stand for Android Open Source Project. It's essentially the barebones Android software that Google compiles. This is then sent off to each manufacturer to make whatever changes they want. Samsung layers Touchwiz, HTC layers Sense, and so on and so forth. But AOKP is the Android Open Kang Project which takes that AOSP build and makes a bunch of tweaks to it from there. For the AT&T GS4, you have task650's AOKP build which makes a completely dark UI and tons of additional customizations like app shortcuts in your notifications bar as well as power widgets and ribbons. Lots to talk about, but even more on which to read. Out of all the non-Touchwiz ROMs I've put my hands on, AOKP wins out with CyanogenMod being a close second just due to the massive dev support and large number of users who are able to submit bug reports.
Long story short, I think it's very wise to root your phone and have the ability to use software like Titanium Backup that will let you bounce from ROM to ROM and keep all of your app settings, SMS logs, call logs, and data usage. Once you start playing with different ROMs, it's hard not to try them all out and using TiBu just makes the process a LOT easier. Additionally, it was mentioned that you have free tethering, within reason, as your carrier tracks data usage and flags the hot accounts to potentially throttle. But it's really as effortless as turning it on and connecting your non-mobile device to its WiFi.
The single biggest improvement I've gotten out of the GS4 in terms of rooting is the ability to have significantly better battery life and overall speed-up of the UI. I use about 1/8 of the total Touchwiz features like SmartScroll, SmartStay, and such. Makes it very easy to use the ROMs that don't have these features.
