I've got a rooted Sony Xperia Z5. It's a relatively new phone, with a bunch of great features: I still love the fingerprint sensor, and the camera blows my mind every shot. Check it:

As a rule, I'm never content to leave devices how I bought them. The last Android phone I had was an Xperia Z1, and before that a Samsung Galaxy S2; I rooted both of them (with some difficulty, if I remember rightly) to get access to sweet apps like Titanium Backup and LMT Launcher (shown below).

The thing is, I'm not so stoked about root any more. LMT launcher is cool, for sure, but I've never found myself wanting to use it -- it's space-age design that doesn't translate well into how I want to interact with my phone.

The same goes for Titanium Backup -- I don't have anything that needs backing up on my phone. Nothing that isn't already backed up (or primarily stored) online, that is; why would I need a complete phone image when all my files are already backed up?

The only other thing I'd ever have used root for is for a screen recorder -- taking videos of my screen to record a mobile game or something. But as it turns out: not only has Android enabled native support for this feature without root, Sony's particular flavour of Android actually includes a built-in screen-recorder which blows the competition out of the water.

The thing is, I'd be fine with having root and not needing it. I'm not scared of power, y'know. But I've had to jump through hoops to get regular apps like Snapchat and Lloyds Banking to work normally. Luckily, they're working without a hitch (near enough). But the most recent offender is Android Pay, and I'll be honest -- that's a real kick in the teeth.

Pictured: the exact moment my heart broke.

I'm also convinced it's destabilized my phone. I don't know, maybe I'm not enough of a power user to use root effectively (?), but it seems like ever since I've played around with the internals, my phone overheats and crashes more. And when I say "overheats", I really mean it -- this phone has a Snapdragon 810 processor, so we're talking flesh-searing, fire-starting, Satan's-pitchfork levels of hot.

I'm fully aware that I got myself into this mess, so I'm not going to blame Sony or Google or anyone else but myself. The guys who released a root for the Xperia Z5 probably know exactly what they're doing, and maybe they'd have had a better experience. I don't know. But one thing I know for certain: I'd be a lot better off without root.