My number one advice is to UNLOCK THE BOOTLOADER if possible. Do this NOW, before you customize anything, because unlocking it will ERASE the phone back to factory state (more or less).
Unlocking the bootloader is usually a requirement before a phone can be "rooted", which is something you WILL want to do eventually, so best to unlock it now. On a Google Nexus or OnePlus phone, this is as simple as typing "fastboot oem unlock" on a connected PC.
I suppose one needs to do this from a Linux PC Mark? Or can this be done from Windows as well?
Benefits of rooting? Well, this gives the ability to customize things beyond what the maker (and google) might normally permit.
Eg. Better Ad-Blocking. UI customizations. Titanium Backup (the best backup/restore app on Android), etc..
I'm pretty happy with the functionality of the phone as-is, but if I had the choice, I would like to install Cyanogenmod on it. I'm guessing I need to root the phone before I can do that?
Also, this Titanium backup app, would this allow me to make a complete backup of the phone, and completely install everything back and make the phone usuable again should anything should go wrong at some point? This is about the only thing I still miss in Android compared to my iPhone: I used to make backups on a weekly basis, and if anything went wrong, I formatted the phone, put the backup back and voila, everything was back the way it was. Can Titanium do this as well?
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