For as many benefits as rooting your phone can bring to users interested in stretching the limits of what their smartphones can do, there are certain situations where rooting just seems to be opening up a hornet’s nest of problems. Google Wallet is one of the more high-profile apps that’s really been putting up a fight against root. We’ve been following issues with Google Wallet for months, from when there was first news of exploits for the app that took advantage of root access, to when the app started actively complaining about rooted phones as unsupported devices. Now, the latest Wallet version appears to be requesting superuser access itself; just what’s going on here?

The obvious answer would be that the app is requesting root so that it can better determine whether or not your phone has it – except wasn’t Wallet already warning users on rooted devices before this change? This is confounded by the observation that the app keeps functioning without issue, regardless of you approving that request or not.

As we touched upon when recently talking about our woes with Google Wallet, the company really needs to get its act together when it comes to supporting the type of Android user who is both a tinkerer and early adopter (and occasionally, smartphone trend-setter). Let’s hope this change to Wallet isn’t a sign of a step in the wrong direction.

Source: Droid-life