my 32GB iPhone 4, its my favourite phone ever and probably my favourite device ever, wouldn't change it for the world (except maybe the eventual iPhone 5 ;))

I have the same phone and my warranties about to end so I'm looking into rooting it and getting rid of all the crap verizon has on the phone and generally streamlining and speeding the phone up. However I don't have any experience rooting phones, can you give me a rundown of how you did it and what the best OS and rooted apps are to download for it?

I used to have that phone! But I have moved on now...

Understandable

Doesn't matter for me though as I basically use it for phone calls and music only.

This thread is great for a beginner: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1238070

I did step 6 to start, that's what I recommend for a beginner as well. That roots the stock OS and adds the superuser app to your phone. The steps are easy to follow and its pretty safe. Then download Titanium Backup from the market. Go to the backup tab and you can remove any bloat from the phone. Simply make a backup of the app you want to delete (saves it on the SD card in case something compatibility goes wrong and you need to restore the app) then you can hit the delete button and the app will be nuked off your phone. If, for some reason, you phone has issues after nuking an app, you can restore the backup from within Titanium Backup.

Then once you get comfortable with the ins-and-outs of rooting and know a lot of the terms you can look around that site for custom ROM's. There are TONS. We are lucky to have a phone with a big dev community! There are expirimental 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich builds, a GREAT ROM called SuperClean (removes a lot of the Touchwiz stuff and gets rid of every Verizon thing on the phone), Cyanogen Mod 7, and tons of others. Its pretty simply once you learn how to use Odin and ClockWorkRecovery.

And if something goes wrong, that site has stock Gingerbread on number 5 of that thread that you can flash on.

Samsung galaxy s2.

Thanks a ton! I'm going to look through that website and do my homework before I root my phone but at least I have a starting point now.

Are there any apps you recommend that are for rooted phones only? I know the first thing I'm going to do is download an app that allows me to use my phone as a wireless tether without having to pay that bullshit fee verizon charges for tethering.

Only one I use personally is Titanium Backup (for uninstalling the bloat). My launcher (ADW Launcher) doesn't require root nor do any of my market-downloaded widgets.

Some root apps are nice and popular such as Set-CPU (underclock or overclock CPU to save battery or get more CPU grunt) but I haven't tried it personally. I've only been rooted on this phone for 3 weeks. I'm gonna flash a new ROM on soon though, possibly one of the ICS builds.

Got a Droid Razr and a Samsung Galaxy S2. Love em' both.

Nope, I'm on Wind Mobile. That's  just a picture I took on Google Images.