Probably the top three questions on your mind when it comes to your Android phone are the following:

1. What is "rooting?"
2. Why would I want to root my phone?
3. And now that I've decided to do it, how do I root my phone?

It's a little scary, we know. But we've got you covered.

First and foremost is our Rooting page, conveniently parked at androidcentral.com/root. There you'll find the basic ins and outs of rooting as well as links to get you started.

Then there's our "Rooting: Is it for me?" Q&A. If you read nothing else, read this.

Your next stop should be the Android Central Forums. Rooting is a little different for each phone, so you'll want to read up on exactly what you need to do.

That's it. It's not that bad, really, and you should definitely take a look. And apologies to our Aussie friends! ;)

If your phone uses a SIM card, you can set a lock on the card so it can't be used by anyone who doesn't know the lock code.  This isn't anything new, and it stays tied to your SIM card -- not your phone.  It's easy to lock or unlock your SIM card on Android.  Go into the settings by pressing menu > settings > Location & security > Set up SIM card lock.  You can toggle the setting on and off by simply checking the box. 

Fair warning: you may have to get the default SIM card pin from your carrier, and too many tries can and will bork your SIM.

Android 2.2 took away the ability to silence your phone using the volume button. Used to be you'd just hit volume down until you hit silent mode, and that was it. So how do you do it now? A few options: First is to go to the lock screen (press the power button once to turn the screen off, and again to wake the phone) and use the slider. Another is to use a widget button like you see above -- there are plenty in the Android Market. Have another option? Share in the comments below. (And if Google wants to add this back in Android 2.3, we'd be OK with that.)

Not everyone uses signatures for their daily email, but many people find it invaluable. You can use anything from a simple name or favorite saying all the way up to including contact info and work position. Or, you can do anything in between.

Creating a signature in the native Gmail app in Android is dead easy, just launch Gmail and go to Menu > More > Settings > Signature. So far, you can only have one signature per account, but you can create different signatures for each Gmail account you have. Perhaps this is a feature Google will include in a future update (which should be much easier now that Gmail is a stand-alone app), but we will all have to live with just one signature for now.

You can go your whole life without actually plugging your phone into a computer. But if you plug in the Motorola Droid X or Droid 2, you'll be greeted with an annoying pop-up web page for Verizon's VCAST service -- every time you plug in your phone.

Disabling it is easy. Just go to the notification area on your Windows taskbar, right-click the MotoConnect icon, and set "When phone connects, launch" to "Nothing." And pray this practices ceases in the future.

A question we're asked over and over is "When I get the Froyo/Gingerbread update, will it erase my phone?" The short answer is that it shouldn't. When you get an over-the-air (read: official) update, it's more of a surgical strike than a carpet bombing. Your phone is partitioned (much like a hard drive -- or multiple drives, actually) so that part of the OS can be rewritten without disturbing the data on another part. That's how your apps, contacts, photos, etc. (should) remain untouched after an update.

If you're loading a custom ROM, leaked ROM or flash from an RUU, all bets are off. Sometimes you'll need to wipe the data and cache partitions. Or maybe not. Point is, read whatever forum thread you've been lurking in before taking that plunge. And, yes, you should back up your contacts from time to time and make sure they're safe somewhere other than on your phone.