[XorNot]

If someone has root access to your apparently unencrypted phone, then they can just launch the Signal app directly and it'll decrypt the database for them.

Which is to say this is an incoherent security boundary: you're not encrypting your phone's storage in a meaningful way, but planning to rely on entering a pin number every time you launch Signal to secure it? (Which in turn is also not secure because a pin is not secure without hardware able to enforce lock outs and tamper resistance...which in this scenario you just indicated have been bypassed).

[franga2000]

Any modern Android is encrypted at rest, but if your phone is taken after first unlock, they get access to the plaintext storage. That's the attack vector.

A passphrase can be long, not just a short numeric PIN. It can be different from the phone unlock one. It could even be different for different chats.