Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What's new in Android 4.3

developer.android.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 125 posts

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#31

Post by veeti »

gergles wrote: post #3

> The /system partition is now mounted nosuid for zygote-spawned processes, preventing Android applications from executing setuid programs. This reduces root attack surface and likelihood of potential security vulnerabilities. Well, that sounds great. It's almost like they're trying even harder to prevent people from having control over their device.

> It's almost like they're trying even harder to prevent people from having control over their device.

What utter bullshit. Every Google Android device gives you the full freedom to flash whatever you want to on it. No restrictions at all.

Security should not suffer because it might have a negative effect on an absolutely tiny minority of an userbase that can freely disable that added protection anyway.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#32

Post by Lewisham »

runjake wrote: post #13
king_jester wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering there haven't been devices yet that are unroot-able, this shouldn't be a problem. At a minimum the various Nexus devices work with fastboot to unlock the device very easily.

I'm guessing you're talking strictly about the Nexus line? Because there's several Android devices that have proven un-rootable thus far, such as most Motorola devices, several HTC devices, and so on.

Honestly, if rooting is important to you, you should be buying Nexus devices anyway, right?

I realize that there are some consumers that are forced into certain handsets, and those people lose out. But many people buy devices like Galaxy S4s with the expectation to root and fix what they don't like, which is never something Samsung promises. If such consumers vote with their wallets, we'll see more things like the S4 Google Edition, which is what such buyers want in the first place.

I don't see much of a problem here (exception of those people who don't have Nexus as an option for whatever reason).

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#34

Post by JeremyNT »

dannyr wrote: post #25

Bluetooth Smart Support is a big deal. It's going to make it easier for hardware devs to develop Bluetooth apps.

One such piece of hardware being Fitbit, which only presently supports some Samsung devices (since Samsung apparently got tired of waiting and hacked in their own support). Perhaps we'll finally get full Fitbit support on Android devices running 4.3.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#35

Post by samstokes »

On the "actual user-facing feature" front:

Android 4.3 adds built-in support for Bluetooth AVRCP 1.3... In addition to exposing playback controls on the remote devices connected over Bluetooth, apps can now transmit metadata such as track name, composer, and other types of media metadata.

I've been waiting for that for car audio (iOS already supports it).

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#36

Post by tadfisher »

untog wrote: post #12
brokenparser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of things in the new version, but just because your random wish isn't there it's "not much"? Give me a break. Besides, you can already do that with DroidWall or any other firewall in the play store.

but just because your random wish isn't there it's "not much"? Er, where did I say that? My "random wish" was one of the new features they announced that I am glad they included. There are plenty of new features in 4.3, but they're all developer-centric. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course, but it means it isn't so exciting for many people. Especially as few people can afford to target these new features ri…

Future Android updates probably won't be as exciting because Google is migrating most of their system apps to Play. In the past, a system update might have brought new features to Maps, or to Google Search, while now those are updated on a more frequent (and less buzzworthy) schedule.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#38

Post by rcchen »

It seems that only Nexus devices are getting the update today, and not the Samsung/HTC Play Edition phones. It will be interesting to see when those two devices get the update; in the meantime, not all Play devices are made equal?

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#39

Post by ge0rg »

veeti wrote: post #31
gergles wrote: post #3

> The /system partition is now mounted nosuid for zygote-spawned processes, preventing Android applications from executing setuid programs. This reduces root attack surface and likelihood of potential security vulnerabilities. Well, that sounds great. It's almost like they're trying even harder to prevent people from having control over their device.

> It's almost like they're trying even harder to prevent people from having control over their device. What utter bullshit. Every Google Android device gives you the full freedom to flash whatever you want to on it. No restrictions at all. Security should not suffer because it might have a negative effect on an absolutely tiny minority of an userbase that can freely disable that added protection anyway.

You are right with respect to the Google-sold devices. Unfortunately, these are only a minority - and this step will make it significantly harder to root devices made by Samsung, HTC, Sony and all the others...

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#40

Post by Zikes »

Lewisham wrote: post #33
Nogwater wrote: post #30

I missed it in the presentation. Did they say when this will ship to Nexus 4?

Rolling out today, is what I read on The Verge. However, that doesn't mean you'll get it today; rollouts are usually so slow that you can wait weeks.

The Check Now button in About Phone seems to be something of a placebo button, as well. In the past I've got around this by going to Settings->Apps->Google Services and clearing the cache and killing the process. That will force an actual check by pressing the Check Now button.

Of course, if your phone isn't scheduled to receive it yet then you'll still come up bupkis, like I have thus far.

Post reply on HN