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What's new in Android 4.3

developer.android.com

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Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#2

Post by untog »

TL;DR: not much.

It's smoother, which is a great thing. But in terms of actual features, the only one I'm looking forward to is being able to use Wi-Fi positioning while I've turned off the ability to connect to Wi-Fi. That is to say, I'm not very excited about this release.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#3

Post by gergles »

> 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.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#4

Post by glhaynes »

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 also like they're trying to reduce root attack surface and potential security vulnerabilities.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#6

Post by znowi »

As an owner of Nexus 4, the only feature I'm looking for is a reduced battery usage :) They provide optimizations for the location API, but I suspect that the more prominent performance features will end up draining battery even faster :)

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#7

Post by king_jester »

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.

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.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#8

Post by brokenparser »

untog wrote: post #2

TL;DR: not much. It's smoother, which is a great thing. But in terms of actual features, the only one I'm looking forward to is being able to use Wi-Fi positioning while I've turned off the ability to connect to Wi-Fi. That is to say, I'm not very excited about this release.

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.

Re: What's new in Android 4.3

#9

Post by king_jester »

znowi wrote: post #6

As an owner of Nexus 4, the only feature I'm looking for is a reduced battery usage :) They provide optimizations for the location API, but I suspect that the more prominent performance features will end up draining battery even faster :)

Some of the performance changes for handling graphics should help with battery life since they will be more efficient in using the CPU and GPU. Some of the Android engineers covered this at I/O 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZFaec9NpA
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