61–70 of 125 posts
"Nexus 7 should receive the update today, other devices in the coming week" http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/android-4-3-will-be-availab...
Seems highly unlikely to me. I haven't gotten the update on my Galaxy Nexus yet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad news for all the apps on Google Play that require rooting to use (there are some with millions of downloads), but good news for custom ROMs, I guess. A lot of people just root their phone and start using the apps they rooted for like tethering, controlling GPS and other secure settings on triggered actions, etc.. Now rooting will still be trivial for complete ROMs, but tougher to root existing ones.
Do you know if Nexus 4 will be harder to root (without custom ROM) after this update? Thanks.
Conceivably, this would allow the DRM subsystems to easily detect root-able systems (and perhaps even using some sort of active probing to check whether the kernel has been modified to lie about suid mount status).
Not to start a flame war here...but what is the likelihood that newer devices still on 4.1 will be bumped to 4.3, on the reasoning that third-parties waited until 4.3 to make the upgrade? Or does it become increasingly unlikely that any upgrade will happen? I have a Sprint HTC One...which was released in 4.2's latter days but still had 4.1...wondering if an upgrade will ever happen
The carriers seem to want a model where you replace your device regularly to get the newer software....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bad news for all the apps on Google Play that require rooting to use (there are some with millions of downloads), but good news for custom ROMs, I guess. A lot of people just root their phone and start using the apps they rooted for like tethering, controlling GPS and other secure settings on triggered actions, etc.. Now rooting will still be trivial for complete ROMs, but tougher to root existing ones.
Do you know if Nexus 4 will be harder to root (without custom ROM) after this update? Thanks.
Unfortunately non-google-sold devices don't have this capability as standard yet, but the Nexus 4 is good to go.
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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.
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Another point to consider. Android 4.3 now includes Digital Restrictions Management framework. In order to prevent users from accessing their data (or running apps) in a ways they're not allowed (copying files, advertisement blocking, tethering and so on), Google (and vendors) certainly wouldn't like users to have unrestricted access to their phones. I really think tightening security with nosuid and SELinux is at le…
'fastboot oem unlock' will still work on Nexus devices, right?
http://source.android.com/source/building-devices.html#unloc...
IMO promoting 'security holes' as a mechanism of freeing your device is counter-intuitive. What everyone needs is a safe way of running their own software; security bugs are toxic to the entire ecosystem.
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> 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...
[1] Sony Android source based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project)
http://developer.sonymobile.com/knowledge-base/open-source/a...
[2] Samsung Android source n stuff (unfriendly interface, a little digging is necessary, Samsung's got a lot of products)
http://opensource.samsung.com/
[3] HTC Android source n stuff, "Kernel Source Code, Binaries and Updates for HTC Android Phones"
http://www.htcdev.com/devcenter/downloads
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Google's AOSP n drivers (for completeness)
http://source.android.com/ https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/drivers
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> 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...
Not to start a flame war here...but what is the likelihood that newer devices still on 4.1 will be bumped to 4.3, on the reasoning that third-parties waited until 4.3 to make the upgrade? Or does it become increasingly unlikely that any upgrade will happen? I have a Sprint HTC One...which was released in 4.2's latter days but still had 4.1...wondering if an upgrade will ever happen
In the particular case of the HTC One, there is a leaked 4.2.2 update (with Sense, not the Google edition) for the international version of the phone that can be safely installed on carrier-specific versions. It will likely be available OTA in a few months.
So 4.3 fixes neither the ad-hoc WiFi issue #82 nor the audio latency issue #3434. I will continue to pass as those are the deal breakers for me. It’s amazing – these two have been pending for more than 4 years. Google hasn’t cared to even comment on the former while thousands of users beg them to: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82