Re: [luv-talk] Android 4.4 external SD card
On Fri, 15 Aug 2014, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
On 14/08/2014 7:19 PM, Russell Coker wrote:
How reliable is the process of rooting a phone using instructions such as the above? Can I expect it to work without wiping the phone data?
When I get the time, I would like to ditch Samsung /lack of support/ for my i9300 and i9505 devices that are 100% stock and only getting 4.3 at this stage -- the devices are fully capable of running the latest Android version.
One of my justifications for going stock Samsung was to get updates that were not carrier branded, nor carrier delayed. And given all the horror of today's Android App permissions, I might even go to the dark side and choose an iPhone next. Suffice to say, I'm not at all happy with the way things are going Android now.
Grr, I've just been looking at this, since my own android phone is a pile of shit, and appears to be monitored by the Mafia, RIAA, Russians, and ASIO (or maybe Android is just shit, and 20% of the battery really does go to "Android OS" and another 19% of battery goes to "Android system" and another 20% of battery goes to Flaky-as-fuck WiFi in 8 hours of uptime while it sits idle in my pocket). My requirements: 1) can easily (no downloading rootkits from the Russians) run latest stable version of clockworkmod, and likely to keep running latest stable (because android permission models are absolutely shit by default - surely CWM's is slightly better, even though I've never seen it in practice). Probably also bypasses all of the google and carrier issues. Do you lose any functionaility I care about? I dunno. 2) has an sdcard slot. No google, I can't move all my music into the cloud, because I tend to want to listen to it 1000km from the nearest mobile phone tower, and I'm too cheap to have any more than 200MB of data per month connected to my phone account (internode, $10 per month. Told you I was cheap. No, you can't buy that plan anymore). HTC one m8 can do it. Maybe. But it will probably suck, because of the 3 golden rules 1) all software sucks 2) all hardware sucks 3) all phones suck 4) it's too expensive ok, 4 golden rules. Sorry I'll come in again. -- Tim Connors
On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 18:59:59 Tim Connors wrote:
2) has an sdcard slot. No google, I can't move all my music into the cloud, because I tend to want to listen to it 1000km from the nearest mobile phone tower, and I'm too cheap to have any more than 200MB of data per month connected to my phone account (internode, $10 per month. Told you I was cheap. No, you can't buy that plan anymore).
If you want to run the latest CyanogenMod or whatever then the Nexus 5 would be the best option. Nexus series always seems best for such things. The Nexus 5 has an option for 32G of storage, while the price difference between the 16G and 32G models is extortionate you really want to get the extra storage. With 32G of storage you can store a lot of MP3s encoded at a quality that is adequate for the common listening environments used for a phone. It's possible that when I connect my Bose headphones to my phone in a quiet room the quality of MP3 encoding (at a bit less than a megabyte per minute) might limit the audio quality. But in almost any other situation I don't think so. With my current phone (Galaxy Note 2, 16G internal and 8G external) the gigabyte of storage for ~20 hours of music is no big deal. It's the FullHD music videos that take up space. My next phone will be the Galaxy Note 4. That will have at least 32G of internal storage and the option of using a SD card, but I don't expect that MP3s will force me to use an SD card. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 06:59:59PM +1000, Tim Connors wrote:
Grr, I've just been looking at this, since my own android phone is a pile of shit, and appears to be monitored by the Mafia, RIAA, Russians, and ASIO (or maybe Android is just shit, and 20% of the battery really does go to "Android OS" and another 19% of battery goes to "Android system" and another 20% of battery goes to Flaky-as-fuck WiFi in 8 hours of uptime while it sits idle in my pocket).
most likely you have apps that are doing lots of stuff in the background, or indeed looping and crashing, which kills the battery. it's almost always random apps that are at fault and not the OS itself. un-install all your apps (your vendors crapware may not be un-installable - see if you can disable it by Settings->Apps->All->click-on-app->Disable instead) and check the battery life again. and/or hook it up to adb, log on, and see what it's actually doing - top, logcat, powertop, procrank, dumpsys activity processes, etc. Re: paranoia: no phones are secure - android or not - I'm sure the .gov people who care can always break in through the GSM layer via a fake tower and then up to the OS 'cos it's all mmap'd. if you carry a smart phone you are carrying a pretty tracking and surveillance device.
My requirements: 1) can easily (no downloading rootkits from the Russians) run latest stable version of clockworkmod, and likely to keep running latest stable ... 2) has an sdcard slot. No google, I can't move all my music into the
I'd recommend a Sony Xperia Z1. cheap 'cos of the Z2. I have a Z1 Ultra (the 6.4" version) and it's great. waterproof too. the only thing I would complain about is a slightly over-sensitive screen. Sony officially supports unlocking so you can run cyanogenmod on it if you want. maybe you lose some accelerated camera function when you unlock it - I forget. warranty too, obviously (unless you re-lock it before returning), but that's true of any unlockable phone. I left mine locked and run a rooted stock image. Sony was really quick about releasing 4.4.4, and it has little bundled crapware and some nice features, so I feel no real need to install cyanogenmod just yet. battery life is ~5 days for me - or more precisely about 6 hours of screen-on time. mostly web browsing & email, wifi on only when the screen is on, mobile data on rarely. I prefer to see updates only when I feel like checking it rather than have the thing chirp at me 24x7. so that's quite a low power use configuration choice - your battery life will probably be shorter. the Z1 is the same SoC as Z1 Ultra, but other things vary (battery, screen size, camera) so that will affect your battery life too. BTW, it's crazy, but the Sony bootloader only cryptographically verifies that the kernel is stock - so as long as you stick to the stock kernel you can flash a rooted /data image and it's perfectly happy. odd. if you choose rooted stock rather than unlock & CM, then the procedure is (of course) a little convoluted - you have to revert to an old rootable OS version, root it using your favourite kernel bug tool (may be written by Russians but some even come with src, or just write your own), and install a custom recovery (dual CWM and TWRP) so that you can then do backups of all partitions and flash the image of your choice. it's not hard to do once you wade through days of (of course) conflicting XDA posts. if you get one then let me know and I'll give you the cheat sheet. HTH cheers, robin
Robin Humble wrote:
no phones are secure - android or not - I'm sure the .gov people who care can always break in through the GSM layer via a fake tower and then up to the OS 'cos it's all mmap'd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_on_Trusting_Trust#Reflections_on_T... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femtocell www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SEv2-c20.pdf I don't see how mmap comes into it.
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 10:24:09AM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Robin Humble wrote:
no phones are secure - android or not - I'm sure the .gov people who care can always break in through the GSM layer via a fake tower and then up to the OS 'cos it's all mmap'd. I don't see how mmap comes into it.
yeah, you're probably right - not via mmap (I was thinking of the OpenGL hardware and blobs), unless one of the proprietary and un-audited firmwares or binary daemons provides that convenience interface :) http://code.paulk.fr/article18/the-samsung-galaxy-back-door-was-bullshit-rea... perhaps the folks who made weak encryption and broken protocols http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A5/1 were so good at writing the binary GSM firmware blob that there are no remote bugs or buffer overflows in it. who knows. cheers, robin
participants (4)
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Robin Humble -
Russell Coker -
Tim Connors -
Trent W. Buck