21 Aug
2014
21 Aug
'14
6:59 p.m.
On Fri, 15 Aug 2014, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
On 14/08/2014 7:19 PM, Russell Coker 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).
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
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. 
21 Aug
21 Aug
10:55 p.m.
New subject: Android 4.4 external SD card
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/
22 Aug
22 Aug
12:28 a.m.
New subject: Android 4.4 external SD card
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
10:24 a.m.
New subject: Android 4.4 external SD card
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_…
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.
23 Aug
23 Aug
5:24 p.m.
New subject: Android 4.4 external SD card
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 10:24:09AM +1000, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Robin Humble wrote:
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-re…
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
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.
3141
days inactive
3143
days old
4 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Robin Humble -
Russell Coker -
Tim Connors -
Trent W. Buck