Topic: Everything Android - The Official Android Thread

[BranDonk Kong]

No, it's about security and usability. Seems ass backwards, but it's not *that* big of a deal if you know what you're doing.

[pokepal148]

No, it's about security and usability. Seems ass backwards, but it's not *that* big of a deal if you know what you're doing.

If by usability you mean creating a lack thereof then yes, that's exactly what it's doing.

Not everyone is gullible enough to believe everything Google says.

[BranDonk Kong]

Right, but some of us are developers and completely understand why they would do it, and have read the documentation and explanations.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Sucks for me because my GS3 seems to be on it's last legs as reception seems to be less and less as of recently.
I'm on Cyanogen Mod, whatever the latest full stable version is, and as of about 2-3 weeks ago, I haven't even seen a 4G signal, most times I barely have a 3G signal, and once in a while I have absolutely no signal.

Now I don't know if it's my Cyanogen Mod, Verizon punishing me for going WAAAAY over my unlimited data plan for faaaaar too long, or because my phone is old and the antennae is dying.

anyone else ever have a similar problem?

[Stratos]

Don't shower with your phone. I used to play music on it while I showered and the moisture killed off my old phone. We put some very delicate, very expensive technology through a lot of abuse we do not even think about. Leave your phone in the car on a very hot summer day and you could fry the circuits.

[BlackNMild2k1]

So you're saying that our oh so delicate technology of the present is the reason why we need to upgrade more often?

I want to borrow a time machine and have them build me the latest and greatest current phone... only in the 70's.
Because then it would last me FOREVER and I would never need to upgrade it again.

[Stratos]

There is a resurgence in "dumb phones" due to people preferring the simplicity, reliability and un-track-ability by corporate, criminal, and government interests. I still have a few old Motorola Razrs that I keep as backup phones if our smartphones die before we can afford new ones.

[pokepal148]

Right, but some of us are developers and completely understand why they would do it, and have read the documentation and explanations.

It's something that at best is a SEVERELY mismanaged transition. At worst it's google trying to gimp functionality of the SD card to push their cloud services that I don't want.

[BranDonk Kong]

But you can still use SD cards, apps are just limited to where on said SD card they can write data to. You can also root your phone and disable this severely mismanaged transition if you want to.


Your podcast app just needs to be updated with a couple lines of code and it can write to an SD card no problem whatsoever.

[pokepal148]

I appreciate the general security benefits but I would also appreciate having a bit of extra control here. Such as being able to make a folder and say 'hey, this app is allowed to write and edit files in here.'

[pokepal148]

Now this is impressive. Apparently mojang is using a g+ group to get mass beta testing on updates for Minecraft Pocket Edition.

Apparently if you own the android version and sign up for the beta the g+ group is able to connect to Google Play and basically put you on a special update cycle that allows me to gain access to the beta version of the next update. If you encounter bugs you are supposed to post on the Google+ group and mention what happened.

Now what's interesting to me is that mojang is apparently able to use Google+ and have it connect to google play in order to

A. Verify that I purchased the game

B. Set me up on a special update schedule so that I can have access to the beta versions of the app.

now google, let's have a seat here, no I'm not going to bitch at you over SD cards again. This is how you should be trying to get people to use google+, not by having it take over youtube comments but by having cross-platform stuff like this. Get some of your YouTube partners to open up google+ pages for their channels and give them an extra 0.002% ad revenue for holding contests and stupid stuff like that. Maybe have a special thing for a small number of people to basically chat with people on the android team and have a q&a thing.

[MegaByte]

Lots of apps do this.

[pokepal148]

Lots of apps do this.

And Google is doing a wonderful  job explaining to people that this is something that g+ can do while fb and twitter can't. (NOT)

[Plugabugz]

Google sucks at 2 things and just don't seem to know how to fix it:

1 - Customer facing interaction
2 - International availability (aka "oh its USA only")

[BranDonk Kong]

'murrica that's why!

[BranDonk Kong]

And pokepal, you probably don't need to root your device. World famous geohot (iPhone and PS3 hacker) has made a program that root just about *any* Android device with a kernel built before June 2 2014.

http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-verizon-and-att-now-have-root-method

[Plugabugz]

'murrica that's why!

And that's a frustrating problem they need to fix.

I've had NFC in five Nexus devices - Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, 4, 5 and 7 - and in every single one it's turned off because it's primary feature, payment methods, simply isn't available outside the USA.

Why not? Google just don't say.

[NWR_insanolord]

You need to look at it the other way, and ask yourself why we in America should be held back because the rest of you lack our exceptionality.

[Plugabugz]

You need to look at it the other way, and ask yourself why we in America should be held back because the rest of you lack our exceptionality.

Exceptional, such as the insanity of being able to pay for things via plastic without a PIN number while we've had that security feature for 10 years already?

Exceptional, such as region locking videos on youtube?

Exceptional, such as the GPE phones and hardware simply not leaving the USA?

Or Moto Maker not being available to the adjacent countries?

It doesn't take 30 seconds to explain why we're not getting it (yet, when, what's the hold up?) instead of silence all around. At least Apple and Microsoft both have clearer processes in that regard.

[pokepal148]

GOOD. Samsung is still free to modify the icons - this is apparently more about all the god damn S-Apps and horse **** that Samsung puts on their phones. You can change the icons yourself if you want to.

Except for every useless s-app like their stupid store there's a useful one like s-planner(which wipes the floor with Google Calander's app) or s-note and Samsung does include some useful toys in their modifications to android like a damn good power saving mode (I think the touchwiz version of the S4 was able to outlast the Google play edition in a battery test by like an hour with that mode active) and a nifty multiwindow mode that I really hope google integrates into stock.

[BranDonk Kong]

Google I/O!

[shingi_70]

Pretty boring so far. Once they hit watches they keep going on too long for something that should be so simple.

I like how they kept the Phone the center of the devices through the cloud. It reminds of the continuity feature on the apple eco-system.

I really like the new android UI.

This chromebook feature to transfer from the phone to chromebook seems to be addressing the major problems with Chromebook being that in all honestly its pretty useless. Seems like they got to where Microsoft has been trying to postion its eco system much faster, and were probably going to see a repeat of what was saw here and at wwdc for the Microsoft ecosystem later this year.

[BranDonk Kong]

It's a developer conference...it's mainly for developers.

[BranDonk Kong]

...aaaaannnndd Hello Navi just made me cry.

[BranDonk Kong]

Wow, heckler talking about machines that kill people...