All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

Rooting the phone is just gaining root access to the Android OS. If you've ever used Linux, it's very similar. It's an open source operating system, but you can still log in as either a root user (administrator) or regular user. Regular users don't have access to some things that root users do.

It's mostly a security thing. Having root access allows you to mess with system files and other stuff that can brick your phone, while non-root users really can't do anything that bad. When you get a new stock Android phone, you basically have normal user access, because none of the normal features on the phone require root access, like calling, SMS, installing and using apps.

With root access, you can do a lot more, like remove pre-installed apps (which are normally located in a root-protected directory), use your phone as a WiFi tethering hotspot, flash custom recovery, kernels and ROM's. The main drawback is that there is increased potential to irreparably damage your phone's operating system and render it unable to boot (known as "bricking" your phone). Of course, it's still pretty rare for this to happen and you have to mess something up pretty bad, but it's possible. That's one of the main reasons why Android phones don't come with root access.

It depends on the phone and how popular it is. Independent developers will make custom ROM's for just about any Android phone, although usually they're only based on the latest official Android release for that phone. Like my Samsung Intercept, for example. There are very few custom ROM's for it, and all of the ones that are out there are based on either 2.2 FroYo or 2.1 Eclair, because those are the two Android versions available for this phone.

 

Thanks for clarifying it for me fellas.

Will snoop around xda-developers and see what they're coming up with. Haven't been there since the Touch HD vs iPhone days lol.

 

SdX-developers is another good one. That's where I found the only couple of ROM's available for my Intercept, while XDA really had nothing.

 

Giving CM7 a try! seems pretty good so far

 

Nice I've been hoping for an Intercept port for a while, as have many other Intercept owners on both Sprint and VM, but I don't think it's ever gonna happen.

 

Samsung Galaxy S II U.S. Carriers Revealed!


Edit: Wow, terrible branding by the networks.

 

yeah not officially from CM i dont think... but someone could port it. There's a CM7 port for the LG Optimus.

what the hell? those are horrible lol. i hope theyre wrong for once





As for CM7.... horrible battery drain D: half through the day and im down to 31% Time to turn off the OC and set CPU to Conservative.

 

Pfft. That's just a day in the life of my Intercept.

 

really? i would think it would get decent battery life

 

I have to admit... Vibrant devs are horrible! Try CM7 with Kang's kernel... Kang is an i9000 dev. And yes... if you have a later revision Vibrant, an OC will kill your battery life. The earlier revisions were better on battery for some reason, and could UV better.

90NM. All ARM11, aside from the MSM722x, are 90NM. Snapdragon in first gen was 65NM and it could suck a car battery dry in 6hrs. Second gen Snapdragon is 45NM, and Hummingbird, Tegra 2, and OMAP 36xx are 45NM.

The next shrink in SoC's is going to move fabs to 22NM. They're skipping 32NM completely.

 

Like Kal-El?

 

Given how weak and small it is, you would think But nope, I usually have to charge it twice a day if I don't want it to run out.

 

I have heard somewhere that charging post-100% gives a big boost in battery life, but I find it fishy and odd...


Shouldn't overcharging ruin your battery instead?

 

Kal-EL, OMAP 5, and a new Samsung SoC... I've actually seen a dev board of the Samsung SoC. It's in A1 status right now.

Sidenote... FINALLY!! Google Music 3.0 fades music in and and out when a call comes in and when you hang up! Gah! I've always hated that about Eclair and Froyo. As soon as my calls were over, I'd get blasted because that's how I left my music. With Gingerbread/GM3.0 it slowly fades in... Very nice touch.

 

If the rumours on BGR ( that I posted in the tablets thread) are correct, we could be seeing Kal-El products on the market this year.

That'd put nVidia further along with development than TI or Samsung, wouldn't it?
Or am I getting my technical terms confused?

 

Well, see, NVIDIA is on a sort of staggered release schedule. Samsung, TI, and Qualcomm are all pretty much on the same schedule, with NVIDIA being kind of in-between them all.

When NVIDIA releases Kal-El, it will be better than what's out on the market now, but will be outclassed by the big three in short order. NVIDIA is banking on their release schedule to bring them contracts, but NVIDIA doesn't want to mess with Qualcomm or Samsung... Samsung in particular. Samsung is shifting GPU architectures with it's next SoC, back to PowerVR and it's moving RAM to DDR3 bus interfaces with CPU cores moving to A15. Qualcomm is bringing Cortex A9 within the year . Kal-El will be A15, but NVIDIA is still learning about mobile GPU's. Tegra 2 was a disappointment, in terms of GPU power.

 

Well, for now maybe - the purchase of Icera suggest they're serious about the mobile market which means that they'll end up on a collision course with Qualcomm, TI etc at some point.
Less so with Samsung IMO because Samsung seem loathed to sell their wares to anyone else, so they won't be a direct threat to nVidia in quite the same way.

Not to mention, with Windows 8 running on ARM processors, getting this side of things right represents a real opportunity for nVidia to try and re-define their place in the PC/laptop market as well.
So they have even more reason to focus on getting things right.

Perhaps now it is but bear in mind that the first talk about Tegra2 dates back almost a year prior to the first information starting to emerge about Samsung's Orion/Exynos CPU.
And to call it disappointing seems a little unfair, it may not be the very best there is but it's still competitive.

 

Agreed on all points. Except I see Samsung and NVIDIA being bigger competitors in the future... especially tablets. Samsung and NVIDIA will be the two major competitors in tablets, IMO.

As far as smartphones, NVIDIA will always have that company (like Motorola) that will butcher their hardware... The Atrix is the slowest Tegra 2 device made. Samsung has the oomph to include their own SoC's in their own products, and that really makes their hardware look good because they control almost the entire experience... as opposed to just outright sales numbers like NVIDIA's T2.

 

Man... the 22nd and unlimited data cannot come fast enough. Its taking me a half hour to download a ROM.

Lol

Idk what revision it is... i know UVing gave me music playback problems. As for OC, it didnt hurt my battery much on Froyo, and i can OC pretty high (1.5Ghz) while some vibrants cant go past 1.3Ghz.

Im geting rid of the CM7 anyway lol, trying a different gingerbread ROM to see if its better.. if not im Froyo until official release.

Ahh ok. Damn 90nm is huge lol

 

This 100%. While i've broken from the "buy the best you can afford" tech tenent with my plans to buy the Merge, its because I have specialized needs that seemingly no one want's to address besides a few handsets. I also agree that brand loyalty is overrated.

If I could give you Rep for this, I would.

Agreed. With both Google (as clearly seen in the explanation over at This Is My Next) and the carriers able to put the kibosh on updates, I've never blamed Samsung and never understood why people have.

Why would Samsung WANT to see users complain and say they'll never buy one again? That makes zero business sense whatsoever.

Again...If i could give you rep for this...I would.

If you're coming from iOS, you'll like the TouchWiz launcher (the home screen and app list) but TouchWiz goes beyond that part, there's apps and small customizations like the GPU accelerated browser to name a few.

I don't know how the Samsung community treats TouchWiz on android, but on windows mobile there were custom roms with touchwiz baked in and custom roms that were just stock win mo. I know many in the community hate the TouchWiz launcher (a lot of android users like it to be as un "iphone" as possible) so a few custom builds might be mostly stock. Who knows, an enterprising tinkerer might extract touchwiz 4's launcher like they did for 3.

Step explained rooting rather nicely.

For music management, if you're coming from iTunes, you'll probably enjoy using DoubleTwist to sync media. I should mention that WMP can also be used to sync music if you want.

Android Market is online: market.android.com
From here, you can even install apps onto your device...no cords required.

Sweet, I'm on 7 now. It's nice, although like my other ROM, Wi-Fi keeps turning itself on...

I'm kinda disappointed that there's one less qwerty phone out there (that case makes the sprint version appear to just be a slab form factor like the others) so maybe the "Epic 2" will simply be a Galaxy S 2 derivative a'la Verizon Samsung Continuum.

Why not wi-fi?

 

I do most of my builds as close to stock, with regards to conveniences as possible... I use the stock Nexus launcher, the Zune's Zegoe UI Light font.... but I keep the touchwiz hardware toggles in the notification drop down, the contacts with the swipe left to call/swipe right to message, the music and video player which can play MKV, AVI, MP4/M4V, FLV and all the others you can throw at it.

Spoiler

Touchwiz 4 launcher is out now, and I believe it's been modified to run independent of Touchwiz UI frameworks. Check the GT-i9000 forums at XDA.

 

That looks very nice, although I was never a fan of the analog clock It does fit in with your theme, though.

When my Intercept was on Eclair, it had the WiFi, Bluetooth and volume/vibrate controls in the notification bar as well, but they actually removed those with the FroYo update, and this bROM 1.1 that I have doesn't have them either. Seems like a stupid thing to take away.

 

This is the theme I designed around the clock...

Spoiler

That can be added back by custom frameworks. I'd need to look, but those should be in services.jar in /system/framework.

 

Not unless things change drastically.
Samsung lack the fabrication capacity to meet their own needs, let alone start selling to other manufacturers, which plays right into nVidia's hands - heck Samsung are using Tegra2 SoCs in their phones and tablets, that's how few Exynos chips they can produce.

Even if Samsung start producing more chips, I just don't see them being prepared to supply anyone else, so their business and nVidia's will never overlap.

 

See, that's what's changing in the next generation. They're going to ramp the hell out of whatever they're going to call this next gen SoC. Like Hummingbird level ramp... where they're coming out their ears.

 

The launcher, i hate lol. But some other things i actually do like. The pull down notifacation bar has a button in it that you can easily turn on/off rotation, which i find great.
Also, the camera app is much improved over the bland stock android camera app, and the several lockscreens samsung offers are cool.

lol

I reflashed and stayed with the stock CM7 kernel last night. Battery drain is much better, but still there...down to 50% half way through the day. I can live with this i think.

It WAS on wifi. My home internet is incredibly slow. my phone is 4x faster than it.

 

I think I'm going to sell this Intercept for whatever it's worth and pick up the LG Optimus V; i.e. the other Android phone on VM. Since I started trying Swype, I've been using my physical keyboard less and less, which is really the only advantage the Intercept has over the Optimus. The Optimus even comes with Swype pre-installed as a system app. Everything I've been reading keeps pointing to the Optimus being a completely superior phone in every way.

The only "disadvantage" is the CPU being 600MHz compared to the Intercept's 800MHz, but it also has a GPU that the Intercept does not have, and from direct comparisons, it's faster at just about everything, and can apparently be overclocked to 800MHz anyway with no trouble. The Optimus also has live wallpapers natively supported, which you had to root the Intercept to be able to install, and they ran like crap and half of them would force close anyway.

I've also read that LG has committed to releasing Gingerbread for it at some point, while it looks like FroYo is the last official update the Intercept is going to see.

Apart from the physical keyboard, they're pretty physically similar; both have 3.2" screens, but the Optimus has a higher and more standard resolution (480x320 as opposed to the Intercept's 400x240), and it has physical Android buttons instead of the touch-sensitive ones on the Intercept.

My current phone, the Samsung Intercept on the left, and the LG Optimus V on the right:



Thoughts or advice, anyone?

 

Nothing personal but I remain to be convinced.

If Samsung had the means to ramp up production, they wouldn't be using Tegra2 SoCs just now.

 

You can add and re-arrange all those notification buttons... Go to settings-->CyanogenMod Settings-->Interface-->Notification Power Widget... then Widget Buttons will add/remove all the buttons you can think of.

I think that's a wise move. The reason the LG is so much faster is that the MSM7227 actually has a CPU cache, as opposed to zilch in the S3C6410 in the Samsung. Adding a cache to ARM11 makes a WORLD of difference. The same SoC that's in the LG is in the HTC Aria... so look at some reviews of that to see performance. Also, the MSM7227 is made on a 65NM process, and it's MUCH more battery efficient than the older ARM11's. It's a win-win, IMO.

As a comparison, the MSM7227 usually gets about 5200 in Benchmark PI.

You'll see. Promise. You'll just have to wait till this October. The reason Samsung is not ramping Exynos much right now is it's mostly a stopgap. They're moving to 22NM A15. As it is now, Hummingbird and Exynos are on the same die size, and they're re-tooling for 22NM.

 

Still doesn't seem to make any sense as to why they would produce such low numbers that they're forced to rely on Tegra2.

 

Pretty much the main advantages of a die shrink is less power consuption and less heat produced, right?

 

With mobile devices, it's more performance and less power consumption. Heat produced is kept at a cap, usually.

 

Unannounced Samsung 'Hercules' headed to T-Mobile, bearing godlike specs? -- Engadget

Now samsung may be using snapgdragon processors?

 

I would definetly do it. Its much faster And yes, they have said that the Optimus will get Gingerbread officially. And there are gingerbread ROMs for it available right now.

I was actually pretty impressed with the Optimus the several times ive used one. I think you'd be happy with it

Rooting was a bit of a bigger process than most phones, but possible and worth it.

Awesome ill check it. Didnt know that was there

 

Is it ONLY T-Mobile? Would it be possible to get an unlocked "Hercules"? It is beastly better than the Arc and MUCH cheaper

 

That price is with a 2 year contract of course.

 

Oh...

Add 100-150$ and you get an unlocked price, I guess?

But still, will it be available to other carriers than T mobile?

 

Im sure there will be a version/variant or competitor at the least, for other than t-mobile.

 

Oh. But it will be US-only, right?

 

If there isnt a version of that exact one for Non-US, then there will be a competitor for it.

 

A phone with those specs will go for at least $599. Contract prices aren't indicative of the real price.

T-Mobile phones can be used in Europe just fine. You have to buy it off contract though, then have T-Mobile unlock it for you (which they will happily do).

 

Yeah, there is a huge disconnect between contract and "real" phone prices. Any of those dinky feature phones that you get for free with a 2 year contract will cost you $200-300 off-contract.

 

599$ is too good to be true lol. It's 420€, whereas the Arc, locked by TMN is 450€ which is 640$... ._.

Yes, but the off-contract+unlocking will be pretty expensive, correct? At least in Portugal it is, rounding 100€-130€ aka 142$-185$...

 

Restoring apps is the most tedious thing evah......

 

At least... it will be at least $599. I'm guessing more, but I could be wrong.

Off contract price is just that... whatever the off contract price is. SIM unlock can be obtained from T-Mobile for free, if it was bought from T-Mobile. Otherwise, if you bought it off contract anywhere else, it should come SIM unlocked by default.

 

I am happy to report that Sense 3.0 (Sensation port) actually functions with edited DPI settings.

 

Great! Grats!

How's the overall performance?

BTW, will ADW Launcher incoporate the interactive lock screen like in HTC sensation?

 

Oh! That's nice! Isn't the off-contract the full phone price?

So you can get off-contract and ask them to unlocm, and voila?


Too bad it won't be before than my birthday...

Bah, screw the phone hunt, the Xperia Arc is a damn nice sexy beast!

 

Sounds promising. I trust your judgment in these matters

How much bigger of a process are we talking, out of curiosity?

With my Intercept, literally all I had to do was plug the phone in via USB with USB debugging enabled, and run a .bat file. I had to run it three times to get it to work, but the entire process took all of three minutes.

 

If it supports ATT 3G along with T-Mo's (like the Vibrant) then that'll be excellent. If not, then it'll be a "don't buy" if people ask me.