Smartphone technical discussion

Yuki · February 10, 2015, 01:15:57 PM

Well yeah, usually the big companies and providers put a ton of bloatware you cannot remove because they're installed in /system and they're taking quite a lot of space. Rooting lets you remove them.

Actually, system and user apps are installed in two different partitions, one being read-only, so not only you'd want to remove bloatware, but also converting some of your apps as system apps. But the problem, some apps really dislike being a system app, so they'll just crash. Android's system/user app system is kind of weird.

Vijfhoek · February 10, 2015, 02:01:18 PM

iOS has a similar system, where system applications are in the read-only /Applications and user apps somewhere else I can't remember.

Snektron · February 10, 2015, 02:52:09 PM

I absolutely hate how you can only flash a whole google apps package with 25 apps in the smallest version.
I only want google play & services >.<

Dream of Omnimaga · February 11, 2015, 05:22:58 PM

Yeah I hate bloatware. On my Samsung i5510 I think aside from the OS, 90% of the remaining space was used by bloatware. I could only install 1 app besides Facebook and I had to uninstall updates for all the preinstalled stuff in order to free up space.

DarkestEx · February 17, 2015, 05:00:14 PM

Samsung is crap. I bought myself a Motorola Moto G2 for my TwoStep App development.

Well Android is great, but I think Java is not a good choice for a whole operating system (except Linux kernel and dalvik-vm).
It's slow and inefficent.
But iOS Objective C is even worse. Its fast, but hard to program (I like C, C# VB.NET and PHP best; I can live with java).

I'm afraid, that we won't be able to write to SD-Cards anymore starting with 4.4.4 but I'm surprised, that SD card writing still works on 4.4.4 on my Motorola.

Just some random things that I have in mind about smartphones.

Snektron · February 17, 2015, 06:10:34 PM

Quote from: DarkestEx on February 17, 2015, 05:00:14 PM
Well Android is great, but I think Java is not a good choice for a whole operating system (except Linux kernel and dalvik-vm).
It's slow and inefficent.

Google is actually developing a Java to native compiler. It's called Android Runtume (ART for short).
My Android 5 device has it by default (Maybe 4.4.4 too, if you have it it's in developer options somewhere), but not activated. I tried it out one time, but as of right now it's slower
than dalvik, but it has some potential.

Dream of Omnimaga · February 17, 2015, 06:18:50 PM

Wait... Android is written in Java??

As for Samsung one issue I got is that their higher end phones, such as the Galaxy Note series, are too large to fit in a pocket. I don't want to have to carry an extra storage thing with my hands or shoulders when I go somewhere.

Duke "Tape" Eiyeron · February 17, 2015, 07:24:19 PM

Quote from: Cumred_Snektron on February 17, 2015, 06:10:34 PM
Google is actually developing a Java to native compiler. It's called Android Runtume (ART for short).

It works, I'm on it on my OPO and it's enabled on my Nexus 4.

aetios · March 03, 2015, 09:16:23 AM

It probably also adds a bunch of NSA spyware and stuff

Snektron · March 03, 2015, 12:16:38 PM

Yeah but everything does these days, the only way is write everything yourself and don't have an internet connection

Dream of Omnimaga · March 03, 2015, 03:26:22 PM

Maybe one day the NSA will launch a worldwide 3G network for which support is built-in in every computer (inside a component that cannot be dismantled without being permanently damaged) manufactured in the world and everyone will be subscribed by default and for free to that big network, so even if you don't have Internet, you will still be spied on.

I tend to not care much though because they can't really arrest 3 billions of people downloading stuff from pirate sites. It's more about risks of a dishonest employees working for the NSA that I'm worried about, since we had those at the government before. I would rather not see my bank account number fall under the wrong hands.

CKH4 · April 02, 2015, 09:10:09 PM

Samsung's Android L TouchWiz rom was released a few days ago, here are some screenshots.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Dream of Omnimaga · April 03, 2015, 02:30:00 AM

So Samsung now has their proprietary version of Android? Does it offer every feature that the official Android offers or did they lock stuff down?

CKH4 · April 03, 2015, 02:32:53 AM

They have their own stuff but most of it is hardware related. They make it much more difficult to root though.

Dream of Omnimaga · April 03, 2015, 02:34:50 AM

Ah OK. I tend to not like proprietary versions of such OSes for those reasons personally. I prefer having full freedom with my device if I decide to. I wonder if that could be why so many people have been ranting at Samsung devices in the last two weeks or so?