Smartphones

The paragraph does have a certain rough-hewn charm, doesn't it.

Some of it might be technically unnecessary too. I'm not sure yet, but one might possibly use stock recovery without root to install gapps.


I wonder how real people use Android. Probably most people with an Android phone, like nearly all, don't screw around like this. When you have everything lined up on your computer, all this "root" and "firmware" and "recovery" is easy, but the process includes hardware risks every time, and the learning curve is really steep, and probably when people buy a phone, they just want a NSA-friendly homing beacon phone.

I just don't know anymore.

So CP, any concerns that the NSA helped write the Android OS?

Nope.

As I understand it, they don't supply proprietary binaries. So whatever code they wrote is available for inspection. Then people like the developers from Cyanogenmod squint long and hard at it. Such defacto inspectors assess the code for whether or not it works in their custom roms, so if there were something hinky in there, *maybe* it'd be spotted fairly promptly.

What I'm personally paranoid about is the stuff you can't spot, like extra elements added to normal Android binaries and then wrapped up as standard firmware. Basically, the same as how malware can be added to your phone piggybacked on popular apps, except this time piggybacking on the Android system itself.

I have no evidence that such corruption of firmware actually occurs. It'd need cooperation between, say, Samsung and relevant offices of the Chinese government. And it'd be really, really bad press for Sammy if firmware wiretapping of every damn phone on the mainland were real. But, Samsung does already customise Android for distribution in China--they take out all the Google stuff (and add in Sina and Baidu and QQ).

I have my hands over my ears and I say lalalala.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act of the USA, and something similar in Canada (don't know its name), *require* there to be back doors for the gubmint. That's when the NSA spying on telecom was moved from the back, back room, to the junction room.

Looooong before Snowden, someone named Max Klein, who worked for AT&T, revealed that the NSA had a secret room in their San Francisco facilities where all internet data on the West Coast of the USA and traveling across the Pacific was copied.

The NSA, AT&T And The Secrets Of Room 641A

These NSA rooms had been known in theory since the 1996 Telecom Act because they were required by the legislation. Other countries have these, as well as requirements for back doors on physical devices and software.

How to add Google to your China Android Phone - the Samsung i9300 edition

The following will NOT root your phone. It will NOT replace your firmware. However, IT WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY. Also, it might not work. There's no telling how many details I forgot. Plus, note, this procedure worked on a Samsung Galaxy S3 - GT-I9300 - starting with a factory fresh Chinese 4.1.2 Android installation. For other phones and other Androids, YMMV.

Step 1: finding out what you have.

You'll need to find the Settings button. Usually it's in the App drawer. Sometimes you can find it on a screen to the left or right of the home screen. However you find it, let's say you pressed Menu. So, do this:

Menu > Settings > About device > Android version

When I started I had a factory fresh Chinese Android. The Android version was "4.1.2". (The Build number, for what it's worth, was "JZO54K.I9300ZCEMD2" - the bestest Android currently available in the CHN region.)

I also took a look at

Menu > Settings > About device > Status > Device status

When I started, the device status was "Official". By the end of the procedure, the device status was "Custom" - aka no more warranty for you.


Step 2: Acquiring GAPPS

There are lots of "gapps". They are collections of official Google stuff, including Google Play and Play Services. The collections are however NOT OFFICIAL. They are fan-made. More exactly, they are flashable zips put together by amateur Android rom developers because Google asked them to stop including official Google stuff in their custom roms. The zips are used by the community to add Google stuff after the fact.

You'll need to find the right gapps for your Android installation. Take a look at Rootzwiki:

 http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/Google_Apps

I started with Android 4.1.2, so I downloaded:

 gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip

Do, for the love of all things not malware, be careful where you get your gapps. All of the commonly used one can be found at Goo.


Step 3: Plugging in

You'll need to be able to attach your phone to your computer. I'm assuming PC. If your PC does not immediately recognise your phone, you need to do something, probably install whatever PC phone management software came with the phone or can be downloaded. For a Samsung, that's Kies. Or you can just install the Samsung USB Drivers.

Once you're plugged in and your pc recognises your phone, copy your newly downloaded gapps to the root directory of your phone. The root directory is whatever directory comes up after you go to My Computer and click on the icon for your phone.


Step 4: Screwing Your Warranty

It would be super if you could use stock recovery to install the gapps zip, but you can't. I tried. There's no option in the stock recovery to make it happen. Thus, you need a custom recovery. When you flash a custom recovery, your "Device status" will change from "Official" to "Custom". Bye bye warranty (unless you use TriangleAway, but that requires root, and a whole other howto post).

Now, this is where we get into device specific details. To flash a custom recovery, you'll need whatever software is commonly used for your phone. For Samsung phones, the tool is Odin. For other phones, I have no idea. As always, choose your download sites carefully, read some documentation, have fun.

To flash a custom recovery, you'll need to choose a custom recovery. There are several that are well regarded. I have only ever used Clockworkmod, so I use that today. the particular iteration I used was Clockworkmod Touch 6.0.3.1 for the i9300. You can find several, plus instructions, at the XDA Clockworkmod for i9300 thread. If you have a different phone, and yet you've still read this far, you probably like Google enough to let Google be your friend anyway. Google: clockworkmod [your phone type].

Okay, so this is what you do for the i9300:

Short Version:

1. Use Odin to flash clockworkmod from your pc to your phone
2. use clockworkmod to flash gapps from your phone's root directory to your phone's operating system
3. profit.

Long Version:

Well, let's just say there is a long version, but it's better if you learn odin and clockworkmod for yo'seff. I don't everyone's phones defaulting to "assplode" because of some tired howto I wrote.


The End

Yeah, so I thought it'd be a good idea to write a How to, then I got tired. But anyway, the principle's there: you can set up your Chinese Android phone to work with all the official Google Apps if'n you want, and you don't have to root nor download some strange firmware. But you will, prima facie, void your warranty.

 

Well sportsfans, while Samsung is off catching flies with vinegar, Cyanogenmod 10.2 has appeared for various devices, including the i9300. Between you and me, it's a keeper.  Cyanogenmod 10.2 is Android 4.3 plus.... stuff. Not a lot of stuff. Just tweaks and organizations, and obvious things like the launcher and the camera. Right now, it's all still being organized, but even just a week or so in, the mod is good enough to use. Whatever they were doing with 10.1 that made it feel hacky and cludged, that's not happening this time.

The mod still has weird graphics glitches. It randomly slaps black space over half of some app screens, especially apps with ads. And the built in launcher--trebuchet--crashes a lot. But whatevs, the apps I use mostly work. Battery life is going to be an issue. Right now, battery charge drops like a stone when the phone is in use. It stays nice and level while the phone is asleep, but I doubt I'll be getting the average 22 hours I used to get.

It's faster, smoother, better, stronger, and Samsung isn't going to release anything approaching it until maybe December if even then. It could all still reveal some awesomely horrible bug that makes the experience so much worse than stock, but with Samsung now officially two generations of Android behind the game, screw them for a technology leader.

Balky carriers and slow OEMs step aside: Google is defragging Android

Android 4.3 was released to Nexus devices a little over a month ago, but, as is usual with Android updates, it's taking much longer to roll out the general public. Right now, a little over six percent of Android users have the latest version. And if you pay attention to the various Android forums out there, you may have noticed something: no one cares.


The article goes on to explain, it's deliberate - Google is making Android updates boring. The action, says the article, is moving toward Google Play Services. Google Play Services is the foundation for all Google apps. Also, increasingly, it's the foundation for what might otherwise have been offered as part of the Android OS but are now increasingly being offered as apps for download from Google Play - Maps, Search, browsers, calendars, news, input method editors (as in Pinyin Input), etc. Google Play Services, once installed, updates itself and is compatible with all the Androids. In short, if you get Play Services, you get, increasingly, the stuff that makes Android useable and interesting as a smartphone.

And the good news.... in China, you don't get Google Play Services. Woohoo! You get a phone, and that part of the OS won't be installed. It could mean a renaissance for Chinese app programmers. All the stuff that makes a smartphone useful will NOT come with the phone unless Chinese Android programmers start making, say, MIUI, worth having from the go.


Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy S3, which might never officially see even Android 4.2, works pretty damn well with Cyanogen 10.2 - aka Android 4.3. A year or two from now, Samsung is not going to be "the" name in smartphones anymore. God helps us, Motorola might be.

GT-i9300_CHN_CHN

Back when I was flashing new firmware on my i9300, I kept running into a problem: download firmware, load it into Odin on the PC, attach phone to PC, start the process of flashing, then somewhere near the end of the flash, the operation would abort and say "FAIL".

Turns out, this is a China specific "feature". The phone I have, as purchased here on the mainland, is the Samsung Galaxy S3 International version China edition. That is, instead of being a standard GT-i9300, it's a GT-i9300_CHN_CHN. And it has a locked bootloader. (No, I don't know what that means either, except that it causes the phone to reject parts of non-CHN-specific firmware.)

You too can discover if you have this "feature": type *#*#1234#*#* into your dialer.


FWIW, none of this is an issue if you use flashable zips and install via Clockworkmod.

ETA: apparently those dialer codes don't work anymore.

Alt method for finding out what model your *SAMSUNG* phone is: boot into download mode

1. power off
2. press and hold vol down + home + power (and release when the samsung logo appears)
3. then when the big yellow triangle appears, press vol up

The product name will appear in little tiny letters at the top of the screen, along with some status info.

To get out of download mode again, press and hold: vol down + home + power. (Phone will power off.)

Hey Calach, how much time do you spend figuring out all this phone stuff?

An afternoon here and there. Most of it's just noticing what other people have already figured out.

Like, I found out about the bootloader because a Chinese guy posted a topic on another forum saying this kind of phone had that kind of bootloader, and it was interesting to know why my phone had "_CHN_CHN" in its name. But I found his post because I was looking for a China-specific software "baseband"/modem that I googled by name, and his post included the name. And the rainbow connection was made.

(And I was looking for the modem because I'm chasing down a particular wakelock that *may* be sucking battery juice and could be fixed by changing the modem.)



It probably adds up.

I've had the latest update downloaded for my nexus 7 for weeks, but I'm waiting for the internet reviews to confirm its stable to use, last thing I want is my UK bought nexus to brick! I should probably back up my work too....!

Cyanogenmod is now a company, aims to be third major mobile ecosystem

CyanogenMod – one of the most popular Android ROMs, is now a business. The team behind this Android ROM has formed a company, Cyanogen Inc., and raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures.

Their goal?

To become the third mobile operating system, ahead of Windows Phone and Blackberry, no less.


And since, as we know, rooting and romming is about the last thing normal people want to do with their phones, coming soon to Google Play, apparently, is Cyanogenmod Installer, which presumably will do all the horrible geek stuff for you.

iOS 7 is out.

iPhones 4S and up

iPad 2 and up

So Steve Kondik, the CyanogenMod guy, is going to be in Beijing on Sept 23 for the release/announcement/whatever of the Oppo N1. So it would seem this'll be the Cyanogenmod phone.

Anyone use an Oppo?