Database Info

[Q] Do you know if recent devices are affected by eMMC bad chips ?

Hello Desire S community, im going to updated my old desire for a Desire S next week ( yeah SGS2 is like a 2nd wallet on my pockets too big for me ) and i would like to ask if recent devices are affected by eMMC bad chips ? Is there a version 2 of the hardware already ?
Regards

Yekxmerr said:
Hello Desire S community, im going to updated my old desire for a Desire S next week ( yeah SGS2 is like a 2nd wallet on my pockets too big for me ) and i would like to ask if recent devices are affected by eMMC bad chips ? Is there a version 2 of the hardware already ?
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am curious to see some comments

I think XDA don't have this kind of Info yet. I'll try to get the newest device i can and i'll report it in this thread later.

Mine is waiting for motherboard replacement.but the local service center has no stock and they are going to ship it from Taiwan...it should be using the latest batch.will see what chip is being used in it though

How would you go about finding out what chip you have?

Trialsin said:
How would you go about finding out what chip you have?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you need to run this harmless read-only command from within terminal on the device or from adb on your PC (with device attached - and correct drivers installed) see links in my sig.
Code:
cat /sys/devices/platform/msm_sdcc.2/mmc_host/mmc0/mmc0:0001/name

Only able to get the phone with a bad chip stops me from buying Desire S. We'll have to buy Google Nexus S.

memtew said:
Only able to get the phone with a bad chip stops me from buying Desire S. We'll have to buy Google Nexus S.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We'll my phone has a so-called bad chip and I've had it since April (over six months) and it's still up and running, you just mustn't do daft things like pull battery etc....although I did that many times, before the community discovered that it was so risky!
There are guides on what best to do, in order to avoid the chance of any issues!
If you did "fry the eMMC chip" there is still some possibility of a warranty return.

Is there actually any evidence that it is a particular type or brand of eMMC chip that causes the problem?
My engineering experience would lead me to also look for a weakness in the design of some associated circuit (i.e. locking out write ability to the chip when battery voltage is below usable value).
- Steve

fasty said:
Is there actually any evidence that it is a particular type or brand of eMMC chip that causes the problem?
My engineering experience would lead me to also look for a weakness in the design of some associated circuit (i.e. locking out write ability to the chip when battery voltage is below usable value).
- Steve
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes if you look here in the forum you'll find the names of the bad chips.

Chainfire Finds Actually Working Galaxy S 4 Root Method

Often times in the world of media, the first to the story gets to claim they were first. They get the worm, and they get the page views. And we won’t say that page views aren’t great; they are. They end up helping to pay the bills that mount when you grow. The obvious downside to that, is often times that same media outlet can fall victim to their own success, and in turn report on things that aren’t actually real. We’ve done it before, and we’ve had to step up and admit it.
At XDA, we take pride in the fact that most of the mobile development news originates here. We are the source that all others report on. We also take pride in the fact that while we may not be the first to the news, we endeavor to report the real story after it’s been tried, tested, and verified. After all, we are the source.
Recently, news went around the internet that the new darling of the mobile world, the Samsung Galaxy S 4, had been rooted prior to its release. Generally that is great news, but in this case the person who did the “rooting” didn’t have the device to test the process. In many cases, like previous versions of the Galaxy series, that is OK because the way to root Samsung devices has been the same via repacking Samsung’s firmware package with su and then flashing via ODIN. While that old way worked, it doesn’t work on the new S4 as XDA Recognized Developer Odia proved in a thread similar to the original “root” thread.
What is different about the S 4 is that Samsung utilizes a new security feature to enable BYOD to make the S 4 more palatable for the Enterprise customers, and that feature is Samsung Knox. Without going into a lot of detail, Knox effectively isolates your personal side of the device from your companies private side.
XDA Elite Recognized Developer Chainfire began toying with the Qualcomm version of the Galaxy S 4 (GT-I9505) back in early March, and immediately began to have issues with the “tried and true” process for rooting previous Galaxy devices. He noticed that while you could “inject” the su binary into the firmware, the device would immediately reboot when that same binary was executed.
After much testing, Chainfire figured out a way to root the device using his tried-and-true CF-Auto-Root process and posted the method in this thread. Be warned that this currently only works on the GT-I9505 (Qualcomm LTE) version of the S4, with Odia finding that there are issues with the Exynos 5 Octa version. As is always the case, be warned that there is a risk in performing any procedure such as this on your device. Let’s hope that Samsung hasn’t decided to really turn their noses up at the development community.

1. This is old news my friend
2. You straight copied and pasted from XDA's homepage, at least cite your source
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

Awesome, chainfire is a boss.
One more reason to get the SD600. Poor exynos is going to fall short in development
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda app-developers app

doktor buknasty said:
1. This is old news my friend
2. You straight copied and pasted from XDA's homepage, at least cite your source
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it was a new news .
And yes i did copied, so whats the big deal.:silly:
I posted in thread so that guys like me who dint knew it before, will come to know about it.

This time around, Samsung's approach is reminding me of an good old un-hackable Symbian S60v3/v5 devices, Sammy is quickly going in that direction, i will not be surprised when Samsung's devices will be "un-rootable" soon, especially their Exynos chipset's closed sources is clear evidence of what is coming Happy flashing guys

Alipk52 said:
This time around, Samsung's approach is reminding me of an good old un-hackable Symbian S60v3/v5 devices, Sammy is quickly going in that direction, i will not be surprised when Samsung's devices will be "un-rootable" soon, especially their Exynos chipset's closed sources is clear evidence of what is coming Happy flashing guys
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ho its not true
Sent from my LT30p using xda app-developers app

Squirrel1620 said:
Awesome, chainfire is a boss.
One more reason to get the SD600. Poor exynos is going to fall short in development
Sent from my ADR6425LVW using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exynos will bee rooted from Chainfire
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda app-developers app

Zahid Ali said:
Ho its not true
Sent from my LT30p using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed not true, but there are some evidence of samsung approach

Alipk52 said:
Indeed not true, but there are some evidence of samsung approach
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But i think no matter what happens, our devs will still find a trick to root the device.

Chainfire words he will root 9500 and 9505
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda app-developers app

muhamet said:
Chainfire words he will root 9500 and 9505
Sent from my LG-P500 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He surely will. He is a man of his words.

Rahil S said:
He surely will. He is a man of his words.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Talked to a friend who sat through a Samsung presentation today about their new devices and the Knox technology. It sounds like they're trying to have an extremely secure device configuration possible - one which might not be rootable and if it was rootable, it'd be fixed pretty quickly.
But from, http://www.samsung.com/global/business/mobile/solution/security/samsung-knox:
In addition, Samsung Knox's Secure Boot technology allows the switch of the secure boot root certificate in a secure manner after the devices are shipped. As a result, customers that have high security requirements can purchase regular consumer devices and switch the root-of-trust used for secure boot to better protected ones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It sounds like they don't intend to ship all the devices locked down. Hopefully the carriers don't get any genius ideas about this...
From what I read of this thread and others rooting the S4, what has been rooted is a non-Knox'd device. They seem to be switching that stuff on and off during the pre-release tweaking.

Changing the Infinity ID (Build.Prop) to Nexus 7

Sorry can't remember the exact naming of it. Though I know many programs (games) don't seem to be on the market for our lovely tablet. Though there is this thing called a Nexus 7 that gets basically all the ones we don't. Would it be beneficial and not cause any other issues that is, to change the ID so the market place reads this as a Nexus 7?
Curious if anyone else has done this long term.

Dont know how to, someone else probably does, but just a warning:
The Nexus 7 has a 1280x800 resolution, which is almost half that of the Infinity. Meaning, even if you buy a game that *does* support Full-HD, you'll still be given the half-HD resolution, as that's what it thinks your device has.
The resolution is also the reason apps aren't available for the TF700. Lazy developers syndrome, it's called.
Send From My Samsung Galaxy S3 Using Tapatalk 2

ShadowLea said:
Dont know how to, someone else probably does, but just a warning:
The Nexus 7 has a 1280x800 resolution, which is almost half that of the Infinity. Meaning, even if you buy a game that *does* support Full-HD, you'll still be given the half-HD resolution, as that's what it thinks your device has.
The resolution is also the reason apps aren't available for the TF700. Lazy developers syndrome, it's called.
Send From My Samsung Galaxy S3 Using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think what is that you can get a lot of the unsupported apps through Amazon... Especially EA titles and they work fine. I think developers are unsure if they support it so they assume they didn't. Not sure it's being lazy as much as uninformed.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD

amaddux said:
I think what is that you can get a lot of the unsupported apps through Amazon... Especially EA titles and they work fine. I think developers are unsure if they support it so they assume they didn't. Not sure it's being lazy as much as uninformed.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not bothering to test or research counts as lazy Just ask any student.
And that's the thing indeed, most of the 'incompatible' apps and games work perfectly well. I'm running several dozen and haven't had a single issue. :fingers-crossed:

ShadowLea said:
Not bothering to test or research counts as lazy Just ask any student.
And that's the thing indeed, most of the 'incompatible' apps and games work perfectly well. I'm running several dozen and haven't had a single issue. :fingers-crossed:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly I got apps that do work...
Wild Blood is example of one of them. Though instead of using a crappy cracked or hacked version to get it to work properly I'd like to use it normally. Hence why I know you can modify the build.prop file (found the proper name finally) but curious if anyone has done it.
Nexus 7 is probably the closest to similar as it gets for tablets. Just curious if someones done it more on a long term basis. I'd just like to switch it once and forget about it basically.

I've tried this and it doesn't work. Google are clever and are working out the device from somewhere else.

sbdags said:
I've tried this and it doesn't work. Google are clever and are working out the device from somewhere else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Grr bloody hell. Thanks for that info sbdags.
Guess I'll be using my phone for the updated APK's still.

What always perplexed me was that running cm10.1 I get significantly more games showing up in the market. I tried playing with the build.prop but could never figure out what it was. May be worth looking into again. I
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

helfrez said:
What always perplexed me was that running cm10.1 I get significantly more games showing up in the market. I tried playing with the build.prop but could never figure out what it was. May be worth looking into again. I
Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well thats some interesting information. Curious to what would make it different now myself.
Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using xda app-developers app

Likely the kernel is different. I suspect that has something to do with it.

sbdags said:
Likely the kernel is different. I suspect that has something to do with it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-in...-from-android-market-for-unsupported-devices/
I want to use this trick in my galaxy tab 2 p3113 by making it appear like the Nexus 7 tab. But I do not know what the values are for the Nexus 7 tab!!

[Q] Can someone explane the high amount of bricked Nexus 5

Hey,
I come from the HTC One section and so I know the basics about Android rooting. But there are still some differences I wanna know before buying a Nexus 5.
Compared to the HTC One I found here a amazingly high amount of people having the random bricks:
[Q] what is qhsusb bulk ?
[Q] Bricked Nexus 5 doesn't boot + no access adb/fastboot/recovery (corup. bootload)
Have I bricked my N5?
So I don't wanna spam you
Ok, AFAIK these bricks happend randomly and not after flashing something. So their phones just randomly died after working correctly for a long time. Can someone tell me if these bricks could also occure when having an unrooted/locked N5 ?
Or does it only appear to be a high amount of bricks and it actually isn't ?
Thanks for helping me

my 2 cents: if you do your homework the likeliness of bricking the phone (no matter of what you flash) is very small.
all other "random" bricks could be just defective hardware or random issues. that's why all devices have warranty.
advice: keep your phone stock for a few days / weeks. just to test it (in case some unfortunate hardware failure appears you will have a better poker face for RMA). after that you can document / read / learn and decide weather you want to tweak it.

LibertyMarine said:
Compared to the HTC One I found here a amazingly high amount of people having the random bricks:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Ah...? It's not what I called an "amazingly high amount of people having the random bricks"...
Plus people claim they "bricked" their device when it's not a "brick"...
I don't think the number is like you describe.
A real bricked device without doing anything is minor for me and all the rest is by doing something wrong, at user level. It's always the same thing for all the devices (I agree some are more concerned than others) but the Nexus 5 does not suffer more...
LibertyMarine said:
Can someone tell me if these bricks could also occure when having an unrooted/locked N5 ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It could happen, whatever if you are rooted, unlocked, stock or not.
LibertyMarine said:
Or does it only appear to be a high amount of bricks and it actually isn't ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it's this, but it's just my opinion.

kraven001 said:
my 2 cents: if you do your homework the likeliness of bricking the phone (no matter of what you flash) is very small.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I generally like having everything under my control... that's also why I try to learn first many things about the phone and so on... and that's also why I don't use toolkits... eventhough I think their creators did an awesome job !
kraven001 said:
all other "random" bricks could be just defective hardware or random issues. that's why all devices have warranty.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, yeah... I had 3 damn hardware faults on my HTC One... everytime rooted and everytime got it replaced on warranty... :victory:
kraven001 said:
advice: keep your phone stock for a few days / weeks. just to test it (in case some unfortunate hardware failure appears you will have a better poker face for RMA). after that you can document / read / learn and decide weather you want to tweak it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, that sounds like a very good idea... Will do that when I got the HTC One refunded !
Thanks!
viking37 said:
Hi,
Ah...? It's not what I called an "amazingly high amount of people having the random bricks"...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah... I exaggerated a bit.. you know surely.. some people may agree and some others disagree with this statement... and because of the fact that it's exaggerated there are more people answering this thread because it's kinda provocative
Nothing against the people agreeing or disagreeing, I just wanna get answers and this is one way of getting them If you think this isn't a good way, I'm always open for better options :good:
viking37 said:
Plus people claim they "bricked" their device when it's not a "brick"...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah... I experienced that on the HTC One section too About 90% of people telling that they have a brick actually didn't have a bricked device and we could fix these devices .. and 9% bricked their device doing something stupid... flashing a wrong hboot and 1% did have a hardware fault... poor guys... I had 3 times one
viking37 said:
I don't think the number is like you describe.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, that's a relief (or however it's called in English.. sry)
viking37 said:
A real bricked device without doing anything is minor for me and all the rest is by doing something wrong, at user level. It's always the same thing for all the devices (I agree some are more concerned than others) but the Nexus 5 does not suffer more...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
even more relieved :victory:
viking37 said:
It could happen, whatever if you are rooted, unlocked, stock or not.
For me it's this, but it's just my opinion.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks !!! Thanks to both of you 1!
Have a great weekend !

Count me in as one of the "hard bricked" phones with just normal use and seems to be a hardware failure. I have seen a few similar post recently but doesn't see like a very big number of instances. Mine had the show up in device manager as "QHSUSB_BLUK" issue. I was not flashing anything or using the phone at all. Just picked it up and it was off.

crazycd1 said:
Count me in as one of the "hard bricked" phones with just normal use and seems to be a hardware failure. I have seen a few similar post recently but doesn't see like a very big number of instances. Mine had the show up in device manager as "QHSUSB_BLUK" issue. I was not flashing anything or using the phone at all. Just picked it up and it was off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, it stinks but does happen. I had it happen on a different device and have seen about the same amount of instances on a number of devices I've followed. The n5 is no different.

One thing you must take into account is that many people buy the Nexus 5 because it is very much a developer friendly phone; so the percentage of Nexus 5 users who post on XDA Developers and who do things that increase the chance of bricking (such as installing a custom ROM) is probably much higher than the percentage of HTC One users who do the same things.

Charlular said:
One thing you must take into account is that many people buy the Nexus 5 because it is very much a developer friendly phone; so the percentage of Nexus 5 users who post on XDA Developers and who do things that increase the chance of bricking (such as installing a custom ROM) is probably much higher than the percentage of HTC One users who do the same things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The n5 is a difficult device to truly brick by flashing things. The ones I've seen that are bricks are failure of the emmc, imo.

a far majority of bricked nexus 5 are not really bricked, its just users doing stuff to their phone without knowing how to recover from their own errors. sure, a few are defective and get bricked on their own, but thats very rare. but the far majority are just user error.

I saw another device kernel flash brick. I assume incorrect bootloader would brick too.
Bricks are caused by 2 things.
1) defects
2) idiots
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

jd1639 said:
The n5 is a difficult device to truly brick by flashing things. The ones I've seen that are bricks are failure of the emmc, imo.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but you're still more likely to brick it by messing with the root system than if you just keep the phone stock forever and never even go into fastboot. I'm not saying that the Nexus 5 is easy to brick, I'm just saying that it probably has a much higher percentage of users who are into modding than other phones, I guess you could counter this argument by saying that many people buy the Nexus 5 for the "stock Android" experience though. Your point does stand though, many of the bricked Nexus 5s I've heard of sound like it was due to a hardware fault and not caused by something done with software, you can't expect this not to happen with anything manufactured in mass production though.

Charlular said:
Yes, but you're still more likely to brick it by messing with the root system than if you just keep the phone stock forever and never even go into fastboot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes but only if you're an idiot or clumsy.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

rootSU said:
Yes but only if you're an idiot or clumsy.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, and you find these people with every device :silly:

Charlular said:
Yeah, and you find these people with every device :silly:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is true
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

The only real manufacturing fault that seems to cropping up is the emmc failure.
But I'd say the most part it is user error.
Many of the bricked threads are actually just soft bricks which can be fixed.
Others are often caused by cross flashing things for a different device.
I've seen people flashing kernels for different phones.
Restoring efs partitions from old to new n5s.
All result in bricks.
The nexus is more open than many other devices.
Unfortunately this gives those who don't know what they are doing the ability to do things they really shouldn't be doing.
As first stated. Failed emmc seems to be the only thing that is a genuine brick. Pretty much all others I think are either not actual bricks or user created bricks.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using xda app-developers app

Alex240188 said:
Many of the bricked threads are actually just soft bricks which can be fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's another truth right there.
Personally I prefer not to acknowledge the existence of "soft bricks" though. It ain't a brick if its fixable.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Yes, most are fixable and not close to a hard brick!

Too many people modding their phones, when they don't know how to properly.
sent from my Hammerhead Nexus

Users with minimal to zero knowledge start rooting and modding cause its hip and cool and preferably use a toolkit to mess up their phones and then scream that the toolkit killed their phone

gee2012 said:
Users with minimal to zero knowledge start rooting and modding cause its hip and cool and preferably use a toolkit to mess up their phones and then scream that the toolkit killed their phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah, I know... on the HTC One section (I have the impression) this is even more popular... they unlock the bootloader mod their device... relock the bootloader and then they can't unlock it again and they are stuck on custom firmware ...

Starting with your brand new Galaxy Note 3

This thread is a starting point for Galaxy Note 3 owners.
So, well, let's get started.
What is my phone called in these forums?
International Variant - Snapdragon Processor - Quad Core (Unless you know otherwise, this is the one you most probably have)
SM-N9005
hltexx
hlte
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
International Variant - Exynos Processor - Octa Core (Launched in markets where 4G is not very prevalent)
SM-N900
SM-N9000
ha3g
ha3gxx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Carrier Variant - Snapdragon Processor
hltetmo - SM-N900T - T-Mobile US
hltespr - SM-N900P - Sprint
hlteusc - SM-N900R4 - US Cellular
hltecan/hlteub - SM-N900W8 - Canada
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NOTE- If you bought your device from Europe or the American continent, it might be region locked. This would typically be depicted by a sticker on the side of the box that your device came in. This means that you cannot use it in another region.
Samsung claims that this restriction is lifted after you use the device in the home region for 5 minutes worth of calling, but many users have complained that this did not work.
My shiny new phone came with Android 4.3 but the moment I booted it up, it wanted to update itself.
In mid January, Kitkat (Android 4.4.2) was released for the Galaxy Note 3. If you update your phone, you will probably get to this version.
Should you upgrade to Kitkat?
The only reason to not upgrade your phone would be if you want to root you phone while keeping your knox warranty intact. (We will come to these terms in a minute).
If you don't want to root your phone, or you don't care about the knox warranty, there is no harm in upgrading.
The upgrade brings with it some noticeable improvement in speed and slightly improved multi-window and recoloured status bar icons. If there were any other visible changes, I have forgotten.
What is root?
Root is basically an administrator user in linux environment.
Cool. What does it have to do with my phone?
Hey, no need to get snarky.
Android is basically a Java Interface running on top of a linux environment.
So rooting your device gives you unparalleled access on your device.
You get to modify the system files, play with the CPU speed and the lot.
A million different ways to screw up your phone, basically.
What is KNOX?
KNOX is a proprietary software developed by Samsung. It was released with the Note 3 and even backported to other Samsung devices.
It allows you to run a separate environment for some particular apps on your phone. This adds a layer of security as it allows you to keep your sensitive data in a separate environment.
If you tamper with the phone's OS files (by rooting and such), the bootloader marks your Knox Warranty to be void.
This can also be used by Samsung to deny you warranty.
Once your KNOX is tripped, there is absolutely no way to go back.
How do I root my phone?
There are two ways.
Root De La Vega - This allows you to root without tripping your knox. But it doesn't work on newer firmwares. Visit the link to get more details.
CF-Auto-Root - Works on all devices and all firmwares but trips the knox.
There are a couple more methods of obtaining root, namely Klingo and vRoot, but they are both under suspicion of being malware designed to steal your personal data.
Which is the best ROM for this phone?
Asking such questions. Shame on you.
If there is anything else that you think should be added here, let me know.

First of all, it ships with 4.3, not 4.2.2. Next, there are other root options, like Kingo root. Where you talk about what the phones are called on these forums, you forgot a major distinction: quad-core versus octa-core. Also, it's extremely misleading to say that those are the only reasons not to upgrade to 4.4. Haven't you seen all that drama about apps not being able to access the SD card?!
Please edit this information in quickly. I don't want to see this well-intentioned post doing more harm than good.
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

The only significant drawback of KitKat on N9005 - no call recording program works without root.

rossiza said:
The only significant drawback of KitKat on N9005 - no call recording program works without root.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So media players not being able to access media files on the SD card is not a "significant issue?!"
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

CZroe said:
So media players not being able to access media files on the SD card is not a "significant issue?!"
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think no, because the developers app just need to update their app to KK to access SD card again...
But that call recorder problem... I didn't know about that. And I didn't like it too. You never know when you need to record a carrier, boss or even family call to proof something.

WandersonGD said:
I think no, because the developers app just need to update their app to KK to access SD card again...
But that call recorder problem... I didn't know about that. And I didn't like it too. You never know when you need to record a carrier, boss or even family call to proof something.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even when they do, they can only access their own data on the SD cards. If I have four media players then I need four DUPLICATE media libraries on my card, which is ridiculous. Actually, they can access it in read-only, which means you need a file manager to create the shared directory and then... OOPS! There's no way to manage the media and make a directory and move them together without a PC because AOSP and stock Android do not have system app file managers. This is a MAJOR oversight.
My last phone was an Xperia with barely any internal storage. When my Amazon MP3 app downloads my purchased albums, Google Play Music can't find or play it because it wasn't included as a system app on my Xperia phone. Furthermore, there is no stock file manager on Timescape. Have you ever tried to use the one included with TouchWiz?! It's laughable! They actually broke functionality with ICS that they STILL haven't fixed (no way to make home screen shortcuts to folders)!
KitKat's problems run a lot deeper than no call recording without root, which was something you were not supposed to be able to do in the first place.
Few people use or expect call recording. Almost everyone with a phone has video and audio players, especially those with a large external SD card.
Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

Another incorrect piece of info:
NOTE- If you bought your device from Europe or the American continent, it might be region locked. This would typically be depicted by a sticker on the side of the box that your device came in. This means that you cannot use it in another country.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can use it in another country without issue... So long as that country is part of the region your phone is meant for!
You can use a German Note 3 in France without any fear of region lock issues. Just don't try to use it in the US.

Alright, OP: if we are going to make this thread work, we've got a lot of editing to do.
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CZroe said:
So media players not being able to access media files on the SD card is not a "significant issue?!"
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I am on kitkat on my N9005 stock and unrooted, i never had this issue. Just took my SD card off my 9100 and plugged it in and i was playing all my songs/vids off my SD all the way from shipped 4.3 to kitkat...
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N1T15H said:
I am on kitkat on my N9005 stock and unrooted, i never had this issue. Just took my SD card off my 9100 and plugged it in and i was playing all my songs/vids off my SD all the way from shipped 4.3 to kitkat...
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Like I said, it works with existing files as read-only but doesn't work for cloud downloads. For example, Google Play Music and Amazon MP3 can't share downloaded media libraries unless one is a system app. They can share what's already on the card but they can only download to their protected folders which the other app can't see/access.
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CZroe said:
First of all, it ships with 4.3, not 4.2.2. Next, there are other root options, like Kingo root. Where you talk about what the phone's are called on these forums, you forgot a major distinction: quad-core versus octa-core. Also, it's extremely misleading to say that those are the only reasons not to upgrade to 4.4. Haven't you seen all that drama about apps not being able to access the SD card?!
Please edit this information in quickly. As it stands, I think this post is doing more harm than good.
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Updated the CPU cores part, the root part (Though Klingo and vroot are still banned from XDA for being malware)
The SD card issue was sorted in the OTA updates of Kitkat.

CZroe said:
Alright, OP: if we are going to make this thread work, we've got a lot of editing to do.
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Corrected.

The combination of KNOX, Kitkat 4.4.2 Symmy negative features, the apparent region-lock issue not resolved and the inability to revert back to 4.3 is a pretty big reason to look for another brand, anybody agree? What do I need a Ferrari for if the speed limit is 50 Km/h ?

koskhandeh said:
The combination of KNOX, Kitkat 4.4.2 Symmy negative features, the apparent region-lock issue not resolved and the inability to revert back to 4.3 is a pretty big reason to look for another brand, anybody agree? What do I need a Ferrari for if the speed limit is 50 Km/h ?
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Switching to another brand won't help reverting to 4.3 with Sony or LG is the same thing I know cause I own both of those phones along with my note 3
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