I do a lot of important things on my phone, so the protection is number the #1 thing for me.
All my previous 5 - 6 android smartphones were rooted by me.
The main reason for rooting was to improve security and confidence in the phone - good firewall, de -bloating, control of privilegies.
But now with S8+ I am having second thought about if rooting really protects vs exposes.
1) Lots of original protection features will be gone after rooting, like DM-verity
2) Automated system updates and therefore related security patches will be gone too. I am not a big fan of regular manual downloads and updates. So my once rooted system will become dated soon.
3) Fingerprint or iris readers be one more vulnerable to errors and manipulations
Am I taking it right?
Do a good firewall and control of priviligies outweigth the new risks that rooting could bring to S8+?
Thanks for you thoughts
Apparently now if you have a rooted S8, Netflix won't work anymore
aulamens said:
I do a lot of important things on my phone, so the protection is number the #1 thing for me.
All my previous 5 - 6 android smartphones were rooted by me.
The main reason for rooting was to improve security and confidence in the phone - good firewall, de -bloating, control of privilegies.
But now with S8+ I am having second thought about if rooting really protects vs exposes.
1) Lots of original protection features will be gone after rooting, like DM-verity
2) Automated system updates and therefore related security patches will be gone too. I am not a big fan of regular manual downloads and updates. So my once rooted system will become dated soon.
3) Fingerprint or iris readers be one more vulnerable to errors and manipulations
Am I taking it right?
Do a good firewall and control of priviligies outweigth the new risks that rooting could bring to S8+?
Thanks for you thoughts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You will get custom roms brother once you rooted , better than stock roms.
Thanks guys. Netflix is not a concern. But custom ROMs Iam not sure. Are they better protected than stock ROM? At least stock ROM is patched very often as new vulnerabilities are revealed. Not sure custom ROM are updated that quick. Plus automated updates without tye hassle of downloading flashing reinstalling is a big deal.
I would assume stock rom would stay most updated at least. Do stock ROMs offer the convenience of automated updates? ... and the speed and frequency of patches or fixes?
Ofcourse not rooted is more secure, it is silly to even discuss this. Rooting is the SINGLE most dangerous thing you can do. You allow 3rd party apps to modify your system. Yes, there is some sort of SuperUser app which asks for your permission, but it is still less secure than unrooted ROM. And as far as stock vs custom ROMs are concerned, would you trust more a group of enthisiasts that "modify" ROMS without proper knowlegde of inner workings or a company that does this for a living???
We all love CUSTOM ROMS, but in my experience on 5-6 (different) devices none of these are as stable as stock ROM, they cas say whatever they want, it is bull*. Stock is stock. Custom ROMs are used because we get new functionality, customizations, freedoom, maybe sometimes speed. But NEVER stability, I have flashed hundreds of ROMs since days of Desire HD through Note 2 and Nexus tablets, no custom ROM was ever as stable as stock. Period.
Personally i think it's hogwash to even think that rooting will expose you to security risks. I believe that's what most handphone manufacturers wants you to believe.
Just like an other tech you use, you make sure you do not install dubious apps. Rooting, like having admin rights on a PC, comes with certain risks and responsibilities.
Just imagine Microshaft or crapple telling you how to use their OS and how,if you have admin rights, will void your warranty or expose you to security risks, how you should use their bloatware apps or take their advice just because they know best?
Samdung doesn't like people tinkering with their stuff, especially when it outshines or is inherently superior to theirs. Their whole argument about rooting is just their way of scaring you to use their sorry of an excuse bloatware, building castles in the air and making sure you use their phones the"right" way.
Thank you Dalanik,
Then stock it is. I would still miss a good firewall or whole phone backup.
I felt quite secure when I saw new apps not being able to connect before I explicitly whitelist them in firewall.
But if it comes with a greater extent and complexity of exposure then I gave up
Thank you Frostmore,
It is not just about admin rights responsibility.
I saw people reporting fingerreader failures, knox being disabled etc. You lose some features which are designed to protect. There is no admin everyday routine that would compensate for that loss.
I would say if you don't overstand the workings of your device, you will not truly know..
Meanwhile from my experience from carriers, Samsung devices (good example: at&t note 4) is taking the enterprise route, more security for business purposes.
Non root I'd personally say from an amateur (myself) viewpoint (if you don't have the necessary knowledge to do it yourself). If someone wants to get you, they most likely will..
Another example is the location, there's multiple ways some of these apps get your location, clicking it off just seems like a "hide from user" option.
Good question though, don't see too many inquiries!
I m hesitant to root this phone. It will be the only non-rooted android I've owned. I am a developer with some embedded experience but I have become much more security conscious.
I so wish Sammy/Sprint would follow the Google Pixel model. The Pixel came out of the book without one iota of crap-a-ware. So refreshing to NOT be treated like a "mark" at a carnival.
The idea that I am Sprint's customer yet they treat me as a resource to serve up to their sponsors, like broadcast TV.
I run much of my business from this phone. I need VPN, TLS, SSL and all the security. I also develop for this device.
I may root in the future but I am going to stay clear of the bloody cutting edge for the moment. I appreciate you guys on the front line. Been there and done that...
Sent from my Pixel C using XDA-Developers Legacy app
Thanks SpringerRider, I like your idea of postponed rooting. I think Samsung with its pushy policies is becoming more and more hostile and arrogant to their own customers over time.
They degrade the support of their devices at akcelerated speed these days. For instance My 4-year old Samsung Smart TV lost 70% of its original functionality in the last year, because Samsung gradually stripped it from SmartHub via weekly updates. They don't want to support the TV even 4 years later after it was first introduced to the market. I guess the same philosophy would be applied on us, S8+ owners much sooner than we would have expected. I guess in 2-3 years we would on our own. Plus I bet Samsung would start overloading our phones with resource hungry bloatware via updates pushing us to buy newer models.
That would be the right time to root the phone and to cut the ties to Samsung.
So I totally get your idea and I thing it makes a good sense.
Related
i have got a samsung omnia7 and was thinking about using the sammy rainbow custom rom, what are the pro's and cons doing this?
atm i have interop unlocked it but as i am still under warranty was curious of the effects.
advice would be grateful
It varies heavily ROM to ROM. However, there are a few common things.
Advantages:
More device control. With the policy system disabled, you can modify almost anything.
More homebrew apps, and more powerful ones (things like bazaar).
Native homebrew apps and ported WinMo apps.
Install XAPs directly (such as from IE), instead of using a PC.
If you find a bug, you can directly talk to the devs about fixing it (or possibly fix it yourself).
You may get updates before your carrier would provide them normally.
Disadvantages:
Higher risk of bugs since the ROMs get a lot less testing than official ones.
Updates may come later because you have to wait for a custom packaging of the update.
Not all custom ROMs are updatable; you might need to replace it with a new version which means you'll lose all your data.
Turning off the policy system increases your risk of malware if you arent' careful what you install.
Custom ROMs may have malware built in (not saying any of them do, but it's a risk).
Currently, I'd suggest waiting a little while to see where the Samsung ROM scene goes, what bugs are found and how quickly they're fixed, what features are available and how useful they are. However, it's pretty much always possible to go back to a stock ROM (unless you somehow really badly mess up your phone) so if you want to experiment or be an early adopter, go ahead. Otherwise, I think it'll be pretty clear what ROMs are good and where the custom ROM scene is going (support- and feature-wise) within a month or so.
so i would be safer to wait and see what the dev of the roms is going to do in the case of bugs.
thanks
That's my take. Note that I'm a dev working very hard on hacks that works with stock ROMs though - somebody who spends their time developing custom ROMs may well give completley different advice. There are certainly lots of advantages to going with custom ROMs, even at this relatively early point (it helps that a lot of the experience from HTC custom WP7 ROMs carries over to Samsung ROMs as well).
it seems as though the custom roms for omnia 7 are coming on leaps and bounds, what with MIRO's ROM http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1499102
there seems to be very little on the way of bugs with his atm so i think i will give that one a shot. i know i am new at this but if you don't ask then you never find out things right
thanks for your advice and input....much appreciated
I've been using the site for sometime and just wanted to put an idea if someone smarter than myself wanted to come up with technical details to make this work or it may already be in development but I'm not aware of it.
Getting the latest android update on phone with hardware capable of using it keeps coming up in a lot of articles that I read and it feels that the masses will probably never come to xda forums to get the updates they may want or need due to their lack of understanding of how to go abouts updating a rom.
The roms for most phones are being done by the community quicker and more reliable than the manufacturer in some cases. Here is what I think would work for masses to get the updates without the knowhow:
Create a process to get these custom roms quickly and easily loaded on to anyone's phone without them thinking about how to reboot in recovery mode. Similar to the Samsung devices getting updates from heimdall app found on this site. However it needs to be dumbed down and should be automatic when the user plugs in the phone.
This could be done by having a windows/mac application which when your phone is plugged in or connected wireless to your local network it would recognise what device you have and any additional information such as boot loader information it needs to search for official roms automatically from the manufacturer. If there is no updates then give the user the option to search for a market like store for unofficial roms which come with a warning to run at your own risk. These would be from the xda forums however they will need to meet a certain requirement as flashing from pc/mac may require a unique process from adb which is the key part to this idea working and I'm not too familiar with it to know if it's possible for some phones or all android phones. This store will contain different roms with user ratings of which is the most reliable rom. Essentially creating a market for roms. The user then clicks install and first thing the software does is to backup everything to save the state on the users hard drive in case you need to revert back to original.
This market should be controlled like the app store by the creators incase people abuse it. This means the requirement for any roms listed would be to include the default google experience and maybe a section for non pure google experiences as an option. It would be better if google created this app/process but let the roms be user/manufacturer driven.
Then through word of mouth/twitter/blogs this windows/mac app and within short time many people will be on ICS without much effort on google.
The android market is crying out from something like this to funnel all custom roms into a place accessible for the masses(knowing the risks of doing so). This separates the hardware binding to one specific software made for it, the user should be able to choose from selection off software which suits best for the hardware he/she purchased.
Obviously this is just an idea but hoping you clever people can come up with something similar. XDA Android Updater maybe
Isn't this exactly what ROM Manager does?
TeeRom said:
Isn't this exactly what ROM Manager does?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nah he wants a better implementation that's dumbed down and on windows etc...
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA
Do you mean that custom ROM's are more reliable than stock ROM? Are you kidding, there are tons of issues with most custom ROM's, just read around here at XDA. But often those issues are not a big problem for a XDA enthusiast, since he chooses a ROM that suits him and also know how to work around those issues. But custom ROM is not something I would recommend my sister or my parents or any non-techie friend.
There are many roms which have become very mature and to a stage with minimal issues. I installed a ICS for my brothers desire, there may be some issues out there but many he won't come across such as migration apps from titanium backup. However he still gets to experience e latest functionality that the OS brings and he seems much happier with as the experience has become more smoother and quicker. I agree that there will be some which will be very much beta most of its lifetime and the market should reflect the known issues such as we have on the forums here.
is custom kernels battery life give more SOT than stock kernel.?
If individual developers can make something so good, surely the massive amount of people and money over at Mountain View can do it too?
IMO the device manufacturers develop kernels that will help "they're"device run better. They seldom worry about heavy users.
Suggest to making
Suggest to making, find they modified the kernel, compile or adjusting voltage! I hope it can help you!
More customization means more test variations (test cases, basically) need to be written and run before each release.
matt hardy said:
is custom kernels battery life give more SOT than stock kernel.?
If individual developers can make something so good, surely the massive amount of people and money over at Mountain View can do it too?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The difference between custom and stock ROMs? Same reasoning behind everything that's customised - cars, motorbikes, skateboards, etc.
Custom ROM. Individual developers make custom ROM the way they want to use it. They care about making the improvements and go into detail on how they will go about the customisation. They are not concerned about meeting deadlines because they would be using the phones and improving along the way.
Stock ROM. Phone manufacturers developers make the custom ROM the way the Company wants it to be used. They care about the meeting deadlines for the phones' launch date. Launch first, patch the defects later. Sounds familiar?
Happy Holidays!
I've always thought the same. I've always been scared to install a custom kernel... But how huge are the improvements?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Narzdy said:
I've always thought the same. I've always been scared to install a custom kernel... But how huge are the improvements?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on the developer and the phone for which the ROM is built. There can be many types of improvemts, for example:
a. Upgrade OS. Phone manufacturers seldom put much effort to upgrade OS. E.g., when KitKat was released, manufacturers offered to an upgrade to only a handful of current phone models. In this case, a custom ROM is the only way for an upgrade for the other older phones.
b. Minimise Bloatware. Stock ROMs usually come with pre-installed bloatware apps that cannot be uninstalled. Not everyone uses all the apps running on the stock ROM. The custom ROM will allow for removal of unwanted apps and prevent apps from running unneccesarily. This will end up with a more efficient phone (more spare RAM) with a longer battery life.
c. Improved user-interface. Stock ROMs come with preset user-interface according to the manufacturer's developer. This may not suit everyone who buys the phone and the user is forced to learn and use this standardised interface. The user-interface of a custom ROM is designed by the developer, and is usually changeable if requests are made to the developer.
d. Fine-tune or tweaking. OS of stock ROMs are usually standardised, and may be carried through a few variations of the phones with very few fine-tuning to match any particular model. The custom ROM is usually optimised for a specific model of phone. When the ROM is optimised, the phone will perform better than stock, with better memory management, smoother running and longer battery life.
Of course, the performance of a custom ROM depends very much on the developer and the users feedback. Some may begin as a quirky OS and does not perform as well as stock, but as time goes on and with feedback from users and commitment from the developer, a custom ROM can evolve into one that will be very superior than the stock. However, this will take some time to happen. You can notice that all of the ROM development threads have so many of pages of posts from users giving feedback, comments and recommendations to the developers.
Happy Holidays!
Developers look at ROMs from the bottom up. Corporate top down
chan.sk said:
The difference between custom and stock ROMs? Same reasoning behind everything that's customised - cars, motorbikes, skateboards, etc.
Custom ROM. Individual developers make custom ROM the way they want to use it. They care about making the improvements and go into detail on how they will go about the customisation. They are not concerned about meeting deadlines because they would be using the phones and improving along the way.
Stock ROM. Phone manufacturers developers make the custom ROM the way the Company wants it to be used. They care about the meeting deadlines for the phones' launch date. Launch first, patch the defects later. Sounds familiar?
Happy Holidays!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly, how else will they be able to push all of their bloatware on you if you could just uninstall it with a custom ROM or root?
Stock doms developed for both casual and users and corporate clients. This means ROM has to pass rigorous testing. This also means no experimental features etc. Another thing is that rom has to be secure e.g. no root.
But most importantly ROM has to suite casual user who needs Facebook, twitter and tons of other useless stuff that consume battery.
Anyone who posts on XDA is NOT a casual user and falls into 10-20% group of geeks
because custom kernel are personalized based on request of the people ..
stock kernel based on the manufacturer's
The wireless carriers and the device manufacturers have the "stock" software produced to blanket specific markets of customers or users. The individual manufacturers also probably have numerous contracts with different providers of services like dropbox and so on. They add all of those apps for that reason and the majority of folks probably never use them. You could compare apps to the "as seen on TV products". Some of them make it and some of them don't. The same could be said for Android apps. I believe they also have a lot of tracking systems in place with the stock roms so they can target advertise to certain customer bases. If you look at any service provider's contract, they don't allow rooting or any type of modification to the base firmware. If you do, it violates the terms of service agreement. That's why your warranty is voided and you're pretty much stuck if you have a problem and can't figure out how to fix it with resources available on the Web. They also have provisioning and proxies to guide you to certain places when using your device, unwillingly for the most part. A good example of that is on my phone I had all Verizon branded apps for customer service and what not. If you open the My Verizon Mobile app and then try to call Verizon customer service and talk to a person it automatically reverts you to the My Verizon Mobile app and says, "if you still want to talk to customer service, please enter your login credentials" I tried this several times but ended up calling Verizon on my house phone. It's pretty sneaky but the more times you handle your own problems with their automated systems, the less money it costs them to run their business.
it's a question i've never understood.
i can try to give you a my personal opinion. maybe stock rom personalized by some brand are not so good as stocks are because they don't look only at fast and battery. they make rom more heay because they want to put a lot of personalization with a lot of graphical effect without spending more time to optimize the whole things
Stock kernels and ROMs have to follow a strict set of rules, custom ones do not.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk
I have been trying ROMs for years now in my string of Motorola phones, and every single one of them has had one set of showstopping bugs or another. I haven't been able to find any firmware that I could actually live with for any length of time.
I am currently on AOSP Extended v3.3 and it can not give me notifications! My phone just vibrated with a phone call but it was not in vibrate mode! There was no phone with jiggly wires on the sides and when I turned the ringer up it was already at max! Yet no ringer.
I've missed appoointments because the calendar notifications don't work, I miss texts all the time because it can't manage out a tone.
All of us here keep upgrading to the next version in hopes of shedding one or more show-stopping bugs, but it's a dream continually unrealized.
Can any qualified developer tell me why this is so hard? Why can Android not get the basics right, even now that we have reached Oreo? Why is this advanced OS not able to do the little things a phone must do? Never-mind the advanced features like pie controls -- I'd learn those if I trusted this thing. But even on the best phones (my prior was a Moto X) I cant get a phone I can rely on.
PS - I tried an Apple phone for work a couple years ago and it worked, but I just hated it.
Lineage 14.1, Official. Installed the 'official way' (motorola unlock code). Not rooted. For me, working like a charm
You should try a different rom. AOSP Extended is based on AOSP-CAF. When I used a different ROM but also based on AOSP-CAF (purenexus) I faced the same problem.
Right now I’m on unofficial Lineage 15 (it still has some issues: random reboots sometimes but that seems to be an upstream issue as Pixels are also rebooting and having to use Footej camera to record video).
As @krondar said official LineageOS should be your best choice even though it doesn’t have some other more advanced custom ROM features. (Or just stock ROM from Motorola if you’re OK with Marshmallow)
Quantumstate said:
I have been trying ROMs for years now in my string of Motorola phones, and every single one of them has had one set of showstopping bugs or another. I haven't been able to find any firmware that I could actually live with for any length of time.
I am currently on AOSP Extended v3.3 and it can not give me notifications! My phone just vibrated with a phone call but it was not in vibrate mode! There was no phone with jiggly wires on the sides and when I turned the ringer up it was already at max! Yet no ringer.
I've missed appoointments because the calendar notifications don't work, I miss texts all the time because it can't manage out a tone.
All of us here keep upgrading to the next version in hopes of shedding one or more show-stopping bugs, but it's a dream continually unrealized.
Can any qualified developer tell me why this is so hard? Why can Android not get the basics right, even now that we have reached Oreo? Why is this advanced OS not able to do the little things a phone must do? Never-mind the advanced features like pie controls -- I'd learn those if I trusted this thing. But even on the best phones (my prior was a Moto X) I cant get a phone I can rely on.
PS - I tried an Apple phone for work a couple years ago and it worked, but I just hated it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
AOSP Extended is one of the best you can find here. But the version you are using is very old. I would recommend you clean flash the latest version and I believe you will love it.
I tryed Cyanogenmod 13 and it was awesome, and now I'm with Lineage 14.1 and everything is ok... no bugs,
Over the years I've tried every firmware from MIUI to Paranoid Android to CarbonROM to Cyanogenmod to ResurrectionRemix, and all have one set of basic problems or another. And worse, seem to deteriorate over time!
This should never, never happen with an advanced OS in the 21st Century. So I moved to the AOSPs and find the same syndrome! This implies a basic problem with Android -- after so many years it can not be gotten right. It's alarming.
Why is Lineage better? What is it based on? How is it different that it doesn't have these problems? How do you find out that one ROM is working better than all the others?
I've been using purenexus ROM for a few month and never faced any issue,not even a little one. It was 100% stable for me and the perfect ROM for a daily driver. AEX Is very good though and lineage OS 14.1 too.
Actually I'd installed PureNexus right after my post above. It's 4 times faster than AOSP Extended v3.3, although I have yet to put it through the wringer. Time will tell.
Quantumstate said:
Actually I'd installed PureNexus right after my post above. It's 4 times faster than AOSP Extended v3.3, although I have yet to put it through the wringer. Time will tell.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why where you using such an old version of AOSP Extended? Currently version 4.6 (nougat) is available and work on Oreo has begun.
Latest Stock Android 6.0.1 with @squid2 r20 kernel works flawlessly on my Moto G3 (xt1548). Two consecutive months of use and not a single bug found.
V-Droid said:
Why where you using such an old version of AOSP Extended? Currently version 4.6 (nougat) is available and work on Oreo has begun.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why? Because I don't have time to be bit-twiddling every other day on my phone. I need to use my phone as a phone, since I am an adult.
Checking, my version of AOSPExtended was 9 March, 2017. You see 5 months, as old? What's the matter with you?
And no matter HOW old, why is it ever acceptable to you that it would sit silent as my phone calls, texts, appointments go by, and it forgets which keyboard I've chosen repeatedly? With this 13th generation of Android, the mission-critical fundamentals are completely busted? It was quite a feat to accomplish that.
Thankfully so far PureNexus is working. I hope that lasts more than 5 months without deteriorating.
Quantumstate said:
Why? Because I don't have time to be bit-twiddling every other day on my phone. I need to use my phone as a phone, since I am an adult.
Checking, my version of AOSPExtended was 9 March, 2017. You see 5 months, as old? What's the matter with you?
And no matter HOW old, why is it ever acceptable to you that it would sit silent as my phone calls, texts, appointments go by, and it forgets which keyboard I've chosen repeatedly? With this 13th generation of Android, the mission-critical fundamentals are completely busted? It was quite a feat to accomplish that.
Thankfully so far PureNexus is working. I hope that lasts more than 5 months without deteriorating.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you don't have time to be 'bit-twiddling' on your phone then why did you bother on unlocking the boot loader and flashing a custom firmware?
Personally I haven't tried pure nexus, but it is very possible that 5 months ago pure nexus had the same bugs as AOSP Extended. Since they are custom firmwares, they are susceptible to bugs, that's why mainteiners push out weekly or monthly updates.
If you think that pure nexus or any other rom will deteriorate over time then you should probably restore the stock firmware of whatever device you are using, well... That of you have time, if not than don't blame maintainers remember they are not being paid for anything.
I don't have time to be bit-twiddling because I have actual work to do. But I want the extra features in custom firmware. Is that unusual? Is that not why most of us do this?
It doesn't matter whether PureNexus had the same bugs 5 months ago. I am using it now. In the real world one can not disprove a negative. Susceptible to bugs? Like the frickin' phone not ringing? And it forgetting basic settings? That should never, never happen. Again, these are mission-critical functions of a *phone*.
The maintainers are doing it for fun and recognition. But those maintainers who lazily emit schlock and dreck should be outed. That is not been happening, and it is time is does, for the protection of users.
Quantumstate said:
I don't have time to be bit-twiddling because I have actual work to do. But I want the extra features in custom firmware. Is that unusual? Is that not why most of us do this?
It doesn't matter whether PureNexus had the same bugs 5 months ago. I am using it now. In the real world one can not disprove a negative. Susceptible to bugs? Like the frickin' phone not ringing? And it forgetting basic settings? That should never, never happen. Again, these are mission-critical functions of a *phone*.
The maintainers are doing it for fun and recognition. But those maintainers who lazily emit schlock and dreck should be outed. That is not been happening, and it is time is does, for the protection of users.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not making this statement because of my obvious bias of being employed by Motorola Mobility. But nobody knows better how to create ROMs for Motorola devices better than Motorola. I totally understand your points and agree with your logic on many of the shoddy custom ROMs put out for Moto devices. Cobvetsely, however, I have to give much deserved credit to some of the XDA pioneer developers who have a passion for both Android and our beloved Motorola devices. @lost101 stands out, as well as @superR, @squid2, @Sands207, and the great @Buzbee2 just to name a modicum of these dedicated individuals.
If all else fails your expectations, go with a pure stock build, with root, busybox, debloating, with the custom ROM type flexibilities and customizations provided by deodexing, Xposed Framework mods & tweaks, etc, etc. You don't necessarily need a custom build to enjoy the perks and customizations of your Android OS, Grab yourself a stock build of your choosing and mold it like a piece of clay, and be your own architect. As a brilliant attorney once stated, "at the end of the day, my client is ultimately the captain of his own ship."
---------- Post added at 05:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:56 PM ----------
Quantumstate said:
I don't have time to be bit-twiddling because I have actual work to do. But I want the extra features in custom firmware. Is that unusual? Is that not why most of us do this?
It doesn't matter whether PureNexus had the same bugs 5 months ago. I am using it now. In the real world one can not disprove a negative. Susceptible to bugs? Like the frickin' phone not ringing? And it forgetting basic settings? That should never, never happen. Again, these are mission-critical functions of a *phone*.
The maintainers are doing it for fun and recognition. But those maintainers who lazily emit schlock and dreck should be outed. That is not been happening, and it is time is does, for the protection of users.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not making this statement because of my obvious bias of being employed by Motorola Mobility. But nobody knows better how to create ROMs for Motorola devices better than Motorola. I totally understand your points and agree with your logic on many of the shoddy custom ROMs put out for Moto devices. Conversely, however, I have to give much deserved credit to some of the XDA pioneer developers who have a passion for both Android and our beloved Motorola devices. @lost101 stands out, as well as @superR, @squid2, @Sands207, and the great @Buzbee2 just to name a modicum of these dedicated individuals.
If all else fails your expectations, go with a pure stock build, with root, busybox, debloating, with the custom ROM type flexibilities and customizations provided by deodexing, Xposed Framework mods & tweaks, etc, etc. You don't necessarily need a custom build to enjoy the perks and customizations of your Android OS, Grab yourself a stock build of your choosing and mold it like a piece of clay, and be your own architect. As a brilliant attorney once stated, "at the end of the day, my client is ultimately the captain of his own ship."
I am with you on Motorola, MotoJunkie01. No one else makes water-resistant phones, and is that not just a basic common-sense feature for something we carry with us?
But few seem to have common sense.
I've owned Motorola phones since cellphones began. I experimented with HTC, Nokia, and Samsung, but over time each one gave me reason to distrust the brand. Always came back to Moto.
I was afraid that Motorola had discarded the water-resistant feature, but the new X4 is at least IP64, so that will be my next phone. There are no custom firmwares for it yet but I'll make a note of the devs you cite. I do enterprise infosec, and rigor and quality are vital -- given my job and my nature it's why I'm so perturbed with these lackadaisical devs who learn only enough to knock something together and don't have enough sense to fix it. It's like spreading pollution...
I wish Whirleyes would bring his amazing multiboot feature -- no software enhancement comes close to being as useful and important to me, but impetuous people here pissed him off. There is some kind of multiboot available now, but it is not compatible with the XT1540.
For hardware features I rank waterproof first, large battery second, and dual SIM third. I've got to research whether the Asian Moto X4 will work in the US on Credo Mobile. (Verizon)
For software, security is of course number 1. I'd want to configure my phone like the Blackphone2, except with a hidden interface. We may soon be compelled to unlock our phones at borders and by police (which no matter what the Supreme Court says, is unConstitutional), so I'd like to unlock my phone, but have another (hidden) unlock for another side of it; another phone or at least storage place, with the two sides completely secure from one another and distinct.
The supposed "Crypto" rom here is nothing of the sort. He's just using a gee-whiz name, amusingly. Doesn't realize how silly he looks.
I've left my phone out overnight in the rain at least twice, and what a relief it is to have this protection.
And true, stock firmware can be relied on, although I wish it had some of the nice features of customs. And I wish it got security updates over time -- that's a key reason I move to the next releases of Android.
Quantumstate said:
I am with you on Motorola, MotoJunkie01. No one else makes water-resistant phones, and is that not just a basic common-sense feature for something we carry with us?
But few seem to have common sense.
I've owned Motorola phones since cellphones began. I experimented with HTC, Nokia, and Samsung, but over time each one gave me reason to distrust the brand. Always came back to Moto.
I was afraid that Motorola had discarded the water-resistant feature, but the new X4 is at least IP64, so that will be my next phone. There are no custom firmwares for it yet but I'll make a note of the devs you cite. I do enterprise infosec, and rigor and quality are vital -- given my job and my nature it's why I'm so perturbed with these lackadaisical devs who learn only enough to knock something together and don't have enough sense to fix it. It's like spreading pollution...
I wish Whirleyes would bring his amazing multiboot feature -- no software enhancement comes close to being as useful and important to me, but impetuous people here pissed him off. There is some kind of multiboot available now, but it is not compatible with the XT1540.
For hardware features I rank waterproof first, large battery second, and dual SIM third. I've got to research whether the Asian Moto X4 will work in the US on Credo Mobile. (Verizon)
For software, security is of course number 1. I'd want to configure my phone like the Blackphone2, except with a hidden interface. We may soon be compelled to unlock our phones at borders and by police (which no matter what the Supreme Court says, is unConstitutional), so I'd like to unlock my phone, but have another unlock for another side of it; another phone or at least storage place, with the two sides completely secure from one another and distinct.
The supposed "Crypto" rom here is nothing of the sort. He's just using a gee-whiz name, amusingly.
I've left my phone out overnight in the rain at least twice, and what a relief it is to have this protection.
And true, stock firmware can be relied on, although I wish it had some of the nice features of customs. And I wish it got security updates over time -- that's a key reason I move to the next releases of Android.
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Click to collapse
Friend we share similar views and sentiments on this subject. We also seem to share in the philosophy that The Due Process Clause, Equal Protection of the Law, and safeguards against unreasonable searches and seizures have essentially all been trampled through the mud when it comes to our privacy and expectations to privacy with respect to our smartphones. Law enforcement having the authority to compel a man (or woman) to unlock their device without constitutional safeguardsl, is synonymous of the police being permitted to kick down the door to a man's house upon a "whim" or a "hunch". Or a cop conducting a traffic stop and subsequent warrantless search of the driver's person and vehicle merely because the cop feels like it. I take great pride in knowing with 100% certainty that any law enforcement who attempts to track or trace my mobile IP, or tries to monitor anything about incoming or outbound data packets on any of my devices is chasing Casper the Ghost. But, anymore I can't be so certain about John Q Law's legal authorization (or ability) to stick his long snout into my device's internal storage. I'm working the final kinks out of a simple process that will completely wipe and heavily encrypt the wiped storage with multiple layers of random binary (with the morbidly numerous anticipation that they actually can and will spend countless man hours and resources on decrypting utterly blank and random blocks of binary jibberish). All with a self determined series of keyfob button presses.
Yeah I know I'm ranting and perhaps being a bit overzealous. But, just like you said, regardless of state or federal appellate court adjudications giving authorities such authorizations, such decisions run afoul of a handful of the most rudimentary tenets of constitutional safeguards.
Word.
Most have given up and acquiesced. But not me. Never. I use Tor to get here, and just about everywhere else. Because I know what can be done.
Most will say that their words are not important enough and so they don't worry. But they do not know that what is Ok today, may not be tomorrow. I used to be in intelligence, and most here would not believe what can happen (and has happened in other nations).
BTW, there is an excellent TV series called The Americans, which I think is as good as the old Mission Impossible series (which came way before Tom Cruise). Although it can never compete with the old Secret Agent ('Danger Man') series, and the John LeCarre series', it is a high-grade and carefully-wrought storyline.
I agree with you that seems no ROM is stable; In fact if your phone is important for you as production device, I would suggest you stick with stock ROM or keep testing until a ROM which works for you and stay there! New version introduce new bug, that's the usual case on Software side, there is no way to avoid.
If you are so sensitive to bugs then stick onto stock rom instead of blaming the developers. Your fault that you can't keep meddling with your device. If you want a totally bugles device then you try to develop a rom by yourself then you will understand what it is to be a developer
MotoJunkie01 said:
Latest Stock Android 6.0.1 with @squid2 r20 kernel works flawlessly on my Moto G3 (xt1548). Two consecutive months of use and not a single bug found.
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Click to collapse
Better than my XT1540, rooted, no other mods except modified host file for ad removal, stock kernel. I have an average 1 bug report a week.
Hi just wondering if there's any point to rooting these days?i mean the s8+ pretty much bang on!can rooting offer anything extra?I understand like an iPhone is miles better jailbroken but s8 seems to pretty much to a lot!!any ideas folks
I only rooted because I wanted to remove system app and use Titanium Backup.
But if you don't use or need those 2 apps...not worth rooting.
Matt.
I used to root all of my previous phones, including S2+, S4 and S6. I loved custom roms and additional battery saving tweaks or performance tweaks, overclocking, downclocking etc. The S8+ has a huge battery and a great system, so most of the features that I'd get via rooting on the older phones are already here. Also, if you root you void your warranty, and trust me, you don't know when you'll need it . And let's not forget the amount of times that I've flashed something the wrong way or idk something got corrupted and I had to reflash and lose all my data. Staying stock is the best choice on S8+.
Of course it's worthy. You can improve the camera quality with Zero Camera Mod, get better performance with kernels and get rid of the annoying ads.
IN MY OPINION
No, it's not worth it. There may be some advantages to rooting, but you can do MOST of those things without root. Samsung Internet Browser already blocks ads. There's some nonroot apps that will block and across the phone if you don't mind using a VPN.
You can disable unwanted apps with BK Disabler Pro (I think that's what it's called).
The camera is already great. I can't speak for Zero Camera Mod, but the Pixel camera works great on this phone.
I used to unlock bootloaders on every device I owned. Wouldn't buy one with a locked bootloader. I rooted. I flashed custom ROMs. I used Xposed and customized. Then I stopped customizing everything. Then I stopped flashing custom ROMs. Android finally got the point I was happy with it out of the box. When I got my S8+ I realized Samsung's software wasn't bad at all, and I actually enjoyed it.
Now I just read thread after thread of people bricking and soft bricking their phones after rooting. People having issues going back to stock to take upgrades. Honestly, I just shake my head and chuckle, because it all seems like such a big hassle and headache, that really does nothing more than disable things like Samsung Pay.
So no, to me, it's NOT worth it. I enjoy my S8+ and my Note 8 with no desire to root it. When I want to customize it, I apply a theme. I just use the Samsung themes, but have thought about trying Substratum. There's always Nova Launcher and the Pixel Launcher if you want a different look as well.
That's my opinion, and it's worth about a buck two eighty. Get the phone. Run it stock for a while and see if you REALLY miss root. Then decide.
No, for the 1st time I must say on S8+ on Nougat it is not worth. You can disable all apps you don't need without root, remap bixby button, set permissions to apps, remove ads without VPN (Adhell2) etc.
Oh coarse it's worth it, for many reasons . . . .
. . . . . . . now what were those reasons . . . . . ?
oh yes, it turns the phone into a 'Super' phone.
You didn't know that is where the 'S' comes from in Galaxy 'S' 8, did you?
There isn't much customization to accomplish for rooting/custom recovery at the moment. I, at the moment, have twrp-d G950F and Stock G955U1. Strangely, I found myself using G955U1 more than that rooted G950F. Given that there is only TW based roms atm, fonts-theming can be acquired through substratum or flipfonts, and Adblocking using adhell. I basically rooted my device to test ROMs to maximize battery life but there is only little variation to them that I sincerely think that stock G955-U1 ROM is better than other, though I do adore the new samsung oreo keyboard that can add gifs to almost all apps that I am using, unlike its current nougat counterpart. But again, U1 is pretty clean and slim rom. I tried oreo beta, through that samsung.firmware.science, but there is currently no comparable U1 oreo beta, there is only U roms that will install carrier CSC and its added apps to the phone. It almost made me wanting to root to remove those apps, but given the near release of oreo, i ended up choosing to go back to my stock nougat u1 rom. I heard its possible to flash any stock rom to any s8 family.
Go check out CarHDROM. He has ported a Note 8 ROM for the 8+. Very nice and has built in a number of things you will not find on stock, built-in.
I can agree that initial messing about with rooting, setting up a custom ROM can take a little time, it's hardly more than a stock ROM. Some folks have to re-do things to get it just right, but once done, it can be spectacular. 'Rolling your own' can have it's own 'rewards', as it allows for some creativity beyond the stock ROM, and there are a good number of things you can do with a rooted phone, that you can not with a stock phone.
If you are new to rooting, etc, there is a learning curve that can be tranquilly taken over short hours, to days to weeks. Tranquil. The Samsung Odin software and the how to's are pretty straight forward to follow, and most of the time folks here are available to help, though that is not always 'guaranteed'. Some posts/requests for help sit idle either longer than the OP would like, or just remain static, though that is not an often case.
I ran the same custom ROM on my old iPhones, OnePlus One, G3, and once setup with a nice custom ROM, did not change them out.
CarHDROM is very well established, and version v9 (last Nougat) is very stable and very extended with it's added abilities. Carotix takes a lot of time with the users.
That ROM is now on v10 (Orego beta), and going through it's growing pains.
I have v9. Smooth, trash free, and well thought out.
I think all the versions are available for download/use.
It is worth checking out.
At any rate, either stock or custom, the 8/8+ is a great phone.
In the (motorcycle) biking side of life there is a saying for (legitimate) bike owners: "Ride it like you stole it".
Have fun with your S8.