Android Authority |
- How to root the Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 [Video]
- Where are the long battery life superphones?
- Galaxy Nexus sales ban temporarily lifted by appeals court, Apple has a week to retaliate
- Oracle might have to pay $4 million for Google’s legal expenses
- Verizon locks the bootloader on its Galaxy S3 model
| How to root the Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 [Video] Posted: 07 Jul 2012 05:29 AM PDT
Looking for full control over your brand new Samsung Galaxy S3? In less than ten minutes, you can safely root your brand new Galaxy S3 using the desktop program Odin. Interested? Let’s begin the process.
Your Galaxy S3 will boot into ClockworkMod Recovery, just wait out the process, as it will reboot once again. You will then be able to identify the SU app in your app drawer, meaning you have gained successful root.
Watch our video below for step-by-step instructions. This article, How to root the Galaxy S3 GT-I9300 [Video] , was originally published at AndroidAuthority.com - Your Android News Source.
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| Where are the long battery life superphones? Posted: 07 Jul 2012 05:21 AM PDT
There are some people who don’t like smart phones. It isn’t because they don’t like the touch sensitive screen, it’s not an ease of use issue, but rather they don’t like the battery life. In the good old days of feature phones, you could charge up your phone once a week, you could talk for hours, and, if you battery showed only one bar left, you knew it would work for the rest of the day. But not so with smartphones. With a nice bright display to power, plus Wi-Fi, plus GPS, and of course 3G or even 4G, a smart phone battery might last a day, maybe two. A typical feature phone might use a 1100mAh battery, where as a smart phone could have a 1650mAh battery. Sure, the smartphone has a bigger battery but it isn’t proportionally larger compared to the juice needed to power it. That is with the exception of the Motorola RAZR MAXX that is. The RAZR MAXX sports a high capacity 3300mAh giving 21.5 hours of talk time, 2.5 days of listening to music, and 12 hours of Internet over Wi-Fi use. These numbers seem better suited to a tablet than a phone!
But is that it? Surely, with every forum and smartphone related website carrying articles and tutorials about battery life and how to extend it, more manufacturers would be selling phones with bigger batteries. The answer seems to be no. There are just one or two companies selling phone with better batteries. The Galaxy S3 has a pretty good, 2000mAh+ battery, but they still only last about a day with full usage. Huawei is touting its Ascend D quad as the world’s fastest smartphone, but it is also looking at the battery aspect. Alongside the Ascend D quad, Huawei will launch the Ascend D quad XL. It has exactly the same specifications as the Ascend D quad but with a 2500mAh battery, which Huawei reckons will last for two or three days with normal usage. Samsung’s Galaxy Note also has a 2500mAh battery but this only gives it a battery life comparable to the S3 or the HTC One X. The reason its battery life isn’t better than the S3 is because of its huge 5.3 inch display. The display is the most power hungry component in any smart phone. It doesn’t matter if you are using Wi-Fi or not, if Bluetooth is on or off, or if you have the GPS enabled, whatever you do on your phone (other than listen to music) you need to use the display, and that takes power. The rumors are that Samsung is preparing the Galaxy Note 2 with a even bigger display (possibly 5.5 inches) and it is hoped that Samsung will include a bigger battery, maybe even a 3000mAh one. So what is the problem? It really is a bit of a mystery. The phone manufacturers are busy adding more features to phones, quad core CPUs, better cameras, larger screens, higher resolutions, but where is the push to add more battery life? The problem shouldn’t be cost related as a 1600mAh battery costs around $5 where as a 4000mAh battery costs $10. So adding $5 to the bill of materials for a bigger battery isn’t a problem, especially when compared to the cost of the display or flash memory. Could weight be a problem? Since phones are designed to be mobile it is conceivable that some manufacturers are concerned about overall weight. But even adding a battery with an extra 500mAh shouldn’t make the device unreasonably heavy. Is Android to blame?Leaving the RAZR MAXX to the side, battery tests show that the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S have quite reasonable battery lives. In the same test that showed the RAZR MAXX supporting 12 hours of Internet over Wi-Fi usage, the iPhone 4S managed 11 hours. But here is the startling thing – the iPhone 4S only has a 1432 mAh battery. That is smaller than the average Android smartphone and more than half the size of the RAZR MAXX’s battery. Could it be that Apple have been able to tweak iOS to consume less power than Android? Is it because Apple own their own ARM chip design team and the chips are made exactly as they want them, rather than having to use off the shelf parts form the likes of Qualcomm or NVIDA?
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| Galaxy Nexus sales ban temporarily lifted by appeals court, Apple has a week to retaliate Posted: 07 Jul 2012 04:43 AM PDT
Judge Lucy Koh may have turned down Samsung's appeals on the injunction of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy Nexus, but the Korean's appeal in the federal court has finally borne some favorable result for the latter. A federal appeals court has temporarily lifted the sales ban on the Galaxy Nexus, thus paving the way for Google's flagship phone to start making its way to its digital storefront once more. Note that the battle is far from over, because Apple still can argue for the sales ban to hold in the appeals court. Cupertino will be given until Thursday of next week to state its case in the appeals court. The hearing will then determine whether the ban should be put in place all the way, until the first trial between the two feuding tech giants is scheduled to start, which won't be until July 26. At the heart of the banning is the alleged use of Apple's patented "unified search" feature on the Galaxy Nexus. Even without the temporary relief, Google was already planning to roll out a software update for the Nexus, which not only brings Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, but also a simpler search feature to avoid the patent infringement accusation from Apple. With the release of the patch next week, the Galaxy Nexus should be able to roam free in the Google Play Store. A quick check at Google Play reveals that the Galaxy Nexus hasn't been put back for sale. Google is probably playing it safe by waiting until it rolls out the workaround before putting the phone back online. And that's your best bet to get the Galaxy Nexus and all of its Jelly Bean goodness before things get uglier. No related posts. This article, Galaxy Nexus sales ban temporarily lifted by appeals court, Apple has a week to retaliate , was originally published at AndroidAuthority.com - Your Android News Source.
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| Oracle might have to pay $4 million for Google’s legal expenses Posted: 07 Jul 2012 04:33 AM PDT
The Oracle vs Google trial was one of the biggest legal spats in the tech industry in quite a while, with Oracle standing to gain billions of dollars from Google. At least that’s what Oracle wanted us (and the judge) to believe when they filed the lawsuit against Google. Judge Alsup has repeatedly asked Oracle to drastically reduce their damages claims and patent infringement claims, even before the trial started, because he never considered that Oracle deserved to win that much, even if Google did infringe on their intellectual property. When the trial started, the tides started to quickly turn in Google’s favor, with the judge saying that, if Oracle won, they’d only deserve around $35 million at most. That’s quite a difference from Oracle’s original claims of $6 billion in damages. At that point, many in the development community were upset with Oracle for trying to get APIs copyrighted, and it seemed that, even if Oracle had won the case, they would’ve probably lost a lot more in the long term. Fortunately, Google won the case, and although in the US there’s no rule that the losing party has to pay the trial expenses of the other party, sometimes judges can request it, especially on a big case between corporations like this one. Google has submitted a bill for $4 million that Oracle needs to pay, and this is only for things like transcripts, documents, and the damage experts, not the actual fees they paid to the lawyers. Adding the lawyers’ fees to the bill would amount to tens of millions of dollars. This is Google’s list of items that they say cost them $4 million:
If Google paid that much for their defense, I imagine that Oracle paid at least as much as well. So, again, even if Oracle won the case, they would’ve still been on the negative at the end of the trial, which makes the whole lawsuit a pretty reckless move on Oracle’s part. This article, Oracle might have to pay $4 million for Google’s legal expenses , was originally published at AndroidAuthority.com - Your Android News Source.
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| Verizon locks the bootloader on its Galaxy S3 model Posted: 07 Jul 2012 04:17 AM PDT
If there’s a good phone out there that doesn’t have too many flaws, and it arrives in the US, you can usually count on Verizon to ruin it. It happened with the One series from HTC, which they made unrecognizable by turning it into the less pretty and underpowered Droid Incredible 4G LTE, which also comes a name to match its looks. The same thing is now happening with the Samsung Galaxy S3, which Verizon decided to release with a locked bootloader. Verizon is known for consistently locking bootloaders on Motorola and HTC phones, but until recently, we weren’t sure if it’s the manufacturers or the carriers who are to blame for the policy. It was usually the manufacturers who got the backlash, though. But now, I’m starting to think that it was actually Verizon forcing their hand all along. Carriers are even imposing certain phone designs on manufacturers, which goes to show how powerful the carriers have become in their relationship with manufacturers. The only example that I’ve seen to buck this trend lately is the Galaxy S3, which, surprisingly, managed to keep the same design across all carriers in the US. I guess Samsung didn’t win everything, which explains the locked bootloader on Verizon.
Carriers want locked bootloaders for different reasons. The main reason they will bring up is security. They don’t want phones to be hacked. But I think the actual reason why carriers want locked bootloaders is because they don’t want users to use tethering apps or other such apps that they wouldn’t normally approve on their network. But if carriers are are genuinely worried about the customer’s security, then there are better alternatives to locking down the phone. HTC’s model of allowing power users to unlock their phones through a webpage is a pretty good one, but I believe Google’s model for the Nexus devices provides the best compromise between security and full user access. On Nexus devices, rooting and unlocking the phone is done easily through a command sent via ADB to your phone. This approach secures the user’s data against being stolen, by wiping the phone out when the device is lost. So, if someone steals your phone (and presumably it has a PIN or lock), he won’t be able to access your data, even though rooting and unlocking the phone is very easy to do. Samsung hasn’t recognized this “issue” yet, let alone provide tools for unlocking the Verizon Galaxy S3, like HTC does. But the guys at XDA developers are hoping to find a way to unlock and root the phone soon. No related posts. This article, Verizon locks the bootloader on its Galaxy S3 model , was originally published at AndroidAuthority.com - Your Android News Source.
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