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The story makes it sound as though Facebook was doing something underhanded and nefarious.

It is underhanded and nefarious to abuse access your app was given for one purpose (e.g. access to your contacts so you can directly go from someone's Facebook post to calling them via the phone's dialer) and use it for something else which the user won't suspect because it's unnecessary for the operation of the app (downloading the entire contact list). Or for a non-Facebook example, you might give an app access to the microphone so it can capture a sample of a song that's playing on your radio, so the app can ID the song. It would be underhanded and nefarious for that app to then use the microphone to spy on everything you're saying. When I give the plumber permission to enter my house to fix the sink, it'd be underhanded and nefarious for him to then go into my bedroom and rifle through my home video collection and take a private sex tape.

Funny how other phone manufacturers don't seem to have the "phone shuts down when it is cold" bug that Apple had and was the excuse to throttle old devices.

Also funny Apple didn't just have a message saying "Your battery is worn out. Please visit an Apple store for a repair. In the meantime you may see lower performance".

Posting as AC to avoid undoing mods.

You are a either a moron, or are willfully ignorant.

Do about 2 seconds worth of Googling, and you will see EXACTLY this issue for EVERY phone OEM, including the supposed "bulletproof" iPhone 4s and 5.

But Samsung, LG, HTC, et al., ALL have multiple reports of "sudden shutdowns" when battery charge is in the 50% or lower range, and/or the phone gets cold.

Here's some random examples:

https://us.community.samsung.c...

https://us.community.samsung.c...

https://forums.androidcentral....

https://thedroidguy.com/2016/1...

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers...

https://www.reddit.com/r/lgv20...

https://forums.androidcentral....

https://forum.xda-developers.c...

https://androidforums.com/thre...

https://android.stackexchange....

https://discussions.apple.com/...

http://iphone-tricks.com/tutor...

https://apple.stackexchange.co...

So, it appears that Apple actually found a REASONBLE software fix for an INDUSTRY-WIDE problem.

Their ONLY "sin" was in not being clear about the fix.

I see that Jobs' reality distortion field is still alive and well. This is a design flaw.

This is reality, not fantasy. The reality is that Android phones as they age suffer from random shutdowns even as they keep the processor at full speed, because they have not made the same (recent, iOS11) choices Apple made in regards to battery aging. The iPhone as the battery ages slows down the processor a little so you'll get a longer time of use from the battery, and also avoid random data-killing shutdowns.

Only an Apple Hater could claim they prefer random shutdowns at 20% of battery over any other option. It's people like you that utterly screw over Android users, as technically stupid choices are made for the entire globe so you can keep your CPU maximized....

My cousin's phone is a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate. It's one of the few Android devices that hide the Unknown sources checkbox from the user, which was AT&T's standard practice for about the first year that it offered Android phones. This means step 1 of the standard installation instructions will not work.

There is a known issue with some Android devices where they don't go into sleep mode and will discharge rapidly even when connected to a charger.
I had this with my Nexus 4 but it's been reported in many different devices.
Lots of random advice in forums on how to fix it but the problem still seems to exist.
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s4-active/733289-s4-active-wont-go-in-sleep-mode-when-charging.html
http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-7-tablet-2013/314761-battery-drain-sleep-mode.html

Oh look. Yet another benchmark showing how superior a new handset is...yet every new handset is still laggy and jerky, including the S3. Something that even a quad core processor and a GB of ram haven't fixed.

Specs are fine and all, but if the basic interface is still laggy, the speed of the processor in a non-real world benchmark, isn't all that attractive when the user can't help but notice.

http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/597461-why-my-samsung-galaxy-s3-getting-laggy-slow.html

Want proof that Google, Verizon, etc. are in on the privacy nightmares of Android?

They keep releasing new versions that prevent people (who own their phones) from rooting them to

1) block ads ( from their Google Play store)

2) prevent you from using apps to control permissions (like LBE Privacy Guard that now reboots your phone in an endless loop)

With all the time and effort put into their OS, why have they not allowed users to control permissions on apps in any way, shape, or form? Why? Because they are marketing companies that also sell your data to other companies (including all the top mobile carriers). They make deals with these companies and propagate the problem - turning smart phones into a privacy nightmare. And it's not like the iPhone is any better.

Until people take a stand (and stop being a bunch of apathetic consumers), it's not going to change. People allow themselves to be taken advantage of. It's sad. Most don't even care. They'll happily give Facebook and Google all their information because "they don't have anything to hide" - which we all know is the lamest excuse for apathy possible and is easily dismissed as moronic. And it just keeps getting worse - and now our governments collect this data too.

And what is the effect? People are not getting jobs or losing their jobs due to their Facebook posts. Insurance companies are increasing rates on people who type certain terms into their search engines. And that's just barely getting started!

Wake up, folks!

Doing isn't the problem. It's undoing in Android that's Android's undoing.

(FYI: No Apple fanboi here--I own 3 Android devices. And I love 'em all, pretty much. But I have to be honest and state that this may well be the single biggest OS brainfart I can recall seeing since Microsoft "forgot" the Internet in '95.)

I'm impressed by your nitpicking on the first link while failing to address the bigger point.

What is "legitimate" and what is considered not "legitimate" is not even a fine line, it's a complete gray gradient. Even Apple is struggling with the App Store while trying to define it.

For example, newer versions of uTorrent(for Windows) contain ads and contain installations for toolbars etc while the older ones didn't.

As for an example of someone having trouble with updated software on Android, here's one http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/566414-installed-my-update-now-im-bombarded-app-spam.html

I am having a really hard time imaging that you think that this won't be a problem on Windows since a lot of freeware suddenly turns into adware, and worse yet, spyware.

The Android forums have been discussing this for quite some time. Not sure if it's still possible but one thing that has been working is to call AT&T while your SIM is in a feature phone and requests to have data capabilities blocked. Once they block data to the SIM swap it into your smart phone and talk/text away. They can still see your IMEI so there is a chance they will turn data back on but I haven't seen any indication this is happening.

YMMV

Did't know that. I searched more on that and found harsh comments about MTP, like on this forum:

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid-razr-hd-maxx-hd/658716-jelly-bean-usb-mass-storage.html

Look like MTP is very inferior to USB Mass Storage for a lot of users that need to do a bit more than drag and drop a file. In addition, it seem to be slow.

LBE Privacy Guard: Possible Malware I installed LBE Privacy on my LG ESteem, and tried it out for for a few days. I uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard a couple days ago, because it kept hassling me to set permissions every time I installed or used a new app. Since I had uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard, my phone has not been able to install new apps properly. Whenever I install a new app, the new app would only work until I reboot my phone. After I reboot my phone, the newly installed apps would fail to launch and give the error message: "the application XXX has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again". That's for every new app I have uninstalled since I had uninstalled LBE Privacy Guard on Wednesday. Another app on my phone, DW Contacts and Phone Dialer Pro, could no longer retain any of my customization settings. DW Contacts popped up an error warning and informed me that the file permission database has some "exception". I immediately knew it's LBE Privacy Guard that had screwed up my phone. I tried re-installing LBE Privacy Guard, and then reboot my phone. As I expected, LBE Privacy Guard has continued to work after multiple reboots. Then I installed a few other apps, but I am still getting the same errors with all other apps. So now LBE Privacy Guard is the ONLY app that has continued to install and work properly after it had screwed up my phone. Then, I googled for information on LBE, and found this: [APP][ROOT] LBE Privacy Guard - Most Powerful privacy protection app for Android - Page 48 - xda-developers Apparently LBE mines user data and is quite shady about doing it, and it also does not like being uninstalled. I suspect LBE made some low-level changes to the permission. It seems to me that everything else (i.e., every new install) has been blocked and denied permission... except LBE itself. http://androidforums.com/esteem-all-things-root/555032-lbe-privacy-guard-possible-malware.html

See? Your answer is exactly what a lot of people reply on Android forums. I assure you, it's a problem, it's not just me. It does connect fine to some networks, but all devices except my Nexus 7 connect fine to my network.

Top 5 links for "obtaining IP address android" on Google:
I currently have 2 devices (my Nexus 7 and SGS2) N7 has JB running and SGS2 recently upgraded to ICS. BOTH have the same stupid obtaining IP address problem.

This is a common problem in android.

There are some problems highlighted in android os, but android WiFi obtaining IP address problem is consider as one of the major problem in android operating system.

The issue that I was facing was a Wifi issue: a bug that renders the phone incapable of connecting to a specific wireless network!

system/etc/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-run-hooks needs to have permissions fixed to "execute" by "user" "group" and "others" by using your favorite file explorer
this will fix your "obtaining ip address loop" without having to ever use static ip address
or at least it did mine.

When people have a genuine problem, and Google doesn't provide support but users do, interspersed with "it's your router, stupid", it just irks me. The hardware is fine, the software is mostly fine, but things like that don't contribute to a good overall user experience. :(

This might help: http://androidforums.com/lounge/82363-why-cdma-better-than-gsm.html

Here is the original source, with more information and less sensationalism. They aren't sure if any user information was downloaded, but are treating this as a full breach. To their credit, they at least hashed the passwords, and chose to inform their userbase rather than sit on it until they figured out if any user data was actually stolen or not.

No, they only informed those who actively frequent their sire, since all they did was post a warning at the top of the forums page. They took no steps beyond that. They didn't bother to send out a mass email to their registered users. I didn't learn about it until yesterday, 3 days after the breach, and that's only because I read it here on slashdot. If I hadn't read about it here, it would probably have been another 5 or 6 days before I learned about it, since that's about how often I frequent their site.

It appears that the change password page is Slashdotted

It's the password that I only use for all my forum accounts, so I don't really care if it's hacked or not. Should I post stupid stuff, then it's just the silly Android Forums hacker.

Here is the original source, with more information and less sensationalism. They aren't sure if any user information was downloaded, but are treating this as a full breach. To their credit, they at least hashed the passwords, and chose to inform their userbase rather than sit on it until they figured out if any user data was actually stolen or not.

It appears that the change password page is Slashdotted - I can't get more than one character into the form before it freezes up.

Good thing it's still using the old password that I used for forums before the great LinkedIn password crisis!

Link to forums... (Thanks for making me add more than just the link, /.)

Since there is no official way to export, why not use your rooted android device to do just that: http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/460827-how-export-your-friends-list-facebook-must-rooted.html#post4444672 Worked great for me, though, I used SQLite Database Browser on Ubuntu which is in the standard repositories.

Android 3.0+ features native gamepad support

People, there is a path here...

http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-all-things-root/459292-how-do-i-remove-carrier-iq-software.html

Rom your phone, walla no more carrier ifucked.

It's little things like this why the art of hacking is not all lost despite the American social media's mass confusion.

Yeah, you're about the only one. Ever.

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f41/home-screen-lag-12132/

http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/7884-htc-hero-reduce-lag.html

http://forums.androidcentral.com/verizon-fascinate-rooting-roms-hacks/34047-lag-fix.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrpd-ZDHHlk

But you're right, you've never experienced it, so it NEVER happens.

a fake phone number

The problem here is that the "phone state and identity" privilege is too broad. I've read that an application that plays audio needs to know that a call is coming in in order to know when to pause playback. And for those applications without a name and password, what unique user identifier do you recommend other than the device's serial number, which the same privilege appears to cover?

a contacts list that only includes Ben Dover and Harry Baals

At least Harry Baals would be correct for my region.

Ads are not the problem, the issue is the amount of information the advertisers want before they serve them.

Say a barber operates in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Haircuts can't be given over mail, phone, or Internet, so the barber only wants to show his message to possible customers in the Fort Wayne area. That's why sponsors want coarse location. And an advertiser wants to know how many unique viewers saw the message and how many impressions per viewer, hence "phone state and identity".

http://androidforums.com/lounge/82363-why-cdma-better-than-gsm.html

Admittedtly a forum post, but quite informative and worth saying "hrm...maybe CDMA did a thing or two right".

I don't remember setting it, but it's set to 'never' already. I'll keep an eye on whether it really disconnects as often as I thought.
For reference as to how to set it: a quick google says: Settings>Wireless and Network>WIFI Settings>Menu Button>Advanced>Sleep Policy to Never .

Stop complaining, download SL4A, and build your own tea-timer in 2 lines of the scripting language of your choice. One of the examples is a two-line script that scans a barcode and looks it up on Amazon - did your 433MHz Celeron do that?

Seriously, there will of course be many things your phone cannot do relative to your PC (lack of keyboard, small screen blah blah) and conversely many things your phone can that your PC hasn't a hope of (mobility, GPS, camera blah blah). People write phone apps based on what they think people will use the platform for, and there are thousands of apps that do stuff that is totally impractical on PCs.

Yes, you can install ffmpeg to recode video with if you want, or busybox and go further. The kernel is Linux, so you can get the NDK, cross-compile gcc for it, and start writing or porting whatever you like. If you don't mind using vi on a 3.7" touchscreen.

You *don't* want 2.2 on that phone. Trust me. http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/147226-2-2-slow-icon-refresh.html

Apparently* it's an external problem and there will be "no need for a system software update.".

Makes you wonder about who can do what with your Windows Phone 7...

*As I noted in my submission. Which was earlier. WTF editors!?

Or your Android device or your iPhone. Newsflash, it's a smartphone and it's tied to a carrier, just about every smartphone platform has had this very same issue - pretty much exclusively on AT&T - yet some people aren't noticing the pattern.

That is 80% of AT&T Android users. AT&T only sells gimped Android phones.

You information is out of date. I just came home with my Samsung Activate. It's not a Nexus One as far as openness of course, but I can do what I want without having to wait for someone to jailbreak the latest OS.

You're lucky. One issue I've had since switching to my Droid is that I can't count on it to work as an alarm clock (seems there's an issue with the sleep-wake interrupt in the current kernel).

I will give a concrete example of this: Motorola's CLIQ. It has fastboot disabled, and its initial root was done by a RAMDLD exploit. About a month later, it had an OTA radio ROM update. What happened is, if you had a custom ROM on your Cliq and that update went through, you would end up with an inoperable device until you flashed a factory stock .SHX file onto your phone. Of course, guess what? The RAMDLD exploit was fixed, and the phone was made unrootable. Source: modmymoto.com's CLIQ forums.

Unrootable, until an European carrier had their version of the CLIQ ROM which happened to ship with ro.secure set to 0. This meant you could flash a custom recovery module via adb, then reflash a custom ROM as part of the root process.

Even HTC has had reports of this (IIRC). Some of their models, if you go to xda-developers, the ROM makers have noticed that some of the filesystems cannot be remounted read-write, even with root.

The Milestone from Motorola also appears unflashable with a custom ROM: http://androidforums.com/motorola-milestone/44177-motorola-locks-milestone.html

This is what we don't want. We don't want supposedly open devices which in reality are locked down in subtle ways. This is why that my next phone is going to be a phone that doesn't use hidden signatures, disabled fastboot ROM, or other items to prevent rooting or modding with custom ROMS.

USAA has both an iPhone and Android app. The android app requires OS version 1.6, so it won't run on an Eris unless you upgrade to 2.1 with the leaked firmware. I don't have the link handy, but it's somewhere in here http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-eris/

You can blame that on pre-packaged apps that the carriers put on. Not to mention putting high-end UIs on two year old hardware (HTC Hero). Go over to the SDX forums or Android Forums and read up on how to root your Android and kill those pieces of crap apps that run in the background slowing everything down. Get Advanced Task Killer too. I've put the latest SDX kernel and recovery onto my Samsung Moment and it runs blazingly fast and is free of a lot of cruft thanks to a handy shell script written by Joey at SDX that removes the pre-packaged apps that take up space as well as make themselves run in the background. It's also still fully functional with no problems. Remember, with the proper help and setup Android is still a Linux machine and has tons of flexibility built-in. Besides jail-breaking your iPhone, you don't get much more flexibility out of it. http://www.sdx-developers.com/ http://www.androidforums.com/

Behind this cryptic topic:
http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/47548-firmware-i7500xefjb2.html
is hidden the key to running v1.6! It's not 2.1, but it's a step in the right direction.

Samsung has done big-time wrong by a lot of customers, but the community is brilliant.

However, unsubsidised phones (i.e. those we have paid a full price to buy) are also forced to update, even for people who run custom firmware that *already* has the 911 issue fixed.

According to this post, for rooted phones with the 911 fix, you can call Rogers and have them restore your data. Are they not doing that anymore?

For those interested, there are further discussions here and here.

In my case, I use Linux exclusively so this weekend I had to hunt down a Windows XP box (since it doesn't work on 7) that I could use. There was no way I was going to trust
the clowns at a Rogers store nor wait for the SD card to get shipped.

As much as I like Android and the whole concept of an open mobile platform, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of letting all members of that mobile ecosystem know who is resposnible for what. The entangled mess that is the mobile industry in Canada will be a challenge.

Thanks to Rogers' constant habit of sticking their stinky paws in the ROM to customize it with their useless icons (amongst other things), "supported" upgrades to Android devices such as the HTC Magic and HTC Dream are VERY difficult. Part of the reason Rogers was even able to release the fix so quickly was because a vocal group of us has been pushing Rogers and HTC to stop this nonsense and letting us upgrade - I'm sure work had already gotten started. I am curious about what would have happened if Rogers and HTC had continued with their no upgrades plans.

For those interested, there are further discussions here and here.

In my case, I use Linux exclusively so this weekend I had to hunt down a Windows XP box (since it doesn't work on 7) that I could use. There was no way I was going to trust
the clowns at a Rogers store nor wait for the SD card to get shipped.

As much as I like Android and the whole concept of an open mobile platform, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of letting all members of that mobile ecosystem know who is resposnible for what. The entangled mess that is the mobile industry in Canada will be a challenge.

Thanks to Rogers' constant habit of sticking their stinky paws in the ROM to customize it with their useless icons (amongst other things), "supported" upgrades to Android devices such as the HTC Magic and HTC Dream are VERY difficult. Part of the reason Rogers was even able to release the fix so quickly was because a vocal group of us has been pushing Rogers and HTC to stop this nonsense and letting us upgrade - I'm sure work had already gotten started. I am curious about what would have happened if Rogers and HTC had continued with their no upgrades plans.

For those interested, there are further discussions here and here.

In my case, I use Linux exclusively so this weekend I had to hunt down a Windows XP box (since it doesn't work on 7) that I could use. There was no way I was going to trust
the clowns at a Rogers store nor wait for the SD card to get shipped.

As much as I like Android and the whole concept of an open mobile platform, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of letting all members of that mobile ecosystem know who is resposnible for what. The entangled mess that is the mobile industry in Canada will be a challenge.

Thanks to Rogers' constant habit of sticking their stinky paws in the ROM to customize it with their useless icons (amongst other things), "supported" upgrades to Android devices such as the HTC Magic and HTC Dream are VERY difficult. Part of the reason Rogers was even able to release the fix so quickly was because a vocal group of us has been pushing Rogers and HTC to stop this nonsense and letting us upgrade - I'm sure work had already gotten started. I am curious about what would have happened if Rogers and HTC had continued with their no upgrades plans.

For those interested, there are further discussions here and here.

In my case, I use Linux exclusively so this weekend I had to hunt down a Windows XP box (since it doesn't work on 7) that I could use. There was no way I was going to trust
the clowns at a Rogers store nor wait for the SD card to get shipped.

As much as I like Android and the whole concept of an open mobile platform, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of letting all members of that mobile ecosystem know who is resposnible for what. The entangled mess that is the mobile industry in Canada will be a challenge.

Thanks to Rogers' constant habit of sticking their stinky paws in the ROM to customize it with their useless icons (amongst other things), "supported" upgrades to Android devices such as the HTC Magic and HTC Dream are VERY difficult. Part of the reason Rogers was even able to release the fix so quickly was because a vocal group of us has been pushing Rogers and HTC to stop this nonsense and letting us upgrade - I'm sure work had already gotten started. I am curious about what would have happened if Rogers and HTC had continued with their no upgrades plans.

So now I'm an accountant?

Bother to do some quick searches. You won't have trouble finding many recommending to uninstall the application so as to drastically improve battery life. And it makes absolutely sense. You can't get the information without polling the system.

This is just one example which was very hastily found via Google.

If you want to see significant battery life improvements, look at trying

This is the google support forum discussion that has earned all this bad press.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=0bd8ccd4799040c2&hl=en&fid=0bd8ccd4799040c200047c99c44ddfe6

By 6pm today I read most of these posts. There are several squeaky wheels that are posting over and over but there are also dozens of individuals that are all telling the same story. These people are in areas with good 3g reception (as confirmed by the coverage map or by another 3g t-mobile phone in the same place at the same time. They report that their N1 continually switches between edge and g3. Their data download rates are about 1/10th what they should be. Many have reported that the constant switching between networks is draining their battery within a few hours. When they call HTC for support, HTC blames T-mobile's network. T-mobile blames HTC and claims that they have not been given any support documentation on the N1 from Google or HTC. The complainers are in a wide variety of locations throughout the country.

Gizmodo reports on the story and claims that their phones have poor 3g reception as well:

http://gizmodo.com/5443123/does-the-nexus-one-have-3g-problems

The same problem crops up in the comments after this story at tmonews

http://www.tmonews.com/2010/01/nexus-one-incurring-3g-problems/

Lots of people are reporting the same problems here on the androidforums

http://androidforums.com/nexus-one/34321-nexus-one-3g-problems.html

So I really don't think this is due to ignorant customers. There is a real problem with at least some of these phones. It may be there is a batch out there with bad antennas, or there could be a software glitch. If it's software then one would hope a patch is coming from Google asap. Regardless of what the problem is, Google has made a terrible mistake in ignoring this for almost 2 days now. Even if they had replied in their own support forums just once saying "sorry we're on it get back to you soon." They might not look so bad. Personally I think Google's experience with leaving their "products" in beta for years on end has finally bitten them on the ass.

See here for lengthy back-and-forth with two guys who've had the phone in their hands since late last month.

If you read the whole thing, they've got benchmarks and such. It's really long though.

"I'm not entirely sure what this article is trying to prove. Android has been out for a year. It takes most software companies 6 months to ready a new release, test it, and put it out to market. If anyone (carriers or manufacturers) are interested in keeping their hardware on dated software, that won't be clear until at least June."

What part of "HTC has indicated that they do not plan any Android 1.6 upgrades for either the Rogers Dream or Magic but will instead remain on the 1.5 platform" did you fail to understand? This has nothing to do with a testing period. HTC and Rogers have confirmed they do NOT plan to upgrade beyond 1.5 bug fixes.