Android Rooting: The deep truth

Android Rooting: The deep truth

The android OS is still considered to be among the best and most popular smart phone OS right now. It comes with a lot of capabilities and flexibility but most time, carriers and phone makers tend to restrict lots of the customization and flexibility.

There is nothing wrong with using your android phone as provided by your phone maker or carrier, though android super users who are tired of being at the mercy of their carriers and phone makers may want to experiment pushing their Android devices to new limits and rooting them. Android rooting opens up a world of possibility, whether its wireless tethering, speeding it up with overclocking, or customizing the look of your phone with themes. Here is what you should know before rooting your android device.

What really is android rooting?

Android rooting for those that don’t already know is the process of allowing users of smartphones, tablets, and other devices running the Android mobile operating system to attain privileged control (known as "root access") within Android's subsystem. It’s similar to having an administrator right in a windows system and jail breaking in an iOS. Rooting is often performed with the goal of overcoming limitations that carriers and hardware manufacturers put on some devices, resulting in the ability to alter or replace system applications and settings, run specialized apps that require administrator-level permissions, or perform other operations that are otherwise inaccessible to a normal Android user. The process of rooting an android phone varies from phone to phone but it all follows the same principle.

Why should I root my android phone?

There are lots of reasons why people do root their android phone some just for the fun of it and others to solve a limitation. Below are some of the limitations that can be scaled through android rooting.

•  Rooting enables you to remove any app that was preinstalled on your phone by your phone maker. Rather than simply disabling these bloatware titles, which is often the most you can do within Android, rooting can grant you a full uninstallation. This could be useful in freeing up additional storage capacity.
• Another important reason for rooting you android phone is to be able to flash a custom ROM. “Custom rom” is a custom version of Android, and it truly changes how you use your phone. It could take some time for a new version of android to get to our device but once rooted, you can often get some of the new platform features through custom ROMs in short order. This could, for some users, add years of life to an Android phone. Rather than buy a new phone, flash a new ROM.
•  Another reason why you could root your phone, is to be able to flash it with a custom kernel. Some android tweaks require a custom kernel which you can only flash with a rooted android device. The kernel helps the apps in your phone communicate more effectively with the hardware of your phone. A custom kernel can improve the phones overall performance, battery life, and can even add extra features like Wi-Fi tethering on unsupported phones.
• Another very good reason to root your phone is to be able to do a full backup. When your switching to another android device or for any reason want to restore your device to stock, you can make your life a lot easier by backing up your apps and settings first. That way, you can get your entire setup back in just a few taps. If your phone is not rooted, you can back up a few things like apps and data but won’t be able to back up system apps and data, or automate the entire process as well as titanium back up can. Titanium back up is not only used for backups, it can also uninstall those annoying battery-draining, space wasting crapware that comes preinstalled on so many phones these days. This features only work on rooted devices.
• Other reasons of rooting could include being able to install apps that are not incompatible with your phone, removing adds from apps, boost your device speed and battery life, etc.

Why you shouldn't root your phone

• Rooting a device can void your warrant. Some manufacturers or carriers will use rooting as an excuse to void your warranty. It’s worth keeping in mind that you can always unroot. If you need to send the device back for repair, simply flash the original backup ROM you made and no one will ever know that it was rooted.
•  Rooting a device can also lead to the risk of bricking the device. This is the big fear that everyone has else you might end up turning your device to a “glorified paper weight”. The obvious way to avoid that is by exercising caution when attempting to root your phone and pay close attention to whatever you're doing. Make sure that the guide you are following works for your device and that any custom ROM you flash is designed specifically for it. If you do your research and pay attention to feedback from others, bricking should never occur.
•  Finally rooting may introduce some security risks. Depending on what services or apps you use on your device, rooting could create a security vulnerability. For example, Google refuses to support the Google Wallet service for rooted devices.

How to root your Android

Rooting isn’t that straightforward because Android devices are not created equal. There are significant differences between Android smartphones, between manufacturers, and even between carrier specific versions of the same phone model. To root an android device, it’s always advisable to do some reading and research on the particular phone you need to root. The best place to find discussions about rooting, guides, and custom ROMs is definitely the XDA Developers Forum. Look for a thread on your specific device and you’re sure to find a method that has worked for other people. It’s worth spending some time researching the right method for your device.

Preparation for rooting

There are some things you need to do while preparing your phone for the actual rooting exercise:

•       Ensure your device is fully charged before beginning
•   Turn on USB debugging. On most android phones, the settings can be found in MenuàSettingsàDevelops option and then check the box next to USB debugging.
•     Most android rooting procedures require you to install some softwares on your computer. Softwares like android SDK is needed for most procedures and any other software that may be required.
•      And finally the most important, it is advisable you back up your phone. After all, you'll need something  to fall back on should you run into an issue.

Making the big decision

Gaining full root access to your Android device can be very exciting, especially if you’re the type of user that wants to tweak features, change settings and customize your device. How much of this customization depends largely on the device you have. If you have a shuttered device, like a Kindle Fire tablet, then it’s a great way to get the full Android experience.

The overall benefits for all Android users irrespective of device include improved battery life, root-only apps, custom ROMs, overclocking, an end to bloatware, improved performance, and the ability to upgrade your phone when you want. If you aren’t excited at the prospect of any of these things, then you should reconsider your decision on rooting.

Have you tried rooting your Android? Did you have a positive experience? Would you recommend rooting to a friend, or do you think it’s pointless? Post a comment and share your thoughts.

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Saving money by using less data on your android device.

Saving money by using less data on your android device.

Android phones has gotten more sophisticated than ever and it’s seen as one of the best smart phones OS. With its increased apps and features that make use of lots of data it’s quite easy to blow up your data plan’s cap and then incur overage charges on the go.

Gone are the days when service providers gave unlimited data usage, now most data usage is capped at a mere 1GB and even the providers that advertise unlimited data have a soft cap around 3GB and reserve the right to charge you if you break through it. Five years ago, it was almost impossible to completely exhaust 3GB of data on your phone unless you’re a heavy downloader, but now watching ten minutes of YouTube video daily, is enough to add about 1.5GB of data to your monthly usage.  In view of this, would be sharing with you some tips that you can use to reduce the data usage on your android phone.

Checking your data usage.

First of all to be able to conserve and use less data on your android phone, you need to be able to check your data usage and also know how much data you really know.

If you are using an a phone that has an Android 4.0 or above you can check your usage via the OS. Simply navigate to Settingsà Wireles&NetworkàData usage. Here you can see how much data you've used during your current billing cycle, set a mobile data limit that will disable your mobile data connection at a certain point, and view a list of apps that use data and how much they consume. To set a mobile device limit, you just have to adjust the orange warning bar and red cut off bar to your liking. When you reach the amount specified by the cut off limit, the mobile data for your phone will be disabled until you intervene.

Also you could get a data monitoring app to be able to monitor your data usage. They are lots of them in the android market but the one I usually use is Netcounter which updates almost instantaneously. It also allows you to set alerts for daily, weekly, or monthly usage. Set it for a bit under your data cap so you know when to back off before the month is up.

Reducing background data usage.

Apart from the normal video streaming and other user activities that gulped data, there are also these silent background activities such Facebook updates, high-frequency email inbox checks, automatic application updates, and other background activities that can put a real dent in your data usage. One way of reducing this is by curtailing application updates. Updates are very important both for its security purpose and access to new features, but it’s advisable to always do your application updates over a Wi-Fi connection. By default, any apps set to automatically update will do so over both mobile data and Wi-Fi. You can change this by going to the Google Play Store app, pressing the menu button, and then selecting Settings àUpdate over Wi-Fi only. Toggling this setting on will save you untold amounts of mobile data usage over the life of the phone.

Using a mobile friendly browser

Android comes with its own pre stock Web browser, but that doesn't mean you're stucked to always use it. You can decide to switch your browser to something more data friendly like Opera Mini (Opera Mini is a free and speedy little mobile browser that compresses websites before sending them to your Android device in order to reduce your data usage. It compresses websites and images so that you can load them faster and use less bandwidth.) Opera Mini claims to compress sites by up to 90%, which can mean huge savings. Or better still use a text only web browser like TextOnly. (TextOnly is free to download and will display only the readable text on most of your favorite websites, though if you happen to come across an article that really requires pictures and/or video you can always select the "View the original" option to see the full article in all its glory.)

Always use a mobile view

Most Web sites have full and mobile versions. The differences between the two are their layouts and amount of content. Generally, the mobile version has far fewer page elements to load and is optimized for viewing on a smaller screen. This translates into less data usage for you. Web sites will normally detect if you're on a mobile device and display the content accordingly, but just make sure you haven't slipped into full mode accidentally. You can tell you are in mobile mode by finding "m" or the word "mobile" in the URL, or by scrolling to the bottom of the page to see if there's a link for the "Full site".

Reducing clearing the cache.

If you don't clear your cache often, you'll end up using less data because your browser won't have to constantly re-download images and other Website assets. If you like to visit the same Website often, obsessively clearing your cache forces your device to redownload the same basic information each time you visit the site. It's a waste of data, and if you use a task-killer app you might be wasting that data without knowing it. Although a lot of task managers and cleaning utilities for your phone love to delete the browser cache. This is not always a good thing, unless the cache is so great in size its always advisable not to clear it.

Use only Wi-Fi to stream

Streaming music and movies is a huge data drain. Watching YouTube videos for just 10 minutes per day can easily push you past 1GB in a month, while listening to Pandora for 1 hour per day uses about 1.76GB of data in a month.

The obvious solution is to stop streaming media over your mobile data connection. The best way to stream videos or music is over a Wi-Fi connection where your mobile data is not being used up.

If you feel they are other ways of conserving data on an android phone which has not been mentioned above feel free to drop your comments below so that we all can learn from you.

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INTERNSHIP PROGRAM OPPORTUNITIES FROM MICROSOFT AFRICA DPE FOR AFRICAN STUDENTS.

INTERNSHIP PROGRAM OPPORTUNITIES FROM MICROSOFT AFRICA DPE FOR AFRICAN STUDENTS.

Microsoft Africa DPE whose overall mission is to “secure Microsoft platform adoption and revenue growth through evangelism, community engagement, relationship marketing and a vibrant solution in Africa”, in partnership with the Microsoft 4Aftrika team whose goal is to “empower every African who has a great idea for a business or an application to form that idea into a reality …” is offering a world- class internship program for IT students in Africa.

The program is open for interns in the following African countries: Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Mauritius, Ghana, Cameron, Angola, DRC, Botswana, and Rwanda.

Benefits

Interns would benefit from the program in the following Ways.

• Awareness of Microsoft latest technologies, (Azure, 0365, windows 8, windows phone and others.)
• Mentor-ship and coaching from inspiring technical expert and leaders in their countries.
•   Visibility within their local community as ambassadors for a global company.
• Opportunity to get employable in Microsoft and partner environment.
•   A certificate from Microsoft endorsing skills and capabilities gained through the program.
• Building of other career competence. 

Qualification

•          Candidates applying need not have a formal working experience
•          There must have a completed IT degree.
•          And must be available to start the 9-months training immediately.
• 
  

How to apply

Candidates interested in applying should send their CVs directly to Jessica O’Gorman:

v-jeogor@microsoft.com

If you have any difficulties or comments about this you can post your comment below and I would get back to you.

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BBM for android and iOS user guide appears online

BBM for android and iOS user guide appears online

The final arrival of BBM for android and IOS users seem to be drawing closer as Blackberry accidentally released the user guides of BBM for iOS and android. This is coming few weeks after the “blackberry for sale sign” is up.

According to techcrunch, the guides explain in detail how the apps function, how to get started and their various feature sets. Previous BBM users from the blackberry network are not expected to find the app difficult to use because most of the app details are similar to the  BBM

The apps are designed to allow for real-time communication between contacts and groups the guides explain, letting users share pictures and messages, including broadcast messages, multi-person chats, and group chats. Users will also be able to create BBM Groups, where they can plan events, track to-do’s, share photos, and chat with up to 30 people at a time, without the need to add everyone as BBM contacts.

BBM will work over both cellular and Wi-Fi, the latter option which is meant to help avoid data charges when traveling.

Each user can establish their own BBM profile, where they can choose a display picture, name, and status that their contacts will see, and they’ll also have a unique BBM PIN which they can access by tapping “Show Barcode.” The apps is said to also include support for various emoticons and emoji.

Whether the leak was a genuine mistake or rather one of those accidentally-on-purpose oments tech companies tend to consult when looking for coverage, we can now be fairly sure that BlackBerry Messenger for Android and iOS will be here very soon. 

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What makes the Motorola Moto X special (REVIEW)

What makes the Motorola Moto X special (REVIEW)

The Motorola Moto X has finally been launched and would be made available to all major service providers in the US. This long-awaited phone is a result of a collaboration between Motorola and Google. (Google became Motorola’s owner and parent company about a year ago) which had people thinking that Motorola would produce the next Nexus phone but instead we got the Moto X, a compact, stylish handset with decidedly mid-range specs. While many competitors focus on specs and features you might not see, Motorola is emphasizing touchless voice controls, the ability to preview notifications without having to unlock the phone and its main selling point, ability to customize nearly every facet of it.

The moto X also has it short commings which include running on an android OS 4.2.2 instead of 4.3 in which the Nexus runs on, a dual-core processor and 720p screen, lower than the quad-core and 1080p combo that the HTC One and Galaxy S4 have taught consumers to expect from flagships, and finally a 2200 mAh battery that Motorola says will keep going for 24 hours, which sounds a little ambitious in my view.

Design

There's no doubt that the first thing you'll notice about the Moto X is its handpicked combination of colors. Motorola spent some time studying the human hand to make its Moto X exactly the right size while squeezing the biggest possible screen into its frame. The handset sports a 4.7-inch display, just as the larger and heavier HTC One does, but the Moto X feels much more compact. The back is also slightly rounded to fit your palm, which allows Motorola to include a "stepped battery" inside to fill out the space.

Weighing 4.8 ounces and measuring 5.1 x 2.6 x 0.41inches, the Moto X is shorter, narrower and lighter than the aluminum-clad HTC One (5.4 x 2.7 x 0.37 inches, 5 ounces). It is also built from a polycarbonate plastic that gives it a different feel from other phones on the market.

The Moto X has a sealed design, with no microSD expansion. Which is a bit disadvantageous because you'll be shelling out $200 or $250 for the 16 or 32GB option, with no 64GB model available.

Display

The phone's display is a 4.7-inch AMOLED display, with a resolution of 720 x 1280 aka 720p and a pixel density of 312 ppi. As I mentioned earlier, that's below the standard of a full HD 1080p resolution of the leading Android devices like the HTC One and Galaxy S4 although it uses a RGB subpixel structure, which means each pixel has its own red, green and blue subpixels.

OS and Interface

The Moto X basically sticks with the clean and intuitive stock Android Jelly Bean UI but adds in some very practical functionality. Unlike the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, which come with their respective Sense and TouchWiz skins, most facets of the Moto X's UI look and feel like those on a Nexus device. For instance, the lock screen, app drawer and notification menu look exactly like the stock version of Android, with little changes. It also includes Google's latest keyboard, which features Swype-like typing and next-word prediction.

Touchless Control

The Moto X  touchless Control feature which can wake your phone up anytime by saying "Okay, Google Now" and asking a question or issuing a command is one of the coolest and most useful smartphone innovations to come along in years. With the Moto X, you can also call a contact without lifting a finger, set reminders, check the weather and navigate to a specific address. Before you use the phone, you'll have to quickly train it to recognize your voice, but once you do, the handset won't respond to other voices. Plus, the Moto X can recognize you in an environment with moderate ambient noise because it uses three microphones.

Active Display/ active notification

Moto X has a Super AMOLED display. And unlike an LCD display, in which all of the pixels are either on or off, individual pixels can be fired up on. That’s where these “Active Notifications” come in. When the phone is in sleep mode, you’ll see the time and a little lockscreen icon flash on every few seconds. That’s what Motorola calls “breathing.” It recognizes when you pull your phone out of your pocket and starts breathing. Or when you otherwise pick it up. And it’s smart enough to not do it in your pocket, or when the phone’s face-down. It’s black-and-white, and it uses less battery than waking up the phone with the power button, because only the pixels used to show the time are used, instead of waking the entire display.

When you receive a new notification, the alert have its own icon, such as the Gmail logo. All you need do is simply press the alert to view the notification, which will be displayed at the top of the screen. From there, you can swipe up to launch the notification's accompanying app though active Display works on a last-come, first-served basis, so only the most recent notification will show. You can also just swipe up to unlock the device to whichever app you were using last.

Performance

The Moto X uses the 1.7-GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU augmented by an Adreno 320 GPU. Although the processor isn't the quad-core powerhouse you'll find in the Samsung Galaxy S4, Motorola attempts to make up for this with its X8 Mobile Computing System. This architecture boasts additional processors for contextual computing and natural language. This makes the Moto X to be extremely fast when it comes to everyday use.

Quick Launch Camera

The Moto X's 10-MP camera starts with two flicks of your wrist -- a gesture that launches the app in about 2.2 seconds -- whether you have the screen off or on. The camera app has a bare-bones UI. You can touch anywhere on the screen to fire off a shot, and you can swipe in from the left side to reveal a settings wheel. Swiping in from the right brings up the gallery.

Battery Life

Motorola claims that the Moto X offers 24 hours of usage time on a single charge. It uses a 2200 mAh battery.

 Verdict

The Moto X is an excellent smartphone that delivers a great mix of personalization and convenience. If you're looking for specific isolated pieces of technology -- the highest resolution screen around, for instance, or the best possible camera you can get -- the Moto X probably isn't the phone for you. It's by no means a perfect device, and there are absolutely individual areas where other smartphones come out ahead.

But if you're looking for a thoughtfully designed phone with genuinely compelling features -- and, most important, a cohesive and outstanding overall user experience that'll delight you from the moment you pick it up -- you'll be hard-pressed to find another product that matches what the Moto X provides.

Finally for the main time, the phone will only be available for people in the US.

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Facts you never knew about blackberry LTD

Facts you never knew about blackberry LTD

Last week, blackberry finally summon up courage to announce officially that  it had formed a special committee to explore "strategic alternatives" for itself. The company specifically said that it's trying to "enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment." However, BlackBerry noted in the release that alternatives could range from joint ventures to partnerships to a sale of its operation to another firm. In other words, the company has just hanged the “for sale” sign round its neck. I will not want to go into detail about the rise and fall of this giant telecommunication and wireless company but would point out some salient points on its transition.

Ø  BlackBerry Limited, formerly known as “Research In Motion Limited (RIM)” is a Canadian telecommunication and wireless equipment company with headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Ø  It was founded by Mike Lazaridis who served as its coCEO along with Jim Balsillie until January, 2012.

Ø  The present CEO of the company is Thorsten Heins.

Ø  The first device introduced by this company was the blackberry 850 introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager

Ø  The name BlackBerry was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit.

Ø  The first BlackBerry devices aimed towards the consumer market that included multimedia features like camera was the BlackBerry Pearl 8100.

Ø  Their first product to run on the QNX platform was the blackberry playbook which was largely criticize as being rushed to the market in an incomplete state.

Ø  On January 2011, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie resigned as the CEOs of the company.

Ø  In June 2011, RIM stock fell to its lowest point since 2006, and on December the same year, RIM shares fell to their lowest price since January 2004.

Ø  In July 2011, the company cut 2, 000 jobs, the biggest lay-off in its history and the first major layoff since November 12, 2002 when the company laid off 10% of its workforce (200 employees). The lay-off reduced the workforce by around 11%, from 19, 000 employees to 17, 000.

Ø  From June 2008 to June 2011, RIM's shareholders lost almost $70 billion, or 82 percent, as the company's market capitalization dropped from $83 billion to $13.6 billion, the biggest decline among communications-equipment providers.

Ø  And finally on on August 2012, the company announced  the special board committee that will evaluate all possible options, including joint ventures, partnerships or an outright sale.

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