TechMostW@nted

Best Android phones of 2011 thus far

edwuave — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:19:09 +0000

It’s already been 9months since we got a taste of Gingerbread topped with an icing of dual-powered CPU. LG Optimus 2X is the first Android device to be baked such recipe, followed by the Motorola Atrix. Early adopters are nothing to compare if you see what Samsung and HTC are offering today. There are roughly 3 months left before 2012, and what we gonna see is Ice Cream Sandwich with probably a quad-core processor and a higher resolution of 1280×720. This year is all about Gingerbread with dual core processor, next year you gonna see Ice Cream Sandwich with quad core processing engine, interesting eh? Anyway, you won’t be seeing these new generation of Android superphones with Ice Cream Sandwich in your stores pretty soon, here are some of the best Android phones you can grab right now.

No.1 – Samsung Galaxy S II

Samsung Galaxy S II

Holding the number 1 spot in the arena of Androids goes to Samsung Galaxy S II. Sporting the fastest mobile processor available currently, the 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos with a brilliantly vibrant Super AMOLED Plus 4.3inch display trounce over competitors effortlessly. The downside of this Galaxy S II is the plastic-ky feel of the phone itself. It feels very light as it was made of high quality plastic.

No.2 – HTC Sensation

HTC Sensation

HTC Sensation is simply sensational. The whole body is made with a unibody aluminium construction. Making it a very well build phone, superior to that of Samsung Galaxy SII. On top of that, the HTC Sense 3.0 take this phone UI experience to the next level. However, the poor viewing angle of the display, low phone storage spaces and less than decent battery life still fall short in otherwise could have make this phone the best phone of 2011. Thus, becoming the number 2 here. next page No.3 and No.4 –>>

Improve Android phone battery life with battery saving tips

edwuave — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:38:45 +0000

So you have finally made your choice in choosing between HTC Sensation and Samsung Galaxy S II? Found yourself having to recharge your new Android device every 8hours? You’re not alone. Some users reported to have a poor battery performance for their Android phones. Older device ranging from HTC Desire, Motorola Droid, Samsung Galaxy S, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 to the latest dual-core Android phones; LG Optimus 2x, Motorla Atrix, HTC Sensation, and Samsung Galaxy S II, are not sparred with complains of poor battery life. However, Android itself is not a power hogger, or call it battery juice sucker if you like. Many users were able to get their Android device up and running in a single charge up to 3 days(gosh I missed the good old Nokia 3310-era).There are many factors in leading to poor battery life. The very main reasons are the display and unnecessarily turned on features, which some users don’t have a clue in turning it off. If you are happened to be one of the Android users not happy of the current battery performance, or you simply just want to improve the extra mileage of your Android device’s battery performance, here are some tips in improving the battery life of your Android phone.

For those who missed my previous How to optimize and speed up to make Android phone run faster article, just click and have a read about it. Most of the tips there works and saved the juice on your Android as well. But some of the most relevant tips will be reposted here.

Switch to 2G network if u dont need the speed

Obviously, the slower 2G networks EDGE and GPRS uses much less power than 3G. If you only use your phone for sending Whatsapp messages, reading text-only news or simply put, you don’t need that extra speed, just switch to 2G-only settings. How to set 2G-only setting? Go to Settings > Wireless & networks > Mobile networks >Network mode.

Disable automatic backlight adjustment

Disabling automatic backlight adjustment saves up the CPU for having to adjust the backlight according to the available surrounding ambient light. This translate into less power to do processing which also leads to less usage of battery on your Droid. Go to Settings > Display > Brightness , and untick Automatic brightness. For Sony Ericsson Android owners, you must use the power widget to disable it.

Disable live wallpaper

Live wallpaper is not free. I mean, not free on your CPU and GPU of your Droid. This eye candy taxes the CPU and GPU on your Android device. I know, it gives you a level of decoration on your Droid which is not possible on iPhone. But hey, if you are looking at this article, you should disable it by setting a static wallpaper to your Android instead.

Do not use any task killers

This tip was taken from XDA. ”Taskillers are supposed to speed your phone by killing tasks when the Memory is ‘full’ or above a defined limit. The problem is that it interferes with Android built-in (and efficient) memory management. You have to understand that what can slow down your phone is not Memory saturation (because Android will start closing apps on its own before reaching this situation), but CPU usage. You can still use a taskiller to see which app are eating CPU cycles and close them. But again, don’t let any 3rd-party app manage your memory. It will only bring you force-closes, battery drain, and various unpredictable issues.”

Since Android 2.2 Froyo, Android has an effective memory management build into the OS itself. For those using Android 2.2 Froyo and above, you can forget about any task managers that you can find from the Android Market.

Use Juice Defender

Download Juice Defender
Like its name says, it defends the juice of your Android. For me, the Free version of Juice Defender is good enough. It turns off your 3G/Wifi everytime you turn off your Android screen and turns on when you turn on your screen again. The marvel of this Juice Defender is, it somehow also turns on the data periodically to check for push messages and emails. I discovered this when I installed Juice Defender, I still able to see messages pushed to my phone during the night when I woke up the next morning. I don’t have to do any manual sync to retrieve messages and email at all.

However, Juice Defender renders my ebuddy unusable at all. It disables the data plan when I screen off. Anyway, it isn’t much of an issue as I uses my instant messagers only when I was travelling. And the best part? After using Juice Defender for 2weeks, I’d notice a better battery performance by as much as half day longer for every single full charge. From the app itself, it reported that it saves up as much as 1.6times of battery life for me. I dunno how it did the calculations, but half day longer battery life is more than good enough for me.

Disable vibration

Vibration eats out your battery life. If you’re not in a meeting or cinema, disable it by going to Settings > Sound > unticks the Vibrate setting

Follow lithium battery saving tips here

I have written a detail guide of prolonging the life of your lithium battery, be it a mobile phone or your laptop battery. Following it makes your battery last longer on a single charge and not only that, you’ll learned the tips of prolonging the lifespan of your phone battery.

use SetCPU or Daemon Controller to adjust your cpu speed ( for rooted Androids only )

Download SetCPU here
Download Daemon Controller here
These CPU controlling apps can be set to reduce clock rates while in different states. Pretty useful to save up juices on your battery. For Daemon Controller, you’ll need the correct kernel for your device (which available on XDA of course). While SetCPU works for any rooted Android phones.

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A simple hack to get back the old Facebook chat, the new Facebook chat simply sucks

edwuave — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:03:58 +0000

You are annoyed by the new Facebook chat. You can’t find which of your friends online and you can’t even hide away that annoying Facebook chat bar. If you have Googled around of how to get back the old Facebook chat you’ll be dissapointed by the profound technical terms in the step by step guide; install, script, add-on (yeah, i’m trying to be as Layman-friendly as possible). Anyway, you don’t even have to install or tweak any stuff at all. There is a simple workaround to get back the old Facebook chat. Here how it is being done.

Well, this is simple enough. How to get back the old Facebook chat? Go to the Facebook page, Hold down the “Ctrl” key and press the “+” on your keyboard. Or you can do it by holding the “Ctrl” and use your mouse to scroll up. You can actually notice this is a zooming function for your browser. Just by zooming one level, the new Facebook chat will be transformed back to the older better version. Simple enough? I dunno, this could be a function build by Facebook itself but didn’t documented well. Anyway, it just work and you don’t have to install or tweak anything at all.

This method has been tested in the following browser, and theoretically it should work on any browser except the ancient browsers like the Internet Explorer 6.

Works on:

Google Chrome 13
Mozilla Firefox 5
Internet Explorer 8
Opera 11

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Latest Android flagship phone comparison Samsung Galaxy S II VS HTC Sensation

edwuave — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 21:35:26 +0000

When it comes to buying a new smartphone for yourself, you might be in a tough situation of choosing in between almost-similar-specs phone. That’s especially true when it comes to Android platform, the most popular smartphone OS thus far. Recently, HTC and Samsung releases their flagship product; HTC Sensation and Samsung Galaxy S II respectively. Both are the new top of the line Android smartphones released by the no.1 and no.2 smartphone manufacturers of yesteryear. Both sporting new dual-core chip with a chance of putting the 6months old nvidia Tegra 2 to shame. Both equally powerful and both sporting some specifications which missed from one to the other. This puts potentially new buyers in a dilemma in choosing between Sensation and Galaxy S II. If you’re facing the exact situation of what I described here, read on.

HTC Sensation

HTC Sensation

Specifications:

4.3inch S-LCD 960×540 resolution
1.2GHz Snapdragon dual-core SoC with Adreno 220 GPU
1GB phone storage
768MB RAM
8MP Dual-LED flash
Front VGA camera
Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS
Lithium-ion 1520 mAh battery
HTC Sense 3.0

First off, lets look at the flagship phone from HTC. HTC Sensation sports a new dual core Qualcomm MSM 8260 Snapdragon SoC running at 1.2GHz. This chip is essentially the same architecture from Qualcomm last year’s 1GHz single core Snapdragon soldered in a dual core package. The big enhancement in this chip is the Adreno 220 GPU which is the new graphics from Qualcomm itself (Qualcomm has acquired Adreno). The rest of the specifications are pretty standard even compared to previous generation’s gadget. One notable upgrade is the HTC Sense 3.0 which looks awesomely cool. I have tested my ownself and was blowned away by the creativity of how HTC managed to take Sense to the next level. What’s new in HTC Sense 3.0 is the totally revamped lock screen, the 3D carousel and as well as newly designed widgets. Depending on how you look at it, HTC Sense 3.0 gives most users a better user experience. For most techie guys, HTC Sense 3.0 is mostly useless as they will flash the Sensation to Cyanogenmod or any other mod ROM.

Why is HTC Sensation better than Samsung Galaxy S II?

Originality. User interface and physical design from Sensation guarantees HTC not getting any design infringement lawsuit from Steve Apple Jesus Jobs. Your friends won’t mistaken your Sensation as an iPhone.
Sensation feels firmer on your grip. It has slightly bigger body and heavier by an ounce than Galaxy S II.
Aluminium build makes HTC Sensation tougher and more likely to survive on a drop to the floor than Galaxy S II. Don’t do that on purpose though.
qHD resolution on Sensation lets you view more stuff in a single page. Text and images will be slightly crispier as well. And since it is a quarter HD resolution, viewing HD video is much pleasurable compared to the 800×480 resolution on Galaxy S II.
HTC Sense 3.0. This is a matter of personal preference. Personally, I would prefer HTC Sense 3.0 over Samsung Galaxy S II’s TouchWiz 4.0. Sense 3.0 is revolutionary and innovative while TouchWiz 4.0 is bland and nothing really awesome out of it.

next page Samsung Galaxy S II >>

Asus Eee Pad Transformer with Android Honeycomb 3.0 vs Apple iPad2

edwuave — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:50:41 +0000

I’ve preview the latest Asus Eee pad Transformer here. The specifications of Asus Transformer is pretty standard, but what distinguish itself from the rest of the Honeycomb tablets is the pricing and the innovative keyboard dock. The keyboard dock itself is already a winner as the physical keyboard provides the way to do input to your device far superior than any onscreen keyboard. On top of that, the competitive pricing at $548 (with the keyboard dock) give Apple iPad2 a run for its money. Well, that doesn’t mean Asus Transformer is the winner tablet now, it all boils down of what you really need.

The specifications of Asus Eee Pad Transformer can be viewed here. So, the question is what are the pros/advantages that this Asus Eee Pad Transformer has over Apple iPad2? Before that, it is best to list out the pros and cons between these two tablets, I’ll start with Apple iPad2.

Apple iPad2 is the 2nd generation tablet from Apple. It was first launched in the United States on 11th of March 2011. Here are the summarized pros and cons for iPad2.

Pros

Dual core A5 processor with graphics purportedly faster than Tegra 2′s Geforce ULP found in Honeycomb Tablets.
33% thinner than the first generation iPad.
Well made and looks stylish
80,000 number of apps, other than tablet’s main functionality these apps is a big bonus to users.

Cons

Same old 4years old iPhone UI. Yeah it was basically a big phone UI and nobody complains it.
Internet experience is limited with no Flash support. Hey, isn’t this suppose to be a semi-computer device and there’s no Flash? And I can’t even run my favourite Facebook games here.

My say
The Apple iPad2 offers a great Apple app store ecosystem. And with over 80,000 tablet apps available on the iPad, it offers plenty of possibilities on the iPad and you wouldn’t go wrong with it. An example would be the magazine and comic apps. You can now purchase magazine and comics and read it on your iPad, paperless. Other examples include slideshows presentation and saleskit. It has revolutionized some of the professionals in the way they present their products and do business. I even saw some parents bought iPad for their kids to learn and as well partly becoming an entertainment device. Some families use it as a home device to browse web and games. All in all, iPad has revolutionize our life in one way or the other. This isn’t possible without the humongous marketing Apple has put on for the iPad. One of their famously expensive (and earliest too) advertisement was at the 52nd Grammy awards (2010), where the host took out the first generation iPad from his pocket to read out the nominees for Song of the Year.

Asus Eeepad Transformer is Asus’ latest attempt in getting into the tablet arena, they did it well. In fact Asus did it so well that the demand is so high and most stores went out of stock just days of release.
Pros

Dual Core Tegra2 SoC with Geforce ULP graphics chip.
Detachable keyboard dock is a big PLUS. Virtual keyboard can never replace a physical one especially for typing long emails and blogging. And Asus Transformer being made as a 2in1 device; tablet and a netbook. This keyboard dock provides extra battery, sd-card slot, and USB ports as well.
Budget friendly, bundling with feature-rich keyboard dock cost just slightly more than the cheapest Apple iPad2
Adobe Flash 10.2 support, which means you’re able to browse websites like what you able to do on your PC.
Android 3.0 is a true tablet OS, it isn’t just a scale up version of the smartphone operating system. It utilizes widgets to organize informations and shortcuts pretty much workable for a bigger screen.

Cons

Number of tablet apps is still far fetched compared to iPad. Don’t think of finding much games and some useful apps like how you do on iPad.
Android 3.0 Honeycomb might not be polished enough, but this has very little impact for most users. There is the Android 3.1 version already out now which enhanced and fixed some of the issue related to Android 3.0
People outside of geek’s world probably wouldn’t know about Asus Transformer; like a 5year old kid recognizes an iPad but wouldn’t even have a clue about Asus Transformer. This puts Asus at a disadvantage as far as market penetration goes.

My say
Everyone seems to forgot the real purpose of a tablet. Tablet serves to be a computer more mobile than a laptop but more functional than a smartphone. Asus did well with the Eeepad Transformer. The main catalyst is the pricing and the innovative keyboard dock. Great for people looking for a netbook and a tablet. And as well as heavy instant messaging, emails and blogging on the go. Basically any stuff related to typing. As far as tablet apps is concern, Honeycomb got a long way to catch up. But on the bright side, Android apps is designed to be scalable across different screen sizes. So, most good Android smartphone apps is able to scale up on a 1280×800 resolution Honeycomb screen. Don’t expect it to scaled perfectly but it does so much better than an iPhone app installed on an iPad. Continue Reading »

Samsung Galaxy S supports Cyanogenmod 7 mod ROM

edwuave — Thu, 19 May 2011 17:16:52 +0000

Image courtesy of Cyanogenmod

One of the best Android phone of 2010 comes from Samsung. The Galaxy S series, where some countries getting slightly different version, is one of the best selling Android phone last year. Physically, the design did reminiscence to the iPhone, but who cares? Much powerful and tweakable alternative to iPhone. But it was plague by slow updates from Samsung and the recent Android 2.3 Gingerbread update was being pulled off by Google.

Anyway, Cyanogenmod, the techno-friendly (or call it hacker mod) mod from www.cyanogenmod.com is finally available in at least 3 of the Galaxy S series; Samsung Captivate, Samsung Galaxy S and Samsung Vibrant. If you’ve already rooted your Galaxy S, you can head straight away to download the ROM, reboot in recovery/clockworkmod and flash it. Of couse, please backup all your apps and data with Titanium Backup first. These are the links to download the latest Cyanogenmod for your Android phone Samsung Galaxy S.

Instructions and step-by-step noob guides are available in the links above. For those haven’t even rooted their Samsung Galaxy S yet, these guides are best for them. If you’ve read thus far and still asking what the heck is Cyanogenmod. Well basically Cyanogenmod is a community ROM mods for your Android device which enhance your phone to a level not possible with stock ROM. Enhancements includes faster processing via default overclocked CPU (don’t worry, it was tested by a huge number of users before determining the final overclocked speed) on the ROM and JIT, advance tweaking features and latest Android OS (Current Cyanogenmod 7.0.3 is a Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread) so you don’t have to wait any updates from your manufacturer which is painfully long.

If you have to ask me whether you should install Cyanogenmod in your Samsung Galaxy S now, I will give you a slap and get your Galaxy S a big injection of steroid via Cyanogenmod 7.0.3(latest), and of course the Galaxy S belongs to me after that. ;D

Seriously, you should install it no matter you are a techno-freak or a layman’s layman, well, you won’t be that “layman” if you are reading my blog ain’t it?

Android 3.0 Honeycomb Tablet Asus Eee Pad Transformer specifications and preview

edwuave — Sat, 07 May 2011 21:55:44 +0000

Asus has released its own Android device in the guise of a tablet. The Asus Eee pad is a tablet running with Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. Though it wasn’t the first Android Honeycomb tablet, but it was the first that garnered much positive reviews from tech websites. The first Android Honeycomb tablet is the Motorola Xoom, the very reason why it fails to impress is the pricing. Asus priced this Eee Pad Transformer at a very competitive price, making Apple iPad2 irrelevant unless you are in a different needs. Anyway, these are the specifications of Asus Transformer.

Hardware Specifications:

nvidia Tegra2 SoC with 1GHz Dual Core ARM Cortext-A9 CPU
Gefore ULP
10.1inch IPS capacitive touch screen with 1280×800 resolution
16GB/32GB internal storage
5MP rear camera + 1.3MP front facing camera
Wi-fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1
mini HDMI port
Android 3.0 Honeycomb

Optional keyboard dock:

2xUSB 2.0 port
extra battery
multitouch touchpad

You can read the review and comparison between Asus Transformer vs Apple iPad2 here.

Best budget desktop computer PC configurations/components build, 2011 Q2 – April,May,June

edwuave — Tue, 03 May 2011 10:25:58 +0000

Next quarter will finally see the effort paid off by AMD’s acquisition of ATI 5 years ago. What I mean is the most talked about Llano APU, the Fusion project that was hyped all the way back during AMD worst time, the first true CPU-GPU combination into a single chip for the desktop variant. Brazos platform with the Zacate/Ontario APU and the Fusion hub controller (Hudson) is cater for the Netbook/CULV segment which single handedly beats down Intel Atom platform. Intel Sandy Bridge offers great graphics performance by having infused both CPU and GPU together with the same chip, the graphics performance increased is unquestionable as the graphics processing unit is being fed with data at much higher bandwidth thanks to the resource sharing with the CPU. With AMD’s expertise in the graphics development, we can expect the Llano Desktop processor to be even faster as far as graphics performance is concern than what Intel is able to offer in Sandy Bridge. Llano could redefine this whole budget desktop PC segment and make some of the budget discreet card irrelevant and redundant. Anyway, this is best reserved for debate when Llano is available to the mass. If you are looking for a budget desktop right now, Llano is not the option at least for these 3 months as it wasn’t available. How about Sandy Bridge? Although it is available right now, but I recommend something more on the budget side. Read on.

Processor:

AMD Athlon II X3 450 : Price USD 76

Best budget desktop PC segment

previous budget PC recommendation

a chance to unlock an extra core as well

RAM @ Memory:

2 x 2GB DDR3 1333MHz, total 4GB RAM : Price RM135(USD 42)

The price of semiconductor memory dropped tremendously during the past quarters. That explains why my desktop PC now having 5GB of RAM. Incidentally, buying a pair of 2GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM is the same price as buying just one stick back “” generic no prescription two quarters ago. Having a total of 4GB of RAM might seem kinda overkill but just forging out a small fraction of the total cost of the computer for an extra 2GB RAM is justified based on the fact that RAM price might accentuate in the near future. Having a 4GB memory for your system also means you can experiment by turning off the page file entirely, this leads to faster processing as the system stores all temporary data onto the RAM instead of the hard disk which is many times slower. This is very experimental as so far nobody has successfully prove a 100% stability of turning off paging file, even more so that some applications are written to use the paging file as temporary storage. However for my computer thus far, with a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit version and having paging file turned off entirely, I was able to run a good 5months without any crashing. And the benefit Brand “” of having page file turned off? Significantly faster startup, shutdown(hell lot faster), and normal multi-task with few programs.

Motherboard:

Asus M4A88T-M/USB3 : Price RM340 (USD 109)

Nothing much fancy about this motherboard over the Asus M4A785GTD-V Evo from the previous budget desktop article, apart from the USB3.0 addition and the AMD 880G chipset which is basically the same as the AMD 785G anyway. The USB 3.0 is definitely Buy online “” a nice upgrade over USB 2.0 with speeds improvement almost 10 times. Which is good enough seeing external hard drive and SSD these days were bottlenecked by the slow USB 2.0 speed @ 480 Mbps. The price point with features listed below is certainly a bang for buck:

Socket AM3
AMD 880G/SB710
4xDDR3 slot, up to 16GB
1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 PCI, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 10 USB 2.0
HDMI port, DVI, D-SUB
Realtek® RTL8111E Gigabit LAN controller
VT1708S 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC

Hard Disk:

Western Digital 3.5″ 1TB 7200rpm : Price RM165 (USD 53)

One thing about Hard disk is that it got outdated pretty fast, comparable to discreet graphics card. The 500GB variant recommended previously is no longer one of the lowest price per GB hard disk. The lowest price per GB hard disk now is bestow on the Western Digital 2TB, where it cost only RM0.138 (USD 0.045) per GB compared to the 1TB’s RM0.165 (USD 0.053). However, most users will find it overkill for this humongous (you will laugh to read this again next year or so) storage.

Graphics:

AMD HD4250 Graphics : Price none

This integrated graphics solution from the Asus M4A88T-M/USB3 motherboard is able to play 1080p/720p HD movies and some light gaming on older games. Even the most famous online game Warcraft III mod – Dota can be runned without problem. This is basically the same graphics since 780G and 785G but being improved incrementally, no graphics performance improvement though. Why not Sandy Bridge one might ask? The total cost for Sandy Bridge system is not justified, and you can’t get such features-packed motherboard at that cost for Sandy Bridge LGA1155 platform. As this guide is more towards on budget oriented people, AMD system is still a very viable choice for budget conscious buyers.

Some notes about this recommendation:
If you are into heavy gaming, this is definitely not for you. This guide is written for people looking to build a very budget-friendly desktop which can perform their daily task without much hiccups, includes but not limited to the list below:

Internet usage; Facebook, emails, MSN instant messaging.
Watching HD Youtube videos
office productivity suite;word processing, email, powerpoint.
light gaming
software development; Java, Android, iPhone, .Net, PHP…etc
media decode/encoding; HD videos, mp3, WMV, mp4.

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What does it mean by "Android phone root"?

edwuave — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:38:41 +0000

Root access or simply put root user is the term for Linux operating system environment which allows full read and write access of all commands and files in the system. From a tech perspective, it is termed as Superuser. For Microsoft Windows, it is called Administrator account which is familiar for most people. That’s vastly different from Linux where you don’t get Superuser a.k.a root access by default on your Linux machine, be it Mandriva, Red Hat, SuSe, Ubuntu or Fedora just to name a few.

Windows’ administrator:

superuser, full control of the system
ability to setup administrator rights to different account

Linux administrator:

non-superuser, most system files doesn’t permit read and write access.
ability to setup administrator rights to different account

As were mentioned earlier, Superuser/root access is not enabled by default across all Linux distributions. In fact, you were given only Administrator access in Linux environment which is suffice for most users actually. It was an added security measure to prevent users from tinkering the system which might cause severe system failure. Fortunately, there are ways to enable root access and one of them is simply by going to the Linux terminal and enter “sudo root password” without the quotes. The root access is limited to only one account, incidentally name “root” as well.

But what does this techie stuffs have to do with rooting an Android phone?

Android is derived from a heavily modified version of Linux operating system. The difference between standard Linux kernel and Android is that Android doesn’t have a native X Window System nor does it support the full set of standard GNU libraries. And that makes Android not able to run native applications designed for Linux. Apart from that, Android is basically a smaller modified version of Linux. Thats Buy “”, Buy “”, Buy “” Without Prescription the same when it comes to Superuser-not-enabled-by-default too, well half correct actually as manufacturers choose not to enable root privilege for the phone out of the box. As I know of currently, there is one rooted-by-default Android phone build by a Spanish startup.

Just Brand “” like Linux, having a root access in Android lets you full access to the operating system. The full potential of an Android is only unleashed once root access is granted. I will detail some of the abilities one is able to do with a rooted Android phone.

Android phone manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, Motorola and LG doesn’t make any rooted-by-default Android phones, and that includes Google Nexus One and Nexus S both manufactured by HTC and Samsung respectively. Android phones come from these manufacturers only gives you Linux-administrator level of access. Any attempt to access the lower level of the system is not possible, which inhibits much ability of what Android phone is able to do like hardware control(CPU), whole system backup, ability to move dalvik-cache “” Professional and much more. To root an Android phone, you’ll need Unrevoked, SuperoneClick or zRoot depending on your phone model and manufacturer. It is very easy and rooting wont cause any data loss and the chances of bricking the phone is not high. I will talk more about this topic in my upcoming post.

That sums up “What does it mean by Rooting Android phone”. Hope it explains the question well. Anyway just a note, rooting will void the warranty of your phone. Fortunately there are always ways to unroot back your Android phone, thanks XDA

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What does it mean by “Android phone root”?

edwuave — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:38:41 +0000

Windows’ administrator:

superuser, full control of the system
ability to setup administrator rights to different account

Linux administrator:

non-superuser, most system files doesn’t permit read and write access.
ability to setup administrator rights to different account

But what does this techie stuffs have to do with rooting an Android phone?

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