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Tag: XDA Developers

  • Samsung Working on Quick Share: AirDrop For Android

    Samsung Working on Quick Share: AirDrop For Android

    XDA Developers is reporting that Samsung is working on Quick Share, an Android alternative to Apple’s AirDrop feature.

    AirDrop is a peer-to-peer service on Apple devices that allow them to share files without the need to email, upload to the cloud or even be connected to the same WiFi network. Instead, AirDrop uses Bluetooth and WiFi to create a peer-to-peer WiFi connection between two devices. This allows for extremely convenient and fast file transfers.

    Unfortunately, up until now, most Android users have not had a similar feature. That appears to be on the verge of changing, according to XDA Developers, at least for Samsung Galaxy customers.

    “This will basically work like most of these other nearby sharing services. If you are near another user with a supported device, they will show up and you can share the picture, video, or file. You will have two options for sharing: contacts only or with everyone. ‘Contacts-only’ will only allow you to share files with other Samsung Social users who you have in your contacts. ‘Everyone’ will let you send or receive files from anyone with a supported device in your area.

    “Unlike other services like AirDrop, Quick Share will have a cloud aspect to it. Quick Share will let you temporarily upload files to Samsung Cloud. These files will then be streamed to Samsung Smart Things devices and downloaded locally. These files can be up to 1GB with a total of 2GBs being sent per day.”

    As XDA Developers points out, Google is also working on its own version of the feature. It remains to be seen if the different services will be able to communicate with one another or if this will lead to further fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.

  • Call Recording Coming To An Android Phone Near You

    Call Recording Coming To An Android Phone Near You

    According to XDA Developers, Android’s Google Phone app may be getting call recording in a future update.

    The Google Phone app is the default phone dialer on Google’s own line of Pixel smartphones, as well as Android One devices. Other manufacturers sometimes include their own dialer apps with more features than Google’s. Xiaomi is one such company, with their dialer offering built-in call recording. Recently, however, Xiaomi announced that its European smartphones would come with Google Phone instead. As XDA points out, however, the company promised that the feature would be “obtainable” in 2020.

    When Android version 43.0.289191107 was released for the Pixel 4, XDA editor-in-chief Mishaal Rahman noticed three developer strings that specifically pertain to call recording, including the status of an in-call button to activate or deactivate recording.

    As XDA highlights, call recording was available before Android 9 Pie, and is a feature that has been sorely missed in the Android community. If the developer strings Rahman found indicate Google’s plans, this should be a welcome improvement for many users.

  • Samsung Galaxy S III Easily Rooted

    Samsung Galaxy S III Easily Rooted

    It was never in doubt that Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, would be rooted, allowing consumers to remove Samsung’s TouchWiz interface and install custom ROMs. What was unexpected was that the root would happen more than a week before its European launch date.

    Last Friday evening, while the whole world was still speculating about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s IPO, a user on the XDA Developers forum named Chainfire posted the keys to the Galaxy S III kingdom. Chainfire detailed the process for rooting the phone, calling the process “trivial.” From the post:

    This root is, as expected, trivial. It was a simple matter of repacking the stock kernel, with a modified adbd binary that thinks ro.secure=0 (even if ro.secure=1). This gives access to all adb root commands (see screenshots). Then SuperSU was installed manually.

    Later on Saturday, after verifying that it was not tracable, Chainfire updated the post with a link to the insecure kernel. As was the case with the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, the bootloader for the Galaxy S III was already unlocked. Nearly every exclusive aspect of the Galaxy S III has been leaked now, including the Android version of Flipboard and Samsung’s S-Voice – it’s Apple Siri competitor.

    Customers who root their phones will be able to install custom ROMs that are closer to a pure Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich experience. These ROMs often enable extra features for the Android operating system, or reenable features that may have been disabled by manufacturers or carriers, such as tethering.

    (XDA Forums Via the Inquirer)

  • Samsung’s S-Voice Leaked Onto the Web

    Samsung’s S-Voice Leaked Onto the Web

    When the new version of Flipboard was leaked from a preview version of the upcomming Samsung Galaxy S III, the members of the XDA Developers forums were excited, but wondered why Samsung’s exclusive S-Voice software hadn’t been leaked as well. This weekend, the hackers at the XDA Developers forums came through again, leaking S-Voice

    S-Voice is Samsung’s new answer to Apple’s Siri. It was supposed to debut, the same as the new Flipbook, as an exclusive on the company’s highly anticipated Galaxy S III smartphone in less than one month. User Ascarface23, on the XDA Developers forum for Samsung Galaxy S II themes and apps, has posted the .apk for S-Voice, meaning any Android user running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich should potentially be able to use it. Since the software was developed to specifically run on Samsung’s new flagship smartphone only, some users are having difficulty installing it. Throughout the same thread, though, a solution for many different installation issues is found.

    Once users get it installed, though, they might have another hurdle to contend with. Many users who are trying out S-Voice are getting network connection error messages from the program. The fix for this particular issue is to use a root explorer to change the product signature of the phone to mimic the Samsung Galaxy S III. It seems Samsung either doesn’t want their new software to be used yet, or they haven’t implemented the infrastructure for the feature completely. Seeing as the Galaxy S III got over 9 million pre-orders, Samsung will need quite a few servers if it hopes to make a good impression with this product.

    (via XDA Developer’s forums)