26
Mar
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CyanogenMod May Soon Allow Users To Revoke Specific Application Permissions, Cue Mass Force Closing As A Result

Posted by in Development, News

One of the ways Android protects application users from unwanted activities is by requiring every app to declare a set of permissions and allowing users to view those permissions during the installation phase. Don't like what an app can do? Just don't install it.

However, this all or nothing approach doesn't allow you to selectively turn off specific permissions, so if you don't like that an application accesses your phone state, you can't just disable that and still have the app installed. This forces you to either potentially compromise your privacy or miss out on what could be a great piece of software.

06
Feb
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Rovio Explains Why The SMS Permission Was Introduced In Angry Birds v1.5.1

Posted by in Games, News

The latest Angry Birds update v1.5.1 that hit the Market yesterday introduced a whole bunch of levels, support for lower-end devices, and... a new SMS permission requirement. This not only prevented the update from being installed automatically, but also created quite a bit of user confusion, or even panic, around the reasons why the game would ever need to send or read our text messages.

Rovio's own Twitter account, probably manned by one of those evil pigs, insisted it was a mistake that would be fixed Monday, which calmed some of us down, but the truth ended up lying elsewhere. In fact, it turned out we knew about it all along, but most of us forgot in the 2 months that followed.

13
Jun
Achievement Unlocked! EVO 4G Now Fully Rooted, NAND Protection Defeated, Full Write Permissions To /system. Incredible Next?

Achievement Unlocked! EVO 4G Now Fully Rooted, NAND Protection Defeated, Full Write Permissions To /system. Incredible Next?

Posted by in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, News, Sprint

Problems Gaining Root On The EVO

If you've been following the EVO 4G root progress, you would know that the current root status is incomplete:

  • the unrevoked method allows granting root to apps but doesn't allow writing to the /system partition, which means you can't remove applications added by Sprint and do any kind of useful hackery, such as installing custom recoveries or ROMs
  • toastcfh's original method (now known as Part 1), which grants write access to /system but only in recovery mode, which means you need to reboot your phone into a special recovery console to gain those write permissions.