The Chinese Communist Party published an app called 'Study the Great Nation' earlier this year which it heavily advertises and even mandates many citizens to use. While it looks like a mere propaganda tool at first glance and seems to function as a news and factoid resource on Chinese President Xi Jinping and his party, it appears to be engineered to monitor its users and even sports a superuser backdoor which it could use to gather more data.
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Magisk developer topjohnwu might be off serving compulsory military service, but he's still maintained a rapid release schedule for his popular root solution. Magisk v16.4 (and Magisk Manager v5.7.0) were released over the weekend, and they add a handful of technical fixes, app shortcuts, and Android P improvements, but it isn't all smooth sailing. The latest version also removes Magisk's 64-bit binaries, which may break root support for some apps, including the very popular Tasker.
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Magisk is probably one of the most well-known and widely used root solutions these days, made famous for its root-detection mitigation strategies. Now both Magisk and the accompanying Magisk Manager have been updated to v15.3 and v5.4.4, respectively, this time bringing the convenience of fingerprint authorization to the dialog which grants root access.
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While large displays can be beautiful, using them in everyday scenarios can be anything but. This is particularly the case if you're holding yourself steady on a bus or train with one hand while browsing your smartphone with the other on a daily basis. To address this potential hazard, Samsung, LG, Huawei, Motorola, and other manufacturers offer a one-handed mode on some of their phones, and now a new XDA app called (wait for it) "One-Handed Mode" is bringing the helpful feature to any smartphone running Android 4.3 or higher.
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So, LineageOS has been out for a few days now. As promised, .zip packages for rooting the ROM have been put up on the community project's site, as it is not pre-rooted when flashed.
Interestingly, this uses Superuser rather than SuperSU to achieve root. Either way, root is achieved through flashing this package once the main ROM has been flashed. It also needs to only be flashed once; subsequent updates will keep root privileges. There are different packages depending on whether the device is 64-bit or not, and also packages to remove root if you so wish.
Of course, this is only the official (and recommended) root package.
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The SuperSU root permissions manager is probably one of the most widely-distributed power user tools on Android at this point, though it won't be breaking the Top Ten lists in the Play Store any time soon. Developer Chainfire has issued an update to version 2.13, which includes a huge list of additional and adjusted features. As far as usability is concerned, the biggest change is probably the fact that the app is now available on the Amazon Appstore. Kindle Fire modders, this means easy updates for you.
Other major adjustments include improved support for AOSP, Android L, and Android TV (such as they are).
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The latest version of the Play Store hit the scene a little over a week ago and introduced a tweak to the way permissions are displayed at install time, and it left some people feeling a little...uncertain. Gone is the ugly wall of poorly spaced, semi-specific permissions. The replacement is a short set of simplified categories, each with crisp-looking icons and buttons that reveal a brief description when tapped. Google filtered through roughly 145 permissions and narrowed them down to a dozen groups, plus one bucket for anything that remains. The list can be found here.
Left: old Play Store.
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These days, it seems like everybody is trying to make Android more secure. As usual, rooting and modding are often casualties of this effort. Just over a month ago Android 4.3 broke the existing model for root, forcing updates to existing methods, and now Samsung is rolling out updated Android 4.2.2 firmwares for the Galaxy S 4 which fully enable the company's heavily secured KNOX environment. Fortunately, Chainfire is already on top of it and has updated his popular root software, SuperSU, to be compatible with the new system.
Samsung has been charging full steam ahead on the movement towards corporate security.
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If you've already updated to Android 4.3, whether via an OTA or by flashing it manually, and rooted it, you're more than likely using Chainfire's SuperSU, which carefully works around the new restrictions Google put in place. Cody has a good write-up about why they did it and what's going on, so go read that if you're interested in the details.
Chainfire created the Android 4.3-compatible root method and the updated SuperSU back when the first leaks showed up for the Galaxy S4 but hasn't updated it for a few weeks. During that time, a good portion of users have discovered that sometimes SuperSU causes CPU spikes and starts eating up 100% CPU.
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It's no surprise that Google's latest update to our favorite operating system is in instant demand amongst power users and enthusiasts. Without fail, the people eagerly installing 4.3 are frequently the same ones who consider root privileges a necessity for a good Android experience. Unfortunately, it seems a wrench has been thrown into the works when it comes to exposing ultimate access, and people are experiencing more than a few hiccups because of it.
For those who have already tried playing this game, you're probably aware that the original superuser app (by ChainsDD) and it's replacement authored by Koush aren't exactly compatible with the latest and greatest version of Android.
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