Of the subsets within Android, those who enjoy rooting their device for various purposes remain one of the more loyal. Rooters are fond of the vast customization options allowed them, with many rooting a device straight away after purchase. With the newest version of Android, the rooting community might see a slight setback.

 Developer Chainfire found code commits in the AOSP tree which “prevents the unconfined domain (everything you run through [superuser] by default) from executing files located on the /data partition”. Essentially, the new Android might end up disabling rooted apps. Rendering them useless is of great concern, but so is the fix.

Ina nutshell, there isn’t a silver bullet for this one. Developers will have to find workarounds on their own, as each app would require different tweaks to get them working again. There are workarounds, but also potential issues for this.

If a Developer who built the app on their spare time or as a side project can’t find time to fix it, then it might just go away. It’s great that Chainfire saw this well ahead of any update, leaving time for Developers to get their apps ready, but it’s going to be tenuous for a while. We should not the changes were made as a security fix to Android, and wasn’t a measure for Google to gain any control or dissuade people from rooting.
VIA: Phone Arena

9 COMMENTS

  1. I really don’t mind. Myself, I started rooting my devices due to poor performance, lags, battery issues and so on. As handsets become better and the software becomes less buggy, I find less need to root my phone lately. Owning a Note 2, I tried at least 10 different ROMs during the year I’ve had it and although some of them were pretty neat and got the phone working like butter, there were some functions I liked from Touchwiz that were not available on the ROM. I never found a ROM that truly pleased me. I stopped rooting and customizing my phone and so far is the best thing I’ve done. Haven’t had any issues with it since then and I haven’t found a root-only-app that is realy necessary for my everyday needs. So, if Google plans to improve it’s software and make it much better, mucho more stable and more customizable, I don’t mind if rooting becomes an issue.

  2. I don’t know anything about rooting BUT I would be happier if apps closed AN STAYED CLOSED when I exit them! I’d like FB, Google & E-Mail to push notifications ONCE and ONLY ONCE in an hour! I would like mt Smart Actionsto work properly! I haven’t been able to set a custom action or modify an existing action for months! I would like the ringer to function properly in the vehicle dock. I want my speed dial!

    • If you’re having issues like this I find it is usually after an OS upgrade and if so you may need to bite the bullet and FDR (factory data reset) your phone. If yours hasn’t been thru upgrading then the issue may be elsewhere. I do not buy the latest edge phones and am still working with my Bionic. I was extremely frustrated with it after two OS upgrades. The first upgrade to ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0) went smoothly and it worked okay, not great. After the upgrade to Jelly Bean 4.1 it was to put it mildly, a POS. I thought if this is what JB is then to hell with it. But I didn’t buy that given the advances and using JB on other devices. So I finally just backed up my data and did a full FDR and for giggles did a full reinstall of JB. Now it all functions as you would think it should. Your issues sound like issues I was having and they aren’t unusual on Androids with a lot installed and a lot of data. Try it. I even decided to go ahead and root finally which gives me more control over what is going on with TSR apps. So many abuse it.

    • Too late. The flat-out harassment, lying and manipulation they pulled with YouTube users who answered “no” to changing their channel names, blew them right around Apple and MS as the most despicable IT company I’ve ever seen.

      • I should have parsed my statement better – you already had a G+ account, didn’t you? They only went after people who didn’t have a G+ account. I got so pissed off I just closed and uninstalled everything Google on everything I could. Unfortunately, I switched from the iPhone to the S4 because I couldn’t stand the camera roll, anymore. So, I had to keep a gmail/G+ account for app reviews.

  3. dont do that Google…… you will lose trust of many developers and you will create a market gap that can be filled with another OS and steal you maybe 20 % of users

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