Electronic Frontier Foundation Petitioning To Keep Rooting And Jailbreaking Phones and Tablets Legal

In 2010 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to help stem the ever present problem of copyrighting media in the digital age. The Electronic Frontier Foundation worked hard though to get a few exemptions to this bill, namely protecting remix videos from being taken down and phones being jailbroken; or rooted. Now, these exemptions are up for renewal this year and not only is the EFF asking for help renewing the two exemptions they have now, they want to expand the exemptions to cover rooting tablets and jailbreaking video game consoles as well.

This is quite a big deal, because if these exemptions do not get renewed it would technically be illegal to root your phone allowing any company who wishes to come after you in court. The biggest case of this would be Sony taking legal action against George Hotz, a man who figured out how to jailbreak the Playstation 3 and put it on the internet. The EFF has a full page dedicated to the rooting exemptions needed along with a petition to sign and a place to send comments directly to the U.S. Copyright Office. There are somewhere near 5,000 signatures already, let’s add our names to make sure we can keep hacking our phones as much as we want.

Via:  EFF Website | Petition


Droid Life

Asus Tweets That Unlock Tool For Transformer Prime Should Be Available In February

Hot off the presses is a tweet sent out from the main Asus Twitter account, stating that the bootloader unlock tool should be available for the masses in February. After discovery by the community that the Transformer Prime shipped out completely locked down, there was mass plea for the company to release a tool to unlock it and make it the great tablet it has been advertised as.

If you are not concerned with warranties and other things associated with unlocking and rooting your Android devices, then this should be right up you alley. And with February literally right around the corner, we should start seeing a lot of movement start up in the Transformer Prime development forums.

Via: Twitter, Android Central


Droid Life

This Week In The Life of DROID: 1/20/2012

It has been a very interesting week not just for Android, but for the Internet in general. So far, it looks like we have been able to make SOPA and PIPA retreat back to their dark caves and re-plot their strategy on world take over. Along with all of that drama, the XOOM WiFi received some Ice Cream Sandwich love, Google says there are 250 million+ activated Android handsets, and Apple continues to sue competitors over features that they declare are their own. Oh what fun.

Hope you all have a very splendid weekend!


Droid Life

Tip: Tiny Flashlight Adds Lock Screen Shake Feature for Quick Lighting Access

 

I’m not sure that I can even count all of the flashlight apps in the market these days (nor would I want to try), but one of them in particular has been downloaded somewhere between 10 and 50 million times. That app is called Tiny Flashlight. Now, normally we wouldn’t waste your time with a flashlight app, but this one just so happens to have been updated to version 4.0 within the last week. And in version 4.0 you get the handiest of features, which is the ability to activate the light with a simple shake at your lock screen. You will have to go into settings and manually tick the feature to “on,” but let me tell you, this sucker has come in handy more than a couple of times over the last few days. Just had to share.

Market Link

Cheers Logan!


Droid Life

Early Ice Cream Sandwich Build for the HTC Rezound Leaked

What sounds like a very early Ice Cream Sandwich build for the HTC Rezound has been leaked this morning. I say “early” because from the what we have read, the build is a mix of HTC Sense 3.5 and some stock ICS icons and images. While we no longer have a Rezound in house to try and flash this, all signs point to it being unusable on a daily basis. This isn’t all that surprising though, since we weren’t actually expecting a release of this to the phone so soon, but at least we can see HTC is puttin’ in work on it. Flash at your own risk, folks.

And is it just me, or is the Rezound becoming more and more attractive by the day? A new $ 199 price, unlockable bootloader, one of the most beautiful screens we have ever seen on a mobile device, and the best camera of any Verizon phone, are making this phone worth another look.

Via:  RootzWiki


Droid Life

DROID RAZR MAXX Will Be Available January 26 According to Motorola Website

When Verizon and Motorola announced the DROID RAZR MAXX earlier in the week, they refused to get specific when it came to a release date and instead went with a “coming weeks” time frame. Maybe they should have read their own Motorola landing page for the phone as it lists January 26 as being the day. The price on contract will be $ 299.

And don’t forget to check out our hands-on video with the device from CES.

Via:  Motorola

Cheers Mike C.!


Droid Life

Eric Schmidt: Android Is All About Differentiation, Not Fragmentation

Google’s Eric Schmidt stopped by CES and offered another classic comment that is sure to spark up some interesting conversations for the next couple of days. When asked for the billionth time if Android has a fragmentation problem, Schmidt used the word “differentiation” to describe the platform instead:

“Differentiation is positive, fragmentation is negative,” Schmidt said during an appearance here at the Consumer Electronics Show. “Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they’re going to compete on their view of innovation, and they’re going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else.”

He continued:

“We absolutely allow [manufacturers] to add or change the user interface as long as they don’t break the apps. We see this as a plus; [it] gives you far more choices.”

The fragmentation argument is beyond played out, so I’ll admit that I actually like this take on Android. While most of us are not interested in skins or custom UIs, they do make one phone different from another. And since so many manufacturers produce Android handsets these days, skins are by no means going away any time soon. We just need to see OEMs spend more time putting in polish and adding useful features that would make them somewhat desirable.

Your thoughts? Buying Schmidt’s “differentiation” argument?

Via:  PCMag


Droid Life