Android 4.4.x (KitKat)

Disclaimer: I had this topic in my dry erase board for a few days now, so time to talk about it. The following discussion may void the warranty on your smartphone.

Wait.

A discussion voiding a warranty?

Whatever.

I recently rooted my smartphone nearly out of contract. Woot!

There's plenty of ROMS for it, I see, and download several to try,

It came with Gingerbread, 4.0.x, and I updated it to Ice Cream Sandwich, 4.1.x, OTA.

I found that the next version of Android was named Jelly Bean, and found a few more ROMS to try. That covers 4.2.x and 4.3.x, and believe it or not, them $59 dollar tablets are running Android 4.2.x or 4.3.x Jelly Bean.

It's a nice OS. Jelly Bean works nicely.

NOW I begin my rant.......

I loaded a 4.4.x KitKat ROM, ooooh, I thought, I'm running the latest and greatest.

NOT!

I Beta Test ROMS, in fact, anyone can, and give feedback to the developers. It's the open source way. Well, the problems I have with KitKat (Android 4.4.x) are thus listed:

I tested the camera first, and it took beautiful pictures from my device. What it WANTED to do is Geo-locate the picture I took, and insisted that I turn on GPS. The icon for turning on GPS is persistent in the camera mode. You can shut it off, but it's there for every picture you take.

I don't want the pictures I take geo-tagged when I take them. That's pure idiocy. I post a picture, and TPTB or anyone with an EXIF viewer can pull that info. Here you are, dummy.

A new ROM with KitKat also wants you to sync your google account, (no real harm there) but ALSO turn on geo-location. It's persistent in the ROMS I've tested.

Android 4.4.x (KitKat) wants to have a persistent connection. It also locates you.

Android, WHY OH WHY did you ruin my trust in YOU? Google has made you an Apple product!

I'm ashamed. For all my love of open source, this geo-tagging need has stretched belief. I ran 4.4.x for a bit, tried to turn off geotagging but was left wondering. I went back to 4.3.x Jelly Bean for safety reasons. It's a smartphone I tinker with, not a tablet, and I need a daily driver. The one I have works fine....GPS is OFF.

4.4.x wants GPS on constantly. That's default, and a move by TPTB to monitor you. Not really.

It's Google that wants to monitor you, and THEN they will sell out to the USG, and turn our records over to the NSA.

Either way, we are screwed.

This is exactly why I hate Windows 8 and refuse to use it. It tries to turn everything into a damn social experiment. It wants you to log in with your Live account and wants you to connect your Google account and your Facebook account so that "everything is in one place" and you can "keep connected with your friends". Screw that sheet, I just want a damn operating system and if I want to visit Facebook or Gmail I will use my damn web browser. I don't want to store all my data on your "cloud drive" and I don't want all your stupid apps clogging up my desktop and I don't want the lame xbox design where everything is a square box painted in a bright color. Sheesh I better stop ranting before I explode... lol.

Rant in the open source community, they will remove the "feature" and recompile it. Just say/make story about GPS is eating up battery and you want privacy, they gladly will remove it.
The geo targetting is the next internet era, the problem is, it should be "on demand" not "always on", complain about that also. Yes, Google is now evil. They probably know what we ate yesterday better than ourself, and its indexed!

Just bug the open source people at forum.xda-developers.com, not here.
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About windows 8, I'm pretty sure it have something "not right" built in there, my other laptop affecting my bandwidth even with its flaps closed, surely it have something accessing the network, but what ? BTW, at 8gb and helluva lots of RAM, they can kiss my bottom most and still I wont use it.

Windows 8 - Failure at start, troublesome while running, and working endlessly when sleep. Not a a good OS choice at all. And yes, those big colour boxes - lol.

reply to post by NullVoid


People have been complaining about always being connected to gps and always being tracked for years... The developers just keep making it worse. Hence why phones need to be rooted so you can better control that. Now it seems they are taking that away as well... We don't pay them the big bucks, the ads and marketing people do, that is why we won't see the constant location issues go anywhere IMO

Are you referring to an open source rom, or the official 4.4 ?

If its a rom, you do know that they are hand built by regular people, and not android devs.

And any beta roms will inevitably have issues that you are going to encounter. You tell them about it, they work on it. It's not android that you're complaining about, as far as I can tell, but a new rom form your device. You say there are many roms, so I am thinking you're just using something unofficial.

I use slimbean. nothing wrong with it using the latest android.

lol @ insant win8 hate.