Sorry, for this update, my Samsung Galaxy SII (GT-I9100) runs Android 2.3.3 (Gengerbread) not 2.3.2 (Froyo). The kernel version was apparently compiled by my mobile phone reseller and network operator (to integrate additional apps), not by Samsung itself. This just confims that phone resellers can include/remove the modules they want from the kernel and other firmware builtin apps.
May be I would have the same troubles as you if I ever rooted the phone to install some other version, but for now I just run the stock firmware (which was updated from 2.3.2 to 2.3.3 by the mobile phone operator in the first 3 days after I had connected it to the network, by a pushed update that I had accepted to install; I have actually never tested the Unicode rendering support before this update). One problem I have with that phone is that the Gmail application is prepackaged, but it cannot be uninstalled and cannot even be updated from the Application menu, even when using Andoid Market (the application is shown as "not installed" and is a very old one). And it contains severe bugs where messages get mysteriously lost, and IMAP folders get garbled. The alternative is to use the generic "email" application written by Samsung instead (which can be updated from the Market by installing an alternate version, something which is mysteriously restricted for the Gmail application from Google). I don't understand the logic of why some applications or services or installable modules are restricted to some clients and not some others. We can find many mailicious apps on the Android Market that can cause severe failures (such as the phone rebooting and requesting again the PIN code, meaning that it unexpectedly gets disconnected from the operator, after using it online and we temporaily loose the network/Internet signal or the GPS signal by moving around; this also causes a severe battery drain each time the phone is rebooted; It is very difficult to determine which app generates those reboots, as there's not even any tool allowing to inspect a log with minimal kernels dumps, and apparently no report being proposed to be sent to a support service and no help given allowing the user to identify the apps/services to uninstall/disable if they cause troubles; it may appear that this is a bug in some builtin hardware device driver and in that case the firmware itself is the source of the trouble, and should be updatable). What I don't like in Android is the very short support time: as I have a phone prepared by my mobile operator, in just a few months it will stop selling it and will immediately completely abandon maintaining the firmwares, but it will still maintain the root restriction, even though it is supposed to be still within the warranty time (and the practive of mobile operators is that oif we send a phone to servicing, all they will do is to rease everything on the phone and reinstall their last supported "official" firmware with rooting disabled and all specific apps from the operator; all apps or DRM protected medias that refuse to be downladed and installed on an external SD card storage will be lost, including payed ones, but the mobile operator absolutely don't care about that !). At least with iPhones, we have a much longer support time. I'm not sure how this behaves in Windows Phone and Backberry. but all of them can be "customized" and prepared specially by mobile operators featuring their own apps (but I'm not sure that Apple allows kernels of sponsored iphones/itabs to be freely modified by operators, all they may do is to disable a standard app to feature another one instead). Getting a decent long term OS support on mobile devices is still very complicate compared to notebooks, desktops, and servers. For this reason, I'm n ot ready to switch my notebook to a tablet, and I will still use a smartphone only as a more mobile complement of my notebook. The convergence between smartphones/tablets on one side and notebooks/desktop/servers is still late, I hope this will converge soon where they will only be differentaited by their form factor but not by the applications, services that are sintalled or by the presence or not of a mobile connectivity sponsored by mobile operators. 2011/11/5 கா. சேது | කා. සේතු | K. Sethu <skh...@gmail.com>: > Thanks to Phillipe Verdy for a detailed reply to my reply to his > earlier post - I had sent my reply only to Phillipe Verdy and not to > this list, though actually I intended to - (missed due forgetting to > press the "Reply to all" ). My post and his reply are quoted below > this.
