Downgrading my Note 3 from KitKat back to Jellybean

Zirconia

I've decided after a few weeks of running the officially upgraded 4.4 (KitKat) on my Note 3 to re-flash it to the version of Jellybean 4.3 it was on before.

Apart from a few cosmetic changes it didn't really give me anything that was significantly advantageous.

However, I did notice it did "broke" a lot of applications I had configured to write their downloads directly to my MicroSD card (the extSdCard device in android), when they tried to save files they failed. I tried to change permissions and download updates, initially blaming the applications themselves, but it turns out they are not to blame at all!

Apparently, since 4.4, Google/Android are no longer allowing applications to write directly to the external SD card, which in my mind is a huge backwards move, see here for details:

How KitKat 4.4 Killed Android — And Google Keeps Screwing Things

Specifically for the article:

"KitKat will make your SD Card completely useless: per the Android API specification, apps can no longer write files to your SD card. And Samsung is following it. This only applies to dual-storage devices, i.e., devices with a user-writable internal flash storage AND a removable SD card.

From External Storage Technical Information:

“The WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission must only grant write access to the primary external storage on a device. Apps must not be allowed to write to secondary external storage devices, except in their package-specific directories as allowed by synthesized permissions.”

If your device has user-accessible internal flash storage, your SD Card is a “secondary external storage device”.

What this means is that with KitKat, applications will no longer be able create, modify, or remove files and folders on your external SD card. As a for-instance, you can no longer use a file manager to copy files from your computer to the SD card over a network. This ability, which has existed since the beginning of Android, has been taken away."

I just thought I'd pass this along to fellow users thinking of upgrading, who may have configured their "download" folder targets to be on their removable MicroSD - you'll be in for a shock.

sawdoubters

do factory reset you will lose all your info and apps

Banjo String

sawdoubters wrote: »

do factory reset you will lose all your info and apps

But he'll remain on 4.4 though.

He needs to download an earlier version of Android from Sammobile.com and flash it via Odin.

Zirconia

Banjo String wrote: »

But he'll remain on 4.4 though.

He needs to download an earlier version of Android from Sammobile.com and flash it via Odin.

Exactly, I'm downloading the previous OS image right now...

iwo

Very nice.. I was wondering WTF!? i was going mad over this until I started googling. Well done google/samsung - step by step getting closer to apple. I kind of understand why they arw doing it from their perspective but this is crewing us - customers. Sim card restrictions, sd card restrictions, knox, and more other cr@p. Just wonderful (^_-)

timetogo

Zirconia wrote: »

However, I did notice it did "broke" a lot of applications I had configured to write their downloads directly to my MicroSD card (the extSdCard device in android), when they tried to save files they failed. I tried to change permissions and download updates, initially blaming the applications themselves, but it turns out they are not to blame at all!

Just about this point. I've installed KitKat on my S4. I've two apps that have no problems downloading to the SD Card. I've set EStrongs File Manager as my default download app. I use BeyondPod for podcasts. I just checked and both of those are happily saving the files to the extSDcard.

The ROM I put on is a Google Edition ROM rather than a Samsung Edition so maybe Samsung are doing something to restrict the SD Card. I read the article and can see its a Google spec. I've no idea why it's working OK on my phone.

Zirconia

There are apps that can write to the external SD card, apparently by using non standard file operations (frowned upon by Google, and therefore not approved), though some say the write operation in these cases are extremely slow, and most apps continue using the standard file operations which will prevent write access.

After beginning the process of downloading the 4.3 OS image, I discovered it won't work - the bootloader was changed in the upgrade image for 4.4 for the Note 3, and it's irreversible (for the moment at least), so trying to put the old image on would probably brick it.

However, I have discovered another way around it, involving modifying (with some difficulty) the "platform.xml" file in "/system/etc/permissions" - you can Google it (or see link below) and try it at your own risk if you have the necessary skills. It has worked perfectly for me.

 [Fix][N9005][ExtSdCard Write Issue][Kitkat 4.4.2][NA6] - Rooted

timetogo

Here's an interesting article about it on Android Police.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/17/external-blues-google-has-brought-big-changes-to-sd-cards-in-kitkat-and-even-samsung-may-be-implementing-them/

I can see why Google do it (can't secure the folder, USB card can be removed, apps could overwrite other apps data). Other not so nice reasons probably include forcing you to store your files on the cloud, preferably Googles.

They could get over all of this by having a checkbox in settings to say "Allow apps to write / delete from ext SD card". That way users who didn't know better could leave it alone. Other users could just check the box and save their camera files, music etc. on the ext SD card as normal.

iwo

Panic is over...Samsung is rolling out update in relation to 3rd party covers and SD cards...Poland is receiving update right now.