Galaxy S3 Android 4.4.2 KitKat Update Rolls Out for AT&T
The Samsung Galaxy S3 Android 4.4.2 KitKat is now available to customers on AT&T.
It includes several Samsung specific changes that affect Touchwiz's look and feel. There is also pre-loaded Beats Music with three months of free service that come with it.
The update is scheduled to roll out in stages so not all Galaxy S3 users on the carrier will get it at once. Users can check for it in the Settings menu and can view the changelog here.
In other Galaxy news, a rooting method released by hacker George Hotz unlocks various smartphones including the unrooted Galaxy S5 on Verizon and more.
Other smartphones that can be rooted using this method include the AT&T Galaxy S5, AT&T Galaxy S4 Active, Google Nexus 5, AT&T Galaxy Note 3 and Sprint Galaxy Note 3, according to Hotz who is now known as geohot. The method is known as Towelroot and it bypasses the system's protections to gain root access.
Geohot said that Towelroot should work with most handsets that have an unpatched kernel, or kernel versions that are older than June 3, 2014. Commenters on various online forums have made claims that say it works with Asus, Oppo and Sony devices.
Towelroot is a one-click rooting tool and it is packaged as an APK. It can be downloaded off Towelroot.com.
Geohot might have won a prize for it as the first developer to find a way to root the Galaxy S5 on Verizon and AT&T had a chance of winning $18,000.
The XDA-developer's community was offering this money to the first person that figured out how to unlock both of these models. They also released a list of requirements that had to be met in order to attain the money that included showing the process working in screenshots and allowing someone else to test and confirm in works.