AT&T Samsung Infuse 4G allows installation of non-Market apps

Some folks who managed to get their hands on Samsung’s upcoming 4G Android phone for AT&T, the Infuse 4G, before everyone has some good news to report. While playing around with the Application settings of the phone, they’ve discovered that the phone has the ability to enable the installation of apps from unknown sources – apps not download from the Android Market.

This is great news for users looking forward to purchase the phone because this restriction that is present on previous AT&T phones didn’t let users install apps if they weren’t available on the market. And the only way to bypass this restriction was to root the phone, which is a task too daunting for most smartphone users out there.

Seeing how the Android Market distributes malicious apps anyway, disabling the option wasn’t going to make the Android experience any safer for AT&T users. No word on when this feature will roll out to all existing phones (if at all), but when it does, unrooted users will finally get to install all the apps they previously couldn’t due to the restriction. And that includes the Amazon App Store for Android.

George Wong
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Android, Apps, AT&T, Samsung