Why do APKs never seem to be available directly from the developers, but only through third-parties? I'm playing with my first Android device.

First thing I discovered is that Google Play isn't installed. If I search for an APK for Google Play Store, the results are from third parties such as apkmirror.com rather than from Google itself.

This seems to be the norm. When I discovered how many permissions Google Play wants for itself, I declined and experimented with looking for APK files individually.

Same story, APKs seem to be available through myriad third-party websites, none of which I trust not to repackage an apk with malicious code.

This device is just for experimentation, so I've been installing things anyway just to see what happens. I'm amazed that there seems to be no indication whatsoever that app developers are publishing cryptographic signatures or SHA hashes or offering any sort of authoritative statement that an apk is authentic.

Generally speaking, if I google apk site:foo.com I get no results, or only a link to get the app through a store.

Why don't developers release the raw APK files or any means to verify the APKs available through third-parties?

If you'd install apps from the developers website directly, you had to trust each of the developers personally that their apps do not contain any malware etc. That's why there are "app markets" (see our alternative-markets tag-wiki for details). Choosing wisely, the user then just needs to trust that market to do the necessary checks. Most of them have such checks in place:

Google Play Store has e.g. its "bouncer"
F-Droid compiles the apps from the resp. sources, which it checks beforehand
Aptoide uses several sources to validate packages (e.g. VirusTotal, comparing signatures, and more).

Besides (and the last item implicitly mentions this), developers provide means to check the validity of their .apk files: they sign them with their certificates. Only the dev has the "private key", and validity can be checked using the "public key" – or simply the key's finger-print. Which is what e.g. Aptoide includes in its "malware check": It compares if the finger-print matches with what .apk files of the same dev from other sources (mainly Google Play Store) shows.

As your device doesn't ship with Playstore (and I fully agree its permission hunger is excessive), I would recommend you using F-Droid. Their repository isn't nearly as big as Googles, but the security measures are good. And you can use additional repositories with their app to cover a larger pool. I definitely and strongly discourage using .apk files you found "somewhere in the wild" unless you know exactly what you do (i.e. either you can trust the source, or know how to check the .apk for yourself to establish trust).


Nexus 5 weird charging behaviour I've had my Nexus 5 for about a year and a half now, but lately it's showing weird charging behaviour (check battery history graph):

I leave it charging every night and it's supposed to reach 100%, now it doesn't even go beyond 48%. What's going on and how can I fix it?

In the end I just decided to let the battery drop down to about 3%, restart the phone and then charge. Now it's fine again!


How to do I change all my default save directory to one folder? Is there an app or settings (asus zenfone zoom) to change all my default save directory to one folder. This folder will be the "inbox" of my phone.

The short answer: No.

The long answer: Yes, but you must root your device, and it depend of wich version of Android is installed on your phone, that cancel your warranty.
If your device is rooted or if you accept to root it, you can install Xposed (that make fail your SafetyNet), and install this module: https://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/mod-downloads2sd-t2656338.

This possibility may ultimately prove non-functional if you are using a recent version of Android.

Apart from this possibility, there are no other options.
If you find another one, don't hesitate to share it here.


Remote Battery management service while SureFox Kiosk is running I am running PAW Server and SureFox (a kiosk browser) to run some webpages. However, I am experiencing significant battery drainage, and I would like to track battery usage by services as the programs are running. Most importantly, I would like have remote management on the devices.

I am using Nexus 7 on Android 4.4.2. WiFi on both ends are guaranteed. I can't do anything on the device since I need to exit surefox to check services and battery usage; I need a service that lets me see battery usage details (top 5 services that are sucking battery) when SureFox is running.

you might try the commercial apps and their monitoring. That would be Kioware and PROVISIO Sitekiosk

Would be easier maybe if Google had something like Samsung KNOX?
https://www.samsungknox.com/en


How do I determine which app is syncing? I frequently see the syncing icon in my notification bar, but every once in a while it gets stuck there, perpetually syncing something.  I have tons of apps that do background syncs.  How can I see which app is performing a sync at any given time?

Edit:

The duplicate question linked below suggested OS Monitor however I have tried that app and it doesn't tell me which app is syncing.  Under the Connections Tab it lists System, Android System, Lookout and OSMonitor.  I tested it by syncing a number of apps (google apps like Reader and non-google apps like Evernote and Got To Do and it didn't show them.  I thought it might be an issue with those connections completing in the time it took me to switch back to OS Monitor but then I tried streaming some audio and it didn't seem to recognize that connection even though it was actively streaming.

On a more general note, I have found that "Monitor" apps are not very effective because they usually only monitor the present time which is indicitive of how your phone is running with the Monitor app open, not how it was acting prior to.  For example, when trying to identify performance bottlenecks, when I open the monitor app it identifies itself as the highest resource hog.

  Possible Duplicate:
  How can I know which apps are currently connecting to the Internet?

When you go in to accounts and sync. It is going to show which account is currently syncing. Then from there, you can go in to the account and you will see what type of sync is happening.

It will show, for example, that "Reader" is syncing. So Google Reader is the App that is syncing. Or it will Show "Gmail" is syncing.

Those would be the apps that are syncing. I don't think just any app can trigger a sync for some other app. Like Reader shouldn't be able to trigger a sync for Picasa Images. But really, even if they can trigger other apps to sync, it is still the original app that is performing the sync. Only the twitter app is going to sync "twitter data and contacts", and only the Gmail app is going to sync your Gmail.


What made the first Command fail? I decided to clear my data usage stats on my Android in Settings > Data Usage from the terminal emulator app, but the first command came back with the error "No such file or directory".

The first command: rm /data/system/netstats/*

The same command that worked: rm /data/system/netstats/*

Here's a screenshot of what happened.

I'm running the supernexus custom ROM on android 4.4.2 on my Samsung Galaxy S3-19300

I was sure of the directory to clear of the stats but had to try a different directory in the latter commands, and the same command worked fine in the last line, what could've caused this?

Hard to tell for sure without "direct access", but here are the most likely answers:

there are no files in that directory, so nothing to remove
you cannot use rm to remove directories (that's what rmdir is for)
that will most likely fail as well, since /system is usually mounted read-only ;)
the original command succeeded at last: most likely some file was created there in the meantime.


Malware on LG G3 redirecting all browsers More or less two or three weeks ago strange pop ups came up on my PC. Antivirus detected ga.js as virus. I thought it was a false positive. Then I've found that the thing somehow jumped on my phone. Every time I surf the internet, unwanted sites pop up. The thing is equally behaving on all browsers: native g3 browser, Mozilla and Chrome. I've tried almost everything:

Kaspersky free, McAfee security, and Malwarebytes
Delete Chrome cookies, block cookies, delete site data, delete cached data
Reset my router and clear the DNS cache.

Nothing. The thing goes undetected, same thing on the PC. Even surfing without the router my phone redirects every time I browse. I'm about to hard reset my phone but this evidently is a malware.

So how is it possible that it goes unnoticed?

My phone is not rooted and the sites I'm being redirected to are those reported here, amongst others. Anyway, I still don't see a solution to this problem.

Ok, it seems I've found a solution.

Disconnect internet;
Go to Settings -> Applications. Clear every data (cache, history, modules, cookies) from Settings -> Applications -> Browser (Mozilla, stock browsers, Chrome)
Open each browser and access the settings (in the top right) and delete upgrades, cache, modules, autocompletes, etc
Close all applications
Restart your phone, reactivate data connection and you should be clean.

I'm baffled on how updated antiviruses and anti-malwares can't detect such things.


How can I merge Spotify offline music with my local music files on my phone? I have tracks saved offline in Spotify. I also have individual MP3 audio tracks that I have manually added to my music folder in my phone (Galaxy S6). However, if I want to shuffle everything then I have to jump between Music app and Spotify app manually. Which is a pain, and a bit dangerous if I'm driving.

What I'd like to do is be able to 'merge' all these tracks together. Whether this is a single playlist of everything, or a way of moving my local music into Spotify app, something like that.

One option i had was to  just re-download the local tracks in Spotify itself, but not all the music I have is found there.

How can I merge all my music from my device into one usable playlist?

It is not possible to merge them to one playlist. However you can sync local files to one playlist. To do that follow the steps below:

Note: This will require that spotify is installed on one of your computers and that your Android device is on the same WI-FI network as your computer.

Steps

On your pc open Spotify, and go to Edit -> Preferences.

In preferences, look for Local Files and check the sources you want to show the local music from. You can directly add sources like Windows Media Player and iTunes library by simply checking the respective options. Or you can also add a folder with some music when you click on Add Source....

All the files you import to Spotify can be viewed and played from Local Files section under Collection in the sidebar. If you have to musch music in your local repository, creating playlists from local files would be a great idea for you.

Make sure your Android phone is connected to the same WI-FI network and is signed in with the same Spotify account as your PC. (Off-topic: for an IPod connect it with a USB cable)

If not already done so: Download Spotify for Android: Spotify Music for Android

Once the desktop application identifies the connected device, it will show you a pop-up asking whether you would like to sync the device with Spotify. Click on the button to open the sync window.

Now the app on your phone will sync all the music playlist you created on your computer to your mobile device.

Note: It may take some time till it is finished syncing the music to your device.

Conclusion
If you followed the steps above correctly, then you now should be able to listen to local files stored on your pc.
I hope this will answer your question. For any questions, just leave a comment below.


what is the most comfortable way to ssh and vim/latex/c++ on android? I'm debating if i should get droid x. i'd like to use it for work, meaning latex and code in c++. I use vim.

i know this is possible with connectbot. but possible doesn't mean i can substitute a laptop in a coffee shop. are there people that use bluetooth keyboard with android device and are happy like this one (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/08/20/travel-with-no-baggage/)? I don't mind the small screen.

just curious about your experience. and i think some keyboards have esc key, which is good for vim.

Update

My current set-up:

note 3 running juiceSSH and vnc (i couldn't get nx to work), perixx 805L, ms wedge mouse, and quikpod tripod to hold the note 3 at the eye level.

So, I have a Nexus One.

Firstly: do not try to use the soft keyboard for any form of coding. It's workable, to an extent, with connectbot's help, for system administration, but coding is flat out. If you insist on trying, look at Full Keyboard.

Secondly: the screen size is an issue, at least for me. I haven't found a font size that is both readable for long sessions and displays enough code on the screen.

Coding and longform text are still definitely a Computer thing.


Is there Any Way to Make Android Stay on the Same Page on the Application Drawer after Pressing the Home Button? Often, I press the home button to end an unresponsive app, with intentions of starting the app back up. However, when I open back up the application drawer, it is always on the first page, and not the page I was previously on, which wastes time. Is there any setting that can change this so that the last page visited will be reopened? (LG Nexus 5, Running Android 4.4.4) I apologise for the terrible question, I know it's probably just the way things are, but it can get irritating. Perhaps, if it is not possible to change this, I will have to get into the habit of searching for apps using "Google Now" on my home screen, but, in the meantime, I shall wait and see. Thank you for any contribution.

EDIT: I am new to this, so I may have tagged something irrelevant or placed my question in the wrong place etc.

The app drawer is a part of the launcher app, so you can replace it simply by switching to a different launcher. Just install a new launcher of your choice that works the way you like.


How to change the name shown in my PC when I connect my phone in MTP mode? When I connect my phone ( actually a 7' inch tablet ) to my PC and set the mode to be MTP, in my PC it shows GEM703L from where I can access Internal Storage and SD card, but the problem is that my phone is actually GEM701L and as I want to sell my phone it sounds awkward. Does the problem have anything to do with cust? How can I fix it?

P.S : I know that I can rename the name in Windows Explorer but that doesn't change the name permanently and the name changes as I connect the phone to some other PC.

Edit the file /system/build.prop

Change the ro.product.model or ro.product.device or any other property that has your device name and reboot..

Note:
I think you need to uninstall your device drivers from your computer after doing that..

Ofcourse, this requires root access (yeah, no official OTAs), and also make sure to backup your build.prop


GPS only works with WiFi On my Blackview Crown with Android 4.4.2 my position is only ever available when I am logged in to a WiFi network. Using google maps outside works in general, but unless there is a working WiFi connection it just stays where it last had one or does not seem to find my position at all.

I've tried all three possible GPS settings (phone only, with mobile Internet, and with WiFi and mobile Internet) and they don't make a difference when outside. Connected to a network only the one using WiFi works, and does so instantly. It is not enough to have it turned on, I actually have to be connected.

The phone is a bit less than a year old and used mostly as an MP3 player, for playing free games, and, well, as a phone. I don't know a lot about Android and GPS in general and I'm running out of ideas.

Basic GPS can take 12.5 minutes to get a first fix from a cold start. Yes, this is slow, which is why most systems are built with other features to speed up the time to first fix.

With a data connection, your device will try to use assisted GPS to get a fix faster. Your device uses local infrastructure to learn which satellites are in view for the current location and corrections. The time to first fix can be reduced to seconds.
With WiFi, normally the first location fix is based on WiFi location; your device queries a large global database for the MAC addresses of WiFi infrastructure and gets back a answer quickly. WiFi location accuracy is worse than GPS, but it is much faster. Once you have this WiFi position fix, it can be faster to get a GPS fix.


What's "creation mode" in the Galaxy S's offical messaging application? If you open the official messaging App, go to menu then settings, there is a setting "creation mode" which has the following options (in that order):

restricted
warning
free

What does this change? Is this documented somewhere?

From a Google search for "mms creation mode" I found this (among others) which says:

  • MMS creation mode — Select Restricted to have your device prevent
  you from including content in multimedia messages that may not be
  supported by the network or the receiving device. To receive warnings
  about including such content, select Guided. To create a multimedia
  message with no restrictions on attachment type, select Free. If you
  select Restricted, creating multimedia presentations is not possible.


How can I access my Google Reader entries offline? I am without a mobile internet plan on my smartphone, hence I am looking for a way to, whenever I'm on wifi, download my Google Reader entries for me to read offline on the road.

I don't mind installing a third-party app, even if it costs a few bucks.

I would start with gReader, which is a very nice unofficial Google Reader app. It supports offline syncing (and can default to only sync on wifi), and multiple other options to customize it (update intervals, number of items to sync, full page/content only/content with images).

If you like it, there is a paid version gReader Pro which removes advertisements and has some additional features.


Do I need to "unroot" my Evo 3D to get the ICS update? Android 4.0 just came out for my phone today (a Sprint-version HTC Evo 3D). I didn't get the update yet, but I guess Sprint is doing it in phases. Anyway, I'm wondering whether I need to unroot my phone before installing the update. I used HTC's method to root it.

Another thing I should mention is that I currently do not have the ability to install "Firmware updates" from the "System Updates" settings menu. There is a pending update now (not the ICS update), but when I try to install it, the phone restarts, then shows an error (what seems to be a green robot with a triangular warning sign above).

Does this mean I need to unroot before installing any firmware updates? If so, how can I unroot it, when it still has HTC's bootloader?

I am aware that there are ICS ROMs I can download and install, but these all have problems, and I'd rather stick with the update from HTC. What do you guys think I can do?

ROM Updates from vendors/manufacturers/carriers usually evaluate checksums of at least the system partition -- which fails in case of applied modifications, such as required by rooting (rooting needs to place at least the superuser apk on the system partition, and other root-apps may then add to it). I'm not sure how this is handĺed by HTC for devices "unlocked" via their "service" -- but in all cases I experienced, OTA-Updates failed due to the CRC check.

"Un-rooting" will probably not help much: the system partition remains "tainted". The only thing I know which should definitely help is flashing the original ROM locally.

As for me, I ended up using CyanogenMod on my devices, which runs quite smoothly (HTC Buzz as well as Motorola Droid 2). If you either have to flash (the original stock ROM), you might want to give CM a try. A good backup with Titanium Backup should take care for your data and make migration easier.


Is it possible to hack android phone by contacting the target over Gmail or Skype, if the target does not downloads suspicious files sent over? In other words, how safe is having Gmail or Skype conversations with complete strangers on android? Suppose the target is wise enough to not open any suspicious files sent to him. How else could his phone be hacked?

I have heard that it is possible to know the ip address of the sender on Skype. But a cyber criminal knowing your ip address is the same as a burglar knowing your address. The information is necessary but not immediately sufficient.

Also, which, between Skype and Gmail is safer for the user in these cases? I guess Gmail is safer, but don't know why and by what amount. Also, how exactly does the danger increas for users using old version of the android- like 5.1 or 4.4.2, let's say? I guess the older the version, more the risks.

Sorry for sounding paranoid, but one is afraid of things one does not understands, they say. Thanks for helping...

Android Apps are sandboxed. If someone can "hack" skype, they may be able to get data from the skype app, possibly including contact list, login credentials and chatlogs. Further they may get everything, what the skype app can access, which probably includes the phone's address book as well.

If your phone has a remotely accessible flaw, which would be a reason for the fear that somebody could get your ip address, you have bigger problems than your skype contacts and should upgrade your android ASAP. Further, modern skype isn't peer to peer anymore but a skype server is used. Finally your phone will be most the time firewalled in your LAN or in cellular networks because of CGNAT. Which may be false security, i.e. if somebody is in the same WLAN like you.

I am not aware of any remote security flaws in android, but there are many local ones in older android versions, including ones triggered by special image files (which could be sent via skype) and similiar attack vectors.


how to solve screen not functioning properly how to solve screen not functioning properly
my phone is Tecno L8, and some parts of the screen are not responding to touch.
and its also popping up things not pressed.
how do i solve this error

Your digitizer is likely broken. You can either send it back to the original manufacturer for repair or find a third party source that can do it for you.

You may just want to consider replacing the phone.


Netffos X9 always starts each app / activity as new I have TP-Link's Netffos X9 and from the very beginning I noticed a weird thing. Each application or activity is always started as brand new. Always, no matter, if I saw or was using given app just like 5 minutes ago, I see loader screen and a home / startup screen, instead of the one, which I left off.

I've been using around a dozen different mobile devices with Android 8.1 and hundreds other with other (older) versions of Android and this is the first time I see such a weird situation.

I have enabled Developers Options and tripple-checked that option Don't keep activities / Destroy every activity as soon as the user leaves it is disabled. I have also checked that a few applications in topic are listed among Developers options > Inactive apps as active. And yet, each time I start it up, they seems to be starting up as freshly new, showing welcome / home / startup screen.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on and how to prevent such behavior?

Netffos X9 (and probably all other TP-LINK's phones) comes with a handy battery optimization functionality which actually kills all the applications that are in background 3 minutes after phone's screen turns off.

One need to go to: ⚙ > Battery > Off-screen cleanup and disable this feature for all applications that should stay in background (and eventually be turned off by system default process, i.e. after few hours).

All applications in question were listed and enabled on the above mentioned list. Turning off this feature for all those applications resolved the issue.


Grabbing a part of the screen as an image I am reading a pdf file and I need to select a specific area in the file and paste it into my note in Papyrus. How to grab a specific area in a pdf file? Pdf reader iannotate does not allow me to do that. Is there a customizable screenshot command or some other app? This is w.r.t. Samsung Note 10.1.

Check out Screenshot Ultimate.

What I would do is enable the Folder Listener trigger, and make sure the settings points to the correct screenshot folder. After this is enabled, I'd take a screenshot normally. Then, the app will ask me what to do with it. I'd click Edit, and Crop it.


What is 10263 process Here is the screen shot

I've checked the battery usage apps so that to save my battery level , I've seen a strange process 10263. I want to know what's is use

As I have answered here, it's the UID of a removed app. You can safely ignore it as it will disappear sooner or later.


Can't pair my phone with my Windows 8 computer on a Cyanogenmod 13 install without Gapps Long story short, I managed to pair once, but I couldn't send files. I un-paired and can't re-pair to it.

The phone keeps saying "Failed to communicate, incorrect pin or passkey" and my computer says "Adding this device failed, please remove the device and try again" during the pairing process.

I have installed Cyanogenmod 13 over the Android 4.0.1 kernel it had before, but I haven't installed gapps on it yet. I've seen some other issues here and there, but they haven't really impacted much, but I'm worried it might have something to do with it.

Edit: I should mention that I want to send files both ways, forgot to in the original question.

I assume you are sending files from your android device to your PC.

Just download the Xender app from google play store and open that app.

I will provide you 2 solutions.

Both PC and android device should be on same wifi network. In PC,
open a browser and type web.xender.com. You can pair the device.

In your android device, create a hotspot and connect the PC with it.
Just proceed with respect to the instruction given by the xender app.

I had similar problem before and I have documented the same.

https://tjosepraveenblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/transfer-files-from-my-phone-to-pc-without-using-a-usb-cable-and-vice-versa/


Rebooting device automatically MY android samsung j5(j500h) is automatically rebooting. kindly let me know any suitable answer that will keep safe my Data

If you are stock, rooted. Then most likely it is your battery. Take your battery out, plug into charging port with battery. Boot phone and see if it processes. The battery has to be removed even if plugged in to test.

The rule of thumb on Lithium ion batteries is 500 charges then done.

When the battery loses its ability to hold the charge, in a lack of better words, it tells the charging to start and stop. Since the device does not maintain any secondary charge backup it tricks the device telling it that the battery has been pulled. Kinda like a short in a wire. The battery "should" never fully discharge on its own. Lithium batteries do not store memory, the memory of being full or whatever level it has is programmed into your device. This can be recalibrated, but in my experience, it has never made that big of a difference. But there are apps for that for free to try. The reading of your battery % is not fact/true it's an estimated. so if the battery is bad the devices does not know that.


replaced screen now having issues :( galaxy s4 i9505 Good afternoon guys and gals please bear with me as i'm new to this forum anywho i've recently replaced my screen on my galaxy s4 after attempting to replace just the shattered glass and failed! went to go power on the phone for the first time with the new screen and everything was great............................................. .................... for about 5 minutes the screen has freaked out big time on the odd occasion will display properly most of the time its just freaking out. Ive managed to do a factory reset using the android device manager and that seemed to help it out for 10 minutes until it returned to freaking out. Could this be software related? As it booted up fine before the freaking out and is still allowing me to use the touch screen as i can hear the phone unlock. Or should i be contacting the person i got the screen from asking for my money back? My phone was completely fine running wise until i had to change over the screen. i hope you guys canhelp me out as im stuck in a rut as to what to do

galaxy s4 i9505 international variant running stock touchwiz

Your display issue is almost certainly a bad connection on one of the ribbon cables that connect the display to the circuit board.  One of the two cables you had to disconnect didn't get fully seated in the connector, leaving some traces intermittent.  Assuming the connector wasn't damaged when you disconnected the old screen, you may be able to restore correct operation by disassembling to the point where you disconnected the screen and digitizer cables, then carefully following instructions to reconnect those ribbons, followed by completing the reassembly.

You should also be able to install the battery and power up the phone to check things before fully reassembling, which will save time if you have to take several tries to get a good connection.


More than 50 android devices on same username/password I have between 50-100 Android devices.  They are being used as a sensor network. Another 50 are coming online soon.  The devices need to download an app from the play store.  So I need to login with a google username/password.  For now, I have been using the same username/password on all the devices.  However, now google is asking me to resign in to the devices after a week or so.  This didn't happen before.  I think the number of devices on the same account is tripping some alarm.

Does anyone have any recomendations for how to set up 50+ devices so that they are all able to download and receive updates from the app store?

Google Play won't let you do this. You can only have a few devices attached to each account at a time. This is to stop people abusing the facility of using paid content from any device on their account.

If the app is an open-source one, or it's under your control, you should distribute it to all your devices through a different mechanism (e.g. a custom app list on F-droid). Otherwise, you should contact the developer of the app and ask to make a volume licensing deal. Unless they're already dealing with enterprise customers, they won't be prepared for this situation, but I think most app developers will be willing to help you out for a reasonable bulk price.


GMail - notify until read? I'm a new Android user with a Motorola X2 running Android 2.3.4 and the GMail app version 2.3.5.2.

I have a set of labels set up and custom notifications enabled for those that I need to have distinguished. I need a constant alert until the message is marked as read.

I have been looking at the GMail Label Notifier app but it doesn't appear to have the necessary option. Any suggestions?

The Google's own Gmail app doesn't have this functionality built-in.

Unfortunately with the latest version of the app (v2.3.5.2 as of this writing,) Google have disabled access to Gmail's data by other 3rd-party apps and widgets.  This was most likely done for security purposes.  The side-effect is that none of the 3rd-party apps on the Market that need access to your Gmail accounts (notifiers, widgets, etc.) stopped working.

Your best bet is to find an alternate e-mail app that has such a feature.  I've used K-9 Mail, but I don't remember any settings that would give you non-stop alerts. You could try submitting a feature request on K-9's support site.


Can I find out what exactly is "android system" traffic? I'm using Android 4.4.4 CyanogenMOD 12. My traffic is dominated by "android-system" - about half of my data usage is caused by "it" and I have no idea why it transfers data. backup (backup & restore) is turned off. I dont use any Google Service besides the play store (and very seldomly youtube).
All the "android system"-traffic is background-trafic.

Is there any chance (tool/app/whatever) to find out what exactly the cause for the "android system" traffic is?

PS:
- I use AFWall+ and in 3G even most of the system apps are blocked.
- I do not have the "Photos" app

It's possible. I used ARM version of tcpdump command. You must copy that command by hand in /system/xbin/. In shell you ran:

tcpdump -i rmnet0 -w /sdcard2/tcpdump.pcap

After some time kill that tcpdump command and copy file tcpdump.pcap to PC. Then use Wireshark to load tcpdump.pcap file to investigate network traffic.


Is there a way to change toggles? Is there a way to change the toggles in Lollipop? I'd like to remove and add some.

You can't edit the toggles in the stock ROM, but I've heard Power Toggles works pretty well. I'm pretty sure that CM allows you to edit the toggles if you are rooted.


Samsung GT-I5510 custom recovery I was looking around for installing a custom recovery and then a custom firmware on my old phone, but I couldn't any links that were still available and not adware ridden, can anyone give me some advice on where to search?

Here is custom cwm touch recovery for your Samsung GT-I5510 phone and Here is list of custom firmware for your phone

Please refer all the instruction/steps in provided link carefully before flashing anything


Using Google Voice with Android phone and a SIP appliance (Obi) I just purchased a Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ with Jellybean(4.1), and have an Unlimited account with Straight Talk. I would like to use Google Voice to handle voicemail for the phone.

Currently, I am using my Google Voice account as a SIP provider for my Obi100 internet phone appliance, but I am using the phone's aswering machine rather than GV to handle missed calls, and I have the Google Voice account set up to act as the phone's voicemail (activated through AT&T, which is Straight Talk's SIM provider.)

The problem is, missed calls to the android phone number, not the GV number, triggers the answering machine at home - calls ring to both the Nexus and the Obi100 device! I have "Go straight to voicemail" checked off under advanced options for missed calls, rather than "ring my other phones first."

Do I need to port the mobile phone number (which I've had for ~10 years) to GV, request a new number from Straight Talk, and use the new Straight Talk number as the "physical phone" for both accounts? Am I missing something in the phone or the GV configuration to make this work as-is?

If you are using your Google Voice for another purpose, such as a SIP service for an ObiHai appliance or as a VOIP system on your PC, you will encounter problems with Voicemail not picking up. You will need to disable Google Voicemail on your phone, create a new Google Voice account, with a new number, and add your Android phone to that account. Then select "use Google voicemail" and follow the instructions for your provider.

(If you use Straight Talk, select either T-Mobile or AT&T as your provider, depending on the SIM you purchased from Straight Talk.)

The number on the new Google Voice account does not need to be used for anything other than voicemail - calls to your cell phone will be forwarded to the GV number after 4 rings, and since there is no VOIP device listening at that number on the new account, voicemail will pick up.

You will need to log into the new account in the Google Voice app, and go through the setup wizard again.


Bilingual language settings? I would like my phone to recognize English and French words.

Also I'd like the swype typing to work this way.

What is the simplest way to accomplish this?

I have a moto G, android 5.1

It sounds like you're trying to change the keyboard settings. Not all keyboard apps can handle multiple languages. On some, you have to install the language(s) you want from the keyboard's settings menu, and then switch the language through the menu (the one you already mentioned) or through a swipe gesture on the keyboard (such as swiping the space bar left or right).

Some keyboard apps can work out what language you're typing in on-the-fly, without you having to say explicitly. SwiftKey is an example of a keyboard that works this way: just enable all the languages you want through its settings, and it will detect what language you're typing as soon as you've written a couple of words.


What's the difference between "Contacts" and "People details?" In Settings -> Accounts -> Google, when I tap on my Google account, I see a "Sync settings" page with a list of different Google services that can be synced (App Data, Calendar, Drive, Gmail, Google Play Books, etc.).

This list includes both "Contacts" and "People details."  What is meant by "People details" and how does this differ from "Contacts?"

Are there any negative outcomes I would expect from disabling sync of "People details" (i.e. what would break?)

Contacts under Accounts, helps in syncing Google-Contacts (Phone contacts saved )
More on Contacts sync adapter here

People details deals with information regarding Google play games and Google+ (Game buddies and people in your circles on Google+)
More on People sync adapter here


Mobile phone internet USB tethering very SLOW I have galaxy s6 edge+
My download speeds on my phone is 33+mb/s with my mobile carrier.
I connect the phone to my PC and use the internet from the phone with USB tethering enabled.

The download speed is now 30kb/s on my computer but still 33mb/s on my phone.

Why has the speed been very limited via USB tethering, and how can I fix this issue?

I have tried changing/updating the USB tehter driver via Device manager to the Microsoft:

Remote NDIS based Internet Sharing Device

and

Remote NDIS Compatible Device

neither helped.

Mobile network carrier often have transparent gateways installed all mobile network traffic have to pass. Such gateways are able to "detect" (smart guessing) if traffic comes from the Smartphone or a tethered PC.

Depending on the data plan contract, tethering may be prohibited and in such a case the carrier can just forcefully slow down the tethered connection.

As only the tethered connections are slowed down you can end up in a situation where identical downloads get a totally different download speed.


Make phone calls using a computer through an Android phone, both connected by WiFi I have a computer and Android phone connected by WiFi. I want to use my computer to make calls through the phone. Is there any way to do this?

Remote Phone Call (Click Here to View App on Play Store) might help you with the GSM Calling via WIFI & BLUETOOTH.

Google VOICE & HANGOUT (Default app on android Phone)
for PC you need plugin for installing HANGOUT..


Can I run Ubuntu desktop x86 applications On Ubuntu For Android? This may be a fairly simple question, but I want to be sure.  My guess is that it can't be done.

Question 1: For example, I have an executable for Linux (no GUI , just cmd line , it just makes some computations) and it works well in my x86 desktop and I want to be able to run it in my Android tablet. The tablet is running Ubuntu for Android. Is it possible to run the executable in the Ubuntu environment on Android?

Question 2: I have a standard commercial Linux app and I want to install and run it on Ubuntu for Android. Is that possible?

If it's not possible, is there any workaroud to this?

No, you need ARM executables (or whatever the underlying architecture of your device may be).

The only way to get around it, apart from compiling from source or finding an ARM version of the package, would be some sort of virtualization.  I don't know of any virtualization tools built for ARM myself, but at least some versions have virtualization extensions so there is the possibility of hardware-accelerated VMs.


Change default application for handling headset controls I have a HTC Desire HD running stock 2.2

When using the HTC supplied headphones, the play/pause/nav controls only work with Meridian. I don't remember explicitly setting it up as such, although I may have missed it. I'd like to be able to use them with BeyondPod instead, as I'm about 10x more likely to be listening to a podcast than music.

Is there a way to change the default app for these buttons?

A bit more playing around led me to a (if not THE) solution.  I found an "enable headset buttons" check box in Meridian, which prompted me to dig further into BeyondPod, where a found a similar setting.

Everything works as I'd like now.

I've since gone back and checked a couple of things though, which are not quite as I expected.  I thought if you re-enabled the controls within one app, it might disable the other.  This isn't quite what happened. When I re-enabled Meridian, it responded to the controls, although BeyondPod still showed it as supposedly responding, which it didn't.  Once I'd disabled Meridian again, I had to go back into BeyondPod, disable and re-enable it's control in order to have it respond again.

My main gripe was that if I were listening a podcast, and bumped the headphone controls, the music would start playing over the top of my podcast audio.  While it may be a cute multi-tasking demo, it's not a particularly practical use of this feature, IMH(BC)O.


Android-adapted BusyBox binary for rooted phone I would like to place a place BusyBox on my rooted Android phone, and I would like to have a version that has "sh" as an alias for "ash" so that I can replace the standard /system/bin/sh with a symlink to busybox. Also, I'd be nice to have it always read in /system/etc/profile.

Of course, I could just compile BusyBox myself, but I feel there should be a "default" BusyBox binary for Android that does all that. Is there?

There is busybox installer program in Market. Also good rooting programs may install busybox themselves.

You can install it manually into /system/xdev/ (with necessary symbolic links)

Here is one I have:

/system/xbin # md5sum busybox
26d429e0541c42684225a880dc331053  busybox
/system/xbin # ./busybox
BusyBox v1.19.0 (2011-08-14 23:46:58 CDT) multi-call binary.
Copyright (C) 1998-2011 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko
and others. Licensed under GPLv2.
See source distribution for full notice.

Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
   or: busybox --list[-full]
   or: function [arguments]...

    BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
    utilities into a single executable.  Most people will create a
    link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
    will act like whatever it was invoked as.

Currently defined functions:
    [, [[, acpid, add-shell, addgroup, adduser, adjtimex, arp, arping, ash, awk, base64, basename, beep, blkid,
    blockdev, bootchartd, brctl, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cal, cat, catv, chat, chattr, chgrp, chmod, chown, chpasswd,
    chpst, chroot, chrt, chvt, cksum, clear, cmp, comm, cp, cpio, crond, crontab, cryptpw, cttyhack, cut, date, dc, dd,
    deallocvt, delgroup, deluser, depmod, devmem, df, dhcprelay, diff, dirname, dmesg, dnsd, dnsdomainname, dos2unix,
    du, dumpkmap, dumpleases, echo, ed, egrep, eject, env, envdir, envuidgid, ether-wake, expand, expr, fakeidentd,
    false, fbset, fbsplash, fdflush, fdformat, fdisk, fgconsole, fgrep, find, findfs, flock, fold, free, freeramdisk,
    fsck, fsck.minix, fsync, ftpd, ftpget, ftpput, fuser, getopt, getty, grep, groups, gunzip, gzip, halt, hd, hdparm,
    head, hexdump, hostid, hostname, httpd, hush, hwclock, id, ifconfig, ifdown, ifenslave, ifplugd, ifup, inetd, init,
    insmod, install, ionice, iostat, ip, ipaddr, ipcalc, ipcrm, ipcs, iplink, iproute, iprule, iptunnel, kbd_mode, kill,
    killall, killall5, klogd, last, less, linux32, linux64, linuxrc, ln, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, login, logname,
    logread, losetup, lpd, lpq, lpr, ls, lsattr, lsmod, lspci, lsusb, lzcat, lzma, lzop, lzopcat, makedevs, makemime,
    man, md5sum, mdev, mesg, microcom, mkdir, mkdosfs, mke2fs, mkfifo, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.minix, mkfs.vfat, mknod,
    mkpasswd, mkswap, mktemp, modinfo, modprobe, more, mount, mountpoint, mpstat, mt, mv, nameif, nbd-client, nc,
    netstat, nice, nmeter, nohup, nslookup, ntpd, od, openvt, passwd, patch, pgrep, pidof, ping, ping6, pipe_progress,
    pivot_root, pkill, pmap, popmaildir, poweroff, powertop, printenv, printf, ps, pscan, pstree, pwd, pwdx,
    raidautorun, rdate, rdev, readahead, readlink, readprofile, realpath, reboot, reformime, remove-shell, renice,
    reset, resize, rev, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rpm, rpm2cpio, rtcwake, run-parts, runlevel, runsv, runsvdir, rx,
    script, scriptreplay, sed, sendmail, seq, setarch, setconsole, setfont, setkeycodes, setlogcons, setserial, setsid,
    setuidgid, sh, sha1sum, sha256sum, sha512sum, showkey, slattach, sleep, smemcap, softlimit, sort, split,
    start-stop-daemon, stat, strings, stty, su, sulogin, sum, sv, svlogd, swapoff, swapon, switch_root, sync, sysctl,
    syslogd, tac, tail, tar, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd, test, tftp, tftpd, time, timeout, top, touch, tr, traceroute,
    traceroute6, true, tty, ttysize, tunctl, ubiattach, ubidetach, ubimkvol, ubirmvol, ubirsvol, ubiupdatevol, udhcpc,
    udhcpd, udpsvd, umount, uname, unexpand, uniq, unix2dos, unlzma, unlzop, unxz, unzip, uptime, users, usleep,
    uudecode, uuencode, vconfig, vi, vlock, volname, wall, watch, watchdog, wc, wget, which, who, whoami, whois, xargs,
    xz, xzcat, yes, zcat, zcip
/system/xbin # ls -l | grep busybox | wc -l
348


Rooting acer liquid mini with Ubuntu? can someone explain how to root android phone using ubuntu or any linux distro please? There are so many app like superoneclick, z4root etc..but android is based on linux right? so it should be easy to root with linux...but how? i'm using acer liquid mini 2.2.

Super One Click is written in C#. You need Mono to run it under Linux and other Non-Windows platforms. You can check your Ubuntu Package Manager for Mono or download it from here.

The XDA-Forum-Link also has a link to a detailed description on how to make it work under Linux.

I have never personally used it on Linux, but once the program is up and running, it should be very self explanatory.


Disable IPV6, what could happen Because of wifi connection issue, I have disabled completely IPV6 on my phone.

What bad could possibly happen ? Could some functionality/app be broken ?

If there is any way to solve your problem other than disabling IPv6 on your device, you should do that instead. For instance, if the problem is an old home router that doesn't support IPv6 properly, update its firmware (if that fixes the problem) or replace it.

It might not have much of a noticeable impact on you today, but these are the things you should expect:

Accessing web sites which have already deployed IPv6 (and are using both IPv4 and IPv6, which is known as "dual stack") will usually be slower, because IPv4 has to go through network address translation, which adds latency to the connection. The difference may be barely noticeable or extremely aggravating. When large scale NAT is in use (this is sometimes given the ridiculous name "carrier grade NAT") as it is on almost all mobile networks and many cable/*DSL ISPs, your IPv4 connections may also be unreliable. IPv6 connections do not need to pass through any sort of NAT, and do not suffer from the latency and reliability problems associated with NAT and large scale NAT. This issue will also affect Android apps which connect to IPv6 enabled web sites.

The sites (and apps) where you may have problems are small and large, starting with Google, Facebook, Wikipedia...
There is a very tiny (but growing) number of sites which use only IPv6, because there aren't any IPv4 addresses left for them to use. You won't be able to access these sites at all. You will only receive an error message.


Storage setting not loading. What do do? When looking on the storage option it just loads forever, and can't view the setting option. What do I do?

I have a Moto E.

What works for me is first going to Settings >  Apps & notifications, and clearing the cache for as many apps as I can.


How can I transfer the whole contact to iphone? I want to buy upcoming iphone 8. Now I am using samsung galaxy s4. So how can I can transfer my contacts to iphone 8 ?

Android phone backs up your contact data on Google/Gmail account, On similar hands an iPhone backs up data on it's iCloud server.

Transferring contacts from Android to iPhone this,can be done by transferring data from your Gmail account to iCloud server

Watch this Video for this method -

https://youtu.be/g_5ABwx-yW0

Other method is to use CopyTrans app for iPhone this is shown in the following website

https://googleweblight.com/i?u=https://www.copytrans.net/support/how-to-transfer-android-contacts-to-iphone/&grqid=3UysKgyv&hl=en-IN

Best Of Luck.!


How can I tell why my sleeping phone occasionally gets warm (and battery is draining abnormally)? My two Android phones are doing the same thing, Motorola Milestone and Samsung GS3. From time to time, it is sleeping in my pocket and it will start to get warm and the battery is then draining quite rapidly. I guess it must be caused by an application that is stuck running in the background so I am checking:

Task manager, but none of the applications seem to be using more CPU than any other, they are mostly all close to 0%.
In "Battery Statistics" only "Phone Idle" shows quite high battery usage so it does not tell me if there is a problematic application.

Currently I just reboot the phone to solve the problem but I would prefer if I was able to find the problematic application so I can close it.

I think this could maybe be because of several things:

You have a bad network connection. If you are on a location where there is a bad network connection, your phone will have to try very hard to keep this connection enabled. Or maybe that is also possible when you are walking in locations that have a bad connection to the outside world (in the basements of some buildings for example).
Sometimes if you are using Live backgrounds, that drains the battery too.
Another possibiliy is that your phone is syncing in the background. If you have for example enabled that calendars have to stay synced (and you have an enabled data connection), then your phone will on regular bases connect to the internet for some updates. I don't think (but I'm not sure though) that this would show up in your task manager.
It could also be that something like your GPS or Bluetooth is enabled, and becomes a problem (although I think this would show up in your task manager)

I would suggest you have a look at the services that are enabled, even when your phone is in standby mode (Bluetooth, GPS, syncing..)


Android 4.0.3 sluggish: nandd process hogging CPU I have an Allwinner A10 tablet clone. While working the tablet "freezes" regularly but not too frequently for a strech of time between 2 and 15 seconds. Described differently: the tablet is useable but the nice "fluid" workflow is abruptly interrupted once in a while...

Situations:

e.g. when opening an additional tab in firefox when already having a few open,
when working with the tablet while downloading a file, these freezes are more frequent
etc

Using the process overlay option from developer settings I realised that during this time the "nandd" process is consuming CPU almost exclusively. It does not appear to max out the CPU but during this time none of the other processes consume more than minute amounts of CPU time.

Can somebody tell me:

whether this is "normal" behaviour
whether an update to CyanogenMod 10 is likely to help
where issue is likely to lie: with slow nand hardware or poor nand driver implementation.

Many thanks.

I have this issue too on an archos arnova 10cg3 tablet.

It looks like the system is reading/writing to the nand flash (your internal storage on which the system + the apps are stored) and that fails for some reason. Try to do a factory reset and if that doesn't fix the problem, send the tablet back for RMA.

The nand chip could have failed or the system is not properly configured to read from it.


Completely hiding a whatsapp group so it never appears I have a whatsapp group which I have muted and disabled notifications for, but I have no way to completely hide it. When I archive it it appears when someone sends a message.

Whatsapp does not have such privacy mechanism as of yet, but if you use Hike you will get what you want.


Incoming call doesn't stop the music in Nexus 5X Before this time I've been using Samsung Android-phone with Android 4.4. There was the next feature: when I listen to the music in headphones and somebody calls me then music stops and I start to hear incoming call in my headphones.

Now I moved to Nexus 5X and Android 7 and things were changed. Now when there is incoming call music doesn't stop while phone is vibrating, but I can't feel when I'm walking on the street, so I miss a call.

I've tried to find a solution in settings but without any result. I thought that the problem can be solved by turning off silent mode but it didn't help too.

Happened to me too, but only when Ring Volume is zero (When you put it in vibrate)

I searched for solutions but dint find any, so I have a workaround for this.

Never set your Ring volume to zero, keep it at minimum not zero. Now it'll ring when you get a call stopping your music.


Cant handle CPU Max Clock! Hello Masters of Android! I am using Galaxy S5(SM-G906S)(Qualcomm SnapDragon 801). I have a problem. The problem is that I can't handle CPU Max Clock.. Available Max Clock is 2457Mhz but system always set to 1728Mhz.. It causes some lags... How can I Solve this.. I already did factory reset using Kies...

Actually, even if you know that a kernel can allow you to overclock your CPU to a certain speed, there's a little file which consists of a frequency limit.

This file is to be found into /sys/kernel/cpufreq, and its name is hardlimit. Inside it, you'll find the maximum frequence, defined in Hz. For instance, and for your case as well, its content will be 1728000, which is equal to 1728MHz.

By using a root file editor, which usually integrates a text editor feature, you can edit this limit to the desired frequence (in your case, 2457000. Please notice that, even if you succeed in editing it, the file may be rewritten after a reboot. Given that, make sure to check if your kernel supports init.d, and, if yes, write a little script to change the file at boot.


How to add a symbolic link to bypass unavailable busybox applet I have BusyBox version v1.15.3 installed that came with the ROM gingerdx 31b. This busybox version cannot be updated/changed, because if it's being updated, the phone goes into a bootloop on the next reboot, it is said not to update the busybox in the ROM thread too.

The problem is, this busybox version doesn't include the applet pgrep. Whenever pgrep is typed in the shell & executed it gives out a pgrep: not found error. "pgrep" is needed by the "super charger" script to do some tasks.

So, I tried creating a symbolic link to a working pgrep from another busybox version. I stored the busybox file in the /data/ folder, made it chmod 777, then cd to that directory. Then execute the command;

  ln -sf "busybox pgrep" "./busybox pgrep"

but even when I execute pgrep, it still gives the same error. How do I make the pgrep command point to a working pgrep, via another busybox or a pgrep file?

Also, how do I make this link permanent, so that it stays that way after a reboot? Should I add this to the .bashrc or do this using a init.d script? Both my knowledge on android & linux commands are limited as well. Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thinking error. You've created a link named busybox pgrep, linking to a (not existing) other file of the same name. What you probably wanted to achieve is:

ln -sf </path/to/alternative/>busybox </path/to/linkdir/>pgrep

Replace </path/to/alternative/> with the path to the busybox binary featuring pgrep functionality, and </path/to/linkdir/> with the path to a directory contained in your $PATH (best the one where the other symlinks reside).

Busyboxes usually decide their "wanted functionality" by checking where they're called from. So the symlink is simply named pgrep, grep, or whatever, and pointing to the busybox binary.


Enabling OTG support in Micromax Canvas Nitro A310 Device info :

Model Number  : Micromax A310
Android Version : 4.4.2
Kernel Version  : 3.4.67

The question here doesn't clear out whether all Android devices has OTG support or not. I need OTG support for my device and used USB OTG Checker to check OTG support. The app says -

  Your Device OS NOT Support USB OTG!

There is another general note mentioned there that interested me a lot which says -

  Important Note: USB OTG function only able fully work if your device OS has USB OTG API and load with USB OTG Kernel.

But on the other hand, looking on Google for enabling OTG support in my device ended me with this XDA link which says that Stock Rom doesn't provide OTG support and solely rooting your device can sort this out.

So the questions are-

Does rooting a device really enables OTG support?
If not, can external API and a USB OTG Kernel be loaded in a Stock ROM to get the desired functionality? Can loading external API has ever been done before somewhere? I know doing such about kernel.
If (2) is true, then does the fact that compatible HW is also required becomes irrelevant?
Not to mention, I do need to know can I get OTG support if its possible?

Rooting alone does not enable USB OTG functionality.  Rooting (and having an unlocked bootloader) only allows you to flash a custom kernel that is built with proper support for USB OTG on your specific device.
OTG API has been included in Android since version 3.1.  Many modern Android devices have the necessary hardware as well.
USB OTG software alone without the proper hardware won't help at all.
There are many apps on the Play Store that claim to be able to tell if your phone supports (both hardware and software wise) OTG functionality, but most of these apps also require root.


How to resize partitions when /system isn't mounted in recovery I have a Runbo X5-King phone which is manufactured by a small Chinese company. I need to shrink /system and expand /data. All tutorials I can find online say to run fdisk in recovery, but the problem is that /system doesn't seem to mount, and "adb shell" results in an error message saying that it cannot find /system/bin/sh. However after booting into Android everything works perfectly, and /system is mounted successfully as well. I'm able to enter fastboot and let my computer interact with the phone, but fastboot doesn't have the ability to resize partitions or enter the shell. Since the phone is not famous, no custom recoveries could be found for it. So how can I resize partitions under this situation?

To use fdisk without recovery, i.e. while Android is running, you need to root your phone, install a terminal emulator, and install BusyBox (the fdisk command won't be available without BusyBox, which provides a bundle of common Linux tools that aren't included in Android). Note that to install BusyBox, it's not sufficient just to install the app. You need to launch the app and click the Install button in order to install the tools.

The process of rooting is device-dependent, and I don't know specifically how to do it on your device, but you could try Towelroot, which works on a wide variety of Android devices and is incredibly simple to use.


Apple Earpod one-click/Double-Click not working on Sony Xperia Z1, Android 4.4.2 Kitkat I have Sony Xperia Z1 loaded with Android 4.4.2 Kitkat. My Apple earpods were working fine on Android Jelly Bean ie one-click will pause/play & double-click will play next song (Volume controls don't work on Android), but after upgrade to Android 4.4.2 Kitkat the one-click doesn't pause/play & double-click doesn't play next song. Please help me out. I don't want to miss the awesome sound from my apple earpods.

Try this:
hold the volume down button in earpod while inserting


Stop Google Maps from loading location photos/thumbnails Google Maps automatically shows photos when searching for places, but this uses a lot of data on mobile networks. Is there any way to block the loading of images?

You have to disable location features on the camera else wise it shows the same.
There is nothing like separate Settings for disabling this things in the Maps.


downloading error file more than 10 MB I am using symphony w 10,there is enough space in my memory card but  I can not download file size more than 10 mb. There is no space left in phone storage.

The phone stores the downloads in the internal memory by default. You could do the following,

Delete unwanted apps. Clear your cache.
Move apps to SD card
Change the default location of your camera to SD card.


How to get battery status in terminal? I have gingerbread(2.3.6) phone with dropbear installed. I usually access my phone over wifi & run commands in putty.
 I want to get Battery status & percentage in terminal.  Is there any command or program  to obtain battery info ?

Query the system service battery (possibly requires root access)

dumpsys battery

Output would be like

Current Battery Service state:
  AC powered: false
  USB powered: true
  Wireless powered: false
  status: 2
  health: 2
  present: true
  level: 70
  scale: 100
  voltage:3950
  temperature: 260
  technology: Li-ion

level: 70 is the battery percentage here.

Not sure about Android 2.3 but  this is relevant for at least Android 4.2.1 and above:

(Prefix adb shell next to every command to run the command using adb.)

This would give you a list of all the historical broadcasts as well as the sticky ones:

dumpsys activity broadcasts

In the output search:

Sticky action android.intent.action.BATTERY_CHANGED:

The lines next to it, until you encounter a new sticky broadcast, are useful to us. In my devices, they are listed as:

Intent: act=android.intent.action.BATTERY_CHANGED flg=0x60000010
Bundle[{icon-small=17302819, present=true, scale=100, level=100, technology=Li-ion, status=4, voltage=4140, invalid_charger=0, plugged=0, health=2, temperature=200}]

Assuming that your Android has grep utility, you can shorten the search by using:

dumpsys activity broadcasts | grep -A2 "Sticky action android.intent.action.BATTERY_CHANGED:"

(Source: Monitoring the Battery Level and Charging State)
Alternative: it is possible to query the battery info from /sys  or I should say the Linux kernel.

/sys/class/power_supply/battery/ has some files with useful information. The file named capacity is equivalent to current battery percentage. You can get an accumulated info from uevent file as well.

For more and related info, read my answer here.


TWRP accepting `adb` connections but no `fastboot` connections I can connect to TWRP (3.2.3-0) with adb but fastboot devices does not list any and fastboot continue (while my phone is booted into TWRP) only prints:

$ fastboot continue
< waiting for any device >

I can rule out a driver problem since I have used fastboot successfully with the same combination of phone, cable and PC.

ADB and fastboot are two different protocols. Android Debugging Bridge works in ROM or in Recovery mode, when adbd (adb daemon) is running on phone.

Fastboot is one of the most commonly used Firmware Update Protocols. It works in bootloader mode which is also called download mode or emergency download mode (EDL) by some vendors. Some devices have both modes where EDL provides more primary access as compared to fastboot. Some OEM's use different tools for firmware flashing such as ODIN, nvFlash, QPST/QFIL etc.

Bootloader mode is usually accessible by rebooting in bootloader mode from recovery or ROM, or by pressing Vol+ key when device is booting. Similarly EDL is accessible using different combinations of Vol+, Vol- and Power key.

Bootloader is one of the very first pieces of software that is loaded in booting process. GRUB is the most common one used on Linux PCs. On Android embedded devices, the most commonly used bootloader by SOC vendors is ABOOT. To know further about bootloaders, boot process and what we can do in adb/fastboot mode, have a look at given links:

Boot Process: Android vs. Linux
ADB & Fastboot


How to archive gmails in GS4 stock email app I kind of like the stock email client in Galaxy S4, but I don't use it since I haven't figured out how to set it up to archive mails instead of deleting them.

I subcribe to Google's philosophy "archive, don't delete" but is that possible with stock email client on GS4?

Only Gmail app currently supports archiving for Gmail. Other mail providers do not have the concept of archiving emails, so this is limited only to Gmail and hence to Gmail app alone.

If you want to archive the emails, you should use Gmail app, I see no other workaround.


How do I completely delete all history and data from Samsung Galaxy tablet? I want to sell my Samsung Galaxy tablet after getting a new iPad from work.  I've done the reboot / factory reset to erase my personal info and history, but my photos and contacts are still showing.  Is it possible to erase EVERYTHING in order to sell it? I don't want anyone being able to access my previous accounts or information.

Just goto your dial pad and enter *2767*3855#
your device will then reset itself and erase all your personal informations and settings.

This page will help you to do factory restore your Samsumg Galaxy Tab through Main menu as well as Hard key reset.

http://galaxytablettalk.com/galaxy-tab-tutorials/how-to-reset-samsung-galaxy-tab-to-factory-settings


Broken SONY SD Card, formatting, "shredding", adding/deleting files to no avail Whole story

(Feel free to skip to the "The Problem" section. This section is included for completeness, and just in case if it actually is related.)

SMARTPHONE: SONY Xperia E C1504
Specs:
-RAM: 512 MB
-DATA/SYSTEM space: < 1GB (~700MB)
-DATA/SYSTEM used out-of-the-box: ~ 300-400 MB
-INTERNAL STORAGE: ~ 2 GB
-PROCESSOR: Qualcomm Snapdragon S1
-STOCK ROM: SONY: Android 4.1.1 - based ROM

SD Card: SONY 32 GB microSDHC Class 10 (U1)

The stock SONY ROM that comes with the phone is too bloated, filled with unnecessary features, apps, and other stuff that make the phone (close to) unusable. Not only that, but even more space is wasted with some "SONY PC Companion" installer that I don't really need (download it from internet, maybe? and NOT WASTE VALUABLE SPACE!!!)

It's so crazy, that I can't even update all the apps in the phone (even without installing other apps in Google Play) without getting "Can't update : Insufficient space available.". Not only that, but 512 MB of RAM struggles to keep up with Facebook/Twitter! (Yes, they come pre-installed.). Way to go, SONY.

(barely) Survived for 2 years, after rooting using KingoRoot, removing loads of system apps, getting an SD Card, and installing Link2SD. After that, some apps just stopped. Knowing an update was pending, decided to Unroot -> Use PC Companion to do clean install. Still SLOW, and storage problem persisted, so decided to Unlock Boot Loader -> Install TWRP -> Install CM10, CM11, or CM12, whatever was available. Latest that worked was CM11, but without camera (bummer), so CM10 was used. So much for Lollipop. :(

Running CM10 smoothly, updated everything, and installed a couple of apps, and now only 150 MB available. :(.

The problem

Installed Link2SD, created mount scripts, and rebooted. Now some apps that were previously on SD card, including Play Store, Play Services, Nova Launcher, etc. appeared magically. Since some were installed in CM10 after wiping, the were replaced by their respective SD card versions.When opening any of those apps, I am greeted by "Unfortunately,  has stopped.". Recreate mount scripts / relink apps / etc, and prompted for a reboot.

Except the reboot eliminated all trace of those apps. Means Google Play Services is GONE!

Next logical step: delete those files and start over. Used an adapter, and it mounted it read-only!!! Tried other adapter: (seems) perfect. After deleting, unmounted SD Card. Surprise! Everything is back again!

Tried GParted (deleting all partitions and creating new ones, as well as destroying old partition table), and to no avail. Everything is back!

Even tried shred -f -v -z -x /dev/mmcblk0, and no errors reported.

So I'm left with yet another SONY product that doesn't work as it should. And it's a shame as I used to trust SONY products, as I thought they were of good quality.

Non-working or impossible:

-Buy a new phone.
-Deal with it, and just use the phone for calls and SMS. No WhatsApp, Telegram / Plus Messenger, etc.

Help? Please?

You can always try:

1)Format/repartition SD card using a PC and ensure that everything in it has been deleted.

2)Wipe your phone from TWRP (data,cache,dalvik cache,system).

3)Reinstall CM10 from scratch.

4)Insert SD card.

5)Link2SD again.

6)Does it work now?

7)If it still doesn't work, it might be a bug in the ROM. See if the developer can help.

8) Of course, the culprit is probably a bad SD card. Try replacing it.


Setting different email address on LG G3 I am not computer savvy, I don't want you all to laugh at me. When I set up my cell phone I used the same email address that I use on my home computer.  Needless to say, I get all my emails on my cell as I do my home computer.  I don't like that.  Can I set up a different email address for my cell phone, and if I do that will that delete my email address from computer?

Obviously not. It is even possible to add a variety of email accounts on your LG G3 including personal email and work email . But for your case, simply add a new adress. Create your secondary email adress and delete the main adress (from the phone: settings > account > Google > [your address ] > delete).

Now you have two addresses, one on the computer, the other on the phone.


What is this blue button next to URL in Android Firefox? The blue document looking icon:

It's reader view for clutter free reading, similar to simplified view on Chrome

Reader View is a Firefox feature that strips away clutter like buttons, ads and background images, and changes the page's text size, contrast and layout for better readability. Reader View settings are easily customizable to fit your reading preferences.

Tap it to reveal a blue circular icon with Aa inscribed, from where you can configure the settings for reader view

(Click to enlarge)


How to monitor the amount of data traffic? I would like to monitor how much data-traffic I use. How?

This is now built into Android in Ice Cream Sandwich. You can view usage per application, set limits and restrict background data.

Some more information: http://androidadvices.com/set-mobile-data-limit-usage-ice-cream-sandwich-devices/

NetCounter monitors mobile and wifi traffic.


Change headphone left-right balance on Android 7 What is the best way to set the left-right balance on a pair of earphones/headphones? I've looked into it, but I can't seem to find an easy way to do this.

I am on a rooted Nexus 6P on stock android 7.1.1

Does anyone know of a way to do this? I know very little about android development, so a simple solution would be best (preferably an app).

Thanks in advance for any help.

Got the same problem.

My solution: root the phone with Magisk, install de Viper module and set the settings.

There's a lot of tutorials in xda, and it's pretty simple.


VoLTE is working in preinstalled Cyanogen OS but not in CyanogenMod I was trying to use VoLTE in my phone but eventually landed up with result:

CyanogenOS can run VoLTE based SIM card
CyanogenMod can't run them.

Tried
1. Setting LTE Only option in ##4636##
2. Setting APN in Sim Settings
3. Also kept the VoLTE in SIM Slot 1

But nothing worked in CyanogenMod.

Does any one have idea how to use both VoLTE and CyanogenMOD both?
Currently my phone's CyanogenOS is allowing me to keep only one at a time :)

But I want to use cyanogenMod as it is marshmallow and nightly build updates are released.

You have to enable the internet option for the 4g sim, which you're using and restart the phone. This will only enable LTE not volte internet.


Cleaning the mess in the contacts I am trying to put some order in my contact list. The situation is as follows: I have first imported my contacts from Gmail and enabled sync, but I have set the phone as the default contact repository (until now), so that new contacts were saved on the phone.

The result is as follows. I have some contacts on phone only, some merged between phone and Gmail, some Gmail only. I would like to have all contacts Gmail only, wihtout duplicates, except for some occasional contacts I want to keep on the phone (say, the plumber).

It is easy, though tedious and error prone, to go through the contacts that live only on the phone, since they do not show the Gmail icon in the address list. I can then manually import them in Gmail and remove the contact on the phone.

My problem is that I don't know how to find out which contacts have some information on the phone and some in Gmail, since they appear as Gmail only in the list. I have to actually open each one to find out. Moreover, once I find out, I would like to be able to copy the information that is on the phone to the Gmail account, so that I can sort the mess in Gmail and remove the contact on the phone.

  What is the simplest way to reorganize the contacts so as to move all the information on Gmail?

If it is relevant, I am on Android 2.2

I'm working from memory here as I'm now running ICS on my phone so I may be a bit off here. If you go into your phonebook settings, you should be able to stop it showing your gmail contacts.

Now, to get them into gmail contacts just do the following. Go to your phonebook, this will now just be showing you the contacts stored on your phone. You should be able to export this as a VCF file. Copy this file to your computer. Now just log into your gmail account, go to contacts and then import the VCF from there. Then delete all the phone contacts and re-sync your phone to gmail.

You may still have to do a bit of merging if you have part of a contact saved in gmail and saved in the phone memory but this will take most of the hassle out of getting them into gmail.


Market app crashes when I try to scroll For the last day or two I have had trouble in the default Market application.

When I try to scroll in the "Just In" area the application just stops working. I get a black screen for while then I get an error that process com.android.vending has crashed.

My device is a Samsung Galaxy Tab and I get crashes in all "Just In" sections such as "Just In" in games, apps/tool etc.

What it could be?

I would try and clear the cache of this application

menu
Settings
Applications
Manage Applications
All
Market
Clear cache

Just to see whether this should help.

You might also want to click the 'Clear data' button but than you must login to your account again.


Battery Drain from mysterious wake locks I have an huge battery drain issue on my OnePlus One running Android 4.4.2 on stock ROM CM11s O5Q with FrancoKernel R35. I googled and searched so many times but couldn't find anything and I am really desperated now. And hope you guys can help me out.

So, some time ago I noticed that my battery drains over night in "Deep Sleep" 2-8% per hour which is really unusual. I installed "BetterBatteryStats" to look up whats going on, noticing that strange wakelocks are draining my phones battery. Here are to wakelocks event0-875 and event2-875 (see screenshot, this screenshot was taken after charging so dont wonder the -0,5%) which iI dont know and I also dont know to what they belong to.

I read so far that event0 are androidOS stuff wakelocks and at the end of a day I have round about 30-40% left mainly drained buy AndroidOS, as I can see from the built-in Bettery Stats. We have to see that its a 3100mAh battery and i usually dont use my phone at all during the day.

I already greenified some apps to see if its an app which is causing the drain but no success so far.

Today in the evening I cant post you another screenshot from WakelockDetector app. The statistics resets after charging the phone.

I hope you guys can help me, thanks so far!

BetterBatteryStats (click image to enlarge)

If you're rooted, try Greenify. It will hibernate all the unused apps and thereby releasing resources which sucks up your battery juice.


Malware App Installed, Then uninstalled immediately- Next action steps I recently accidentally installed an app from Google Play onto my android phone (Version 2.3.6) which was clearly a fake... It had the same name and icon as the app I wanted, and I hit the install button.

While it was installing, I noticed it was not the real app, and as soon as it completed, I uninstalled the app without opening it.

1 - What actions should I take to assure I have no infection?

2 - Does the fact that I did not run the app mean that it did not have the ability to infect the phone in any way?

3 - Just by installing it, could it have sent my MEID to a bad guy?

Thanks in advance for your help!
SteveG

Android won't run anything from the app as soon as you install it. An app can only set alarms, register broadcast receivers, etc. after the first time you run it manually, for example by:

launching one of its activities from the launcher
clicking Open in the Play Store app
creating a home screen or lock screen widget provided by this app
starting it from another app (via a Share action or the like)

This isn't a complete list, but it should be pretty obvious what actions start the app. If you haven't started the app, it can't have run yet, unless the author is able to exploit a bug in Android that no one else knows about.

This is very different to the situation on desktop OSes. In Windows and most GNU/Linux package managers, installing an application consists of running code provided by the app author. In contrast, Android is designed to limit what apps can do. Android itself installs the package by reading its manifest, which tells Android the name of the package and what components it contains. Android unpacks the app's files to its own private directory in internal storage, without running any code provided by the app. If the app wants to do any further setup (such as performing an anti-piracy check, or getting you to sign into a server), it can only do this when you first run the app.


How can I install Skype on my Acme tablet? I have Acme 7" tablet. How can I install Skype on it? When I go to the Skype for Android site it seems to allow installation for mobiles only.

Also, when I go to the Android Market and sign in with my Google account it says that "There are no Android phones associated with this account". How do I manage my tablet from the web interface so I will be able to download apps from the Market?

If you don't want to/can't install the market on your tablet, you can download the .apk file for an app either directly from a website on your tablet or download it on your PC and then transfer it to your tablet.  After that you can use any file manager to navigate to the APK and then click on it to install it (you have to have third party app installation turned on).

I usually get my APKs at Android Community for Devs


Setting VPN when the built-in setting is absent/hidden I know Android has native support for PPTP VPN, but I'm trying to set a custom PPTP VPN on an Android TV Box which has the setting hidden. Does anyone know if there's another way to enable this (without rooting)?

Any thought appreciated.

I am not so sure but try the apps : 'drony' or 'psiphon'. I personally use psiphon in my college. I recommend psiphon, its easy to operate upon.


How can I download email attachments only when requested? The default email application seems to be downloading email attachments when I try to read an email.

I don't want to download attachment by default, it should on request. I should be able to read the mail body text without needing to download the attachment.

I am using my own POP3 server and not GMail.

Is there any way to enable this or another application which I can use for this?

I have Samsung Galaxy Ace Model GT-S5830.

K-9 Mail does load attachments only on request. But your problem is not only the Client, it's more the protocol used for retrieving E-Mail: POP3 does not support the partial download of an E-Mail without their attachment(s), whereas IMAP does. Besides of that IMAP has some nice extensions when it comes to mobile usage: Lemonade Profiles


Unable to connect with PC using USB connection after upgrading to Lollipop 5.0.2 I am using Micromax Yu Yureka. I'm unable to connect with PC using USB connection after recently upgrading my device to Lollipop 5.0.2. But it was working in Kitkat perfectly.

go to settings>developers options>and check the USB debugging option.(it should be on).This might help or try hard factory reset.


Using a android tablet embeded in my car I want to replace mycar hifi with a tablet, I have worked out the mechanical issues with putting a 7" tablet behind the dashboard where my exisiting doubld din car ICE is, with it behind the trim i have no access to volume or power without removing it, is there a device I can get that can remote control the volume level and/or the power on/power off functionality.
The tablet will be connected to my amp for final audio output.

cheers for any suggestions (thinking of hacking a BTkeyboard to bits for button funcion unless you can recomned somit better)

How about using widgets? Probably cheaper and would let you control all the functionality on the device itself, without any external hacks.

For volume control, you might be able to do with a widget similar to Volume Control Widget and for the power menu try an app like Button Savior or Shutdown Menu 2.1 (Both power menu apps require root access I believe)

EDIT:
Just realized that you might have issues waking up the device once the screen turns off. Found Wave to Unlock after a few minutes of googling. It uses the proximity sensor to unlock the device. This might do the trick.


Cant see contact "last seen online time" Does this contact not want me to see when last he was on line then? I can send him messages as well as chat.

It may mean that your contact is using a privacy option to keep that information private:

https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/20971848

"Through our privacy settings, you have the option to control who can see your last seen."

There are a few reasons why you may not be able to see a contact's last seen:

They may have set their privacy settings to hide this information.
You may have set your privacy settings to not share your last seen.
If you do not share your last seen, you cannot see other people's last seen.
You may have been blocked.


can't boot into recovery anymore I am using CM10 nightly version and TWRP for tf201. Wanted to try the unofficial CM11 version android 4.4 on my tablet and it says that is not compatible with this recovery, so I downloaded the latest version of CWM 5.8 from its website and using adb fastboot (and second time with the tablet terminal) flashed the new recovery over the older one.
Now the problem is I can't enter the recovery mode, it gets stuck while entering the mode. I tried that procedure with two more recent version of CWM (both touch and classic) and also its ROM manager but the problem persists. Some info:

1- I have my device unlocked, rooted
2- adb fastboot said completely Done while flashing
3- i could see the blue bar completed on the tf201 device and then i used fastboot reboot.

Any suggestions?

I've found that if I run into problems with the custom recovery, I can get rid of it altogether by re-flashing the stock firmware, and then I can install the custom recovery again. You have a different device, but that's what works on a Samsung Galaxy S4, so it might work for you. Of course, there's always the possibility that if you try installing CWM again you'll run into the same problems, but at least that should let you start again from square one, as if you had never flashed a custom recovery in the first place.


How has a WhatsApp contact removed our older conversations from my phone? I’m baffled . All my previous conversations with one WhatsApp contact are no longer in our WhatsApp chat. They have all been wiped off preceding April 2019. I cannot retrieve from the archive either. I’m confident it is not something I have done, and this contact has erased them somehow on his ph7 WhatsApp. I’m really curious as to how this can be done?
Thanks for your help

It is not possible for anybody to delete old WhatsApp conversations from your phone without having access to your phone. The only exception is the short time period during which the sender can retract his message (s).  Even that option will leave a note on your side saying that This mesaage was deleted.

It is very likely a case of somebody else accessing your device and deleting the older conversation from your side. Some people have previously used WhatsApp web interface to access the chats of others without their knowledge. But even for this the user needs to scan the WhatsApp Web QR code using your mobile phone. You can check for active WhatsApp Web sessions by:

Open WhatsApp > Tap on 3 dots at top right > WhatsApp Web.


How to hide your Wifi Hotspot from unwanted devices Device : Galaxy S5
Version : 5.6

I have a request

How can I hotspot my 4G but I only want to select who can see the network on wi-fi

And for other people when they search wifi they don't see it

Anyone answer

Keep your ssid hidden, after creating the wifi hotspot. Just tell your friends and others the ssid. No one else would be able to see it.


Can't find Google Contacts in Gmail app I have my Google Contacts on my PC. I have activated the sync feature in my Note 3 and synced my contacts with google. But when I open my Gmail app on my phone I can't even find the contacts link. I've searched everywhere for contacts and found nothing.
This is maddening!

There is no option in the gmail app for viewing the contacts! You can access them through web.


How to track reboots in Jelly Bean Samsung Galaxy Nexus (Verizon) with Android 4.1.1 (unrooted).

I seem to be having unusually frequent reboots of my phone; sometimes multiple times in a day. Certainly much more frequent than with Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.4).

Additionally, my battery life seems to be lower since the upgrade from 4.0.4. (It might be my imagination, but it might be running hotter than I remember, too.)

I've been looking for some common denominator but I'm baffled.

What can I do to try to find out what is causing these crashes?

(No suggestions that require rooting, please.)

System Tuner looks like it could help you figure out what's going on. Excerpts from the app's description:

  Display log(cat) for all/one process (even on JellyBean Android 4.1)
  Record (optionally at boot) activities in the background
  Record all apps or all processes
  Allows analyzing past recordings without limits

I didn't try it for this special purpose, but the description suggests you can check what was going on when the device went down even afterwards: which processes were running, memory and CPU status, and more. As it is able to read system logs fine even on JellyBean, it should be able to give you the information needed to figure out what is going on.


Pokemon Go 0.35.0 on ZenFone 5 Sometimes my character won't move even though i am moving in real life. Everything is fine, gps is working fine, sometimes my character just stand there and I can spin the pokestop for hours. But the problem is i can't hatch my egg sometimes, is that bug or problem for zenfone 5? Or is that any ways to solve this?

Possible issues
 1) You did not provide all the necessary permissions requested by the app to function properly.
 - you need to go to the settings -> apps and check the permissions.

2) Your network might be an issue.
- check the data transfer rate while in the game, and see if there is data being transferred when this happens. if not more than 2kbps then there is a high possibility of this being the cause.


Is it possible to run Minecraft on an Android? I was thinking in using some tools to convert the JAR into an APK. But will my Nexus One have enough memory? And what about the controls?

Minecraft Pocket Edition is available in the Google Play Store and Amazon's Appstore. Engadget has a  hands-on of the game, and "SonyEricssonDev" has a video showing Minecraft being played on the Xperia Play.


How to send SMS from terminal in background on Android? I'm trying to send text message (SMS) from my Android terminal app in background (sim 1 or 2).
I can send message in foreground using this command:
am start -a android.intent.action.SENDTO -d sms:121 --es sms_body "test text" --ez exit_on_sent true;
input keyevent 22;
input keyevent 66;

But this command don't work in background.
So, how can I send message in background from my terminal?
Note: Android version 6.0. Rooted device

The syntax that appears to work as attested over at our sister site stackoverflow is and is explains in detail:

adb shell service call isms 7 i32 0 s16 "com.android.mms.service" s16 "+1234567890" s16 "null" s16 "Hey\ you\ !" s16 "null" s16 "null"

  "Isms method number (5 and 7 above) may change with the android version . Read full explanation to understand it."


How to open protected files? I sale my mobile,  LG g4, and I use content lock on my files, now I switch my mobile to Huawei P8 lite, but the files which were protected from my LG g4 couldn't open, and it's format is some 'dm files', it's very important files for, kindly just help me how to open these files?

If you have used the LG phone system encryption tool for protecting your content , then it can only be unlocked from the same device.


Question on installation of android-x86-8.1-r2.x86_64.rpm on Ubuntu 18.04 I installed the android-x86-8.1-r2.x86_64.rpm package on Ubuntu 18.04 using the following commands as suggested by Release Note 8.1-r2 but it didn't add boot entries to the grub2 menu.

sudo apt install alien
sudo alien -ci android-x86-8.1-r2.x86_64.rpm

  Question: What are the definitions of the boot entries I need to add to the 40_custom grub file in order to add android-x86-8.1-r2 to my grub2 boot menu?

Based on the answer below I tried adding the following menu entry to the 40_custom grub file. I also tried changing system.img to system.sfs.

menuentry "Android-x86 8.1-r2" --class android-x86 {
        insmod part_gpt
        search --file --no-floppy --set=root /android-8.1-r2/system.img
        linux /android-8.1-r2/kernel root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=remix_x86_64 androidboot.selinux=permissive CMDLINE
        initrd /android-8.1-r2/initrd.img
}

Based on How to Install Android in Dual Boot with Linux I also tried adding the following menu entry to the 40_custom grub file.

menuentry "Android-x86 8.1-r2" {
search --set=root --file /android-8.1-r2/kernel
linux /android-8.1-r2/kernel quiet root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.selinux=permissive
initrd /android-8.1-r2/initrd.img
}

Neither of the two menu entries above work. When I update grub it produces the following output which seems to indicate grub isn't recognizing the menu entry, and my computer continues to boot directly into Ubuntu 18.04.

Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-25-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.18.0-25-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.18.0-15-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.18.0-15-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done

My computer hard drive has a single Linux ext4 partition, and the contents of /android-8.1-r2 are as follows:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root      4096 Jul 21 09:40 data
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1358699 Jun 13 02:11 initrd.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7437056 Jun 13 02:11 kernel
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1424814 Jun 13 02:11 ramdisk.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 877621248 Jun 13 02:11 system.sfs

I determined that grub was actually configured with an option to boot Android, but I wasn't seeing this option because grub was configured to automatically boot Ubuntu. I added the # to the beginning of the following lines in /etc/default/grub, ran "sudo update-grub", and now my computer gives me the option to boot Android.

#GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
#GRUB_TIMEOUT=0

I also determined the menu entry I added to 40_custom wasn't necessary as it resulted in a redundant option to boot Android in the grub boot menu, so I deleted this menu entry (which I had manually added as described in my question above) from my 40_custom file.


OEM USB Drivers Lenovo What's the URL for Lenovo drivers?

I tried to run my first Android app on my Lenovo tablet (Android 4.2).
http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/oem-usb.html

My OS is Windows 7. I tried to download the Lenovo driver here, but the URL is corrupted:
http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/oem-usb.html#Drivers

Try these:

Download the Android SDK, and try the driver inside the SDK.
Check out this link: Android Lenovo ADB Interface Driver


Broken OnePlus One - Data recovery possible? So I've got a OnePlus One that's been badly smashed up (no screen or digitizer), and I was wondering if there's any hope of trying to rescue some (or even all) of the data off it?

Some details:

1 - The device still switches on

2 - It's running the latest version of Cyanogen OS (I think 13.1.12)

3 - It's still recognized by my PC when I connect it via USB. (I can't retrieve any data from it because of that annoying thing where you first have to give it permission when you plug it in)

4 - USB Debugging wasn't enabled, so ADB isn't picking it up either.

Any help/advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Hmm.. I have a couple questions first, and then I will provide answers.

Did you ever use a service such as Google Photos to back up photos?

If you have Verizon, did Verizon Cloud back them up?

If none of your data was backed up, I'm not sure if you can save your photos, but you should be able to restore your apps when you get a new phone. If you visit the Google My Activity page, and scroll down to Device Information, it should be checked. If it isn't, try checking it, and it should be able to back up if the device still turns on.

This backs up your apps, and if you buy a new Android phone and login with the same account, it should ask if you want to restore your apps from a backup. I'm really sorry about your phone, and I know this is not a great solution, but it was the best I could come up with.

In the future, however, consider an app like Google Drive, Google Photos, or OneDrive for backing up photos on WiFi. I recommend Google Photos, as they give free unlimited storage and have awesome categorization features. Anyway, I hope my answer helped and I hope you can get a new phone.


Is permission elevation still a security issue for end users when updating Android? Is this still an issue for end users?:

Researchers have determined that the Android update process has a vulnerability that allows permission elevation without user knowledge.

Android allows installed applications, if so designed, to obtain additional capabilities without the owner's consent, just by updating the phone's operating system to a newer version.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/beware-of-danger-lurking-in-android-phone-updates/

From my understanding this vulnerability only works for updates that introduce new permissions.

Therefore the update from 2.3.6 to 4.0.x which contained a lot of changes had the highest impact regarding this vulnerability.

I have not checked it but my impression of the latest major Android updates is that the major privacy related permissions don't change very often. Therefore even if this had not been fixed by Google the attack surface is relative small.

Additionally at that time only the static APK manifest defined permissions existed. Nowadays Android has the additionaly run-time permission system where the user is been asked to explicitly grant a specific permission to the app at run-time (e.g. sd-card access). This also reduces the impact of such an attack if it would still be possible.


Hi. I need to turn my data off for both sim cards in Moto gen2. I just received a huge bill for data usage. I want to know how to turn my data off on each simcard on my dual sim Motorola gen 2 phone. I want to use data when connected to wifi only.I don't know how to do this.
Please help......
Liz

From the home screen, swipe the Status bar down.
Tap the Quick settings icon
Tap SETTINGS
Tap Data usage
Tap to toggle Mobile data ON (Then it will ask you to disable mobile data?)

Tap OK.
The mobile data connection is now disabled.


Android file transfer without USB cable, pulling out the microSD card, or using 3rd party apps My android phone's charging port died, so I am looking for a semi-convenient way to transfer files without using any 3rd party apps. Is it possible?

I already have an SMB share configured on my NAS, and a couple Windows computers. I have a WiFi network and a Bluetooth radio in my pc, but I'd much rather not use the latter as I've only seen abysmal transfer speeds from it.

P.S. I can still transfer files with the microSD card, but accessing it is onerous.

Fortunately, wireless charging still works on my Samsung Galaxy S8+

Bluetooth (Phone to PC)
Enable Bluetooth (BT) on both devices, tick the checkbox on phone to make it visible (Phone BT settings), pair phone to PC (PC BT Settings, add new device).
On Phone, View files in file explorer, if possible zip them, then share, send via bluetooth
On PC, run fsquirt, recieve files
On Phone, select your PC, and wait for the transfer to happen.
Tip: Laptops generally sit on their BT radios
Note: Bluetooth speeds vary depending on devices - a colleague's S10 transfers faster than my J7P
Google Drive (Phone to PC via Cloud)
This involves google drive or any other cloud storage provider as a middleman. Suitable if you have a Hi-Speed internet connection
Files By Google (Phone to Phone)
Note: This requires a second Android Phone, and assumes both came installed with Files (by google) - Mine did
On both phones, open Files, and go to Share
Follow the steps to setup your name and send files!