A way to get location coordinates from command line I'm looking for a command line, or a series of commands that can dump or list the latitude and longitude on a rooted device.

I connect to a device using ADB shell.
A way that will cause the coordinates to be logged to the command line is also good for me.

Looks like there is a way:

  adb shell dumpsys location > dumpsys.txt

This will give you a file with all location service information. In this file search for 'Last Known Locations' and you should see something like:

passive: Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{noGPSLocation=Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{coarseLocation=Location[network 92.918919,55.603997 acc=2000 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms]}]}], networkLocationSource=cached, networkLocationType=wifi, travelState=stationary}]}]

network: Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{noGPSLocation=Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{coarseLocation=Location[network 92.918919,55.603997 acc=2000 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms]}]}], networkLocationSource=cached, networkLocationType=wifi, travelState=stationary}]}]

Of course, the list will include another entry if you have the GPS provider enabled on the device.

Going by android code, I tried to find out how apps get the location when they use LocationManager.getLastKnownLocation(). After a bit of following, I ended up in LocationManagerService here. which implements getLastLocation and also a dump function.

The coordinates are not stored in any file as far as I can tell. They are stored in memory in a hashmap and dumped for the dumpsys command. This also explains why a directory heirarchy search did not reveal any files with gps info.

If you want this info in a more standard format, you will need to take the app route and go with something like this. This app exports the info in a GPS or a KML file that you can feed into geo based apps.

PS: This works on non-rooted device just as well.


Unable to restore stock OS on Nexus S I had a post on https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/14999/how-can-i-restore-the-default-os-on-phone-that-has-custom-build
however this got closed because it was a possible duplicate. Unfortunately the duplicate did not answer my question so I am posting again with further details.

Basically I had built the Android source and flashed this to my phone and now I would like to go back to the stock version.

The link in the duplicate points to the following recovery file http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespo/f182cf141e6a.signed-soju-ota-102588.f182cf14.zip

I renamed this to update.zip, and reboot into recovery. I then get a triangle with an exclamation mark. Then I hit the power and volume up key again and see more options, so I then selected 'apply update from /sdcard'.

I receive the error:

 E:failed to verify whole-file signature
 E:signature verification failed
 Installation aborted

How can I restore my phone with stock Gingerbread?

It's an official update, so the signature should be perfectly valid.  There are a couple things to check:

You didn't mention where you saved the update.zip.  Make sure it's in the /sdcard/ folder -- try viewing it via a file manager on your phone to ensure it's there.
I assume you've done this already, but make sure your bootloader is unlocked.
The download might have been corrupted.  Try the download again, and verify its validity with the MD5 sum (3e8908941043951da5a34bb2043dd1a0)
What's your specific model number?  Perhaps this update doesn't work for your model.

You can try this 2.3.6 for the GT-i9023 / GT-i9020t: http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespo/1ada25375426.signed-soju-ota-189904.1ada2537.zip
Or this 2.3.6 for the GT-i9020a: http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespoa/0b9c8148de0d.signed-sojua-ota-189904.0b9c8148.zip


How can I configure an unlocked HTC Sensation XE for 3g connectivity in USA? I bought this phone in India and brought it home to USA. In India I had no issues in connecting to 3G network but after coming back to USA I am no longer able to connect to 3G network (AT&T). I know the phone operates in a different frequency but I wanted to know if there is a way to tweak this.

I got excited when I saw a similar link posted on another forum but that did not work on my phone.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks...

AT&T's 3G works in the 1900 MHz and 850 MHz frequencies.

Even though HTC Sensation XE is listed as supporting the 850 MHz frequency, it is only using it for slower 2G (EDGE) speeds.  For 3G it's using T-Mobile's HSDPA bands 900/1700/2100 MHz.  Unfortunately no amount of tweaking in the phone's software will make it work on AT&T's 3G bands, since this is a hardware difference in the phone's modem.

There are very few phones that work on both T-Mobile and AT&T's 3G frequencies - those are called "penta-band".  The new Samsung Galaxy Nexus is one of them, along with older Nokia models E7, N8 and N9 phones, for example.


Can you Modify or Increase the Size of the Recent Apps List? I tend to rely on Recent Apps list to bounce between apps I use most often, as a sort of day-long history, for example. Is there a trick to increasing how many apps are listed in the default Recent Apps list (long-press home > Recent Apps)? I believe it's limited to 8, is there a trick/app which would increase it? Picture the PC Alt-Tab menu when you have 10+ programs open. Perhaps it makes more sense on a phone (from a resources perspective) to limit the number of apps on the Recent Apps list.

I'm not looking for a task-killing app, but a task-switching app. Would this be solved if I looked into a tasker app?

EDIT1: Using Advanced Task Killer as a switching app is a workaround. Still looking for an answer that literally increases the number of apps shown after long-pressing home.

EDIT2: Another very similar question had this answer, which is more convenient than Advanced Task Killer, IMO. Still, I would prefer a solution that would incorporate long-pressing Home, like the original Recent Apps list.

If you have rooted your device and use a 'Villain' rom, you can find an option to change this setting in Villain Settings > Input settings > Long-press home settings.

Realise you might not have this rom but it's worth a mention!


Auto silence based on geo location - android I’m trying to get my kids android devices to be on do not disturb mode when they’re at school.
Schedule based works fine but also effective on holidays which is I wanted.
Any ideas?

There is a free app called IFTTT (If This Then That). It lets you set up a trigger and an action that happens when the trigger fires. You could set the school as a geofence trigger, and "Set to do not disturb" as the action. Unfortunately, this app on its own will not stop them from simply turning off 'Do not disturb' manually. You will need some other parental control that stops them from messing with the settings.


Siri-like answers in Google Voice Search on 4.2 On my Nexus 7 (4.2, all updates, German), I can start searches using speech in Google Now, but I can't get it to do anything else. In particular: It never opens cards when I ask about the weather for example, it never answers with speech, and it doesn't perform any commands (like call/text somebody). I've seen all these functions in videos promoting Jelly Bean features, and believe they should be there.

Basically, instead of working like Siri, I just have a search textbox with the voice input method.

I've searched the Play market, but didn't find anything that looked like it might help. How can I get Google Now / Voice Search to answer me?

Edit: If I switch the language to English, I get the Weather card (in a German-English mishmash), but I still don't get any spoken answers.

Unfortunately, Google Now only supports certain languages at this moment in time.

You should change to a language that it supports (such as British English), using a locale changer application.


Why did auto-upgrade Lollipop not hit in my Moto G 2nd Gen? All,I am very excited to look forward to taste Lollipop in my Moto G 2nd, From the read, I was told Moto will auto-upgrade the Android system in their device from 4.4 to 5. I already checked my phone, In the "About Phone" , it shows "Moto G 2nd", But Why the upgrade notice doesn't show .Did I missed something ? Please help me .Thanks.

Rollouts are done in stages, so you may not have been selected (automatically) yet.

This could be for a number of reasons:
-The rollout is still in progress
-They have postponed the rollout due to bugs

There are methods that allow you trick the rollout system (they will only work in the first case, not the second), but they aren't guaranteed to work, on my old nexus 4 you could wipe google play services data and reboot, there is probably a motorola equivalent.

Other than that, sit tight, motorola are probably acting in your bests interests (neither of my friends with moto g (2) have receive the update either)


I get the following message on my phone: "confirm if it's you recovering your account" But I didn't do any recovery and of course I didn't press any button.
It happened already two times.
What does it mean? Does somebody is trying to hack my google account?
I have 2 factor google authentification, but didn't get any SMS, which is supposed happens if somebody is trying to change my password.
I found the following discussions on:
google community
reddit
but it isn't clear for me what does it mean and what should I do.

If you were actually trying to recover your account, you should have received such a message.

You didn't, and it looks like a glitch as the Google help you linked suggests.

One option is do nothing, a better option would be review your account, sign out of unused devices, and change the Google password to a strong one. This question from our sister site is useful XKCD #936: Short complex password, or long dictionary passphrase?. Generate new 2FA codes, keep them securely.

Obviously, the second option is better because, you did a security check and changed passwords / 2 FA codes. As an added precaution, be on the lookout for Google security mails in your inbox.


why can't i move certain apps from sd card to internal memory on android LG-L38c touchscreen phone? Why are some apps i download and install saving to sd card instead of internal memory? I have more space on internal than sd card and it won't let me move some apps to internal memory.

In the Manifest of the .apk file, developers can specify where they prefer there app to go. When that request can be met (technically), it will. The different possibilities include e.g.

no preference set: Goes to "internal storage"
preferExternal: Goes to SDCard (if available), else internal storage
set to "auto": if the app has widgets or declares services, it goes to internal storage. Otherwise it depends on device settings.

See also my answers here and here – the latter answer also details how you can (partially) override this.


How to upgrade Android 2 to 3 or 4 on GT-I9000? All is in the title. I have got a GT-I9000 (samsung galaxy S) and I do not understand why I cannot upgrade the android version ?

Why an android version is linked to a specific phone ?

First, you probably cannot update to Android 3.x as that version was only intended for tablets.

Second, no Android version is linked to a specific phone. But each phone needs specific adaptions due to different hardware elements used, so each Android version must be adapted to be usable on the device.

Third, for "How can I..." and "Where do I find..." and "When is it available...", please check the questions (and answers) already dealing with this:

How do I update the OS on my device? (includes links to "When does my device get the Android x.y update" for most Android versions)
Can every Android device be updated to the most recent Android version?
What is involved in upgrading Android to a later version, if the manufacturer no longer supports the device?
and others (check the "Related" and "Linked" sections of the questions)


To Connect Audio Generator to Phone Call? I know that you cannot play music to your phone call without hacking the code as discussed here but I would like to connect an audio generator to a phone call.
This approach should be simpler because I have the synthesizer code myself.
Assume the code can be run in real-time with only a little tau time-lag so fits very well in such an application.
I am not sure how you can reach an real-time access from your keyboard to your phone call.

Cases where the feature is needed

Sometimes, I am in a library where I cannot talk and I cannot move without disturbing my work.
However, I could easily type to the caller such that the text would be converted to speech in real-time.
Person with a disability that he cannot speak but only type. People are calling him, but currently, he cannot provide discussions because of restrictions and little understanding about the tech.

I am using Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-i9506 with CyanogenMod 13 (Android 6.0).
So I want

Type with your Laptop or Bluetooth keyboard connected to your phone.
Synthesize the typed text in real time to the phone conversation.

How can you connect audio generator to your phone call?

As you've already said you don't mind typing on your laptop to achieve this, it's perfectly possible. Just use any text-to-speech system on your laptop (Windows has one built-in, and you can buy/download extra voices for it), and make it output to your laptop's headphone jack. Then you need an adapter cable to connect the headphone output of the laptop to the handsfree kit of your phone. Alternatively, you can use your PC as a Bluetooth headset for your phone instead of using a tangible cable.

Note that this technique isn't specific to Android at all: it would work just the same with an iPhone or even a 'dumbphone'.

Doing it on the device might not be possible, even with a custom ROM. My answer here about recording calls explains why not all phones can do this: often, the phone call audio goes directly from the Bluetooth interface or speaker/mic to the mobile baseband, so the application processor has no way to send other audio to it (or to intercept the received audio).


Android OS uses a lot of data in background, how to turn auto system update check off? I have a nexus 5 with Android 4.4. If i look at data usage, it shows that Android OS is using a couple of megabytes per day. I tried disabling sync and backup but it didn't help. What could be causing the background data usage? One thing that I could think of is automatic system update check, but there seems to be no way to turn it off.

What could be the cause of the data usage and can I fix it without rooting?

Found out that the issue is not persisting on nexus 4 and only in nexus 5.(Thats very strange.)

Temporary Solution until Google fixes this. Just root your phone and freeze Android System Update.
That will fix the mysterious data consumption issue.


Hotspot issue, connected, no internet I have an issue in my phone, and I lost hope I will find solution.

Phone:
* Xiaomi Redmi Note 4
Android Version:
* 7.0 NRD90M
MIUI Version:
* MIUI Global 10.1
Kernel Version:
* 3.18.31-perf-g4339b70

The problem:
I share internet via hotspot and everyone can connect to it with any devices but when I connect my tablet (Galaxy tab) or my other phone (OP 5T) I got an exclamation mark next to my wifi and "connected, no internet".

I don't understand why. Can somebody help me what is the problem?

What is the thing that provides you internet ?

Wi-Fi or cellular data ?

if its wifi Android devices auto-disconnect from the wifi so they can host you Hotspot

if its cellular data then i dunno !


"Clear data" does not clear login details I was under the impression that "clear data" clears everything, but apparently it does not. Tested with a few apps, including Facebook.

I stopped the app, cleared cache, cleared data, opened it - and by some miracle it still remembers my login details! How does it do it? How can I disable this?

You probably also need to remove the program account details from Settings -> Accounts and Backup -> Accounts

It is probably there that the account details are being saved. Mainly to allow you to safely clear data (to reset the program) without the hassle of having to log back in.


"Restarting adb... Installation aborted." without any further details after abd sideload I'm trying to setup a bulk of tablets with a custom ROM (as a kind of kiosk mode tablets for my company). In short all I'm doing is deleting all kind of stuff from the tablet and then I'm installing just my self-made kiosk app as a launcher app. I've already accomplished that by doing it manually on a rooted tablet. However I need to that for a bulk of tablets so I want to create an update.zip which automates that and apply it to all tablets by adb sideload update.zip.

When I try to load a minimalistic update.zip which I created to just learn and play around with the update.zip archive format I always get the following error:

The minimalistic update.zip which just creates a tiny text file in \system\ to proof that the update really has been applied can be downloaded here: update.zip

What's wrong with my ZIP? All similar questions on this topic seem to be related to signing issues, but:

i've signed my ZIP
and all the other issues get errors like invalid signature but I don't get any error message at all!

OTA update packages must be signed with one of the keys expected by the system or the installation process will reject them.
You cannot just apply a zip to a stock ROM using the stock recovery, even if it is signed. It must be signed with the key used when building the ROM/recovery, which is only available to the device maker. If you want to apply an update you need to have a custom recovery at the very least which should allow you to bypass the signature verification.

Release keys
The Android tree includes test-keys under
build/target/product/security. Building an Android OS image using make
will sign all .apk files using the test-keys. Since the test-keys are
publicly known, anybody can sign their own .apk files with the same
keys, which may allow them to replace or hijack system apps built into
your OS image. For this reason it is critical to sign any publicly
released or deployed Android OS image with a special set of
release-keys that only you have access to.
Signatures and sideloading
Before installing a package, recovery will verify that it is signed with one of the private keys matching the public keys stored in the recovery partition, just as it would for a package delivered over-the-air.


What can be saftly deleted in data/data What can be saftly deleted in data/data.  I have almost no space left on a few devices.  I don't want to delete account info.

Remove apps via Settings > Apps > Your app > Uninstall. It is safer and you will be able to know easily the app(s) that you want to uninstall (you won't need to know the package name).

Start by removing apps you don't use. If there are system apps (i.e Google play music, duo, Hangouts, etc), you can remove their updates then disable them.

If there are apps you want to remove and keep their data in case you reinstall later, use Titanium backup or Helium to backup the apps and their data then remove them.


Insufficient storage error message I have bought new Samsung Galaxy S7. And it has available space of 27 GB, though whenever I try to download app it shows insufficient storage error.
Please help me to solve this issue.

try to reboot, check your storage settings or try using google:

http://recomhub.com/blog/galaxy-s7-how-to-fix-insufficient-storage-available-message/


Default Alarm ringtone Es file explorer can set the default ringtone for Alarms (this means that when you set a new alarm, xyz sound is already selected by default).  Factory "default" is set to silent.

Google Assistant will set alarms but uses the factory default sound which sisilent on my phone.

I do not like es file explorer.  Is there a way to manually do this without root just as es file explorer does without root?

Are there other programs that will do this with the system sounds.?

Btw, es file explorer will not do this with system sounds but only with my personal files.  Which is okay but not acceptable.

Honestly easiest way for me:

Download Zedge. (Free app)
Look up what sound you want (it has alot)
Set as "alarm sound"
It is now Google clock's alarm default

And it also has wallpapers,  ringtones,  notification sounds and so on. You can use them anywhere even Facebook messenger.

Hope this helps :)


Android phone keeps rebooting, how can I save my data? I hope this question fits this site, as in my opinion the problem is caused by Android.

My problem is that my phone froze all of the sudden while browsing settings, and ever since the first freeze it reboots all the time. It boots just fine, but after a short period it freezes then reboots again, in a loop.

I tried to leave my phone until the battery drains, then take it out for a day, but the issue is still present. I wiped the cache partition from recovery mode, the reboot is still occurs even in safe mode.

UPDATE: Safe mode seems to be working, at least I can browse my phone without it freezing. However it freezes in safe mode if I go to the "Application manager" in settings, thus I can't uninstall any applications.

I've read that a hard (factory) reset would probably solve the problem, however I have important information on my phone (contacts, messages, pictures) which I don't want to lose.

Since I assume that the hard reset would solve my problem, my question is, how can I save my data from the phone? Is there any utility that allows me to directly copy from the phone?

Phone: Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 (i8160)
Android version: 4.1.2
Kernel version:  3.0.31-1106830

The phone is not rooted or tinkered with in any way.

I know there are already similar question on this site, however they did not receive a working answer, and I feel like my situation might be a different issue.

I'm sorry, but at this point your only hope is a factory reset.

The symptoms sound like the data for one of the system apps has become corrupted. If you had any way to stop the reboot cycle, you'd have a shot at saving the data. Since even safe mode doesn't give you that, there's not much you can do.

I will suggest, for the future, saving all of your contacts, messages, phone logs, et al., to external servers, such as Google Contacts. That will also help when you upgrade your phone. There are several apps in the Google Play store to save text messages, phone logs, photos, videos, and the like to a remote server.


Are there situations that a crashed Android app's task will remain running in the background? Quick question to help me understand how my phone's performance is affected when an app terminates "irregularly".

When an Android app crashes (or otherwise terminates irregularly), could the task keep running even though it's inaccessible?

For example, when a Windows app (like Excel) crashes either "on it's own," or because of a programmatic error on my part, and I then restart Excel, the Windows Task Manager will sometimes show 2 or more instances of the application (sucking up resources even though the extra windows aren't visible/accessible) until I manually CtrlAltDel→End Task or Reboot.

My question(s) are:

Can the same thing happen when an Android app crashes?
If multiple instances were indeed running, would multiples show in Android Task Manager?
The Clear Memory button in RAM Managerisn't exactly descriptive of what it's "clearing".  Is it doing anything helpful in cases like these?
Are the answers to these questions affected by whether or not the crash produces the standard Unfortunately, xxxxxx has stopped. Report/OK dialog (as opposed to just returning to the home screen)?
Is there a better method for keeping an eye on resource usage that might not be easily identified with builtin Android Task Manager?

A quick explanation (or a point in the right direction) would be appreciated... As a coder (but not for Android!) the info I've found is either too simplified or too advanced to answer my questions.  :)

I'm running Kitkat 4.4.4 on Samsung Galaxy 3.

If the app crashes the app will restart most probably by default and continue in background.
You cannot run multiple instances of the same app in android.
The clear memory button is used to free the memory occupied by all open apps and the apps will restart.
Don't do it frequently because the apps will occupy the space again and it will take more power and processing power to free the memory and reload the apps.
You don't need to be concerned with resource usage, android os is smart enough. Just make sure you don't keep unnecessary apps on your phone and huge media files that are not required.


After - Turn on USB storage.... External Card is not accessible When I turn on USB. Internal memory is accessible but having issues with external card.

Even after turn off. No app is working, installed on External memory.

Rebooting device will make everything normal again.

Please Help.

The problem is happening that when you connect your phone to your computer via USB it attaches (mounts) the card to your computer and while that is happening the card is not accessible for android system. This breaks all the applications which are moved to SD card.

This might be device specific to change (if possible at all), so please post your device info.


Make a pop up message if about to call area codes excluding specified So I wanted a pop up message/dialog box  to appear whenever I dial/call number with prefixes excluded from my list.
To clarify, there are two codes. One is the country code and the other is the network code. For instance, country code is +63 and network (company) code is 945. Country code is only one. While network code reaches like a hundred. I want a pop up message to appear when the prefix is other than +63945*, +63917*, +63906*, and 20+ other numbers. In other words, there would be no pop up when the prefixes I set are being dialled/called while every other number would prompt a pop up message.
I used this macro but all the numbers I dial seem to activate the dialog box. The macro is working but there seems to be an error somewhere.
(Click to enlarge the images)

Here's a working macro with explanation in comments
(Click to enlarge)

Note

Log events write to the log which can be accessed from the home screen of the app and are useful to check errors.

Screenshot shows the local variable value, which is also useful in troubleshooting.

Your macro had matching condition excludes which is wrong, it needs to be != (not equal to).

In the Text Manipulation action, the output should be saved to the variable A

Edit : The answer above is in response to the previous version of the question


New cable modem giving Android Phone time outs on sites I just changed from DSL to Cable Broadband and I'm having a rather peculiar problem. Most of the time I get time outs from hosts using my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone while my other wireless devices work fine (Win Laptop, Ipod). My phone works well on WiFi at work, but it's not getting along with my Arris (Model: TG862A) Cable modem. I haven't updated the phone's firmware (5.0.1) or anything. I can ping sites and other devices in my network, but a lot of times can't access websites. I have even thought if it was the DNS server and I have changed to Google's DNS Servers and entered the server's IP address, but nothing. I get brief moments where everything works fine and then it's gone.

Just wanted to know if anyone has had a similar problem.

Since other devices are working fine, and your phone works okay on other networks, it's likely a specific compatibility issue between your phone and your home wifi network.

First, find out exactly which cable modem you have.  Some Arris Cable Modems like this SBG6580 support dual band WiFi, which means they can broadcast at 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz.  If you have one of those, try using one or the other frequency to see if your phone is having problems with one of them.

It may also help to find out what kind of wireless router or modem they're using at work.  For example, if they're both using Wireless-N and broadcasting on a 5GHz frequency, then the frequency isn't the problem.  In that case, it could be a problem with the specific modem you have - getting it replaced might help.


How can I launch a system app that doesn't appear in the app drawer? Just for context, I have an unrooted OnePlus 6. There's a system app called "Zen Mode" (not in the play store) that gives you notifications when you use your phone for 2 hours. I tapped on the notification, it opened the app, and there was a button to disable the notification, and I disabled it. But now it's not going to give me notifications anymore, so I don't have a way to open the app, so I cannot change those settings?

I'm using NovaLauncher, and I've verified it is not just set to "hidden" in my launcher. It just won't appear in the launcher whatsoever.
I can still view the app details in settings, but there is no "launch" button or similar.
Looking on the app details page, it looks like this app doesn't support being opened by any links, so I can't take advantage of that by typing a URL into the web browser for example.

I found a similar question here: How can I run an installed system application that doesn't appear in the app list?
however the answers on that post suggest using an "am" command that isn't working for me (error is "adb: usage: unknown command am")
and the other answer suggests the app is disabled, but in my case it isn't disabled (and in fact, the "disable" button in the settings is grayed out, unclickable.)

Since you have Nova Launcher installed, try adding an Activities widget and flip through the available activities list to see if one of the activities is what you're looking for.


What is the difference between odexed and deodexed ROMs? What is the difference between odexed and deodexed ROMs? Which is the standard (stock) ROMs that ship use?

A .dex file is basically a compiled bytecode version of an app that has been built for the Dalvik VM which Android's apps run on. I believe it is short for Dalvik Executable, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering that correctly.

An .odex file is an Optimized .dex file (hence the 'o'), meaning that it has basically been pre-compiled for a specific platform. The advantage to this is that startup time is much faster since the VM doesn't have to perform any optimizing at startup/runtime. The disadvantages are 1) That it takes up some extra space and 2) An odexed app won't run properly if it's put onto another device, and it must have the associated .odex file to run at all.

ROMs are typically released in deodexed form because they can be themed and modified fairly easily, whereas theming/modifying an odexed ROM is basically impossible (at best things would crash like crazy). Some people also choose to release their ROMs in odexed versions for people who would prefer the performance gains.

Most of the stock ROMs I've seen are odexed, I assume because the carriers/manufacturers want the performance boost. They also don't have any kind of official theming methods, so they probably don't care if you can't change the colors of your status icons or your system text or whatnot. Plus they have the advantage of knowing what device they want their system to run on, so they can pre-compile the .odex files very easily, I imagine. As an added bonus, it makes it difficult to pull .apk files off of the device and share them with people.

Edit: Since I just realized that I was not very explicit about the difference here - an "odexed" ROM is one where the apps have been precompiled, and thus contain associated .odex files which are external to the .apk files. A "deodexed" ROM is one where data that would be optimized in the .odex files has been more or less merged back into the .apk files (meaning it is not optimized but basically platform agnostic), thus the .apk files are self-contained and there are no .odex files. This is usually just done with a deodexing utility, such as smali/baksmali.


TWRP fails to decrypt data on OnePlus One During charging my OnePlus One turned off and I wasn't able to turn the phone back on by pressing the power button. I wasn't able to get the phone to recharge. I managed to boot to recovery (power + volume down). Now TWRP fails to decrypt with the current, correct password and can't be used in any way. I have rebooted several times, considering doing a factory reset.

TWRP error I get:

E: Unable to mount storage.
Full SELinux support is present.
E: Failed to decrypt data.

Latest TWRP and a recent CM 13 nightly ROM installed.

This can happen due to many reasons ! A common issue is the fail in the boot order sequence which indeed is stored correctly in the TWRP from which you booted into.  Now, Are you able to boot through the normal method ?  . If not, then boot to bootloader and select the normal startup option. Try fixing permissions from TWRP and see if it fixes the problem.  Good Luck!


How does Android account for hardware changes in each individual device? I recently wanted to use the fingerprint scanner on my Galaxy S6 in an app and doubted if Android would have classes pertaining to it (it does), which led me to ask:

Does Android add classes to its library for every minor hardware feature on every device that supports Android (like the fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy S6) even the obscure ones that maybe only 1 device has? If not, how would one access those hardware features?

Most hardware-specific code doesn't come from AOSP1, but is provided by the corresponding manufacturer (often as so-called binary blobs). This is especially true for "exotic components" (like your "fingerprint sensor") – but also for more common components as the camera. Which BTW also is one of the reasons why there isn't a "generic ROM" fitting all devices.2

1: Android Open Source Project
2: see Why is it that Android still can't be installed as regular OS? and Can I install any ROM for my Android device?


Connecting Android phone to OSX mac computer I've had trouble connecting my android (The Nextbit Robin) to my computer. I am pretty sure it's an Android 6.0 issue. I have been able to get it to work by enabling USB debugging and selecting MTP on USB configuration. However when I tried to do that again it just selected 'Charging only', even when selecting any other setting. I clueless as to what to do. Does anyone know how to fix this? By the way, I should mention that I am using android file transfer.

Thanks.

I should note that I have no idea why this worked, but it did.

I made a partition in my computer's memory. Then I installed a separate version of OSX. When I booted to that partition the Robin connected flawlessly. I thought that it would only work in the partition I created, however, when I booted back to the default partition, the Robin connected.

For perspective, here is a list of the things I tried before I got it to work:

Fast booting the Robin.
Rebooting the Robin.
Wiping the cache of the Robin.
Restarting my computer.
Clearing the SMC and NVRAM of the computer.
Turning on usb debugging.
Switching between usb modes in developer options.
Probing the usb ports in my computer (software).
Disconnecting and connecting the usb several times out of pure frustration.
Connecting the Robin to another computer (it connected).
Uninstalling Android file transfer and reinstalling it.

Hopefully one of these things will work, if someone has this problem in the future.


Secure container for Android Tablet user I've got an Android tablet that has multi-user support. Galaxy Tab 3 if I remember correctly.

Now, I'd like to store some of my files on it but so that apps and I could access it on my user, but not other users or their apps on that tablet. It must only be accessible if my user is unlocked on the tablet, if I lock the screen it should stop being accessible.

According to this post on StackOverflow the storage should be separated.

Each user gets their own space on the emulated storage which other users cannot access to read or write (assuming the device is not rooted, in which case all of this goes out the window...).

As far as installed apps are concerned, the fact that there are several installations of it on one device is indistinguishable from being installed on several devices. So each user can access the app as though they are the user of the device.

Therefore you should be able to store files on the 'sdcard' (internal storage) and they will not be accessible to other users of the device. Assuming your user has a lock screen PIN/Password/pattern/etc. then they will not be able to access the files unless you unlock the device and 'log in' as your user.


ICS: Add Google Contact Group To Home Screen Please note I'm using Ice Cream Sandwich.

I'd like to add a shortcut to a Google Contacts Group such as 'Co-Workers' to my home screen.  Can I do that?

It doesn't appear that there is a native way to do this in ICS.  However, you could use the folders feature in ICS to add multiple contacts to the home screen and group them into a single folder.  Not exactly what you're looking for, but this seems like it is the best native (non-3rd party) solution in ICS.


How to enable USB connection mode on Samsung Galaxy Fit? How to enable USB connection mode in Samsung Galaxy Fit mobile?

When I connect my mobile to laptop via a data cable, I am unable to transfer data between PC-mobile and mobile-PC.

The option "USB settings" under Settings tab is missing in my mobile. I have enabled USB Debugging mode under Applications tab in my mobile.

I tried all the viable options but still am unable to select the mode as Charge mode/USB mode etc on my mobile.

What could I have missed?

Hi try clicking Notification Scroll down to find 'USB Connected' like option... press go navigate


Samsung Galaxy Feel cannot find any Wifi access points My Samsung Galaxy Feel (running on Android 8.0) cannot find any Wifi access points after turning on the Wifi.

Other mobile phones (iPhone, Xiaomi, Huawei) and computers can find more than three access points.

I've already tried factory reset.

How to fix this issue?

Try reinstaling system completely. Sometimes this helps.
It is pretty hard to find firmware for samsungs now but i can give you app for this later, then just run odin. If you need support contact me.


Why are there a ton of Logcat processes slowing down phone? I noticed a major slowdown on 2.2.2 Android, and it looks as though it's caused by too many logcat processes. With adb shell, I ran ps | wc -l and there were about 400 processes, after running killall logcat I ran the ps count again and there were around 200.

Even something as simple as ls would take like 10 seconds before, and after cleaning up all those Logcats it was instantaneous.

Is this a known bug in Android?

It's a known issue with the Applocker app: http://code.google.com/p/applocker/issues/detail?id=8

It creates too many Linux processes, causing devices to slow way down due to lack of memory.


How can I add a visual effect on where I click on the screen on Android? How can I add a visual effect on where one clicks on the screen on Android?
Similarly to what can be done in Windows:

I don't see any Show Touches in Developer Options:

First, enable Developer Options by going to Settings -> System -> About Phone -> Software Version and tapping "Build Number" until it says you're a developer.
Then, go to Settings -> Developer Options and enable "Show Touches".
This shows the small pointer/dot when you press on the screen, as is often seen in emulators.
There's some possibly-dangerous options here, so please make sure you understand what they do before trying them! :)


Is it possible to compleately and utterly brick a phone with no chance of repair? As i have recently gotten into some research about android kernel development and would like to fiddle around my phone and of course i have seen all the warnings about "bricking your device" but it seems like most of the issiues i could encounter could be fixed by flashing the stock kernel onto the phone.

But i am very inexperianced in this field and would really like someone else's opinion on the matter.

So is it possible to compleately break the bootloader and destroy the device and if it is how would work so i can avoid it?

PS: I appologize if the question is too broad but any input on the matter is appreciated

Most bricks are "soft" bricks, where the device will not boot but can be fixed by flashing good software.

To fix "hard" bricks requires special tools (like a JTAG setup or USB jig) that are not generally available to end users.  (And yes, it is possible to do this.)

It is also possible to unrecoverably fry the chips on the device, and this could potentially result from kernel development (overclocking and reaching unsafe temperatures, for example).


How to download pictures from Google Nexus? With T-Mobile myTouch 4G and T-Mobile's default Android 2.2, I can download the camera photos by pairing the phone with a computer through Bluetooth, and using an integrated file browser functionality of the computer (e.g. the Browse Device option on OS X).

But Google's Galaxy Nexus with Google's default Android 4.2 doesn't seem to support file browsing over Bluetooth.

How do I download the photos from the Nexus, without using any questionable third-party tools?  (Don't you find it ironic that a vanilla Google Nexus device doesn't have this rather standard functionality — file browser over Bluetooth — that all the old phones do have?)

Bluetooth is a rather slow choice when it comes to transferring bigger files: to transfer 10 MB, you'ld need...

BT 2.* (2.1 MBit/s) ~ 40s
BT 3.* (24 MBit/s) ~ 4s
WiFi g (54 MBit/s) ~ 2s

And with BT, the range is quite limited as well. Most devices probably still use BT 2 standard.

How to transfer your files then? You might want to check the most frequented questions of the "file-transfer" tag for that. The usual method (if you don't want any "questionable third-party tools" involved) is to connect your device to your PC using the USB cable -- which then should mount your device storage like a drive. You could also use some third-party tools (they are not all "questionable") to manage your device via WiFi -- AirDroid would be a good choice for that.

For transferring data between Android devices, you could use wifi-direct. Again, there are some good 3rd party tools to help, as e.g. SuperBeam or WiFiShare.


View & control screen of broken screen android phone? I have a Samsung Galaxy S8 and need to control the phone. The display is totally messed up, its flashing about 20 different colours every 5 seconds.

I can't use touch screen as I can't see what I'm doing. USB debugging is not enabled and I want to view my screen, control it, respond to texts etc until I get my screen fixed at a store.

Is this possible? I have a really important text I need to respond to and my screen has broke?

You're probably going to be able to connect using a USB cable to a laptop/desktop and to use Vysor to emulate your screen. https://www.vysor.io/


Strange icons artefact on app launcher I have QMobile Noir LT250 running Android KitKat. As you can see on the image, two applications have strange icons. I have uninstalled one app and reinstalled it again, but it didn't solve it.

I have one option that I can perform a factory reset to solve it, but I don't want to do it.

Any suggestions?

Click to enlarge screenshot

I have just installed Marshmallow launcher to get rid of that artefact. On the new launcher, the interface was new, no artefact. However, the artefact was still there on the stock launcher. Whenever I go to that launcher, that artefact was there.

Then after a few days, I just unintentionally go to stock launcher, then you know what, there was no artefact, the problem was solved!

Recently I have just found a way to get to the recovery option in my mobile. If I will ever face that artefact problem, then I will try to clean cache to see it solves or not as some of you said me to do this. Thanks guys!


Will Factory Reset remove root? I got my Samsung Galaxy Y rooted a month ago. Will a Factory Reset harm the phone? Will it still have root?

No, Factory Reset will not remove root. However, you will lose all your data and all the apps that you installed. It will be good as new. Files in the external SD card will remain.

When the phone boots after a Factory Reset, you will be asked to log-in to your Google account again.


How can voice search improve recognition I understand that Google will store the things I say and is supposed to improve recognition of my voice on my android phone.  How can it do this if there is no way to correct it?  I say a persons name several times and it incorrectly recognizes it the same way each time.

How is it going to improve and recognize what I say correctly?

Try this Can I train Google Voice Actions to better recognize my voice?

Digging around Android forums and elsewhere, I found a good number of testimonies from speech-to-text enthusiasts who saw better results from simply speaking at a normal clip. Google representative Nadja Blagojevic offered much the same advice for the search giant's voice product in both Android and its Chrome browser: "Speak naturally and clearly, but don't strain to enunciate too much or speak slowly."

http://lifehacker.com/5825965/speak-faster-to-improve-voice-recognition-apps

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=630707


Alarm about Internet usage? Possible Duplicate:
  Monitor wifi usage?

Is there a way to have an alarm warn me every time I spent another 100MB and telling me the total I've spent on the last billing period to avoid going over my limit and into debt in Android?

It looks like NetCounter will do what you need


Moving unmovable apps to SD Card My target was to get enough space on my tecno camon CA7 android 8.1 and got it a 32Gb sd card but only to find out that some applications cannot allow me to transfer them to SD Card. This sounds like the legitimate law of some apps developer suggestion. Does this mean that after rooting my device I can have access to transferring every app with storage suggestions

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gmail.heagoo.sdcardmovable
open the app,
goto "only ROM" tab,
press and hold the app,
tap "make it movable",
"uninstall" (the original app),
"install" (the patched apk),
then check again from your app settings if the "change" (storage) button appears.
Note: the app will no be longer updated from Playstore. You lose all app data on uninstall


How to turn off Vibration in Google Hangouts [ Version: 6.1.109448852] It is really annoying that the mobile phone vibrates on every message arrives on google hangouts after update, how to disable it ? I mean for all messages I just don't need vibration, only sound notification is required.

I found my own solution to it. Here are the instructions:

Open hangouts. Click on the menu (three lines on top left corner of hangouts).

(Click image to enlarge)

Click on settings.  Click on your email account, on which you want to control notifications
.
Click on Notification under the given options.
Uncheck the sound or vibrate option to disable/enable them.

(Click image to enlarge)


Why Does TowelRoot Require Internet / Network Access? I read a blog post somewhere that suggested TowelRoot does not need internet access, and I've also read that it does. The latest version I tried to run TowelRoot v3 will not work without it. Is it downloading or sending any information? If so, what?

Addendum: I suppose if they were trying to accomplish anything nefarious, they would just do it instead of asking for permission... right?

Since TowelRoot's code is not publicly available, I resorted to decompile the latest APK, downloaded from the TowelRoot website, in order to investigate the app's need for the INTERNET permission.

Relevant notes

Upon successful decompilation, it turned out that neither the activities nor the code itself be obfuscated. The developer certainly had anticipated that this app would've been investigated, yet he had left the code to be as much transparent as possible.
The most important file we have at this point is TowelRoot.smali, which describes all the workings of this app.

Note: depending on your particular version of ApkTool, the line numbers may vary.

Initial structure

In lines 13-22, the code initializes a field called fingerprint. The relevant code follows:

.field fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;
    .annotation system Ldalvik/annotation/Signature;
        value = {
            "Ljava/util/List",
            "<",
            "Lorg/apache/http/NameValuePair;",
            ">;"
        }
    .end annotation
.end field

which is a Java list composed of key-value pairs, to be used when collecting the relevant info from the phone.

Data collected

In lines 56-215, the code describes a method called fillInFingerprint, which is responsible for retrieving the appropriate data to be sent to the TowelRoot website, in order to ascertain whether the device can be rooted via the homonymous exploit. This method makes an extensive use of the abovementioned fingerprint field. The collected data follows.

Device model

The visible device model. Lines 70-80:

iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "model"

sget-object v7, Landroid/os/Build;->MODEL:Ljava/lang/String;

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v7}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

Device fingerprint

An unique identifier for the OS build. Lines 83-93:

iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "fingerprint"

sget-object v7, Landroid/os/Build;->FINGERPRINT:Ljava/lang/String;

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v7}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

Device hardware

Likely the processor board. Lines 96-106:

iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "hardware"

sget-object v7, Landroid/os/Build;->HARDWARE:Ljava/lang/String;

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v7}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

Device serial

Device's unique serial number. Lines 109-119:

iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "serial"

sget-object v7, Landroid/os/Build;->SERIAL:Ljava/lang/String;

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v7}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

Device kernel version

Vital since the exploit is likely to have been patched in the recent kernels. Lines 122-134:

iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "kernel"

invoke-virtual {p0}, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->javaSucksAssReadTheKernelVersion()Ljava/lang/String;

move-result-object v7

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v7}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

TowelRoot version

Lines 168-180:

iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "appversion"

invoke-direct {p0}, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->getSoftwareVersion()Ljava/lang/String;

move-result-object v7

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v7}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

Modstring

The string modstring. Lines 202-211:

.local v1, "modstring":Ljava/lang/String;
iget-object v4, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;

const-string v6, "modstring"

invoke-direct {v5, v6, v1}, Lorg/apache/http/message/BasicNameValuePair;-><init>(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V

invoke-interface {v4, v5}, Ljava/util/List;->add(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

The server request

In lines 227-329 the code describes the method queryServer, which queries the server's database in order to find a match with the collected data, and handles the possible exceptions in the code. Such data is transmitted to the URL https://towelroot.appspot.com/report/ via SSL and a POST request (lines 263-275):

.local v2, "httppost":Lorg/apache/http/client/methods/HttpPost;
new-instance v5, Lorg/apache/http/client/entity/UrlEncodedFormEntity;

iget-object v6, p0, Lcom/geohot/towelroot/TowelRoot;->fingerprint:Ljava/util/List;

invoke-direct {v5, v6}, Lorg/apache/http/client/entity/UrlEncodedFormEntity;-><init>(Ljava/util/List;)V

invoke-virtual {v2, v5}, Lorg/apache/http/client/methods/HttpPost;->setEntity(Lorg/apache/http/HttpEntity;)V

.line 88
invoke-interface {v1, v2}, Lorg/apache/http/client/HttpClient;->execute(Lorg/apache/http/client/methods/HttpUriRequest;)Lorg/apache/http/HttpResponse;

move-result-object v3

make it ra1n

The method buttonClicked (lines 333-426) contains the code that makes the app work when you push the button. Amongst others, it calls the methods fillInFingerprint to gather the required info, and queryServer to see if the device can be rooted.

It then proceeds by analyzing the server's response. If said response is empty, TowelRoot prompts you about the necessity of an Internet connection (lines 369-378):

invoke-virtual {v0, v2}, Ljava/lang/String;->equals(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

move-result v2

if-eqz v2, :cond_1

.line 115
const-string v2, "Please ensure you are connected to the internet"

invoke-virtual {v1, v2}, Landroid/widget/TextView;->setText(Ljava/lang/CharSequence;)V

If the response is not empty, then TowelRoot proceeds by checking if the abovementioned equals the string nyet (lines 391-402):

const-string v2, "nyet"

invoke-virtual {v0, v2}, Ljava/lang/String;->equals(Ljava/lang/Object;)Z

move-result v2

if-eqz v2, :cond_2

.line 117
const-string v2, "This phone isn\'t currently supported"

invoke-virtual {v1, v2}, Landroid/widget/TextView;->setText(Ljava/lang/CharSequence;)V

If the response equals nyet, then the phone isn't officially supported.

Finally, if the response is both non-empty and different from nyet, TowelRoot starts the rooting procedure by calling the native method rootTheShit, defined at line 448 and probably contained inside the library libexploit.so.

For the brave ones

TowelRoot includes a special mode for users with unsupported devices. This mode, whose code is defined inside the method titleClicked (lines 451-504), is accessible by tapping the red welcome to towelroot v3 title inside the app, and will allow the user to try different modstrings in order to try to root the device anyway.


Default music player restarting song on Bluetooth reconnect When my s4 mini pairs with my car stereo, the headset can control operation of the music layer ok, except when I turn off the car then turn it back on, it has restarted the currently playing song, not paused/resumed.

I have tried different apps - pixel player, double twist and others, to no avail. The others all have issues where they don't receive Bluetooth commands as well as the default player or don't show the correct track info onscreen.

Is there a way to either get the default player to pause on disconnect and resume on reconnect or use a different app that will do the same?

Also, are there any apps to monitor what is going on under the hood with Bluetooth commands and which apps they are being routed to?

I am using a non rooted s4 mini, android 4.4.2.

Yes, poweramp works well when Bluetooth is reconnected. It has got a trial version from the playstore which you can install for testing, if it works then you can purchase it as per your requirements.

Here is the link for Poweramp Music Player Trial version in the Playstore.

The settings which you need to change is indicated in yellow color.

Screenshot (click to enlarge)


TCL Idol X (s950) stuck in bootloop, after flashing new firmware I have flashed new firmware on my phone TCL Idol X (s950) and now the phone won't boot anymore :(

It starts but then it ends up with the bootlogo.
I can access it with adb shell but it is read only mode.
Switch it off reboot the phone.
Recovery doesn't start.

How can I rescue it from the bootloop or get into recovery?

Solution that worked for me:

Connect the phone to the charger
Switch it off (10 sec press power button)
As soon as the led light up and the phone screen is black, disconnect it from the charger
The phone should remain off ( wait for 10 sec to be sure )
Connect again the charger and then unplug it after 5 sec
Now try to boot the recovery (power + volume up )

Once you are in recovery:

fix the permission to enable r/w on system.
Clean Cache and Dalvin Cache
if you need flash it again ( you can push file with adb )

Now the phone boots perfectly! I'm using lewa mod for reference.


LG G2 - Debugging mode not enabled I'm attempting to run an app on the LG G2 (Verizon) using Eclipse on a Mac. The phone, however, is not recognized by the computer. I enabled debugging but it doesn't appear when I do adb devices. Additionally, I never receive the debugging notification when I put the phone in debugging mode. I think it's the phone since I've ran other devices on the mac with no problems.

Any suggestions on why the debugging mode is not being enabled?

I found the solution: Assuming you have debugging mode enabled, you have to change the USB settings to Internet Connection: Modem or ethernet. Keeping it on Charge Phone, Media Sync, or Camera does not enable debugging.


Is the Android F-Droid client still actively maintained? According to the G-Droid app description on the F-Droid website, "the F-Droid client is not [actively maintained] any more".

I could not find evidence that this is true.

Is the Android F-Droid client still actively maintained?

Yes, F-Droid get's updates and commits.
G-Droid does not get commits anymore.
The message by G-Droid was removed in d53a33c8


How do I view a different country's Google Play store? I would like to look at the Google Play store for a country different than my own, but I've spent an hour trying to figure out how to find or view the stores for any other country and I can't find the option to do so.

For iOS I just use iTunes and it has a country button at the bottom of the page where I can simply choose any country to view, I assumed for Google Play there has to be something similar and I'm just not able to find it.

EDIT: This answer for this isn't found in in this thread (How do I change the Google Play country?), the answer there was simply on how to view only one other country, and required that you make a purchase in that country. There must be another way.

One solution I've found was to use anonymous foreign proxies for each country I want to check. It's a pain finding a decent proxy for each separate country, but technically it works.


Nexus 7 2013 WiFi (flo) freezes and/or bootloops when booting TWRP I unlocked my Nexus 7 2013 WiFi (flo)'s bootloader and flashed the latest TWRP (3.5.1_9-0 at the time of writing), but now it freezes on the boot/splash screen and reboots after waiting. I can use adb shell to access it, in there I see errors like this repeated over and over:
<3>[  305.099060] EXT4-fs (mmcblk0p30): VFS: Can't find ext4 filesystem
<5>[  305.158416] type=1400 audit(1620032012.811:24): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=172 co
<5>[  305.158416] type=1400 audit(1620032012.811:24): avc:  denied  { read } for  pid=172 comm="recovery" scontext=u:r:recovery:s0 tcontext=u:r:recovery:s0 tclass=netlink_kobject_uevent_socket permissive=1

What might I do to get TWRP working?

I want to preface this by saying that the following is what worked for me. I can't guarantee it will work for you, but I wanted to document it here for the future in case I need it again or someone else finds it useful. I take no responsibility the possibility of this messing up your device even worse or not doing anything at all. I don't really understand why this worked for me.

First of all, reboot the device so that you're freshly in the TWRP recovery when you start executing the commands. The device seems to randomly reboot when in this state and it wouldn't be nice if that happened while re-creating the partition, so give yourself as much time as possible.
You will need adb on your PC to follow these steps. Explaining how to acquire it is out of scope for this guide, but I'm sure you can find instructions for your operating system online.
Note that you should not include the $ and # when running the commands!
Once TWRP's splash screen appears on the device, quickly run this command on your PC:
$ adb shell

Make sure you start the adb server with the right permissions before you try this as starting it up takes some time.
Following that, run this (in the adb shell):
# mke2fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p30

This formats the userdata partition. Let this finish. For me, the device rebooted right after, but you may need to do it manually.
After the reboot, you should be booting back into Android assuming you have a working Android ROM on the device. If it seems to be stuck, wait a few minutes. If it still seems to be stuck, try giving the power button a short press. This worked for me for some reason. After this, set up the device, go into settings, enable USB debugging, and run this on your PC:
$ adb reboot bootloader

After this, flash TWRP 2.8.1.0 (Not sure whether this is necessary):
$ sudo fastboot flash recovery twrp-2.8.1.0-flo.img

Boot into it and observe it boot Android instead for some reason.
$ sudo fastboot reboot recovery

Reboot back into the "bootloader" (fastboot):
$ adb reboot bootloader

Now flash the latest TWRP again.
$ sudo fastboot flash recovery twrp-3.5.2_9-0-flo.img

And it should work. However, in my case, I have to re-flash TWRP after every boot of Android.
I'm not sure whether it is necessary to flash the older TWRP version for this to work, but I thought I'd include it just in case.

Credit goes to this forum post for giving me a vague outline on what to do: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/q-flashed-twrp-and-now-cant-find-ext4-filesystem.3096502/ (archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210503093052/https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/q-flashed-twrp-and-now-cant-find-ext4-filesystem.3096502/)


When changing SIM card what needs to be copied or transferred from the old SIM card? I'm changing to a new SIM card with my phone. I know Contacts are able to be stored on the SIM card, so I've copied them across (I used an import as described here).

Other than Contacts, is there any other data stored on the SIM that might be important to export or copy, and how would I do it?

A SIM card typically has 8k to 256k of memory which stores MNC, ICCID,
  IMSI, Authentication Key (Ki), Local Area Identity (LAI), and
  Operator-Specific Emergency Number. The SIM also stores other
  carrier-specific data such as the SMSC (Short Message Service Center)
  number, Service Provider Name (SPN), Service Dialing Numbers (SDN),
  Advice-Of-Charge parameters and Value Added Service (VAS)
  applications.

  Most SIM cards will orthogonally store a number of SMS messages and
  phone book contacts. The contacts are stored in simple "name and
  number" pairs: entries containing multiple phone numbers and
  additional phone numbers will usually not be stored on the SIM card.
  When a user tries to copy such entries to a SIM the handset's software
  will break them up into multiple entries, discarding any information
  that is not a phone number. The number of contacts and messages stored
  depends on the SIM; early models would store as few as five messages
  and 20 contacts while modern SIM cards can usually store over 250
  contacts.

Source

  The SIM card has a special file where the SMS are stored, the file has
  several "slots" in it, each slot holds a message. The number of slots
  is finite, i.e. a SIM card can store 20 or 25 SMS (depending on the
  capacity, newer cards have more slots). When all the slots are filled,
  you have to delete an old SMS before you can save a new one.

[Paraphrased] Modern phones do not use this storage normally, but all SIM cards have this capability since it is part of the GSM standard.

Source

SMS and Contact management are handled by applications on your device, in an Android this is typically your Dialer or Contacts application, and for your SMS messages this is handled by your Messaging application. This seems to be a thing of the past now though, as many apps do not include support for storing or retrieving user's SMS or contact information from the SIM card. SIM Manager is an example of one application that can help you manage the information on your SIM card.

Also note, your carrier may insert information such as a welcome message as an SMS message, or contacts such as their customer service, billing, or repair service numbers.

So the answer to your question is that both SMS and Contacts can be stored to the SIM card, but it's limitations likely mean the use of it for backup and transferring to another device in modern smartphones is extremely limited.


What does the "2 arrows inside a broken triangle" notification icon mean on Samsung devices? Since yesterday, I am seeing the below icon on my Samsung Galaxy M30s that looks like 2 arrows inside a broken triangle.

I have gone through the official user manual and found nothing related to this.
What does this icon mean?

It is the data saver
 icon - switch it off from your settings and it will vanish (Thanks to OP for the link of Data saver)

Source: Personal experience


Network Support Explained Is a phone that supports the most network bands ideal if you are trying to get the best cellphone service?

I have noticed that for example the iPhone supports dozens of bands https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ while many Android phones may only support a couple bands in 2G/3G/4G etc...  http://www.china-prices.com/phone/bands/10024/doogee-bl12000

Is a phone that supports the most network bands ideal if you are trying to get the best cellphone service?

It simply depends on the match between your phone modem (radio) capabilities and the band used by Telco(s) where you plan to use them. Other than this having capability to function in bands other than those your Telco(s) or carriers use neither adds nor detracts performance

It is a marketing decision to cater to a few bands which are reagion specific or broader (International models). Apple is more consolidated than splintered Android and that could be a reason for support to bigger range of bands

No

If you have a set of bands that your phone can support but are not supported by your carriers. Capability has no use

Yes

If your carrier(s) (as in roaming) support different bands and your phone supports them, it is good because your phone will work on all of them

Aside,  you can see performance in the same mode widely varies within networks


How to fix error 905 in play store? I can't download large apps like CSR racing, Asphalt 8, and Trial Xtreme due to error 905. I tried to uninstall  play store updates but as soon it reinstalls error 905 occurs.

My friend had the same problem and he solved it in this way
Tap "Menu"> "Settings"> "Applications"> "Manage Applications"
Tap on the tab "All"
Scroll down and select the "Google Play Store" app from.
Tap on "uninstall updates".
then install your app Google Play market again and then it should work...try again and contact customer support


On system restore, will I lose my software updates? I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and have it updated to 4.1.2 from ICS.
If I restore my phone to factory settings (either by going to settings or by rooting), will I lose my updates?
If so, is there any other way to restore without having the above setbacks?

Yes, you'll lose your updates, along with any other installed app that didn't come with stock. But you will be able to re-update the apps via Google Play, and you won't lose any purchases you made (they are stored forever on the Google cloud).

I'm not sure why you're concerned about it, though. I can understand not wanting to lose your settings and data, but the only downside to losing app updates is the time and bandwidth required to re-update them afterwards.

Edit: You are probably asking about OS updates. Your phone does not keep an original OS image. Thus, once you update your OS (either by OTA updates or by installing a custom Rom), you will not be able to revert to the older Android version. Doing a factory reset should just reset the phone to a clean slate of the current Android version.


Galaxy S5 after System Update is asking for SIM Network Unlock PIN I recently purchased a Galaxy S5 on http://amazon.co.uk. This was a well deserved upgrade from a galaxy S2.

When I got the phone I powered it on with my Vodafone Spain SIM card and it worked perfectly. The day after I realized that there was a system update and I ran it. As soon as the update ended the phone asked for "SIM Network Unlock PIN"

Is there any way to revert this update? is reverting the best option?

Can I unlock the phone without buying an unlock code?

I found this site http://unlockcode4u.com recommended by a friend and they seem capable of unlocking the phone, but I just expended £250 for the phone and the code is really out of my budget.

Please help.

My suggestion would be to talk to your network provider and ask them why are you seeing the above mentioned error message only after updating the firmware. Ideally it should not happen as you have bought an unlocked phone.


"Google BroadcastListener" running for over 78 hours now On my Galaxy S3 I have "Google BroadcastListener" running for over 78 hours now... Is it possible my ex is accessing it or something?

Also, is this the reason my "record audio" won't work? It tells me that "Unable to start new recording. Other applications already recording", yet I have nothing else on that I am aware of.

No. This listener has nothing to do with "listening" in the sound sense: it's listening for intent broadcasts, which are a kind of signal that different software components in the device use to notify each other of important events. For more explanation about broadcasts, see What's the difference between a service and a broadcast receiver?

If you want to solve the problem of not being able to record audio, I recommend you post a new question with full details about what steps you took, what happened, and how long this has been happening, along with what phone and OS version you have. Without any further details, my first guess would be that  if the audio recorder app you're using stopped unexpectedly, it failed to properly release the mic for use by other apps. In this case restarting the device would fix the problem.


What is the default channel for Android Hotspots? I have seen the other threads talking about you not being able to change the default channel, and that is fine as I can configure my router. Can anyone just confirm which one it uses though, or does it vary by manufacturer? If so would you know for Xiaomi and Samsung? Thanks =]

I can confirm that on OnePlus you can not choose the channel that is used. You can although choose if you wish to tether via 2.4 Ghz, or via 5 Ghz band.
On the 2.4 Ghz band it picked channel 8, so I doubt there is default to which channel uses, at least not here. It might either pick at random, or do a short channel scan itself and pick an optimal channel.
If you have a second android device, you may use something like Wifi Analyzer to find out which channel your device ended up on.


Is my device rooted if I can delete system app, but doesn't have SU installed? I recently bought a new Allwinner A13 tablet. I wanted to side load Google Search app, but because there is already Google Search system app, it conflicted and failed to install.

Knowing this would be impossible without root, I still downloaded Root Explorer and navigated to /system/app and deleted the Google search app. To my surprise, it's deleted successfully. I rebooted the tab 4 times and the file is not in /system/app. So, I was able to side load my Google app.

Does this mean my tab is already rooted even though it's brand new and doesn't have SU installed?

In addition to Hussain's answer (whether the existence of SU app tells the device is rooted or not), the fact that you can access /system folder gives a strong indicator that your device is already rooted.

Note that it seems A13 tablets usually come pre-rooted; they are already rooted when out from factory.

  From the little bit I'm seeing of these A13 tablets, [...] , and I can get root, which most people seem to agree that they usually come pre-rooted, [...]

(Emphasis mine)


How to stream sound from Android phone to PC? Is there a way to stream all sound from an Android phone to a PC to be played by the boxes of the PC?
At best wirelessly?

Based on some quick testing I did on my Nexus One running Android 2.2 (Froyo), it seems like all sound is routed through headphones when they are plugged in.

You could attach a male-to-male 1/8" (3.5mm) audio cable from the headphone jack on your phone (or the mini-USB-to-headphone-jack adapter, depending on your phone model) to the Line In jack on your PC.  You may need to do some configuration on your PC to get sound from the Line In to play to the speakers — I recommend sister site Super User if you need help with that.

There's one caveat: although all sound is routed through the headphone jack, some sounds are still also heard through the phone's speakers.  The two most notable of these are the ringer and the camera shutter sound.  Depending on what exactly you're going for, that could be an issue.


Updating the Moto G 3rd gen from Lollipop 5.1.1 to Marshmallow 6.0.1 I'm on a UK Moto G, 3rd gen, 8GB storage, 1GB memory, currently on Android 5.1.1.

I have numerously been prompted to update to 6.0. The 6.0 on Moto G 3rd gen has some bugs, like the shutter sound cannot be disabled. So I am ignoring the notifications, and have remained on 5.1.1.

How come I am being constantly prompted to update to the buggy 6.0 instead of the rectified 6.0.1?

Update: I have now updated to 6.0. However, when I go to About Phone and check for new OS software, I am being prompted that my software is already up-to-date. This is contrary to this Moto UK website. Restarting did not help. How can I update to 6.0.1?
This has been posted as a new question.

How come I am being constantly prompted to update to the buggy 6.0 instead of the rectified 6.0.1?

It depends upon the manufacturer pushing the update. For many number of devices you would end up in same situation even if the first release of a platform upgrade was buggy. Let's take it this way:

Assume that these are the Android versions - build numbers for your device:

Android 5.1.1: build LJKRTY;
Android 6.0.: build MOUIPV;
Android 6.0.1: build MOUIPW

When you would switch from build LJKRTY to MOUIPV a lot of the files  required for Android 6.0 would be upgraded. Since the manufacturer came to know about a couple of bugs in the recent release, they decided to only patch the bugs and release the patch as an update with build MOUIPW instead of packing and releasing the whole platform upgrade again.

Now there is no point in applying a patch if at the first place both the vulnerable and relevant code isn't there. You may also not be able to apply such a patch manually since manufacturer can require an update to check whether the currently installed build is compatible.

So over and all, switch from Android 5.1.1 to 6.0. and then to 6.0.1. That's the way to go.

By the way, it is possible that the update for 6.0.1 may be a full blown platform upgrade but your software updater is stuck at 6.0 simply because it is silly. You can attempt to clear its data (if it is a separate app), force stop it (or reboot) and attempt to check if it still requires to download Android 6.0. I won't keep hope here.


Wallpaper automatically blurring after a while Since a few days the wallpaper of my Samsung Galaxy S7 is getting blurred after i use it for a while (10 minutes to an hour).

i just select a picture, tried 5 different ones, (even the stock wallpaper) and after selecting the wallpaper it looks perfect and as it is supposed to be.

then after not using the phone for a few minutes and i unlock it again or after a reboot the wallpaper looks totally blurry.

i haven't installed any apps the past days before this started happening. anyone got an idea what is wrong?

extra info:

using the default Samsung Launcher. tried Nova launcher same problem.
used multiple apps to set the wallpaper (using settings of the launcher and using Google wallpapers app both same effect)

I personally don't have this issue, but this is how I solved a friend's phone with this problem:

On your phone, go to Google Play and install the app Muzei
Once installed, tap the open button in the Google Play app. You will be greeted with a splash page with a button that says "activate". Tap the button, and then click set wallpaper at the bottom of the screen.
Now you will see a new screen telling you to double-tap your wallpaper to see it in detail. There will also be an icon near the middle of the screen. Tap the icon.
At the bottom-right corner of the screen, tap the three dots, and then in the new menu tap customize.
Drag left to reveal an option reading "my photos". Tap it.
After tapping it, a small settings icon appears under it. Tap it.
At the bottom of the screen, tap the "+" button under the text reading "Choose specific photos instead".
It will then open the documents app. to get to your photos you can tap the button at the top-left corner of the screen, revealing a new menu. In this menu, tap gallery. Now you can choose one of your photos (or multiple photos).
After choosing a photo, tap the back button at the top-left corner of the screen. You should see the screen you saw in step 5.
Now tap the text at the top of the screen reading "Sources", and in the new menu that appears tap "advanced".
You will now see sliders labeled, "blur", "dim", and "grey". For a completely clear image, drag all of them completely to the left, but you can set these however you want. You should uncheck "apply blur on lockscreen" and you may also want to uncheck "New Wallpaper Notifications".
Tap the check mark at the top-left corner of the screen. Now you can close the app and go home to see your clear image.

With this method, you are also able to adjust the brightness of the image by opening the app and following steps 4 and 10-12 in that order. To change the image later open the app and follow steps 4-9 and 12 in that order.

If there are any more issues, I am very happy to help.


Is it possible to use 2 Bluetooth Unidirectional devices simultaneously? Is it possible to pair (and use) both a microphone-only and a speaker-only Bluetooth devices so that they can be used instead of the built-in mic/speaker in the phone?

If so, can you point to where I can find more information about how to accomplish that?

It should be possible to do what you want. Try this: pair both of the devices with your phone, then go to Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Bluetooth Settings, and long-press on the paired device and  select "Options".  From there you can choose which service you'd like for this particular device.


wifi not recognized unless restarted in archos 32 Many times when I'm near a wifi network, my archos 32 won't recognize it. It shows no networks in the wireless settings and doesn't show alerts for available networks even when this alert is on in the settings. It would only recognize the network if I disable wifi and then reenable it.

Did that happen to anyone else? Any workaround?

As a power-saving strategy, radio chipsets can sleep -- meaning they stop actively listening for a wi-fi network to connect to -- when they are out of range of any network, and will wake up to search for a network once every few minutes.

It may simply be that the radio on your Android is doing this, and that you haven't waited long enough for it to wake up once you come back in range of a wi-fi network.

A quick search tells me there's a Powersave disabled setting in the wi-fi settings on the Archos that might help.


Flash Rom and Recover Later I Want to put Android 2.3 on My Phone, its an ZTE Racer with Android 2.1 and the Manufacturer hasnt released the new version i have found a Rom, But im afraid to do it and lose my phone, can anybody tell me how to get my actual version of android back it up so if something goes wrong i can recover later? and how to put the new ROM on the Phone?

You need to install a custom recovery, which can back up your original ROM so you can restore it later.  The Clockworkmod recovery is generally considered the best, there's a build of it with instructions for the ZTE Racer at MoDaCo.


Clock in Combined/Status Bar on ICS tablet overlaps the date when pops up The Combined Bar (or Status Bar) on ICS shows the clock. When you tap this clock it pops up and shows details of any notifications. However, the clock in this popup overlaps the date on my DGM T-703 tablet when using 24-hour format.

I have tried altering the system font size, but it makes no difference to this part of the display.

NB: This is only an issue when using the 24-hour format, since the 12-hour format does not use a "0" prefix and the "1" (in 11:00 and 12:00) is such that it just about wraps around the date!

Is there any way to fix this untidiness and prevent an overlap?

I haven't seen this problem on any of ICS devices I have, most probably it pertains to the particular version installed on your tablet. Unless you want to modify the firmware yourself, the easiest fix would be to complain to the tablet maker and expect this to get fixed in the next release.


Picture converted to very low quality while sharing on Google + I'm using a HTC ONE X with Android 4.2.2 and HTC Sense 5.0

I took a screenshot from my phone : the picture has the same resolution as my screen which is 720x1280.

Then I share it on google plus :

go to 'Galery' app ( don't know if its the standard android one or an HTC specific app :/ )
choose my picture
touch 'share'
chose in the list 'Google+' which open the google+ app to choose the circles I want to share with.
confirm.

The picture shared is then 180x320 !
All text is unreadable so the sharing doesn't make sens anymore :/

Does anyone know why ? And how to prevent this ? I'm connected using wifi connection so there's no need to scale down the picture I can upload the full size...

It seems like it fixed by itself...

Now  can see the full size picture in my post on Google + without doing anything more.

My guess is : it uploaded a sample sized version of the picture in order to share my post instantaneously while the full picture was still uploading ...

Anymore informations on this from anyone would be nice.

Thanks :)


Send Android Notifications(like SMS, Gmail, WhatsApp) to PC Most of the time, when I keep my device for charging, away from my PC where I work, I get lot of notifications from things like Gmail, WhatsApp, SMS and Hangout, and other communication apps.

I know that I received these notifications because I do get sound alert whenever I receive them.

But I need to walk to my phone to see what those messages are and then take appropriate action if needed.

Is there a way to send or divert these device's notifications to my PC? And respond to them from PC itself?

My Android device: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2(Android 4.1)

My PC: Lenovo B40-30, Windows-8.1

This should work for you:

PUSHBULLET: Pushbullet makes your devices work better together by allowing you to move things between them easily.
Never miss a call or text again while working at your computer.
See all of your phone's notifications on your computer. You can see text messages, phone calls, and more.

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pushbullet.android


Is Skype available for all Android flavors or just Verizon? I see that Skype offers an Android version, but it only works on Verizon? Fring used to connect to Skype, but now it looks like they don't. Is there no Skype client for Android?

Skype is avaiable now for everyone on the Market, in case you are still looking!


Rooting Samsung Galaxy Pocket i have an android Device (Samsung Galaxy Pocket S5300) which i want to root, because i have used Ubuntu on my PC and Notebook for five or six years and i am familiar with doing different maintainace there using root, so i want to have a way to use root-privilleges on my smartphone too. I dont have a lot of experience in delevoping smartphone applications and rooting smartphones, so i need a bit help.

After a bit reading, i read that i should download an update.zip file, which i should select in the recovery mode.

I read this blog: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2365697 where they say i should download an update.zip from mediafire. I downloaded it to my PC and had a look into it and could found the various binaries that i need to be installed (su, busybox, superuser.apk etc.)

Now i have a question: do i really need to download an update.zip from mediafire, where i don't know what it comes from? The reason I'm worried is that i don't know who has created it and have no really posibility to check if the binaries i will execute are not compromised and have no viruses etc... i am a bit scared to execute binaries somewhere form the web (with root pivilleagues) where i don't know if they are to be trusted and to be sure that they are no virusus, spyware etc...

Thank you.

Whether the file is on mediafire or xda, you still run the risk of a user putting up a bad file (whether maliciously or incompetently). You have to trust someone unless you decide to make your own rom from scratch.

You could always open the update.zip file and do a cursory look at its contents. And if the poster has a good history, that gives points in their favor. Many posters on xda host their files on external download tools like mediafire; it doesn't inherently make the file more suspicious.


Droid Explorer issue Unable to locate the Android SDK tool, Please reinstall the application.
I have done  SDK download and the exact path I have put. But the same error occurs again and again.
I uploaded the video in Dropbox, please watch.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7xgbrigv1i01sp/Untitled%202.mp4?dl=0

Thanks.

If you downloaded the SDK tools from the site, you need to run sdkmanager tools platform-tools  "build-tools;28.0.3" platforms;android-28. (You might want to check the relevant build-tools and platform versions with sdkmanager --list).

That gets it to install... To actually be useful, you might need to downgrade some tools.


Motorola Bionic and OG have bad audio jacks Both my Motorola Bionic and OG have bad audio jacks that require significant jiggling around to get a constant connection almost every time I plug them in. Once it's "good" I can leave it alone and it works great but if I bump the connection it could disconnect again.

Is there any resolution to this? Is this true for other phones as well? It doesn't matter what OS version, it's the hardware connection itself.

The jack is probably dirty, or the wires could have loose connections in the phone. Try cleaning the headphone jack.


HTC One M9 - Stock, never modified. Bricked after OTA update 15/06/2017 Please note that:
This phone has never been reprogrammed/rooted/changed in any way/anything else like that. It is as stock as the day I bought it 2 years ago. I am happy to do whatever it takes to resolve the issue below.

The phone can be turned on, but will only do one of the following things:

-Black screen, old-style htc logo in centre, short vibrate, turn off, endlessly loop.

-White screen, green htc logo with "powered by android" text at bottom, short vibrate, turn off, endless loop.

Holding volume up+down together gets me to the boot screen with the following:

* Software status: Modified
 LOCKED
 S-ON *

 to previous item
 to next item
 to select item

REBOOT
REBOOT TO BOOTLOADER
BOOT TO DOWNLOAD MODE
BOOT TO RECOVERY MODE
POWER DOWN

When I plug in the phone to my PC, the USB notification sound plays, but only if the menu above is showing.

Selecting any of the options reboots the phone and goes back to the menu above, with the exception of the "BOOT TO RECOVERY MODE" option. Selecting that takes me to a black screen showing the old htc logo in the centre and:

Failed to boot to recovery mode
Press volume up or down to back to menu

This build is for development purposes only. Do not distribute... etc.

Pressing vol up/down at this point gives me the first mentioned menu screen, but below the * S-ON  line is  Security Warning *.

So, my question is:

1) Can I get my phone out of this loop and back to booting normally?

HTC have sent me this, but as far as I can tell it's useless in our case:

(Posted as answer, not comment, because of size and formatting)

(Not sure what they've done with the numbering)

  factory reset the phone in order to get out of the  boot loader page, please follow the below steps

  3.Press  and hold the Volume Down key.

  4.Turn the phone on by pressing the Power key until the phone vibrates, then release Power.
  5.Continue holding the Volume Down key.

  6.Release the Volume Down button when the black screen with red and blue lines of text appears.

  -

  1.Press  the Volume Down button repeatedly until reboot to bootloader is highlighted, then select it with thePower button.

  2.The device will display a white screen with colored text.

  -

  1.Press  the Volume Down button repeatedly until BOOT TO RECOVERY MODE is highlighted, then select it with the Power button.

  2.The screen will display the white HTC screen, and then turn black.  After several seconds, a picture of the phone with a red triangle and exclamation mark will appear

  -

  1.Hold the Power button, while pressing and releasing the Volume up button.
  Note: This can be done at any time after the screen turns black.  If this button combination is pressed before the image of the phone with the red triangle appears, it may take several seconds for the recovery menu to appear at the top of the screen.

  2.Another black screen with red and blue text will appear.

  3.Press  the Volume Down button repeatedly until wipe data/factory reset is highlighted, then select it with thePower button.

  -

  1.Press  the Volume Down button repeatedly until Yes – delete all user data is highlighted, then select it with thePower button.

  2.Once the data wipe is complete, make sure reboot system now is selected and press the Power button.


Why does my storage page say I have 34 GB of Audio files when there are only 2 audio files stored, totaling 2.1 MB? I've been trying to free up space on my Pixel 2XL, and the Storage menu in Settings says I have 34 GB of audio files stored, but when I go in to the files to try to erase things, I only have two audio files taking up a total of ~2.1 MB. I don't even know where to find what else might be taking up the space, there's nothing else there... Any ideas?

Storage Menu:

After pressing Audio

After pressing Unknown

After pressing VoiceRecorder

Apps may not store files with music file extensions, this is why they cannot be seen as audio files. You should try clearing app data of Apple music or something similar or check in its directory to see what you want to keep. Sometimes android also recognizes file extensions wrong and interprets them as audio files, such as incomplete downloads. You may use apps such as Files Go from Google to optimize your device storage space.


Webpage not loading in the Android browser I was checking out my website using the default Android (2.3.4) browser and the link to one of my PDFs is not loading and returns a "Web page not available" error.  The URL http://www.ericperrets.info/Resume%20-%20Eric%20Perret.pdf .  When I try it in Chrome or any other browsers on the desktop it load correctly.  Any ideas why this is happening?

For better compatibility you might consider removing the spaces in the filename. Other than that I don't know what the problem could be.


Barcode Scanner not working correctly on Galaxy S II I got my Samsung GS II just recently and I was wondering if the problem I'm experiencing comes from my phone or is a common problem among GS II users.

Once I turn on the Barcode Scanner I'm able to scan QR codes correctly, but when I try to scan a barcode, it rarely works.

If I try to focus the bardcode for a couple of minutes it will work sometimes and scan the code. The camera seems to struggle to scan the barcode, from the looks of it.

Everything else on the phone is working fine so far so I doubt at first that it's an harware problem.

Does anyone know how to overcome this?

EDIT:

Barcode Scanner seems to be able to scan some barcodes if I can scan the code for about 30 seconds or more. This should be done almost instantly when the camera gets a clear vision of the barcode but it seems to take the phone quite some time to lock it down.

Any ideas people?

After spending the whole week searching for this issue and testing different settings and tricks recommended by users from other forums, I have finally found the culprits.

It seems that the least mark of your fingertips on the lens of your phone's camera will make it less sensitive to QR codes and Barcodes in general.
That and also not having AutoFocus On.

Things I did that helped:

Clean the camera lens with a soft cloth to remove fingerprints or other marks
Turn on AutoFocus On your camera, if it's not On
Try setting camera Action to Macro, this seemed to make it recognize codes faster.

I hope these tips can help others as it helped me.

Edit:

Also check this Forum for more tips on this matter.


Increase maximum number of connection of Wi-Fi hotspot I use my Android TV Box as wi-fi hotspot.

Users  --wi-fi-->  TV Box  --lan-->  Internet

However, wi-fi hotspot limits max 10 wi-fi connections.

For rooted Android device, can we increase this maximum number of connections?

I have been researching about this for some time now, but I have to admit that I failed to get substantive information on the subject.

However I have come to a conclusion, that this setting is hardcoded and difficult to manipulate (perhaps even with root), unless you're compiling a customised ROM from scratch with such modifications.

It may be a restriction by manufacturers perhaps the feasibility based on factors like wi-fi chip capability, CPU power, battery etc (from my observations this limit ranges from 8-12 varying with devices)

The are some workarounds I propose, depending on what you're trying to achieve you could either;

set your Android device as a wi-fi repeater
or first share you device's internet connect to a desktop/laptop PC preferably via USB connection (i.e USB tethering if possible) or other means then reverse-tether that connection to other clients from desktop/laptop.

Using Android device as wi-fi repeater

It is possible to use the android device as wi-fi repeater, through various methods most of which you can find here: Can we use an Android phone as a Wi-Fi repeater?
The consequence is that you can make use of the second Access Point, to have other clients connect to the internet via a wi-fi AP broadcasted from the primary device.

Nb: Watch out from battery drain and heavy resources consumption

Option 2.

This concept is an indirect method which may demand other pre-requisites i.e a desktop/laptop PC other third-party software for hotspot share (may be freeware or shareware)
Here you need the android device to have its internet connectivity shared to the primary device (i.e PC) first, then the desktop (which is much more capable of accomodating a much larger number of clients than android device) can then share to other clients.

Some of the appropiate methods have been described here: Share WIFI over USB and around the internet.

EDIT

You can check this thread on XDA with a similar question: [MOD] Increase Max Users for Wi-Fi Tethering LG G2 LS980 [NON SPRINT ACTIVATED]


Force a notification to be swipeable I have a notification from Google Play Services about a ROM update that is stickied in my notification tray:

I want to make it possible to swipe away the lower notification. I am rooted with XPosed installed, however I can't find any solution online.
I'm running Lolipop 5.1 on my Verizon HTC M8.

It is my understanding that in order to make a notification from persistent (sticky) to ordinary, the persistent one must be destroyed and a fresh ordinary one must be created.

Regardless, whether my claim is valid or not, you can opt to hide a particular notification from an app rather than choosing to nuke all of them from App details under Settings. NotifyClean (free, donate) can do that for you.

(Note: Android must be rooted and Xposed Framework should be installed)

Instructions

When that persistent or troublesome notification is in the Notification drawer, either do

long-press → NotifyClean, or
launch NotifyClean → select the app owning the notification

Select the particular notification you don't want to see. The background will change for that entry and the notification would vanish from the drawer.

(I've not confirmed whether the method of operation of NotifyClean is similar to what Android does when Show notifications is unchecked in App details.)

It must be noted that you wouldn't be able to see that same notification again in the future, unless you disable the NotifyClean module or uninstall this app or revert the changes inside NotifyClean.


Some application sets alarm loudness to zero For some reason some application sets the alarm loudness over night to zero.
How do I find out which application is to blame?

You might want to look for applications that do require this permission: android.permission.MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS

Then uninstall it and set the alarm a short while after that. If everything is back to normal you have found the application in question.