what is the difference between Dolphin Browser HD and Mini versions? I look at the official Dolphin Browser page, but I can't seem to find any differences, besides:

Dolphin Browser Mini – Fast & Simple
Dolphin Browser HD – Powerful & Elegant

In what sense is HD powerful or elegant?

In what sense is Mini simple?

What am I missing out on if I use Mini instead of HD?

I've used Dolphin HD for some time now, but every time I try to compare its features with Dolphin Mini I get frustrated, there is no clear documentation everywhere.

That said, Dolphin Mini is a version of the browser that is optimized for velocity and reduced resources use, so I came to the conclusion that Dolphin HD is the right path to go if you have a terminal with decent resources (700Mhz o more powerfull processor, 512Mb of RAM or More, 800x400 resolution, etc....) while the Mini version is here to that ones that do not have this kind of terminals or that prefer a more faster browser even at the cost of missing some features.

So with the two versions being free I choose Dolphin HD if the terminal is powerfull enough to allow you to maintain 3 or more tabs open an user flash.


Where is the IMEI located on a Motorola phone? I have two motorola phones - One that I fastboot erase all'd 'accidently' and lost £300, so I was wondering if I could just transfer the IMEI from one phone to another?

No, you can not move one IMEI to another phone.  That number is a lot like MAC address of every device that we use now a days. In theory, and with the help of root. Yes you can change the IMEI. However, that is alot of work.

The IMEI is unique to each phone and is how the authorities can help locate missing phones or even in many cases missing persons.

As for where you might find it. Look in your battery bay. or on the covers. if you have any of the documentation or even the box still.. you can also locate them there.


How to disable bad RAM addresses and fix bad storage blocks? The symptoms which device presents are:

Restarts randomly with a previous freeze of a few of seconds (this is becouse of /proc/sys/kernel/panic is set to 5).
Sometimes with a blue filled screen.
Even on boot or TWRP.
Can restart several times on boot at different times.
Can avoid the 'restart effect' for a while keeping RAM usage low.
Not using the device and stopping services that run in the background makes the device "reboot proof".
This error appears in the log of TRWP:
E:Invalid block device on /sdcard ext4 [][][]flags=display="Internal SD" ; symlink ', 'flags=display="Internal SD" ; symlink' , 27
When trying to change partition type or repair 'Internal storage' at TRWP it says Invalid partition selection (maybe becouse of 7?)

I have done this to try fixing it:

Using adb to fix badblocks (Found some).
Using different ROM's.
Wiping the whole device.
Set kernel.panic_on_oops to 0.

UPDATE: After analyzing a lot of crash reports, seg faults and memory corruptions I am pretty sure that the unusable ram is from address 0xb6000000 to
0xb6ffffff.

How to leave them out? It is a ARMv7 device.

This might not be a direct solution to your problem, but I'm sharing my thoughts on it.

SHORT ANSWER

It's not very likely for RAM on embedded systems to get defective. And if it does, solutions might not be readily available, except if someone has already done that specifically for your device.
Modern flash storage devices manage bad blocks on their own, users haven't much to do in this regard.

If any of both problems requires user intervention, usually it's time to replace phone.

  This error appears in the log of TRWP:
  E:Invalid block device on /sdcard ext4 [][][]flags=display="Internal SD" ; symlink ', 'flags=display="Internal SD" ; symlink' , 27
  When trying to change partition type or repair 'Internal storage' at TRWP it says Invalid partition selection (maybe becouse of 7?)

To me these symptoms look like those of a dying eMMC.

BAD BLOCKS ON RAM

I suppose you are talking about a phone or similar device.

Phones have SoCs, the module which includes CPU, GPU, RAM, eMMC, modem, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS along with other critical components. In addition to that, LPDRAM and eMMC are in most cases manufactured together as a single Multi-Chip Package (MCP).

That said, what you are saying is highly unlikely to occur on phones. On PCs RAM is installed as independent modules which are prone to physical damage and wear and tear e.g. due to moisture, rust, dust, jerky movements, vibration, loose connections, pressure (during installation), heat (because of overclocking or improper ventilation) etc. So there are tools like memtest86 to regularly check for memory faults. All of these factors are ignorable for phones because the RAM is tightly integrated with less than a square inch sized SoC chip, keeping in view all above factors.

Another possible reason is electrical failure of the circuits/components e.g. due to electric shock in a sudden blackout which renders it totally useless. This again doesn't seem very probable for phones as the RAM is part of SoC, so the whole SoC should fail along with other, some kind of, surge protection mechanisms (if any).

Since RAM is volatile memory, its cells never get physically changed while reading/writing data unlike eMMCs. eMMC is persistent storage, so the physical properties of silicon cells change during E/P operations. That's why eMMCs have a limited life but RAMs aren't subject to any such limitation.

So if RAM is defective, the most likely is that it was manufactured with faults. RAM failure because of growing bad blocks isn't a common case, at least no sooner than other components of device, but still can't be utterly rejected. So how to fix it?

Since hardware is handled by kernel, the only way to mark some memory addresses bad is by making kernel not allocate those addresses to any userspace program (as can be done on Linux with BadRAM which modifies kernel source). And that too if the bad memory lets the device boot to kernel stage. Otherwise you'll have to handle the matter at SoC/bootloader stage where RAM is being initialized after power on (as can be done on Linux with GRUB and on Windows with BCD). It's definitely impossible on phones since bootloaders are closed source. If your bootloader is configurable like in case of development boards, that's an exception. But in each case you probably have to go through thousands of lines of code.

BadRAM is no more maintained after kernel version 2.6.28, that was 10+ years back (probably because it wasn't accepted into mainstream kernel tree). You can ask the developer if he can assist you to port the patch to ARM (if it's possible at all). Or may be you can exploit kernel parameters mem and/or memmap somehow to achieve what you want. Again the situation might differ a lot when there is no ACPI and no BIOS. Personally I never came across such situation for mobile phones.

BAD BLOCKS ON STORAGE

Coming to the other point, fixing bad blocks makes sense only with hard drives or at maximum with old raw NAND drives (ref). HDDs have a linear LBA to CHS mapping, which means a filesystem knows to which physical location data is being written. Modern flash memory storage devices (including eMMCs, SD cards and SSDs) have a built-in firmware controller called Flash Translation Layer (FTL). FTL handles LBA to PBA mapping, the filesystem and OS are quite unaware of. As a wear-leveling strategy, FTL doesn't map sequentially and the mapping is dynamic. First LBA could correspond to last PBA and last LBA could point to somewhere in the middle, continuously changing with Garbage Collection.

FTL also scans and keeps track of all bad sectors (more specifically silicon cells) and remaps worn bits from overprovisioned (kind of free) space if required. Filesystems will never identify a sector bad, unless the stage comes when E/P cycles limit of flash memory is reached and it starts behaving funny, becomes read-only and ultimately crashes. Even if a purchased software identifies a sector bad, you can't mark it as not allocatable; refer to dynamic nature of LBA to PBA mapping. You mark a sector bad in filesystem and after few minutes that would be moved to some other partition.

HDDs usually don't die at once. Their built-in firmware maintains a list (G-list) of bad sectors from the day of manufacturing (ref). LBAs corresponding to bad sectors get replaced with spare sectors which every HDD has. Once the pool of spare sectors is depleted, any newly appearing (possibly partially) bad sectors are exposed to OS/filesystem. So when a program like chkdsk, e2fsck or badblocks identifies a bad sector, it can handle that at OS level or make it marked bad by HDD firmware. Quoted from here:

  If you give permission to overwrite a bad sector SeaTools will attempt to write a pattern of zeros to that sector. Usually, this action will assist the disk drive firmware in managing the problem by retiring the problem LBA and activating a spare in its place.

That's what hdparm --write-sector does.

Mostly filesystems can also maintain a list of bad sectors to be ignored during read/write operations. For instance on ext4, dumpe2fs -b shows a list of bad blocks reserved in bad block inode.

Mostly HDDs (as well as SSDs) are also built with SMART technology to monitor device health, but not eMMCs. In case of eMMC, the only thing e2fsck does is to identify errors within filesystem (and possibly repair using e.g. information from jornal), not in flash memory. All OS's including Android perform filesystem checks on boot before mounting, so that manual checking is not needed.


What exactly is the APN field used for, and why do some providers require it while others don't? I've switched providers and now have to enter an APN (access point name) in order to use the service. With my older two providers I did not need to do this and it worked out of the box. What is the rationale for requiring APNs to be entered on some cell phones, and exactly what features do they enable?

Why do some providers require them while others don't, and what do they do?

APN settings are necessary for data service on GSM and related networks (UMTS, LTE) to work.  It defines what network to connect to and the configuration of the network (e.g. the gateway GPRS support node address, which is the interface between the mobile network and the public internet).

APN settings are always required for data service on GSM and related networks.  The reason why you didn't need to enter them before would be either that you purchased the device from the carrier, in which case it would have been pre-configured with their APN settings, that the ROM (either stock or custom) included your previous carrier in their APN database, or your phone was able to accept automatic configuration from the carrier.

Most custom ROMs and some stock ones (in the case of direct-from-the-manufacturer devices) include an extensive database of different carrier's APNs and Android can automatically choose the correct one (Based on information from the SIM card) so you don't have to enter stuff manually.


Annoying overlay add This specific add keeps popping up as overlay at random.
It's always the same Facebook Maket thing.
I'd appreciate any hint on how to get rid of it.

First, see @Ifran Latif's comment. This is a good action for finding malicious apps.

If it's simply an ad that you want to not see anymore, there are several ad blocker apps available that can help:

AdAway

AdBlock Plus

AdGuard


Google Drive’s image recognition on Android 4.1 demo available on older versions? There is an example of text recognition from an image on the recent Android 4.1 demo. The example is a picture taken with the phone of a post office receipt that is then OCRed and indexed. Is this OCR and indexing already available to all Google Drive users or just limited to Android 4.1?

This is nothing new. Google Docs supported character recognition in both images and PDF files.
It is also available in the mobile clients regardless of the OS version as this is a server side feature.


How to improve image quality in Firefox when using Sprint Tethering? Ever since I got my android, and switched to sprint, when I use Firefox, all of the images loaded are just horrible in quality, like almost to a point you can barely tell what it is.

I hear that it has to do with the data provider, routing traffic through a proxy that modifies the HTTP header with some Javascript that compresses the images to preserve bandwidth.

EDIT: I found the script. Used on EVERY page that is loaded, in the title:

This is what I need to figure out how to block!

When I hover my mouse over an image, it says "Shift+R improves the quality of this image, Shift+A improves the quality of all images on this page".
So I try that and even that wont work for me.

I wouldnt mind this if I could take care of the situation when I needed to by pressing those keyboard shortcuts (Shift+A/Shift+R) but since it doesnt work for me, I am kind of stuck on what I should do about it..

Is there anyway to get around this? or a way I can fix the keyboard shortcuts to actually work?

Im a web developer so I kind of need my images to render correctly as I need to actually preview my layout and see if my pages are rendering satisfactory, but I can't do that if my images look like junk all the time.

This happens on every page by the way, but I noticed it only happens to images that are embedded using the image tag , and it doesn't happen to images loaded via CSS. .image { background-image: src="", etc; }.

Also I noticed the shortcut keys work on Firefox on Ubuntu 12.04 (just barely), but it is not working for me now in Windows 7.

So is there a way I could go into the about:config and change some values to prevent this? or a counter script, or ever something on my phone that will prevent this?

Any thoughts on this would be great, I would really greatly appreciate it. I mean its a nice feature, saves on bandwidth and all, but Its ridiculous just how bad the image quality can be, pixelated as can be, without a way to fix it.

Would the same thing happen if you used a VPN? Your ISP wouldn't be able to compress images if it didn't know what the traffic was, right?

I found setting up a basic VPN to be pretty easy; if you have a Win 7 PC with an internet connection (or a willing buddy with one) you can set up a quick VPN using this guide: How to Configure your Computer to Accept Incoming VPN Connections in Windows 7. With that working, try connecting to your VPN both from your tethered laptop and from the Android phone itself. If it works you could investigate a more permanent VPN solution.


How to get out of non-responding screen swipe on locked Galaxy Edge 6? I have a Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge phone and twice now, the phone has gotten into a locked state, but the screen swipe does not work, it does not respond to finger swipe to unlock the device.  I can push power button to get screen on or off, but no screen finger action has any effect.  I cannot get it to reboot.  Pushing power off button for a while brings up screen with choice to reboot, but that requires touching screen to select reboot.

I pressed power and volume down keys for several seconds to force restart, and chose normal boot from the menu, but after rebooting the issue remains, no screen swipe response.  Booting into safe-mode didn't help either.  I did a factory reset and still no response to screen touch.  Is this a hardware issue and I need a new phone?  Should I use ADB and redownload the operating system onto it?

Verizon had to replace the phone due to hardware issues evidenced by these symptoms.


Cannot see, buy, or download apps I have a Samsung Galaxy S3.

Sometimes when I'm looking for an app, it says "not available in your country". It's very weird that I cannot see or buy paid apps, when others can see them.

Is it because of my phone, my country, my Google account, or what is it? Can I change that? If yes, how?

The reason the OP cannot see an app due to a message not available in your country is down to the very simple check on the SIM card. Each SIM card has a carrier identification, and country code identification. When Android powers up, the Radio Interface Layer (RIL) obtains the carrier and network information in which the baseband receives over the air, here is a small subset of an example taken from Gingerbread source, apns-conf.xml

<apn carrier="Vodafone ES-Internet" mcc="214" mnc="01" apn="ac.vodafone.es" user="vodafone" password="vodafone" type="default,supl" />
<apn carrier="Vodafone" mcc="214" mnc="01" apn="airtelwap.es" user="wap@wap" password="wap125" type="default,supl" />
<apn carrier="Vodafone ES" mcc="214" mnc="01" apn="airtelwap.es" user="wap@wap" password="wap125" type="supl" />
<apn carrier="Yoigo" mcc="214" mnc="04" apn="internet" proxy="010.008.000.036" port="8080" type="default,supl" />

Notice the values for mcc, mnc, for Spain for example, in this case, 214, and 01, 04 etc, that carrier information is transmitted across to the SIM card and internally within Android for reference.

The Play Store, reads the phone state, and deduces the carrier information as a measure for "filtering" out apps based on the region/carrier. However, if the SIM card is from the country of origin, for example, UK (this also applies when roaming), Android "remembers" the mcc and mnc and pushes that aside, and gets replaced with the preferential carrier's network codes for the said values of mcc and mnc respectively when roaming, for example, Spain. (Incidentally, as a side note, that is how auto-update of time-zones are supposedly to work, by looking up the mcc, and timezone, add on x minutes to the clock maintained by Android).

But that is in a nutshell, in how the Play store determines what to show for that intended audience based on their respective network. There are work-arounds available, by faking the carrier code is one, Market Enabler does that exactly that.

Please see the other answer that was posted in how to get-around the limitations and work-arounds.


Add specific website to Chrome's New Tab Page Is there a way to explicitly add a URL to Chrome's new tab page dial pad?

Does not look like there is a way to specifically add a URL for it to appear in the new tab page - generally that page is Most Visited (depending on what you have set to appear).

Would be a very useful feature instead of accessing bookmarks but you could create a bookmarks folder and add you important sites there - should be two clicks away at most.

Here are a possible of work around:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/VnDvOnYvZrQ


How can I stop Hootsuite from trying to send this failing message? So I try to send a tweet from hootsuite about this really nice beer I had. It was a nice beer, and a nice tweet, and nothing weird about it at the time.

The message send failed -- see screenshot, below.

The message cannot be found in hootsuite --  the message doesn't appear in my twitter feed, nor in "sent messages" (of course) -- the "Pending" tab is empty.

The message send KEEPS failing -- even though I've posted other messages from Hootsuite to Twitter since then. The message keeps trying to resend (and fail) every few minutes [no idea of actual frequency, but if I dismiss the message, it reappears sooner or later].

Have you tried clearing the data for the app?  Or uninstalling then reinstalling?  Or does Hootsuite cache unsent/failed tweets to the cloud?


Which application keeps port opened on android? Possible Duplicate:
  List of open ports on Android

On my nexus 7 rooted device some programs keep two ports opened (8080 and 8082). How can I determine what are those applications? Netstat from terminal can't help.

Install the OS Monitor app. One of the things it can do is list your network connections, show the used ports and the app that is using it.


Galaxy fame wont work with otg I am trying to operate an otg cabe with my Galaxy fame but am getting nowhere. When I run host diagnostic it doesnt recognise the phone Anyone help?

According to GSMArena, this phone doesn't support USB-on-the-go.


Samsung "My Files" Downloads folder corrupted on non-rooted phone On my Note 9 unrooted phone, for whatever reason, if I delete files from the "Downloads" section of the My Files app, these files (or references to them) aren't completely removed.  A residual "0 byte" file with no name and a time date stamp of "December 31, 1969 4:00pm" is leftover. Also, these residual files can't be moved or deleted.

This Downloads section seems to have a relation to the /emulated/0/Download/ folder... although, not the same thing. If I delete the "Download" folder, the "Downloads" section remains unaffected.

In the Windows OS world, I would just run chkdsk to quickly fix the corrupted file indexes on the file system. However, I'm not sure what the equivalent is for an unrooted Android OS.

Things I've tried:

Wipe the cache partition
Delete the /emulated/o/download folder and recreating it again.
Force Stopping the My Files app, clear cache, clear data.  This is supposed to be similar to clearing the app cache for 'Media Storage' app on non-Samsung Android devices

I REALLY don't want to factory reset my phone, considering how much time I spent configuring all my applications... unless I have absolutely no choice (and know for sure it would fix this issue).  This issue is completely over my head.  I'm hoping an Android expert will know what to do in this case without having to do a factory reset.  Maybe, I can do something via ADB shell?

There is an app named Media storage in Android OS that stores the database of files and folders in the storage of your device. Looks like there is some problem with this app, so you need to clear it's data and cache.

To do that, go to System settings->Apps, click on the menu button (3 dots) then click on Show system. Then, in the apps list, you can find an app named Media storage. Click on it and clear it's data and cache. See this screenshot :


How to merge /data and /sdcard on Android 4.4? Is it possible to use two partitions as one storage on a MediaTek device?

AFAIK, it is already implemented in Samsung Galaxy S III, may be.

Not very large number of physical primary only devices were shipped with separate /sdcard partition (with attribute removable="false") in transition phase from UMS to MTP. Most of those were shipped with ICS or JB, a few got updated to KK. Then mostly vendors moved to the dominant concept of emulation on /data/media/0. See Android's Storage Journey for more details.

You can take risk to paly with partition table in order to merge both partitions: /data and /sdcard (depends on the layout of partitions). But how would you get a compatible ROM? In fact you'll have to develop a custom ROM from scratch, which needs modification to both; AOSP and kernel code. Particularly vold configurations need special upgradation as it would be looking for partition to be mounted at /sdcard with (permission-less) FAT filesystem, which is now merged to /data with ext4 filesystem. Storage configuration in framework, fstab and init.*.rc files would also needed to be changed.

So the struggle required isn't worth it. And I doubt even if you would be able to get complete source code for such an old device.


How do I make a chart in Microsoft Word? None of the templates have chart as an option, but in the Play Store it stated you can do make charts. Where or how do I make a chart with a particular number of rows, etc?

Short Answer

No, you cannot create a Chart using Microsoft Word for Android.
However, You can create Chart using Microsoft Excel for Android.

Long Answer

If there was any, it should have been under Insert menu which does not have Charts currently

Click to enlarge

There is no option to create charts in Microsoft Word. Without any Office 365 subscription, Office for free - can render if you have a file which has customized chart (which has been created earlier using Microsoft Word on PC). Basic operations like Copy,Paste and delete works on charts.
See screenshot for more understanding

Blue tint in Status bar is Microsoft Word, green implies Microsoft Excel

Possible Workaround

You can however use Microsoft Excel for android to create Charts.

Click to enlarge

About Playstore desciption

Microsoft has a unusual way of putting things about the apps in Google Play.
If you see Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel Google play links and scroll down to the
What's New section
You'll see that they are literally identical and talks about the other i.e in Microsoft Word page they have mentioned about Excel's new features and in Microsoft Excel page they have mentioned about Word's new features too.

Office 365 subscription

Premium feature related to Charts

  Advanced editing of charts: precise control over chart display options that allow you to change elements of the chart such as data labels and the legend are paid features. If you use Office for free and receive a workbook which contains as customized chart, it will render in your Excel app. However, you will not be able to change chart elements unless you purchase a subscription.
  Source


Why Can I Not Access My Devices Localhost Over Data? While experimenting with the Bit Web Server app I have noticed that when I attempt to access my device's localhost, the connection seems to be sent somewhere else.

Using the localhost button in the app sends me to http://localhost:8080, however this displays a blank page, whilst removing the port number takes me to a page that has the following written on it:  Bytemobile Dummy Web Server.

When accessing http://localhost:8080 with no connection (WiFi and Data are turned off) I simply get Unable to connect to the proxy server.
I can however connect to my device's localhost fine when connected to WiFi.

Why can I not connect to my device's localhost? Surely it should not need a connection for it to connect to itself. Why does it only work when WiFi is enabled and how do I change this behavior?

The clue is in the error message, which says it can't connect to the proxy server. If your device is configured to use a web proxy, then it'll never connect directly to localhost: it connects to the web proxy and asks that for the web page you really want. This won't work with a local web server.

To use a local web server, turn off your web proxy settings. See this related question for more info about that.


Google Play Store won't download apps after reinstalling I had mistakenly uninstalled the stock Play Store on my rooted Lava Iris X1 Mini running Android 4.4. I reinstalled it as a system app after downloading the apk from an external site. Now, I cannot download any apps from the store, because as soon as the download starts, play store crashes. It doesn't even work when it's installed as a user app. Clearing data and cache of Google Play Services also doesn't fix the problem. Any way to prevent this problem? Thanks in advance.

You can try downloading the play store from GApps. You will probably want the pico version... You then have to flash it with a custom recovery (e.g. TWRP).

Good Luck ;)


When will my device get the Android 5.1 update (Lollipop)? Android 5.1 (Lollipop) was officially announced on March 9th, 2015.

You can review the high-level changes at the announcement on the official Android blog.

Of course, not all devices will get this update right away and others won't get it at all. Each manufacturer and carrier often choose to add their custom modifications which tend to delay the official release.

When will each device get Android 5.1, either officially or unofficially, if ever?

See also:

When will my device get the Android 5.0 update (Lollipop)?
When will my device get the Android 6.0 update (Marshmallow)?

This community wiki will list all of the known and rumored dates for devices. If you have an update make sure to follow the format that's been established, and the following guidelines:

Keep devices in alphabetical order listing the manufacturer and model
Specify if the date is confirmed or rumored and link to the source
If there is an unofficial release, link to the site where it can be downloaded

Phones

HTC

One M9: 2015-07 (confirmed)

LG

Nexus 4: 2015-03-09 (official)
Nexus 5: 2015-03-09 (official)

Motorola

DROID Turbo: 2015-07-01 (confirmed)
Nexus 6: 2015-03-09 (official)

OnePlus

Samsung

Galaxy S II: unofficial (Cyanogenmod)  (via | Cyanogenmod Download)

Sony

Tablets

Asus

Nexus 7 (2012 & 2013): 2015-03-09 (official)

HTC

Nexus 6: 2015-03-09 (official)

LG

Motorola

Xoom: unofficial (OmniROM) (via | Official XDA thread)

Nvidia

Shield Tablet (WiFi and LTE): 2015-05-22 (Android Police)

Samsung

Nexus 10: 2015-03-09 (official)

Sony

Other


App doesn't access GPS location directly There's a strange situation with Citymapper, where it doesn't access GPS location directly, but it does if a different app is accessing location at the same time. This hasn't always been the case, but I'm not sure exactly when it started (so, can't say if it's because of a certain update etc.).

Problem details:

I'm using Citymapper 6.23 on LineageOS 14.1.
The Location permission is for Citymapper is turned on
"Location mode" is set to "Device only" (i.e., GPS only), although I've tried turning "High accuracy" on to test, and it doesn't fix the problem.
I have Privacy Guard enabled on Citymapper, but access to location is allowed, and as before, disabling Privacy Guard for Citymapper doesn't fix the problem.

Citymapper "thinks" it's accessing location, but it's not: I say this because when I disable the location marker for the device, Citymapper complains that "Your location is disabled". If location is on, Citymapper doesn't complain (so, it thinks it's working), but I know it's not accessing the location for three reasons:

the location Citymapper shows is incorrect (it shows the last "known" location -- see below for details)
the location marker doesn't appear at the top of the screen as it would when an app is using geolocation
in the system settings > Location, "Recent location requests" are shown, but Citymapper is not on that list.

Further to this, Privacy Guard reports that "Fine location" is being accessed by Citymapper every time I use the app, but it says that GPS was last accessed on 26 December 2017 (Privacy Guard controls separately access to "GPS", "Coarse location" and "Fine location").

Indirect access:

The weirdest part is that when I open a different application that uses geolocation (in this case, MapFactor Navigator) and the location marker does show up at the top of the screen, the correct location does show up in Citymapper as well (this is my current workaround, and this is how Citymapper gets the last known location I mentioned above).

What could be causing this, and how could I go about fixing it? As I've mentioned, it used to work but started having this problem a while back (perhaps around the 26th of December, since that was the last GPS access). I haven't seen this with other apps, but then again, I don't have a lot of apps with location access.

System details:

Device: Samsung Galaxy S5 Duos (SM-G900FD)
OS: LineageOS 14.1
Android version: 7.1.2
The phone is rooted with SuperSU.

Note: There's no "Citymapper" tag (and I'm a newbie), so I used the generic "applications" tag. Maybe a senior user can fix this.

Android Engineer at Citymapper here!

The issue you're describing sounds quite similar to one we fixed recently.
So I would recommend updating to the latest version of the app.
The current version in the Play Store as of writing is 7.1.


ADB commands to get the adb version of mobile phone This might sound stupid, but after reading this post (which seem complete) I still dont see how to get the "abd version" of my android, the output I expect is something like this Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.31. I tried (based on this answer)adb shell and then adb version and I get /system/bin/sh: version: not found.

The reason I want to know it is to see if it is compatible with the adb version I have in my desk. Thanks!

UPDATE:
Although I could not see the adbd version of my android. At the end I did not matter as I could command my phone from my desk using the last release of adb here. So thanks all anyway for their contributions, cuz although I did not get exactly what I wanted it help me to reach the a solution to my problem.

First of all, Android since Marshmallow doesn't come with adb binary (client) anymore, but only with adbd (server), for communication with an adb client on Desktop.

In a nutshell, this is how the communication takes place:

your Android device has adbd, a daemon, which is started during boot process, and listens on USB by-default for communication from desktop clients;
your adb tool in your desktop acts as a client and sends request to adbd on your Android, and you get to run adb commands successfully subjected to fulfilment of certain conditions.

If there are compatibility concerns, they would arise if adbd is depreciated or adb client on your desktop is. To see the versions, run:

adb version                 // to check adb client version in your desktop
adb shell adbd --version    // to check adbd's version in your Android. Please note that some users reported error with this if executed without root access.

You shouldn't be worried about adbd's version but only with adb client version in your Desktop since official adb client is backward compatible.

Now to the localized issues you ended up with.

You incorrectly executed the commands. Nowhere the linked answer instructed to execute adb shell version. The correct procedure is:

adb version // adb version (client) on your Desktop
adb shell   // launches shell on your Android device through adb client on Desktop
adb version // the version of adb (client) binary that used to come with Android prior to Marshmallow.

The last two commands have no relevancy to your question since they intend to ascertain the version of the adb client in your Android. As I explained in the beginning, it is adbd (server) alone which communicates from Android device's end, not the adb binary in the Android. That binary in Android can be used, if available, to talk to other Android devices (USB-OTG, WiFi, etc.) or to the same device if adbd (server) is listening on network too.

Also, when you ran adb shell version, it meant: launch a shell on Android and execute the command version. There is nothing named version which is to be executed, hence, you got the error.


Will Google Navigation work without WiFi on Android tablet I have a Toshiba Excite tablet with android ice cream that has WiFi only (no cellular) that has Google Navigation (Beta) app on it and also Google map (Beta) app. I want to use the tablet in London England and Paris France. Will it work while walking around the city if I can't stay connected to WiFi?

If you think it won't work, what app can I use offline that will?

It most likely will work, depending on a few facts:

your device must have GPS built-in
you must have the map data downloaded while connected to WiFi (e.g. using Maps (-) Offline Navigation, which fills Google Map's cache)
for navigation, you must have calculated the route in advance

I'm not sure whether Google Maps supports pre-calculation for navigation -- but even if, there's another restriction: once you hit a "closed road" (road works or the like), you're lost -- it cannot do a re-calculation of the route without network.

Also, getting a fix on GPS might be a lot slower (unless you aquire your fix while still connected to WiFi). Background is: To get a fix, GPS needs to know where which satellites are. These data are contained in what's called the Almanac. While AGPS downloads those data from the network (e.g. via mobile data), "plain GPS" does not have this feature, and thus needs to get the data directly from the satellites -- which obviously is not as fast.

If it does not work with Google Maps, there are several alternatives to be found on the Google Playstore. I successfully used Locus Map Free this way, so I know it does work. Locus lets you download map data directly from within the app, from different sources, and also offers pre-calculation of routes. This app is just one example, there are a lot more available.


What does RF Cal means? I'm using android samsung galaxy s5. When I entered in the dial *#12580*369# it appeared some information about the phone. One of them is RF Cal (it is formated like a date).

Does anyone knows what it is?
What does RF Cal stands for?
Where this terminology came from? What organization / person coined it?
If RF Cal is the manufacturing date of the phone, then why not just call it manufacturing date of MFD for example? is it because there is a difference?

RF Cal stands for "Radio Frequency Calibration". For smart phones, it means "time of first power up". After assembly, some parts of the phone(e.g. magnetometer & proximity sensor, radio chips and antennae)  must be calibrated before it's correctly functional. It is slightly different from "manufacture time", because hardware calibration is after the device is fully assembled. You can simply think it's "time of the end of manufacture of this device".


MarketMarks app: How to perform Backup and Restore MarketMarks is an excellent Android app to create a sortable wishlist for apps offered in the Android Play Store, complete with editable tags, update dates, prices, and custom notes.

I can't get the Backup and Restore functionality to work in it.  How do you get that functionality to work properly?

I want to be able to backup the MarketMarks list and then restore it.

Here's what I've tried, in order:

Select Backup
Select Restore
Select Check Updates

Each time I do this, MarketMarks crashes on step 3.

How do you accomplish this essential task?

Please specify the version of Android you used in your answer as well as the version of the Play Store (the Play Store version number is indicated at the bottom of the Play Store's Settings page, under 'Build version').

Thanks for your answers!

An recent update to MarketMarks has fixed this bug, and it now works as expected.

Furthermore, the user can now customize the folder where the backups are stored.


Samsung USB Driver for Windows 10 - Android Studio I've got an issue setting up the AVD in my Android Studio as Intel HAXM is not working with my Windows 10. So, I am trying to debug and run my projects with my Android device. However, after trying to download the Google USB driver and replacing it with the standard driver that comes with Windows, I find I am not able to:

By the way, I am trying to replace this driver with the Google driver or the driver offered by Samsung - both turned up with this error.

But when I check the Android Device Monitor, my phone is not listed as it did in the tutorial I watched. (My device is a Samsung W GT-I8150 - Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread)

Any help or advice will be most appreciated.

Raihaan

In Win10 use this:

Uninstall previous Samsung USB drivers from “Programs And Features”
and “Device Manager”.
Power off your Samsung phone. Switch your Samsung phone into download mode (power it on
with Power + Vol UP + Home pressed simultanously).
Connect it to your computer via USB cable. Your phone should become discovered by Windows as some device. In my case, Windows has found my phone
as a “SAMSUNG Android ADB Interface” device.
Restart your phone.

Now it all. Phone driver work perfectly.


Corrupted or Fully Damaged, DEAD SD-Card? and what to do? I just recently tried to play music, then suddenly music app stopped working and my phone had a hard time from not responding, I restart it and after about 4-6 minutes it came up with everything not responding!!
I then tried to format the sd-card using my computer I get message of operation not completed successfully, I tried to erase data manually, funny thing is I can erase it easily but after I reinsert the card or refresh the folder the data that I erased is there like nothing happened, I tried to do re partition it everything says succeed but after a refresh nothing change! I cannot change anything on the card. I even tried use raw data viewer and put zero in the partition table and many other places, but after a refresh partition table and everything is there no problem. I can get the data but cannot change it, anyone can say what is actually going on? is the card completely dead? or there's some hope?
It is like a readonly sdcard!!
Thanks in Advance

EDIT: Looks like boot sector at partition 1 (sector 8192) is corrupted as DriverResotre says, however it cannot fix it though, I even tried to wipe things there but nothing happened, I tried zero one using wipe disk but no go, I tried fsck too but still didn't change anything.

Well it turns out that the SD-CARD went into write protect while I was listening to music, Write protect mode is happening when suddenly while reading and writing something goes wrong like lost connection to chip or getting high voltages something like that, unfortunately Sd-Card is so dead and is non-writable, you can see the data but cannot change it, if you have warranty and too much sensitive information on SD I advise not to send the card to warranty but also break the Sd card or put it in microwave for 1 or 2 second ONLY (that's what I did) as your sensitive information will be always there and someone from the warranty can access it easily and use it against you.

Hope this information become useful in future.


USB debugging turns off after restart on Android 7.0 Recently, my Moto G4 running Android 7.0 has been turning off USB debugging under developer options whenever the phone restarts. Is there a way to keep it on all the time? I have already tried revoking and reauthorizing the USB debugging authorizations.

This might help you Sir!:
If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KdH4j7aAPM


Where does Facebook cache video? Few days ago, I played a video in Facebook app. Today, I tapped the same video just to know that the video was cached locally.

From where can I get this cache?

You can find your cached videos under /data/data/com.facebook.katana/files/video-cache.

Note: To open that path, you need a rooted phone and a  root explorer app.


How to troubleshoot overheating and high battery drain in an Android Device? Device info:

Model  : Micromax Canvas Nitro A310
Android Version : 4.4.2
Kernel Version  : 3.4.67
Device Status : Rooted, Philz touch recovery, Xposed Framework installed

Issue:

My(relative's) device is getting overheated (avg temperature ~ 48 deg Celsius, max reached ~ 65 deg Celsius) and the battery drains (100% to ~9% in less than 7 hours with usage of attending few calls only) very quickly even when its idle.

About Overheating :

I used CPU Temperature for profiling the apps with respect to temperature. Based on that, I auto-hibernated those apps in Greenify(all experimental features enabled except Telephony Wakeup, working in Boost Mode).

One main culprit I noticed is the Runkeeper app which requires high-accuracy (more battery consumption) location mode for smooth working. If I put this app in Greenify then it can't possibly be used (will get hibernated) for its intended purpose if the device screen turns off or goes to sleep.
Other culprit noticed was Google Play Services and Gmail (both updated to latest version) which I don't have any option to hibernate the former in Greenify and I'm not supposed to disable the former because of Runkeeper's demand for Maps and location.

About Battery Drain:

Battery usage from Settings didn't reveal anything useful at all. At the time of writing this question, I've put to test three apps:

BetterBatteryStats and Battery Stats Plus for profiling battery usage;
DS Battery Saver(free) for keeping the drain low.

This profiling will take at least 1-2 days and I'm not having high hopes from DS Battery Saver. Another point, my relative keeps GPS Off when not using Runkeeper. Usage of Runkeeper is for around 1-1.5 hour roughly in the morning.

About Device:

The device is only six months old with 2500mAh battery. The surrounding environment temperature isn't much more than 34 deg Celsius to corroborate any additional heating. Furthermore, no new apps were installed before when these issues came into my relative's attention. I take it as some new update in Google Services or other app could be a reason for this. But that is just a wild guess.

Question:

I need to know how should I proceed to troubleshoot both of these issues effectively? Is there a guide here or elsewhere for such, to do this in a sound manner rather than being haphazard? I aim to pinpoint the culprits here.

Note:

Although I have already made Nandroid and ADB backup, I don't want to reset my device. That is left if all else fails.

BBS is more confusing than GSAM battery companion. It provides more detail, but GSAM + root can tell you a lot. If you could provide screenshots of full charge, to fully dead we can point you in right direction; if this happens in 7 hours with the screen off and no interaction all the better it should be very trivial to find.

From there, you could use Xposed App Opps module to disable apps with excessive spyware.

I don't really help people (relatives, friends) with this stuff unless they're willing to understand 'why' themselves, easier to just recommend iPhone.

There's almost certainly a rogue app running around doing something. A picture would be worth a thousand words


Why does android ignore my etc/hosts change in the browser? I've remounted /sys as rw, added one entry to etc/hosts (e.g. 10.0.0.1 x.com www.x.com) and rebooted my device.

After rebooting, if I check etc/hosts, the entry is fine. If I ping x.com, it pings the correct IP address I entered.

But, if I open a web browser (either stock or Dolphin), and browse to x.com, it'll go to the IP address the DNS resolves to.

What's happening?

(My phone is a Nexus One, which is running the custom Cyanogen 7.1 ROM based on android 2.3.7)

Update:
On the app 'LAN Droid' I get the edited address (so 10.0.0.1) just fine too. It seems like that it's only the browsers where it behaves wrongly.

This sounds exactly like this, down to ping working but not the browser. His eventual solution is quoted below:

  Stupid question, but are you editing the file on the handset or just pushing the file that
  you posted here?  The one you posted is in dos format, so it has extra linefeed characters
  at the end of the line that could confuse a linux system.

I don't know what you used to modify it, but you might want to check what kind of linefeed/newline characters it's using.


first time trying to install custom ROM on Samsung Galaxy Win (SHV-E500L) I have an old Samsung Galaxy Win (SHV-E500L) Korean version (Android 4.4)
 which I want to experiment on

I searched for custom ROMs for this model online but I haven't been able to find any

I am thinking of risking it and trying custom ROMs for The E300 phones (they are Galaxy S4 phones if I understand correctly)

One of the things I have read is that installing ClockworkMod is the first step to installing custom ROMs, and the wikipedia for ClockworkMod says it

  ...replaces your Android device's stock recovery image. Using this
  recovery image, various system-level operations can...

What are the risks associated with doing this? At the moment I can go into recovery mode on this phone by pressing home+volume up+ power button simultaneously. Does ClockworkMod replace this built in recovery mode? If it is, is there a way to get it back in case something goes wrong? I have used Odin to download stock firmware on this phone before. Ideally, I want to be able to do it again multiple times and get it back to it's factory condition if something goes wrong.

If I manage to get ClockWorkMod on this phone, will I still be able to get the phone back to it's default settings using Odin and stock ROM in case something goes wrong? I do not have any special hardware for doing this so ideally any problems with the phone should be fixable through the standard USB port. The deice will not be used as a phone and only be used for it's camera and wifi.

Some details about the phone:

These aren't probably important details, but would still like to point them out. This phone previously had a problem where it would boot up to the telecom company logo but not go any further than that. The Download mode was still working so I managed to use Odin to download the stock ROM and the phone worked worked normally after that, but there were many background processes that would suddenly stop, giving an

Unfortunately, xxxx has stopped working

error box. This happened especially more frequently with Samsung Touch Wiz (which was fixed by installing Google's launcher) but started happening later on with other system apps as well. The problem happens more frequently if resource heavy programs such as games are run on the phone, but doesn't happen as much if it is just used for basic internet surfing and youtube from the browser. I am assuming there is some kind of problem with the phone's RAM related hardware, so I'm hoping that downloading some lite weight custom ROM without any bloatware will make the device run more smoothly.

If You have stock rom,pc and odin then you can retain device to normal state as restored if you flash cwm or twrp you can still get your default recovery from Stock rom but don't flash wrong rom it might brick your device so be careful.


Tell TWRP to decrypt for ota Old versions of TWRP would prompt for the password to decrypt the phone prior to performing an ota, however new versions are able to apply otas without requiring decryption. This is great in practise but does mean that magisk is removed by the ota (when decrypted it would run some scripts after the ota installed, this doesn't happen when the phone is still encrypted) Is there anyway to tell TWRP I want it to always decrypt the phone?

Edit: the feature was added in twrp 3.2.2)

Running Lineage 15.1 and magisk v18.0 on a op3t

There doesn't currently seem to be a way to tell TWRP to decrypt /data before an OTA. As you've said, this prevents the Magisk addon.d script to work, since the main part of that script itself resides in the /data partition. (But it also seems to require other things from the /data partition, so we can't just move it).

Here's a workaround:

Since you're on LineageOS, you can install your OTA update manually in TWRP, after decrypting. First download (not install) the OTA in the LineageOS updater. Then reboot to recovery manually and select the OTA zip from /data/lineageos_updates.

It's a bit more cumbersome than automatic-recovery-OTA, but at least it doesn't require adb or manually downloading the zip to your internal storage, where it is writable by any app with Storage permission...


How to install extensions on Android's stock browser? I have JellyTime (R30 - https://code.google.com/p/jellytime/) installed on my HTC Desire HD phone which is running a variance of Jelly Bean 4.1.2.

Is it possible to add some extensions/features to the default available Internet Browser in Jelly Bean? For ex. Ad Blocker, Flash Blocker, etc.?

The default Browser does not have extensions, but what you are looking for might be found as Android apps, for instance: "Bookmark Sort and Backup" (BookmarkSB).   The bookmarks themselves are considered part of Android not of the default browser, but the addon would only have use through the default browser and there are changes made to the options in Browser that you will not see in other browsers from installing this app.

For serious stuff like effective ad blocking and changes to the hosts file you would need root access, before you can use full features of such addons, and in particular modify your hosts file.   The hosts file would apply to your entire system not to a specific browser or application.


zip file signature verification? In the custom recovery TWRP, what does the option "zip file signature verification" do? How do I know if it should be checked when installing something?

Basically the Zip File Signature Verification flag will enable flashing only if the zip file is signed properly by the developer. This is (almost) the same method used signing Jar files in Java.

From here

  Basically, before executing any third-party program you want to make sure that it hasn't been tampered with (integrity) and that it was actually created by the entity that it claims to come from (authenticity). Those features are usually implemented by some digital signature scheme, which guarantees that only the entity owning the signing key can produce a valid code signature. The signature verification process verifies both that the code has not been tampered with and that the signature was produced with the expected key.

Note from the above, that this (obviously) cannot detect if the code itself is malware etc, just that it is as it was when it was signed by the developer. You have to trust the developer of any software you flash.

An example of this is that you cannot flash a custom ROM through a Stock Recovery as the stock recovery will look for a signature from the manufacturer.

It can also detect if a zip is corrupt but is not a definitive check, you would be better verifying the MD5 sum of the file and comparing to the one provided by the ROM developer.

"How do I know if it should be checked?" This is probably going to vary depending on what you are doing, I generally have it left at the default value of the particular recovery I'm using, and I've never actually had to check or uncheck it for any Zip files. Keep in mind some perfectly functional packages might be signed incorrectly and may install perfectly if you disable the verification, but conversely it could be a corrupt file and bootloop the device.

I leave it checked, and if someone on a thread / the developer says it's ok to install then I will make a nandroid backup and try flashing it with the signature verification turned off. (ALWAYS make a backup!)

Here is an example of trying to install a custom ROM on a stock S4 Recovery:

  Finding update package...
  Opening update package...
  Verifying update package...
  E:No signature (188 files)
  E:Verification failed
  Installation aborted.

Here's a link to the more technical information on GitHub which is a bit out of scope to go into on here.


Why my mobile eats hell lot of wifi data I have a Micromax Canvas a200 turbo mini. I have started using WiFi since last month. In one month "Android OS" and Google Chrome have used 63 GB of WiFi data. I have tried using third party apps, but they are only useful when you are using cellular data. I have tried reset factory as well.

What would cause this high data usage?

Click image for larger version

You can try opera max. It is VPN service that having app management features. There you can manage which app to allow network connections. And then only allowed apps would be able to access network bandwidth.


Just did system update and forgot I had TWRP and root and now the updates changes havent taken affect! Help! I have just installed the Android 4.3 update on my Nexus 7 which is rooted with a vanilla kernel with TWRP installed. It rebooted after the update and it booted straight into TWRP so I rebooted again and then it booted into Android as normal but the OS is still on 4.2.2 and not 4.3. I have tried going into About This Tablet then pressing Update and its saying its not on the latest version...
Help!

The best way to 4.3 may be unrooting and flashing the stock recovery image.

I used the Nexus Root Toolkit 1.6.4 to install 4.3 on a Galaxy Nexus having some minor problems. I would suggest waiting for NRT 1.6.6 which will have full support for 4.3


How to Put Mi Band 2 to Silent Mode Now with Android Phone? Situation: to put Xiaomi Mi Band 2 to Silent mode when configuration with two Internet Gadgets in connection to Android 6 phone as described here; Android's own silent mode does not work as expected with the internet gadgets

I experience much duplicate notifications when using Pebble and Mi Band 2 at the same time. I can put Pebble to silent mode easily but not Mi Band 2. DND is only time specific there in the Mi Fit's settings but not now.

I cannot use Gadgetbridge for the task because I already use it for Pebble and it only supports one device at the moment.

Phone: Samsung Galaxy S4
Phone OS: Cyanogenmod 13 (Temasek's unofficial Rom)
Activity band: Xiaomi MI Band 2
Smart watch: Pebble Classic 1
Pebble firmware: 3.12.2 (newest 9.8.2016)
Pebble hardware: V3R3

Playstore

Install the application Do Not Disturb. It puts all your internet gadgets and your phone to silent when you want in the tab Now.
Android's own silent mode does not work as expected.

F-Droid

...

Get a new phone

Oneplus 2's hardware button of the left-hand-side at the top position seems to override those notifications too


How do i correct my far-too-sensitive proximity sensor? The sensor that turns the screen off in my pocket or at my cheek is suddenly turning the screen off when my thumb is within two inches of the top of the screen. It is difficult to grab the notification bar without triggering it, and holding my phone sideways is now an exercise in frustration. Is there a way to fix this? Did some update recently come out for the Galaxy Nexus (GSM)?

Z-Device test may show your sensor output: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=zausan.zdevicetest

Possible reasons:

some aftermarket display protectors may cause that
an earlier Android release only switched the screen off via proximity sensor when held vertically. This would have prevented your described problem. (See http://www.guytechie.com/articles/2012/1/22/galaxy-nexus-slow-proximity-sensor.html). Maybe this behaviour has been reverted.

If you updated just before noticing this problem, you might have to switch back or wait for another update to fix that again. Installing a 3rd party update like Cyanogenmod9 might also fix your problem.


How can I configure a separate MMS APN on LineageOS Some mobile phone providers (e.g. Optus, including MVNOs that deliver service through Optus' networks) have a separate mobile APN (access point name) for sending MMS to what is used for mobile data.

However, the user interface in LineageOS (and probably other Android variants) does not seem to let you configure two APNs.

Through the UI, under Settings -> Network & Internet -> Mobile network -> Advanced -> Access point names it is only possible to select a single APN as 'preferred'.

How can I configure my MMS APN at the same time as my data APN?

Firstly configure the mobile data APN through the UI and verify that is working.

Next, we will need to configure to MMS APN without using the API. To do this, you will need access to the phone through adb, and you will need a rooted phone (see other posts on how to do this if you don't already have that). All of the commands could alternatively be performed on the device itself through a shell.

In Android, the different networks that can be configured are identified by a 'subscriber ID' or subId. The first step is to find the correct subId to use.

If you haven't already, restart adb as root using adb root.

Now find the subId already in use for data with:

adb shell content query --uri content://telephony/carriers/preferapn

Look for the part of the line that looks like sub_id=3, - you may have a different number in place of 3. That is the subId for mobile data - not the one we want to use, but useful for elimination. Also make a note of the _id number and the numeric from the response - you will need those in another step.

Run adb logcat -d -e "matching subId" and look at the subIds that come back. If you only have one SIM enabled, but you need to enable a separate network for MMS, you should see two different numbers in the results. Eliminate the one that matches the mobile data subId. This is the subId you will need to configure (in my case, it is 2).

Now list the options with

adb shell content query --uri content://telephony/carriers/ --where "numeric='50502'"

(replacing 50502 with the numeric you recorded from the earlier query). In the results, find the row that matches the APN you want to configure. In the Optus case, the row will like something like

Row: 5 _id=2912, name=Optus MMS, numeric=50502, mcc=505, mnc=02, apn=mms, user=*,
server=*, password=*, proxy=202.139.83.152, port=8070, mmsproxy=61.88.190.10, mmsport=8070,
mmsc=http://mmsc.optus.com.au:8002/, authtype=-1, type=mms, current=1, protocol=IP,
roaming_protocol=IP, carrier_enabled=1, bearer=0, bearer_bitmask=0, mvno_type=,
mvno_match_data=, sub_id=3, profile_id=0, modem_cognitive=0, max_conns=0, wait_time=0,
max_conns_time=0, mtu=0, edited=0, user_visible=1, user_editable=1

If there are several options and you are not sure which one, you could try each one in turn using the following steps. Note the number after _id= - that is your APN ID you need to configure.

To configure the MMS APN, use the command

adb shell content insert --uri content://telephony/carriers/preferapn/subId/2 --bind apn_id:l:2912

Replace the 2 with the subId you worked out you needed to configure (i.e. the one that is not the mobile data subId). Replace the 2912 in the above with the apn_id from the above command.

If you configured the APN successfully, you should now be able to send MMS and use mobile data at the same time.


How much internal storage for apps does Nexus 4 have? Please tell me that 16GB of internal storage as mentioned on NEXUS 4 is available for apps or for apps it creates separate internal storage thing as it does in Nexus S...

No device can have all of its internal storage free for user. The Operating System (and pre-installed apps) needs some space for itself. So Nexus 4 doesn't give you 16 GB free either.

The 16 GB version of Nexus 4 gives user an approximate of 12.92 GB free. Whereas, the 8 GB version of Nexus 4 gives you an approximate of 5.67 GB free space to use.

I don't have the device (at least yet). This is what I have found in reviews / discussions.


URL Not Found Error in SDK Manager As of lately i have not being able to update / install SDKs from Android SDK Manager.

I get the following errors:

Preparing to install archives
Downloading Android SDK Platform-tools, revision 20
URL not found: C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-studio\sdk\temp\platform-tools_r20-windows.zip (Access is denied)
Downloading Android SDK Build-tools, revision 19.1
URL not found: C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-studio\sdk\temp\build-tools_r19.1-windows.zip (Access is denied)
Downloading Google APIs (x86 System Image), Android API 19, revision 5
URL not found: C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-studio\sdk\temp\google_apis_x86-19_r05.zip (Access is denied)
Downloading Glass Development Kit Preview, Android API 19, revision 8
URL not found: C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-studio\sdk\temp\google-gdk.zip (Access is denied)
Skipping 'Android SDK Tools, revision 23'; it depends on 'Android SDK Platform-tools, revision 20' which was not installed.
Done. Nothing was installed.

I have given full right permissions on the directory that the SDK manager is installed as well as the temp directory

While android-studio was already running I tried to run "android.bat" at below location by right clicking and choosing run as administrator which ran SDK manager and download worked for me.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-studio\sdk\tools\android.bat


How do I get my Clock & Weather widget on my homescreen? I used to have a widget for Clock & Weather on my home screen but it vanished. I am trying to set it up again, but I am not successful. I am seeing that you need to press down on home screen and select widget am on Android 4.0.4, but all I get is "Choose wallpaper from".
I miss my widget. How can I get my widget back?
My device is an Infinix Race Bolt 450 running Android 4.0.4. The "App Drawer" has a widget tab, but the widget is not listed there. It is installed, however, as the app providing it is still there and working.

Try to :

Press Home button followed by Menu button. Select Add -> Widgets ->
Clock & Weather.

Or :

Press Home button to show the home screen. Tap and hold your finger
on any available space, select Widgets -> Clock & Weather.

Hope it will help.


Pixel 2 Android Phone to Lenovo Windows 10 Bluetooth Won't Pair My Pixel 2 Android phone WILL NOT pair via Bluetooth with my Lenovo ThinkPad Windows 10 laptop PC.  I have tried everything including uninstalling antivirus/firewall software on both devices.  Neither device detects the other device over Bluetooth.  Both devices detect all other in-range Bluetooth devices.  I have disabled the AirDroid app on my phone.  Of course both devices have Bluetooth enabled via their respective Settings selections.  I am at my wits end and want some help fast.  I am about to conclude that Microsoft Bluetooth doesn't want to talk to Google Bluetooth and vice versa despite the fact that Bluetooth is an open standard accepted throughout the industry.  Are there additional steps that need to be taken in order to make both devices "discoverable"?  I tried to install a Microsoft app on my Android phone in order to establish a Bluetooth link but the app wanted to take over my phone and I decided not to go through with the installation.  Any advice on this matter is welcome.

Are there additional steps that need to be taken in order to make both devices "discoverable"?

Yes. Android phones are discoverable only while the Bluetooth Settings activity is displayed. (There's a message in the activity to tell you this.) You need to scan for devices from your laptop while this activity is open on your phone.


Samsung Photosphere orientations.txt data Samsung (and perhaps other vendors) photosphere source files include the photographs and 2 text data files.
sessions.meta - contents are self explanatory, labelled metadata info about the sphere.
orientations.txt - unlabelled columns.
Below are sample contents of orientations.txt:
-0.28355762 0.95895493 7.3134253E-4 -0.19058217 -0.057101488 0.9800091 0.9398263 0.2777497 0.19895127 2.8249815
-0.18003005 0.96288395 0.20110609 -0.044745624 -0.21225126 0.97619015 0.9826429 0.16674495 0.081296444 2.9338377
-0.27238333 0.95405024 0.12488161 0.17231762 -0.07932246 0.98184246 0.946633 0.28895682 -0.14279357 2.9741824
-0.43306527 0.8942725 -0.112832405 0.09304 0.16886118 0.9812387 0.89654785 0.41444248 -0.15633103 2.746174
-0.44042435 0.87723744 -0.19099967 -0.14356112 0.14119293 0.97951764 0.8862373 0.45882356 0.06375239 2.631776

My question is, does anyone know what these columns in orientations.txt represent?

1 row per image
10 columns of floats
no field names
I assume it may have to do with roll, pitch and yaw, but I'm not certain.
Perhaps accelerometry output?

Thank you very much in advance.
This is broadly related to these two other questions, but they don't really address my question.
Get the original photos after using PhotoSphere?
Is there any way to re-render a photosphere?

I've noticed that most elements are less than 1. Moreover the first 9 elements seem to be always less than 1. It looked like elements of a rotation matrix. So I grouped these elements into 3x3 matrix and it happened to be orthogonal, and it is in fact rotation matrix.
-0.28355762  0.95895493  7.3134253E-4
-0.19058217 -0.057101488 0.9800091
 0.9398263   0.2777497   0.19895127

If the phone is in landscape orientation and points to the North than the matrix is identity matrix:
 0.9999746    0.0067272037 0.0023434649
-0.0067065083 0.9999394   -0.008729676
-0.0024020493 0.008713738  0.9999592

The last element in the row is the sum of all elements of the matrix. I don't know why it is added, because it doesn't seem to have any physical meaning, but I guess that it is some form of a checksum.


SMS archiving and control I've searched throughout the web with no joy. My background: I've got 16+ years in software (I'm out of it but not before I built some Android apps for myself).

My problem is that I'd like to reduce the amount of space used on my phone for old messages but I'd like to keep them available.

Something like an automated system that prunes old messages to off-site (cloud) storage but makes them available upon demand.

What I want, is a system that lets me keep my chats growing indefinitely while keeping only a specified amount of space used on the phone.

Thoughts?  Suggestions?

2 options come to mind.

Export sms to text file and upload the text file to a cloud service.
In your application, you would need to recognize when the user wants to load older messages, maybe an onScroll event or maybe a "Load More" button etc...
Store SMS entirely on cloud services.
Only load the sms from a cloud, and upload whenever you receive a message.
The application purely loads the sms list as a ListView from the content returned by the server.

Using PHP and SQL as the server API would work to build your own server.


USB debugging switches off automatically I'm using a Huawei P20 Pro.

I'm trying to use adb according to this guide: https://developer.android.com/studio/command-line/adb.

I have enabled developer options. I can enable USB debugging, but if I go back one screen and return, USB debugging is off again.

And ideas on how I can enable USB debugging?

What worked for me is choosing "File Transfer" on android when you plug the USB instead of "Charge only"


How to get the camera's auto white balance to work on a Nexus 4 I've been taking pictures with a Nexus 4 for a few days now, and noticed that the colors are off on many pictures. Finally today, I decided to do a Nexus 4 vs. iPhone comparison, with the same scenes, and it seems to me that:

The auto white balance on the Nexus 4 / Android 4.2 isn't always working; in particular, with incandescent lights, in Auto mode, at times whites are greenish. Forcing the incandescent light mode fixes this.
In all cases (incandescent or fluorescent, Auto mode or correct mode specified), the image lacks contrasts: whites are grayish and dark areas lack details.

Just walking around with a Nexus 4 and an iPhone while pointing are things around makes this very clear. Is there a way to improve this, or should I just resign myself to the iPhone camera (lens, sensor, DSP, software?) being overall better than the of the Nexus 4? (And my apologies if this sounds a bit provocative, as I seriously hope this is not the case!)

This isn't a miracle solution, but:

When taking pictures indoor, keep in mind that Android's auto white-balance might make the wrong choice. Look at the image on the screen, and if it feels unnatural, try manually selecting the incandescent or fluorescent settings.
Be aware that, at least currently, the Nexus 4 camera doesn't compare favorably to the iPhone 5 camera: on the Nexus 4, pictures tend to lack details, colors are washed out, and images lack contrast with both white and black leaning towards the grey.

If you own a Nexus 4 and find this disappointing, let me try to reassure you: first, it isn't as bad as it sounds; second, there is still a chance this can be improved with software; third, don't forget your unlocked Nexus 4 costs almost half the price of an unlocked iPhone 5.

Below are some pictures of the same scene I took with an iPhone 5 and Nexus 4, so we can compare them side-by-side. This first shot was done indoor, in a low light, without a flash. Left: iPhone 5 (original), right: Nexus 4 (original).

This second shot was done outdoor. Top: iPhone 5 (original), bottom: Nexus 4 (original).


Stop calendar from asking me if I want to turn on notifications Every time I put a new event in my calendar that came with the phone it asks if I want to turn on notifications in order to get reminders for the event.  How do I shut this off?  I have already turned off notifications for the app.  I never want a reminder.  Also, is there any way to switch the color order around for color coding events so it automatically selects purple instead of ugly teal as the default?

I found the answer and am posting it here for anyone that's having the same issue. Open the calendar app, go to three dots at the top, select settings, go to set default reminders, set both to none. That should stop the anniying pop up.  I am still looking for a way to rearrange color order.  Apparently they will let you do it with stickers but not with colors.


How can I view a PDF in 2-up? Is there a way to view PDFs on Android that lets you show 2-up like a regular book? - or like the 2-up option on desktop Acrobat Reader (with first page as cover)?

It looks like EBookDroid has this functionality.

The PDF reader in Documents To Go looks like it might, too.


Voice Dialling opening on lock screen I've got a Moto G running KitKat and am having an issue where the Voice Dialler (I think that's what it's called) opens up when the phone is in my pocket, locked.

I have no idea how it is happening.. I presume there is some combination of buttons you can press to open it, and these are getting pressed in my pocket. I regularly have headphones plugged in to the phone, so it is perhaps related to that.

My question is, how is this Voice Dialler app opening and how can I disable it? I haven't installed any third party app so I presume it's a part of Google Now, or some Motorola app that came with the phone...?

I haven't been able to get a screenshot, but the app opens and a voice prompts me to say a name or phone number to dial.. Very annoying as it cuts off Spotify and I have to unlock the phone and hit the play button again.

Its a pretty useless app if you don't use it (forever). So what you can do is disable it. Go through Settings>Apps/App Manager>All>Voice Dialler>Disable. Thats it. You can enable it again if you wish when needed.


How do I remove the Chrome menu button? It appeared in Chrome 40 and occupies precious space in the address bar.

I'm using a Samsung phone, which already has a menu button.

You might be able to uninstall and disable updates in settings > application manager > all.  As chrome is a system app in Samsung,  to completely uninstall it you would probably need root permission and "uninstall system apps" from Google Play.


Is there a way to wipe a device based on a certain password? A like a "Wipe-me" password? Is there a way (an app perhaps) that will wipe a phone if a certain password is entered at the lock screen? For example "letmein" unlocks the phone, but if you enter "wipeme" it will start the factory reset process, or erase the decryption key or what have you.

There is no way to do this, although you could do it using SMS.

You would have to install an app like Cerberus which allows you to send an SMS to wipe your device.


Galaxy S4 Not booting up My phone (Galaxy S4 GT 19505) suddenly shut off a few days ago without me noticing it.
I tried to turn it on but it wouldn't respond to the power button. However inserting the battery in would trigger boot, but it would shut down immediately after the Samsung Galaxy screen. (I tried recovery mode too, it would shut down after on the Galaxy screen, there was a blue line on the top left indicating that it was going to recovery mode, but it shut down a second after the Galaxy screen displayed)

I found out later that it might be the cause of the power button being stuck.
However before this, I put the phone on charging despite it being off. When I took it off later and tried to reinsert the battery,it wouldn't respond at all. Now it doesn't display anything at all.

I'd like to know if something else might be the matter other than the power button, whether charging might've damaged something. Or if this is just the battery dying, I don't have a spare battery.

Thank You.

Most probably the issue is with the battery. The battery can't provide stable power output and that's why the phone can't continue after the samsung logo.
You should try a new battery. If still the issue persist, let me know.


My search results open in samsung browers rather than chrome browers How can I change it to chrome rather than Samsung on my samsung s3 tablet?
 I do not know how to change it

Go inside your Samsung S3 tablet settings. After that select Apps. When you select apps you will see every installed app in your tablet. Now press the three dots on the upper right corner and select Default Apps option. The next page will show you a variety of options including Browser App and in there you can select chrome.

Alternatively as soon as you enter settings do a search for Default Apps and it will take you directly to the default apps page.


Headphone is not working in MIUI I have recently installed MIUI on my SONY XPERIA P. Recently I found that headphone(original and others) is not working properly. But when I tap the button (that is in the original headphone) , music is pausing or playing. That means headphone is connected. But no sound is appearing in ear piece!! How can I solve it?

First, this often just a simple problem. Little balls of lint and debris can gather inside the headphone jack. This can cause the plug not to seat fully into the jack. This will prevent the system from recognizing that headphones were connected. I have to clean mine out every few months. I just use on of the little plastic dental picks to pull the lint out.

Also, since this is not an official MIUI ROM, it could be a problem with the port. Try contacting the ROM maintainer through the forum where you obtained the ROM.


Prevent music players from auto play on bluetooth connect Whenever I connect my android device with a bluetooth device, it automatically starts spotify and starts playing.
As far as I know this also happens to other users/players (according to google)

How can I prevent this (without signing out of spotify)?

Android: 6.0.1
Spotify Version: 6.2.0.1015

Background

Major part of this guide was extracted here: How to Disable Bluetooth Automatic Playback on any Android Phone

The point of this guide isn't to disable Bluetooth music entirely, otherwise the latter can easily be achieved by:

Disable Bluetooth Music : Settings >> Bluetooth >> Your device(Car) >> Settings  then uncheck audio support.

..and this simply destroys the whole purpose of the guide.

 It is important to know that autoplay is a feature of many Bluetooth devices, despite the fact people do see this "feature" as a problem though, which is the original reason the original author wrote the guide.

Understanding Bluetooth Autoplay on Android

What essentially happens when you connect a Bluetooth device that sends an autoplay command is that this command is seen as a KeyEvent for toggle play/pause in Android.
Applications with a MediaButtonReceiver broadcast receiver can then react to this Media Button event.
Android keeps track of the last application that requests to receive Media Button events.

  Any new media application can take over to listen to Media Button key
  events by calling setMediaButtonReceiver in AudioManager, and that
  application will handle Media Button key events until another
  application requests control.

You can actually see which application is currently set to respond to these key events by entering the following ADB command:

adb shell settings get secure media_button_receiver

On the author’s device, this command yielded the following output:

com.google.android.music/com.google.android.music.playback.MediaButtonIntentReceiver

  This is the broadcast receiver set up by Google Play Music to respond
  to Media Button key events. So if I plug in my Bluetooth device, my
  phone will automatically start playback in Google Play Music.

Disabling Bluetooth Autoplay with Tasker

Profile (or Trigger)

Goto Profiles Tab and click the "+"
Event >> State >> Net >> BT Connected
Tap back to exit from this window

Task

You will notice as soon as you exit, you will be prompted to link this to a Task

Scroll all the way up the Task list select "New Task + "
You can just keep it anonymous or give it a name
Click "+" to add new Action
Media >> Media Button Events >> Grab
Tap back to exit from this task

AFAIK root is not necessary for this task

Once you’re done, Tasker should now automatically set itself as the Media Button Receiver in Android upon connection to your selected Bluetooth devices. This way, the play/pause action that is sent will not be received by any of your media applications, but instead by Tasker

Unfortunately I couldn’t get Spotify or Soundcloud music application to replicate the issue. However, I retested this feature using a PC with the remote audio service (Bluetooth module on my PC supports that) to test the bluetooth autoplay feature.

Tests done

Enabled Bluetooth audio service (to use PC speakers to listen to remote audio).
Open two different music apps on android and played music and play
Created a “media button grab” in Tasker to handle Media Button key events.
Retested (2) with Tasker running the previously created task.

Results

On test (2) the audio output was transferred to PC speakers indicating that the autoplay feature was still active.
After performing test (4), the audio sound output came from android and was not transferred to PC speakers. Which essentially solves the issue.

Alternatively..

Head to playstore and get Bluetooth connect & Play

You can tell it which app should play for each bluetooth device (or to NOT play on a given BT device)

Acknowledgements

Original author: Mishaal Rahman
Beeshyams


How can I change pointer locations setting in developer options from adb shell? I need to be able to select and deselect "pointer locations" from the developer options menu using adb.  adb shell am start -n com.android.settings/.DevelopmentSettings, but once I'm there I can't figure out how to select and de-select pointer locations.

I tried just using shell keyevent 'xx' to move the focus, but it seems problematic and unreliable.  Is there a simple set of commands that will allow me to just jump to the selection?

To enable Pointer locations, the command is:

adb shell settings put system pointer_location 1

Change 1 to 0 to disable it.

Enter adb shell settings to understand its usage and what the aforesaid command is doing.


How to SSH into Android which is a hotspot? I am using Wi-Fi hotspot on Android. Can I SSH into it from my laptop which is connected to hotspot? How would I do this?

You need to run an SSH server on your Android phone. There are apps available, but simple solution is to go for Termux. Install app, then  install packages openssh and termux-auth. Set password and start server:

~$ pkg install openssh termux-auth
~$ passwd
~$ sshd

If you want to use key authentication instead of password, create key pair on client with ssh-keygen and copy the contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to phone in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (where Termux's $HOME is /data/data/com.termux/files/home), and restart server:

~$ pkill sshd
~$ sshd

Now on client:

~$ ssh <Phone_IP> -p 8022

No username is required as Termux is the only user which can be logged into. If you want default port (22) or a username or multiple user setup, visit the link given below.

RELATED:

How to run SSH/SFTP server for multiple user logins with password authentication on Android?
How to connect to Android through SSH over 3G/4G public IP?
How can I permanently change my hotspot tethering IP address?


How do I root my HTC Hero? I'm tired of waiting for my Android 2.1 update to arrive, so I've decided to root my HTC Hero.

Any direction as to how I should do this?

Note: I actually have a T-Mobile branded version, so I do need some workaround because it doesn't let itself be unlocked as easily as vanilla HTC Heros.

See here:

http://rootmydroid.co.uk/guides/hero/howto-root-your-htc-hero/

Like you, I got fed up with waiting for OTA upgrade from Orange. Using VillainRom 12, which is brilliant. No regrets!


Sense shortcut icon reverts to standard Android icon after reboot I have recently purchased an HTC Sensation, and I'm very happy with the device; everything runs smooth and fast as I should expect from the device itself.

When rebooting the device, I tend to lose a lot of shortcut icons on the Sense screens; they revert back to some default Android icon. This causes me to remove the icons that were "defaulted" and put them on there again to get the correct icons.
Being new to the Android community, I was wondering if anyone knows why this is happening.

The device is an HTC Sensation running Android 2.3.3 and HTC Sense 3.0.

Quick and dirty way to reload your icons in HTC sense UI!
Change scene to anything else, then change scene back!
Temporary fix till next boot or smth but that's the only way i know how to do it right now.


Annoying MMS problem I am having an annoying problem on my Galaxy Note 3. For whatever reason, MMS will not send/receive on my WiFi network, but as soon as I turn off WiFi and connect to my carrier's network (T-Mobile) it works. It used to work on WiFi just fine, and we did not make any changes to our network when this started. I have had this phone for about a year and 3 months (it is preowned). Any suggestions? I have rooted this phone (Kingo), but the problems started before I rooted.

MMS service is a carrier service and is sent over a cellular network (see: wikipedia page) so you need to be connected to your carrier and it does not work solely on WiFi.

It is quite normal that you cannot send it over WiFi but as soon as you connect to your carrier's network, it works.

I suspect that in your previous experience, you may have been connected to both your WiFi and your carrier, used WiFi for Internet connection and used MMS over your carrier without being aware. If you later started turning off your carrier connection when you are connected to WiFi, this issue may have surfaced.


Android Emulator: How to avoid boot loop after rooting? I was searching for a way to root an Android emulator.

I was very thankful for finding an answer to how to root an Android Virtual Device here: Root Android virtual device with Android 7.1.1

The guide (see URL) works and successfully roots my emulator (API level 25 Google APIs on x86). However, it's stuck in a boot loop once the device gets restarted.

Is there any way to avoid this since performing the steps to root the device on every startup is quite inconvenient?


When downloading a Rom on NOTE 4 questions Now I unlocked my phone  from T-mobile switched carriers to AT&T, my question is when downloading a rom do I download of N910T still or something different? In my phone setting it reads N910T... Even though I'm on AT&T now.

It seems These are Have different Roms.

Galaxy Note 4 Models:

T-Mobile SM-N910T Galaxy Note 4
Sprint SM-N910P Galaxy Note 4
AT&T SM-N910A Galaxy Note 4
Verizon SM-N910V Galaxy Note 4
Canadian Rogers SM-N910W8 Galaxy Note 4
Canadian Bell SM-N910W8 Galaxy Note 4
Canadian Telus SM-N910W8 Galaxy Note 4
International SM-N910F Galaxy Note 4
International SM-N910C Galaxy Note 4

and According to list, you need SM-N910A Galaxy Note 4 Rom for AT&T.
hope this help.


Help! I can no longer access photos from my gallery when trying to send a picture I have a Samsung S4.
when I'm trying to attach a photo to an MMS I used to get an option of accessing the photo via galary or Samsung link. Usually I selected gallery. This time I accidentally clicked Samsung link and now I can't access pics to send via gallery it only takes me straight to Samsung link.

My question is how do I access pics to send via gallery not Samsung link?

You can reset the default application settings in settings > apps > [your app] > "launch by default"


How do I set up Slack to send notifications to my Android phone? I must have missed something, but I can't get push notifications working for the Slack app on my Android phone.

In the settings of the app, I've set the Send me push notifications for option to Activity of any kind, with a Push timing of As quickly as possible. I also deactivated the Do not disturb feature just to be sure.

The Slack app is authorized to send me notifications in the OS settings.

What did I forget? Is there a hidden option in the Slack web application that I'm not aware of?

You might have different settings for each channel, so that the channel you are testing with, does not send mobile notifications.

With a channel selected in the sidebar, click the Notifications icon (the bell), and check the settings for the channel you are viewing:

In the Mobile push notifications section, make sure you have not selected Nothing. And make sure you have not checked the Mute this channel option:


Removing non-Google contacts from Messaging I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 (running Gingerbread 2.3.3) and enabled syncing of contacts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google. I've been finding it really annoying that when I go to write a message I start typing in a name and I get a bunch of e-mail addresses from Facebook, etc - people who are not in my main contact book and that I do not want to contact from 'Messaging' on my phone.

I have tried setting the option where only contacts with phone numbers are displayed but I think this only applies to the 'Contacts' application and not messaging. Any ideas?

If you're using the in-built (stock) messaging app, see if there's an option in the settings similar to what you've described. By default, only contacts with mobile numbers should be shown.

Alternative messaging apps like GoSMS and Handcent also have an option to restrict contacts with mobile numbers. In GoSMS, it's in the SENDING section of the settings.


How much power does a Galaxy Tab 10.1 charger need to supply? The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 comes with a special charger which (I'm assuming) provides a higher current output than the USB standard.  Without it, the device can actually die, even if the USB cord is plugged in to a USB port (albeit a little less quickly).

I'm looking for other (cheaper) AC and car adapters, but I don't know the minimum power they need to provide to power the device.  Does anyone know the minimum current needed for a 5V USB connection for the Galaxy Tab 10.1, or perhaps a link that provides this information?

This turns out to be more complicated than just the amperage rating of the power adapter.

This XDA post says that the Tablet itself may 'step down' to 0.5A charging if it cannot detect the right support in the USB host.  There are some additional details in this post but I don't grok them.

That thread led me to this slashdot comment which seems very useful and knowledgeable.  If I understand the story correctly, unless the tablet can negotiate with the host device, the amount of power it can draw is limited.  A physical "hack" (now part of a USB standard) in the adapter can make it clear to the USB client (the tablet) that there is no host device (its a wall wart), so it can charge faster.  Without the hack, the device is limited in the amperage it can use.

More details on the USB charing spec are on wikipedia.

I just verified some of this with my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the no-name 2A USB wall charger I have.  If I plug my tablet into this "unapproved" USB adapter, then I get a little red "x" on the battery charge indicator in the system tray.  Additionally, I get the "media scanner running..." alert (which I think means that the Tablet thinks it might be connected to a computer).  I cannot tell at what rate (2.5mA, 500mA, 2A, etc) the tablet is actually charging at, though.

If I plug the tablet into the 'approved' wall wart, I get no such red "x", nor any "media scanner" alerts.

All that said, in practice, I've found that the tablet will charge up on my no-name USB adapter.  I'm not sure if that's because I tend to turn the screen off (and I don't have 3G), and thus the power draw of the sleeping tablet is less than the 500mA, or if its actually getting the full 2A.

I think the upshot is that any reputable wall charger or anything labeled as "compatible" with an iPhone or iPad will probably support the USB charging spec, and thus will fast-charge a Samsung Galaxy Tab.  But I'm just guessing.  It would be nice if there was an official USB logo or label for chargers that supported this mode ...


Does boot take up any significant power? If I wanted to conserve energy, and needed to check on my phone once every while, would turning the phone off and on every 30 seconds actually conserve more power than if I had it on all the time?

Does the boot sequence perhaps take more energy than the energy I saved in the off time, thus having negative "profit" of power save?

My phone is running CyanogenMod 12.1, and is a kminilte (S5 mini)

Yes, booting the device is very expensive in terms of power consumption.

Many reads from the storage and lots of computation needs to be done when booting the device so that you need considerable off time to justify turning it off.

Android's power conservation features (deep sleep, dozing etc) allow you to keep your phone turned on all the time and still consume less energy than booting it freshly.


Is there an Android app that can use the GPS to track my location, distance, and time traveled on a map? I have a few use cases for this - running or walking to track distance and time, hiking to know if I'm backtracking on myself, and driving aimlessly (well, when gas prices are cheaper than they are now) around an area to explore it so I know places that I've already been.

I did a quick look around the market and nothing stood out. Does something like this exist?

I've used My Tracks while walking, and a cyclist friend of mine is fond of Sports Track Live


How to move (ICSDroid) Calendars to the Phone section This questions splits this question into smaller parts. Living without Google

So first of all I would like to find out, how I can move the 2 ICSDroid calendars to the Phone section. I think with doing this the read-only issue will be solved, too.

After adding 2 .ics files (click image to enlarge)

Feel free to post also alternatives to ICSDroid if there is something better. It does not have to be ICSDroid for the import.

I now solved with installing ownCloud on my server. It was not difficult and is easy to setup. Also it gives the possibility to enable even more features.

So in Thunderbird I just add the online calendar URL to the specific calendar. That's it. The only bad thing is that Thunderbird(Lightning) does not get the colors from the server. So you have to set them manually.

And on Android you need a special app like CalDAV which is really cheap and as well easy to setup.

Now you can use any calendar app like the of your Android. Planner Plus or aCalendar. This is totally up to you. I really like Planner Plus somehow.

For me this is a really good solution. Synching is working perfectly even with different users on it at the same time. You can also manage the rights the users have in your ownCloud which was impossible with the row ics Dropbox solution.

I also use the Tasks app of ownCloud, what is called the app OpenTasks under Android, which makes it pretty easy also to use tasks on Android.


Can't boot into TWRP recovery after flashing custom ROM? I flashed the latest pixel experience Android Q build for Redmi note 7 pro using the TWRP recovery after unlocking the bootloader. The ROM seems to be working fine and the phone boots into it without any issues however when I try to boot into the TWRP recovery, it doesn't boot into it and instead I get a Redmi logo on the screen that doesn't go away. What should I do to boot my phone into recovery? I haven't rooted my device yet, just unlocked the bootloader.

Could it have something to do with the fact that I forgot to flash the TWRP image from the TWRP recovery?

Remember that the custom ROM package will include the boot image too. And on A/B partition devices, the recovery rests is in the boot image. So, if the custom ROM has written your boot image, then your TWRP should be gone. What will load will depend on the recovery included in the boot image. It could be stock, something else or nothing.


Dropbox LAN Sync on Android Device Dropbox provides LAN Sync for PCs to save time & money. Is there any way to enable it for Android devices? All Dropbox sync apps use only internet for syncing.

What you can do is use both Dropbox and a LAN syncing tool like Unison. I couldn't find any LAN syncing tool for Android but if you mount your device in Mass Storage Mode, running Unison purely on your PC should yield acceptable performance. It may also be possible to compile Unison on Android (it works on GNU/Linux), but that would be fairly difficult.


What affect does a dual SIM have on the apps and software? Some Android phones have dual sims. I'm curious what difference this makes? For example are any special apps required? Do regular apps work on dual sims or do they have to be a special edition?

Is the standard versions of Android (e.g. Kitkat, Lollipop, Marshmallow) compatible by default?

First, for apps that don't use the SIM card (i.e. everything but phone apps and the SMS system), it makes no difference at all. Most apps don't need to know or care how many SIM cards your phone support.

Second, for the remaining apps, it depends on the Android version. Older Android versions didn't have support in the Android framework for multiple SIM cards, so there was no standardised way for a phone app to pick which SIM to use. Each manufacturer did things their own way, and the phone included the manufacturer's own phone app. Only that one phone app (or third-party apps written specifically to work with that phone) would work properly and support both SIMs. Other apps might be stuck with the first SIM and not be able to make or receive calls with the other SIM, or they might not work at all.

As Izzy says, Android 5.1 introduced standard multi-SIM support into the Android framework. Now any phone app targeting Android 5.1 or later can access multiple SIMs on any phone that supports the standard way of accessing them. Of course, it's still possible that the manufacturer continues to use their own system instead of supporting the standard Android one, but most have adopted the new system. You should check before you buy the phone.