What are the advantages and disadvantages of MTP versus PTP? My Android 5.1 phone lets me connect to my computer via MTP or PTP. Are there any advantages of using one over the other for copying files between the phone and computer and visa versa?

From Wikipedia:

  The Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) is an extension to the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) communications protocol that allows media files to be transferred atomically to and from portable devices. Whereas PTP was designed for downloading photographs from digital cameras, Media Transfer Protocol allows the transfer of music files on digital audio players and media files on portable media players, as well as personal information on personal digital assistants.

You'll be able to see most if not all files with MTP:

...whereas you'll only see media-related folders with PTP:


open-gpstracker: Export all tracks or access the SQLite database I am using open-gpstracker to track routes. After quite some time I have collected a large number of tracks that I like to export as GPX files. The application allows to do that, however, there is no export option for all tracks at once.

I am using a device without root access. Is there any way I could access the SQLite database of the application? I also thought of modifying the source code of the opensource application to my requirements, but I am afraid of losing my data when I install the customized version of the app on my device. Am I right, that this can be a problem?

Update: I came up with the idea that I could use the ContentProvider of the application, if there is one included and if it is public. I could write another application that uses the interface to access the database. Do you think this is possible? How can I see if there is a public ContentProvider?

Each app on Android stores its data on internal storage by default, below the /data/data/<package_name> directory. Due to the sandbox princip, except the app itself and root nobody has access to that if not explicitly defined otherwise by the developer (e.g. Skype currently has a serious security flaw giving everybody read/write access to all its data, including plain-text passwords). So no, you won't be able to get access to the database, which most likely is located in the /data/data/nl.sogeti.android.gpstracker/databases/ directory without having root access to your device.

As for your second question: You are assuming correctly. As you don't have access to the developers certificate (for good reasons), you cannot "update" the original app with your modified version. You would have to uninstall and then re-install -- or giving your modified version a different package name. In both cases, you won't have access to the original apps data.


How do I grant root privileges to an app? I have installed Root Explorer on my HTC G12 phone. When try to view /init.rc, it shows 'No root privilege' and ask me to root my phone.

It seems Root Explorer didn't run as root (or this process is not added to some group with storage access). And, it seems on a non-rooted device, when the phone boots up, we are logged in as a non-root user.

Where does Android control the log-in user's privilege level? Is it in the init process?

The log in user is always a user.  You have to invoke su to run specific commands as the root user, and su will not work unless you have rooted your device to gain access to the root account (imagine it's password prtoected and you have to crack the password).  To gain root access on your device, check out How do I root my Android device?

Root Explorer and similar apps will automatically invoke su when they are able to.  The SuperUser app can be used to control access to su, so that you don't have to worry about rogue applications elevating themselves beyond your user permissions.


What adapter do I need: Philips Headset + Samsung S4 mini duos I would like to use the microphone of my Philips headset (SHO9567GB/10, iPod compatible) with my Samsung S4 mini Duos (i9192). Right now, the headset is only recognised as headphone. What kind of adapter do I need?

The in-line-mic only works for compatible Apple products. Apple always has something different than the standard and most Android devices use the opposite. I would like to see an adapter, but it would probably use an Apple patent. I think you're out of luck, but I'll update this if I find anything in the future. Next headphone pair you buy, I recommend you looking up if it's fully Android compatible.

P.S. If you in-line-buttons (volume and track control) to work, their are apps that convert one Android compatible button to work like the other few buttons using double clicking them. I recommend Headset Button Controller I am warning you that they get annoying because you have to have the play-pause button working as well as be able to spam the play button a number of times to get it to do volume-up for example.


APN setting is missing on Nexus 5 bought from US I have an unlocked Nexus 5 handset bought from Google in the USA. I just wiped it and installed Android 5.0 on it. However, the UI to edit the APN settings does not appear. By that, I don't mean that the APN info is gone, I mean that the actual UI to view/edit APNs is missing.

If I go to Settings -> More -> Cellular Networks, I see only the 3 settings shown in the picture below: Data roaming, Preferred network type, and System select. This meant there was no way to get the phone working with my SIM card using only the stock Android installation.

Now, I was able to get on Wi-Fi, download the app Tweakker APN INTERNET MMS (removed from Play Store), configure the APN settings using that app, turn off the Wi-Fi, and confirm that I was online via the SIM card, using LTE. So the phone is working. But the APN view/edit UI is still missing from the Settings app, even after adding and activating the OCN MOBILE ONE data-only Japanese SIM card I have.

I googled the hell out of this in the morning, and there is every indication that there are supposed to be APN editing controls at the bottom of that "Cellular network settings" panel in Settings. But there are not.

Does anybody know:

A way to get the UI to edit those settings to appear?
Why they might not be there in the first place?

The only weird/unusual thing here is that I am using a US phone in Japan. I bought the OCN MOBILE ONE data-only SIM card from Amazon here. It seems unlikely, but I suppose there might be weird country-specific telecom regulations that for some reason make Android hide these controls on an unlocked foreign-model phone?

EDIT: I should have mentioned: this occurs with or without the (NTT DoCoMo) OCN MOBILE ONE SIM card in the phone. I even re-wiped the phone and re-installed with the SIM card removed to make sure.

(Click the image for its larger variant)

It seems the problem is related to GSM/CDMA network. As you bought the phone in US which uses CDMA networks, I kind of believe that the default setting is to use LTE/CDMA network.

You can change the preferred network type by:

Dial *#*#4636#*#* (i.e. *#*#INFO#*#*)
Select Phone info
Scroll down to Set preferred network type
Select the one with GSM (e.g. LTE/GSM auto (PRL))

In case it's already selected, select any, and select it back.

Reboot the phone, and the APN setting should be back.

Source: Cyanogenmod forum.


Battery life issues on Xperia Z1 after Lollipop update Since the update of my Xperia Z1 to Lollipop (5.0.2), my battery life is horrible! It takes a very long time to charge it to 100%, and I can only use my phone for a few hours.

How can I fix it ?

Check the Battery usage under Power Management in Settings. There you see list of apps showing how much power they have consumed up to then. Check which app is using more battery and uninstall it. If the app is a System app (like Android OS, Android SDK, etc) then you need to Factory Reset the phone to resolve such issues or if any H/W like Screen, WiFi, GPS, Radio etc are using much power then you may consider complaining about the issue in any service center.


How do I record a video with a file size larger than 4GB on Galaxy S4 exfat SD card? I've searched quite a bit and called Samsung tech support who didn't have any documentation on this issue. They all say that there isn't a limit on how much video you can record. I want to record class lectures, they run about 2 hours long. I set up the camera and tap record. Camera runs properly for about 30 minutes then says "Maximum File Size Reached" and stops recording. This happens to occur at a file size of 4GB about where you'd expect fat32 issues to occur. This is a Samsung SGH I337 from ATT Android Version 4.2.2

Here's what I've tried. The camera is set to record to the SD card. The SD card is exfat formatted. I can drop a 16GB .iso onto the card from my windows 7 computer through the phone via the usb cord with no issues. This leads me to believe there isn't a file size limitation from the format of the card. The SD card is NOT full it is a 65GB card with 40GB free.

Does anyone know of an app or a tweak that will let me record unlimited video within the real constraints of my hardware, 50GB's of 1080P video at a time or until battery failure?

Thanks for your time.

I would change the video quality settings to a lower rez and try again
Leave it 16:9 At 1280x720 instead of 1920x1080. I would imagine your content will be watched on computers and iPads etc and not in imax theatres. You might get 2 hours out of that.

It is a stupid limitation .
I'm in the same boat so I'll keep looking. Maybe there are some developer options to fiddle with.

Cheers


Install APK on Bluestacks for Mac How do you install .apk file on Bluestacks for Mac? More specifically, where is the directory for Bluestacks kept and do I have the 'APK Handler'?

From this SO post,

  Open terminal and run the following command:

 /Applications/BlueStacks.app/Contents/MacOS/adb install ABSOLUTE_PATH_AND_APK_FILENAME

Other Method: This one is not a solution, but a quick workaround is to have the apk in any cloud storage like Dropbox, Drive, OneDrive etc and download it in your bluestack's Dropbox app and install it. As quoted from this apple discussion thread,

  The quick and easy method is to :

  install dropbox in your bluestacks.
  drop your apk file into your dropbox from mac/pc/phone.
  access your apk file from your dropbox in bluesstacks and install.


Can a GPS enabled android device provide lat/long underground? Just what the title says; In a closed environment like a subway tunnel, or a deeper subterranean tunnel - will a GPS enabled phone be able to provide lat/long?

GPS relies on your device picking up radio signals transmitted by satellites orbiting above us, an awful lot of things can block these relatively weak signals. From Pocket GPS World: How does the Global Positioning System work?

  Buildings, terrain, electronic interference, or sometimes even dense foliage can block signal reception, causing position errors or possibly no position reading at all. GPS units typically will not work indoors, underwater or underground.

(my emphasis)

This is the same whether you're using a dedicated GPS receiver, or a smart phone, if the radio signal can't get through your device won't be able to pick it up.

In addition phones tend to have less sensitive GPS receivers than large, powerful, dedicated GPS devices with large antennae so there are likely to be marginal places undercover where your phone won't be able to pick up a GPS signal when a dedicated device may be able to.


Fastboot erase system not working My device: Karbonn A52+

Android 4.2.2

Mediatek MT6572 CPU

Root Access: Yes

Bootloader: Unlocked

I'm trying to flash the official system.img of my device's stock ROM which I have with me, over fastboot.

However, when I run the command: I get this...

C:\Users\Tanmay>fastboot erase system
******** Did you mean to fastboot format this partition?
erasing 'system'...

And this goes on forever. Does not go further this. If I directly run this command without going through the above process:

E:\OS\Mobile\adb>fastboot flash system system.img
erasing 'system'...

Same thing happens, it gets stuck at erasing 'system'...

Other fastboot commands work fine:

C:\Users\Tanmay>fastboot devices
mt6572v1_phone  fastboot

Also, commands like fastboot reboot, fastboot getvar all, work fine.

I'm only facing problem with erasing system. I am unable to figure out why it happens with this command. Is it possible I'm being impatient? I abort it if it doesn't respond after 3-4 minutes.

As amazing as it seems, changing the cable and USB port on the PC worked for me.

Reference:
http://androidforums.com/threads/nexus-7-2012-ruined-bootloader.794839/


Is it safe to charge tablet from phone via OTG cable if tablet's adapter is 5.2V? Is it safe to charge tablet from phone via OTG cable if tablet's adapter is 5.2V (a bit above)?

Yes, as long as it is supported by the tablet and you have compatible cables available.

USB Standards specify that charging voltage should be 5.00V ± 0.25V, i.e. 4.75V~5.25V.

Upper limit is 5.25V which is higher than tablet adapter voltage ; add to this the resistance offered by the cable and the input voltage will be well within safety limits.

How efficient it would be is upto you to verify as Robert pointed out in comments


Is it possible to set DNS for mobile network I live in Canada and use an unblocking service to access US Netflix content, Pandora and Hulu. I would like to be able to use this service while not on my WiFi is there a way to set the DNS server to the ones i need for my unblocker to work for the mobile network

When I needed to change my DNS the solution was always SETDNS. It's light, fast and user-friendly.

Be aware that if your phone isn't rooted SetDNS will only modify WiFi' DNS settings...


How do I free up internal storage if I don't have any apps downloaded? I have an Android Voyager, RCT6773W22B. It's version 5.0.

When I first got it, and years after that, I could download at least five apps downloaded at a time and have a great sum of pictures in my gallery. I would still have space after this. Over time, I would delete apps I didn't use anymore. If I wanted to download something else and there wasn't enough space, I would delete apps and/or pictures I don't need.

Now, I can't download anything due to internal storage. I have no apps, five pictures (not taken with the camera), and I've cleared the cache on everything except Chrome. It tells me my internal storage is completely full and I can't move anything to an SD card. What do I do?

There are a lot of reasons that can cause this:

leftover artifacts from uninstalled apps or updates
download content from apps (videos/ photos from chat applications, maps for navigation, audio files for language learning apps, etc)
currently kept open browser tabs (my chrome had at one point 50 tabs, it reserved ~1.5gb of space even if closed it but kept the tabs)

If you do a backup of your contacts and other important data, you can try to reset it to factory settings with a wipe of all sd/ internal memory.
If you have a pc to connect your phone by cable AND the knowledge, you could browse the file folders and find the culprit (I would still recommend to clean the files over the phone afterwards but its easier to find what is taking the space)
You could buy as a well a bigger sd card as a temporary solution.


Problem after flashing Sony Xperia Mini This is related to How to root the Xperia Mini ST15i.

I followed the instructions from the answer, but I'm stuck.

  Now open the flashtool again and flash the stock kernel of ST15i and
  now enjoy the rooted phone. For check if you have rooted your phone
  successful there is an app installed superuser on your phone or you
  can download the Go backup/Titanium Backup to check out its rooted or
  not.

After flashing the stock kernel, the phone is stuck with the Sony logo, and keeps on restarting. The phone can't detected by the PC, the Sony PC companion, or the Sony Ericsson Update Service. Because it can't be detected, I can't flash it. It doesn't even charge when it's connected through the charger cable.

Same problem was with me I have tried flashing by flashtool by switching off my sony ST15i and then connecting to the PC by data cable and pressing vol+ key at the same time. Your phone will glow a green light it means your phone is in flashing mode. It was sucessfull, I have tried it many times it always work.But after a month it shows no servis or emergency call I don't know what to do with it but my phone works properly but remember use only Ginger Bird ROM otherwise it may be wouldn't work.


Why I cannot find google Cantonese input in play store? I watched this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqz3Fv9PcRo

I want to download the same app, the video was just a few months old. However, I could not find the app.

My location is US.

I searched the package name of the app you are talking about is com.google.android.apps.inputmethod.cantonese I didn't find any thing on play store There might be 3 reasons for it

Reason 1 -> The app is not available in your region

Reason 2 -> Your device does not support the App

Reason 3 -> The App was unlisted from playstore

the first option seems more likely

Any way you can always download the APK from external sources , might not be the safest but it works


MIUI newest version displays annoying message popups Whenever someone writes me a message on hangouts or messenger, I get this popup:

Screenshot (click to enlarge)

How can I disable this? It's very annoying when I'm watching a movie

The simplest way would be to just turn off all notifications for the applications.

You need to swipe down your notification bar and then long press on each notification, it should open up a menu for disabling all notifications, if this doesn't work then you'll need to open up the applications individually and thoroughly go through the settings of each app, most likely you'll have an option to turn these type of notifications off.


How much control can I have over my device while not voiding the warranty? I'm a developer and a Linux user, so naturally, I want to install a Bash prompt on my device. There are several Bash "apps" available in the Google Play store (haven't tested any of them, just searched), so it doesn't seem to be forbidden to do so.

What I'm worrying about is accidentally doing anything that will void my warranty. Will I get a big, clear notification warning me "Note, running the command su will immediately void your warranty! Are you sure you wish to continue?"

That pretty much depends on two things:

the area you're living in
the manufacturer's fairness/good will

For 1., inside the EU there's a ruling that, put simple, "software changes" such as root won't void your hardware warranty. You might lose "support" concerning software things, but if some hardware component shows problems (e.g. your battery starts acting weird, or your headphone connector fails to work) that will still be under warranty.

For 2., many manufacturers tend to "ignore" the fact your device is rooted – either generally, or because they simply "didn't notice". I just got my rooted device returned with a new image flashed, so root was gone – but no bill, the paper stated something like "repair done under warranty". You can't rely on this, but it often is handled that way.

If, however, a defect is obviously (or likely) caused by your tempering, things may look different. Say you "burned" your CPU by overclocking, a repair under warranty might be refused – for good reasons ;)


Fdroid OTP Authenticator, how to move accounts to new phone? This is NOT the Google enabled Authenticator. This is https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.bierbaumer.otp_authenticator/

There is no signing in.

Is there anyway to move credentials / accounts over to another phone? At worst, it seems like you need to just re-add them to your new phone, but maybe I'm missing something.

The app doesn't offer any feature to do this, as you can see from the issue log. That leaves with two choices

Using backup methods for only an app as discussed here Full Backup of non-rooted devices
If your  device is already rooted, using titanium-backup is a popular choice (amongst other such apps)

But I suspect your device is not rooted, so you have only one choice


Samsung Galaxy Note does not boot after ICS update I've just installed Android 4.0.3 ICS onto my Samsung Galaxy Note with 2.3.6. The installation was done by wifi via official installer. I did not download anything specifically, just got a popup with something like "Do you want to upgrade to 4.0.3?" After answering 'yes', it downloaded some files over wifi, and restarted the phone.

But the restart didn't go well. I can see the initial Samsung animation, but after that the text "Samsung" keeps flashing in the center of the screen and nothing happens. I left it for a couple of hours - no changes. I tried rebooting and even remove battery - the same thing, it does not boot.
I have never rooted the device or replaced the ROM.

What can I do? How can I enter recovery mode or something? I tried to enter safe mode by tapping menu button while booting - didn't work.

I would suggest flashing the stock ICS (or Gingerbread, if you prefer) ROM via Odin.  Full instructions here.

Get the official image from http://www.sammobile.com/firmware/ (search for "N7000" and select the download for the appropriate region.)
Download and install the USB drivers (for 32 bit or 64 bit Windows)
Download the Odin tool.
Extract the contents of the downloaded ROM and place it somewhere on your PC.
Reboot the phone into Download mode (Volume Down+Home+Power buttons.)
Run Odin and connect the phone to the PC via USB.  Odin should recognize the phone by showing a yellow [0:COMX] sign in one of the "ID:COM" boxes.
Select the "PDA" button and browse to the extracted TAR file.
Make sure that only two boxes are checked in odin - Auto Reboot and F.Reset Time.
Click "Start".

This should refresh the phone with a brand new OS and all prerequisites.


Shutting down Android phone from PC The screen of my Android phone sometimes automatically shutdown and cannot reshow again.

Can I shutdown my Android from PC or other ways?

You can do this with adb (Android Debug Bridge).

Enable "USB Debugging" on the phone (Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging)
Type adb reboot in a terminal in the directory where you installed adb platform-tools


Samsung Mega 6.3 i9205 problem*does not have proper root* After I root my phone, I downloaded Super SU from here and after I press in Super SU, it ask me to update my su binary but after a long time it got stuck on (installing please wait...) then I tried to check whether my phone is rooted or not by using root checker. At last the answer is does not have proper root. Please help!

I faced the same problem when I tried rooting A china phone having Samsung Galaxy S2 stock Rom. I searched and here is what I found Firstly Try installing binary through Busybox installer on play store. Interent is required to download and then try every version if It didn't work out for you. Then Download Kingoapp it's One Click rooting method. Kingoapp has successfully. In some cases it will ask you to install Costum recovery in order to root your device if it failed to root your device in the ordinary way so, if you don't want to lose your stock recovery just cancel rooting procedure.


Syncing music without iTunes...or can you? I just switched from iPhone to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and realized that music syncing isn't going to be the same - but maybe it can be better.

I downloaded doubleTwist from the Play Store because it had gotten amazing reviews on the web and the reviews on the Play Store seemed to back up the love it was getting on the web.

I tried to connect via USB and then became aware of the "USB mass storage" setting being unavailable in Jelly Bean 4.1.1. I paid for doubleTwist AirSync and it stunk.

So now, if I just move folders of music over to my Note 2, it's all recognized by the standard player, but I'd really like to sync it all and not just add and delete folders.

Is there one good app that will sync my music, let me create play lists, show album art and details and won't force me to sync over Wi-Fi? When it comes down to it, is there a way to get functionality like iTunes, but for Android?

I would try out Google Music. It will be the most native with your device, and gets relatively close to syncing, in theory.

The first thing you will have to do is go to the Google Music Homepage and download the Music Manager tool. Once downloaded, you tell the Music Manager where your music is on your computer, and it uploads it all to the cloud!

This music becomes visible as soon as you log into Play Music on your phone with the Gmail account that you used to set up Google music on your computer.

Then whatever music is placed on your computer in your music folders is accessible at music.google.com and on all of your Android devices.

The difference is, your music does not actually sync to your phone, but is streamed when you choose it on your mobile device.

This can be slightly modified by selecting an album or such on your device, clicking the little expansion arrow (usually at the bottom right of the item), and choosing the Offline music option (it has a picture of a pin next to it). Your phone will then download this music so it does not have to be streamed to play later.

You would have to do this with all of the music you do not wish to stream, but if you have a decent internet connection, streaming is very much a viable option. And saves TONS of space on your phone!

Hope this helps!


Keep android phone off until I press combination of volume + power I'm using Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 running on android pie.
My problem is there's kid at my home and he play with phone though it is protected with pattern he start all options from navigation bar or power off phone.

First I want to block notification bar completely I won't it scrollable.
Second I want kid prevent from turning phone switch off.

So how can I make my phone won't wake up or screen on until I do something special?

Your best and only bet is to root the phone. There may be an xposed package that will be able to give you the functionality you want. Look into the Magisk platform. I wasn't able to find a package for it but that does not mean it doesn't exist.

As far as on startup or shut down, what you described is impossible. That's controlled by the phone bootloader and cannot be changed. Attempting to do so can destroy the phone permanently.

Note that any of these procedures will void your warranty.


INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS on Android 9 I am trying to install an apk that contains armeabi-v7a native libraries, on an emulator with KVM enabled. When I try to install the apk on to the running device I am facing this error: Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS: Failed to extract native libraries, res=-113]

As per https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/emulator#30-0-0 the error above shouldn't occur on Android 9 or 11

  Android 11 system images
  You can now create an AVD that runs Android 11 by selecting either of the available API level 30 system images:

  x86: Includes both x86 and ARMv7 ABIs.
  x86_64: Includes x86, x86_64, ARMv7 and ARM64 ABIs.
  Support for ARM binaries on Android 9 and 11 system images
  If you were previously unable to use the Android Emulator because your app depended on ARM binaries, you can now use the Android 9 x86 system image or any Android 11 system image to run your app – it is no longer necessary to download a specific system image to run ARM binaries. These Android 9 and Android 11 system images support ARM by default and provide dramatically improved performance when compared to those with full ARM emulation.

My environment is Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS)
Here are some of my setup commands:

tools https://dl.google.com/android/repository/commandlinetools-linux-6200805_latest.zip

sdkmanager --install "system-images;android-28;default;x86" "emulator" "platform-tools" "platforms;android-28" (at this step feel free to replace x86 with x86_64)
Note I have tried with google-apis/playstore services and it allows the installation but fails at runtime.

avdmanager create avd -n "x86" -k "system-images;android-28;default;x86" (same steps of replacement apply)

emulator @x86 -no-boot-anim -noaudio -no-window -verbose -wipe-data -partition-size 1024 -qemu -enable-kvm

Is it something I'm missing? editing the build.prop file doesn't help.

Even though Google states that this works for the Android 9 and 10 images as well from my experience it works only for the Android 11 preview images.

I have tested this on Windows using the latest default x86 Google enabled images shown in the emulator manager for Android 10 and 11. As test app I used an Telegram armv7 only apk file from 2019:

Android-R - (Android 11 preview) Google Play Intel x86 Atom System Image (revision: 1)

Installation success, app start success

Android-29 (Android 10) - Google Play Intel x86 Atom System Image (revision: 8)

Installation failed INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS

Therefore my results contradict to the Google description you quoted in your question. At the moment only the preview x86 images of Android R seem to be capable of running armv7 apps.

Test environment: Windows 10 64 bit with Intel Haxm installed.


How can I tell that my phone uses the Wi-Fi connection for data traffic? I just bought the Samsung Galaxy 2 and my monthly data plan allows me 250MB.

I have Wi-Fi at home with 100GB of data per month.

Obviously, I want to use my home Wi-Fi as much as possible on my phone, and I have no trouble connecting my phone to it.

My question is:
How do I know if my phone is accessing my home Wi-Fi and not my phone company's network when I access the internet on my phone.

I can see that my phone is connected to my home Wi-Fi but it is also connected to my phone company's network at the same time. Is there a way to see when I am using my home Wi-Fi and when I am using my phone company's network?

I am worried that if my phone connects to the phone company's network and not my home Wi-Fi, then I will end up with a huge bill. I just want to make sure I am using my home Wi-Fi when I am accessing the internet on my phone.

If you are connected via Wi-Fi, your phone will only use that connection. The only sort of data that would be required to use mobile data would be MMS (aka multimedia messages) everything else will operate with Wi-Fi if you have it.

One thing you'll also want to look into is the Wi-Fi sleep policy, to ensure you phone never disconnects from Wi-Fi if it is in range.

Go to:

Settings → Wifi → Advanced (via menu button) → Sleep Policy

Set this to "never", so your phone will always use Wi-Fi (if available) when it's asleep.
 This also saves battery as the distance between your Wi-Fi and your phone is a lot shorter than the phone mast and your phone!

Update
If you are that concerned about using mobile data, search the market for "APN Droid", which is an app that completely turns on/off your mobile data.


Is there any way to use "alarm tones" as ringtones? I have the straighttalk Optimus fuel. In browsing" alarm tones" there are 2 - forest festival and morning cello I would like to make use as ringtones but they are not in that section... is there anyway to get them?

If you are rooted, then with the help of any kind of explorers which allows browsing root storage, for instance, Root Explorer, open the Root tab, browse through system/media/audio/alarms... Copy the required files (alarm tones) and paste to system/media/audio/ringtones


How to access sensors and camera of android device from Shell I have logged in to my android phone through SSH [installed SSH client in android and through putty from windows]. Now I can access all the directories like root, dev, etc, of the phone. Can someone tell me what's the native method to access the devices and sensors of the phone .. I mean, how can I control say, the camera, just from this Linux shell terminal of the phone.

I haven't tried this, but since android isn't so different than the underlying Linux system, you might be able to do the same thing as described here. The device file name might be different though and you might need to be rooted.


Huawei bootloader: what is "FB Lock" and how to unlock it? I was playing around with my spare Huawei phone trying to bypass the security without wiping data and came along this article: https://blog.salvationdata.com/2018/09/07/case-study-mobile-forensics-a-practical-solution-to-unlock-huawei-bootloader/

In step 3, you should "temporarily disable FB lock". What does this mean and how do I unlock it using fastboot? I suppose, that I cannot do that using standard fastboot oem unlock command, but I couldn't find anything else in the fastboot documentation.

EDIT: Result of fastboot help command as requested:
https://pastebin.com/2rhr1PTT

platform-tools$ ./fastboot help
usage: fastboot [OPTION...] COMMAND...

flashing:
 update ZIP                 Flash all partitions from an update.zip package.
 flashall                   Flash all partitions from $ANDROID_PRODUCT_OUT.
                            On A/B devices, flashed slot is set as active.
                            Secondary images may be flashed to inactive slot.
 flash PARTITION [FILENAME] Flash given partition, using the image from
                            $ANDROID_PRODUCT_OUT if no filename is given.

basics:
 devices [-l]               List devices in bootloader (-l: with device paths).
 getvar NAME                Display given bootloader variable.
 reboot [bootloader]        Reboot device.

locking/unlocking:
 flashing lock|unlock       Lock/unlock partitions for flashing
 flashing lock_critical|unlock_critical
                            Lock/unlock 'critical' bootloader partitions.
 flashing get_unlock_ability
                            Check whether unlocking is allowed (1) or not(0).

advanced:
 erase PARTITION            Erase a flash partition.
 format[:FS_TYPE[:SIZE]] PARTITION
                            Format a flash partition.
 set_active SLOT            Set the active slot.
 oem [COMMAND...]           Execute OEM-specific command.

boot image:
 boot KERNEL [RAMDISK [SECOND]]
                            Download and boot kernel from RAM.
 flash:raw PARTITION KERNEL [RAMDISK [SECOND]]
                            Create boot image and flash it.
 --cmdline CMDLINE          Override kernel command line.
 --base ADDRESS             Set kernel base address (default: 0x10000000).
 --kernel-offset            Set kernel offset (default: 0x00008000).
 --ramdisk-offset           Set ramdisk offset (default: 0x01000000).
 --tags-offset              Set tags offset (default: 0x00000100).
 --page-size BYTES          Set flash page size (default: 2048).
 --header-version VERSION   Set boot image header version.
 --os-version MAJOR[.MINOR[.PATCH]]
                            Set boot image OS version (default: 0.0.0).
 --os-patch-level YYYY-MM-DD
                            Set boot image OS security patch level.

Android Things:
 stage IN_FILE              Sends given file to stage for the next command.
 get_staged OUT_FILE        Writes data staged by the last command to a file.

options:
 -w                         Wipe userdata.
 -s SERIAL                  Specify a USB device.
 -s tcp|udp:HOST[:PORT]     Specify a network device.
 -S SIZE[K|M|G]             Break into sparse files no larger than SIZE.
 --slot SLOT                Use SLOT; 'all' for both slots, 'other' for
                            non-current slot (default: current active slot).
 --set-active[=SLOT]        Sets the active slot before rebooting.
 --skip-secondary           Don't flash secondary slots in flashall/update.
 --skip-reboot              Don't reboot device after flashing.
 --disable-verity           Sets disable-verity when flashing vbmeta.
 --disable-verification     Sets disable-verification when flashing vbmeta.
 --wipe-and-use-fbe         Enable file-based encryption, wiping userdata.
 --unbuffered               Don't buffer input or output.
 --verbose, -v              Verbose output.
 --version                  Display version.
 --help, -h                 Show this message.

There are two types of bootloader locks in Huawei devices: FB Lock and USER Lock.

USER Lock restricts the standard partitions like system, data, recovery, kernel etc, but not the critical bootloader-partitions which I don't remember the names of. (So you can't edit them even if you perform a USER Unlock) The USER Lock is what requires the bootloader unlock code to unlock. Also, there are some hidden hardware commands which are used for serious debugging like JTAG, that cannot be accessed with a USER Unlock.

FB Lock is used for protecting these restricted functions. A FB Unlock works as a key for all of Fastboot. (So if you perform a FB Unlock then you can unlock everything USER Unlock does, and the other restricted stuff) FB Lock is intended to be used by Huawei personnel for repairing. It is NOT supposed to be unlocked by users, but it is possible anyway, as I discovered after quite some research, but it doesn't work on very new firmware versions like EMUI 8.2 or July/August Security patch. It has been used for years by paid software for performing FRP Unlock, full system restoring, and it can even be used for obtaining a bootloader code for USER Unlock. A FB Unlock is usually temporary.

The method of FB Unlock has been kept behind cover for quite some time now, but I saw recently that it has been leaked on XDA. You can check it out here. That guide also covers a method for extracting the NVME partition for a permanent FB  Unlock. If you don't want a permanent FB Unlock, but would like just a normal USER Unlock, you can skip doing steps after 3, but instead when you boot into TWRP, you can use:

su -c "grep -m1 -aoE 'WVLOCK.{14}[0-9]{16}' /dev/block/mmcblk0p7 |grep -aoE '[0-9]{16}'"

That will output the bootloader unlock code which you can use for standard USER Unlock. Good Luck!


widgets with cutomized service? I am new to android, just bought a nexus 5.
I am now trying to customize my desktop (I am using nova launcher + Zooper free widget maker ).

Now, the problem is, can I customize the service of a widget? Say, I liked a weather widget in zooper, I want to use it. But the weather service of my choice is accuweather(no business, just an example).
How can I have these two together?

The general answer I'm afraid is "you usually can't". In principle there's nothing to stop a developer from writing a widget that supports multiple information sources, and allowing you to choose between them. In practice, though, that's often just more trouble than it's worth, as those different sources may deliver their data in quite different formats that the code would have to handle.


Is there a 1-click method to do this 3-4 click task? I'm on a pay-as-you go scheme using an HTC desire with Android 2.3 installed. Right now, to activate my mobile internet (which I do only when I need to check email) needs me to go to Settings > Wireless > tick 'Mobile Networks'.

Question:

Is there a 1-click way of doing this? I probably will need to install an app that helps me do this I'm guessing?

I spent several minutes looking for this over Google, but I suspect I didn't know what to search for

Try searching for a data toggle widget on the market to add a one-click shortcut. For example, I found Data Enabler Widget pretty easily.


Is it safe to cross flash partitions across devices? I've got my Nexus 5 replaced today. I was wondering if I could make a backup from the recovery on device A and flash this on device B? They are exactly the same, just a different physical device.

As long as it's the exact same model (be very careful here, since Nexus 5 has GSM and CDMA models) your plan will work.

If you are planning to unlock your phone's bootloader, root it and install a custom recovery and ROM, it's easily done with nandroid.

On original Nexus 5 you run nandroid backup.
Using adb pull copy the newly created backup directory to your PC (the path will be different depending on the recovery you are using.)
Unlock the bootloader of your new Nexus 5.
Boot into your new phone and enable USB Debugging.  Now hook it up via USB and accept the authorization prompt. This is a very important step.  Do not skip this, otherwise adb will refuse to connect to the phone, even in recovery.
Install same version of custom recovery as you were using on your original Nexus 5.
Using adb push copy the backup folder you retrieved in step 2 from your PC onto the new phone.
On the new phone boot into recovery and run nandroid restore.

Keep in mind that nandroid does not back up or restore the contents of media storage (/sdcard), so you will need to copy those files manually (adb pull/push works quite well, or you can use other methods as Izzy mentioned in the comments).

If you cannot (or don't want to) unlock the bootloader, you may want to look into using adb backup tool.  However, this method also has its down sides (e.g. SMS messages are not backed up or restored, failure to back up some media, etc.)


How does Android determine which apps are "social networking" apps for data usage purposes? My phone carrier (Bell Canada) says that in addition to my maximum data limit, I have "unlimited social network" usage.

I'm wondering which apps count as social networking apps? As an Android developer, I'm also interested in how I might designate one of my apps as a social networking app.

(Let me know if this would be better off on programmers.stackexchange or stackoverflow...)

Your carrier determine a social network by his hostname or IP as said in comment, not with a specific application. But there is sometimes where this feature doesn't work with apps ( some apps use proxy, don't know if this is the case for facebook or twitter... ).
An other case is this only work on the carrier's website (if they provide social network functions directly on their site), but it would be said on your carrier's offer.

Anyway this is only determined by the IP or hostname. You can't do that by designate an app with a certain programming function...


Can I connect a pen drive to my Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini using USB OTG? I am using Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini. Can I connect my phone with a pen drive using an on-the-go (OTG) USB cable?

I would assume, YES.

Currently, my Samsung Galaxy S4 (using the latest stock ROM) supports USB OTG.

Before that, I had a Samsung Galaxy S2. Using the stock ROM, I could not use USB OTG. So, I installed USB OTG Helper, which requires your phone to have root. When I changed to CyanogenMod (CM) ROM 10.1, I did not need USB OTG Helper; it had USB OTG support.


Can't move System from one phone to another using twrp? I have a HTC desire 510 (broken) and a HTC desire 510 (rather unharmed).

I made a backup of the system on the old one to the new one using twrp 3.1.1 to the external sd card.

If I put the sd card in the new phone, I can't restore the backup to the new phone, as the backup is not shown to select in twrp. On the other hand the backup of the stock sw I did on the new phone is available for restore. What can I do?

Found the solution in the thing called „internet“:

(in the following it is assumed, that all backups are stored to a SD card).

TWRP stores backups with a „serial number“ of the phone. i.e. when looking into a SD card, there is a folder called TWRP/BACKUPS. Inside this there are subfolders named after a unique ID for every phone. E.g. CC48TY402141 or something like this. I think TWRP derives this code from the IMEI and possibly from other information on the hardware of the phone.
Inside such a subfolder all backups from a certain phone ares stored.

To convince TWRP to restore the backup from my old phone to a new phone I had to do the following:
I made a backup of the stock software of my new phone. TWRP then created a new subfolder with the ID for the new phone in TWRP/BACKUPS, and stored the backup of the stock ROM there. Then I moved the backup out of the subfolder from my old phone into the new subfolder. After restarting TWRP the backup from my old phone was available and could be restored to the new phone without any hassle.


If you delete a message sent on a WhatsApp group by some other user, do they or anyone else in the group know Suppose in a group some user sends a message and you accidentally or deliberately delete it, do the original poster gets some kind of notification that this other user deleted your message?

No the original poster doesn't gets any kind of notification.


Problem in opening applications When i restart my mobile Samsung j5 2016  Or  shutdown so when i switch on my mobile. It start like from begning like when we by new phone . All that app doesnt work before restarting or before switching off i have. Please help me

Such an error can occur because of several different reasons and all these reasons come into existence due to one reason:

System or CPU failed to handle that app properly.

Messenger is a heavy application that will use a huge portion of your RAM and CPU while running and sometimes, to run system apps, the phone has to abandon these processes. That is why your apps keeps stopping (also, you are using a Samsung phone, so the UI uses more memory then the standard Android UI).

For a better experience, you have to keep your device clean by installing a cleaner app. You then have to remove cache and data of such apps regularly to have a smooth experience.


Is there a way to connect Acer Iconia A500 tablet to windows PC via USB as a drive, not a device? It currently shows up as a "device", but I prefer to have it as a drive so that I can run tools like SyncToy and many others against it.

Download File Manager HD from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhmsoft.fm.hd

Follow these instructions. Answer source: http://androidforums.com/2848952-post5.html

  On the panel at the left tap Storage.

  On the panel at the top right press the Up arrow until the first
  directory entry is asec. Now scroll down through the directory and you
  should see usb_storage. Tap usb_storage and you should see your data.


What is the diff between the Media transfer protocal and Picture Transfer Protocol After connecting my device for data transfer the device asks for mode of USB transfer MTP or PTP.

I googled it and found that MTP(Media transfer protocal ) and PTP(Picture Transfer Protocol) are some sort of protocols for data transfer but didn't get why is it been used as we can transfer data easily with the previous USB mode as an external storage device.

The new USB device modes is somewhat complex for me to understand as I am used to data transfer only as an external storage device but not any PTP or MTP.

Which mode is suitable for what kind of data transfer?

MTP is the better option in most cases, since the protocol is actually designed for this use.

PTP is offered as an alternative since Macs don't understand MTP by default (you need to install "Android File Transfer" on the Mac to make MTP work). This protocol was designed for PCs to access photos from digital cameras, so it can only access the photos on the phone, and it might trigger a photo management app on the PC instead of a file manager.

To learn more about why MTP was introduced, see my answer to Why is Android File Transfer necessary?


LineageOS: Phone and Contacts crash I've switched from Cyanogenmod to LineageOS using the experimental build and then flashing a nightly build afterwards. This worked great except for the fact that the phone and contacts app kept on crashing. I reflashed the nightly and -- to be sure -- this time I flashed the GApps immediately after as well.

I've tried both the Gapps "stock" package and the "micro", because I thought the problem could lie within Hangouts. It didn't.

When I boot my phone up, I get android.process.acore has stopped working (or something along the lines of that; I'm using the German translation) and this message get's repeated everytime I try to open the phone, messages or contacts. All other apps seem to work fine.

Interestingly enough, I can get called. The aforementioned error message is displayed, however, I can tap on Kill app without killing the conversation.

If you have the cynogenmod zip file somewhere stored then I think it is very easy to restore it. Just extract the cynogenmod on your computer and go to system->apps and copy the apks which are not working (eg.Phone, Contact in your case). Now also extract the nightly build which is giving you errors and go to system->apps and find the phone.apk and contacts.apk and delete it. Now just paste those apks which you had copied from CynogenMod and compress the modified Lineage OS in zip format. Now you are all done. Flash the newly created zip file and comment here if it worked (which is going to work in most case).


Dates changed on the photos Photos were taken in 2011 on Samsung phone GT-B3310 (not a smartphone). This phone was switched off for over 2 years in 2013.

On 24 January 2015 the phone was switched on and transferred the pictures via Bluetooth onto my Samsung Galaxy S3. The pictures showed dates from 24 to 28 January 2015. Some pictures had 24, some 26, 27 and 28. The Exif file also showed the dates from 24 to 28 January 2015. The original dates in 2011 were missing.
Samsung South Korea said that if a device is switched off for long, and subsequently switched on and connected to a device (phone/computer) the pictures would take the switch off date.
But the puzzle is, why do dates vary from 24 to 28 January 2015? Can anyone kindly give answer? This has created a huge issue/problem for me.

Exif dates are stored in your images as strings, including the year. So the fact that the phone was off shouldn't be relevant.

However it's quite common that image transfer programs re-write metadata, unfortunately.

Try emailing yourself one of the images from the phone directly and testing with that on another computer (or find some other way to get a file off the phone for testing.)

Switching the phone off won't wipe any Exif data. That's stored inside the files.


How is my friend bypassing Applock application I'm using moto x 2nd gen, I recently installed applock to keep some apps private but one of my friend knows a way to bypass the password and even change it, he did the same even with pattern lock. He doesn't even reboot the phone, he does it in seconds. How is he doing it and in what other ways can I lock my apps?

One possible answer can be that he is killing the application process that is protecting your device. One possible way is that he goes to Settings->Apps->[applock_application] and then Force Stop it.

Go to this link for more detail.


Android won't boot after unsuccesful wipe operation I rooted my Asus Transformer Prime and tried to install a custom ROM but I managed to fail. I selected the option to wipe data from the table in the bootloader menu (accessed it via holding power button and volume down) and then I cancelled it by turning the device off because I wasn't supposed to select that. It seems this wasn't wise...

I tried to boot the device but now it's stuck saying "Asus" in the middle of the screen. If I try to power it off, it turns off but immediately it turns back on.

I can't access the bootloader menu. Fastboot nor ADB sees the device via USB.

How can I restore it?

I was having the same issue as this. I was in a "recovery boot loop" and could not get to the recovery options.  I did have ADB access to the device after I installed the "Naked Drivers". Once I did this I was able to see the device using the command "adb devices". The MAGIC command once I had adb access was "adb reboot bootloader" BAM! It rebooted mid bootloop and I was able to select the fastboot option. I followed all of matt95's instructions above including following the link he provided to XDA. The link at XDA explained how to get the "blob" file. It's easy, you download the current rom from ASUS and extract the blob file from it. I literally copied and pasted each command with the exception of the path to my blob file and my TF201 has been resurrected!

Good Luck!


YES... I STILL Have My Galaxy Note 7, So I Could Please Use Some Help With Contact Errors So, as of right now, my preinstalled Android calendar, email, & contacts applications are not working. I have NO contacts showing up. I save ALL of my contacts in my Google/Gmail account. I've installed the app "Contacts+" & finally they've shown up, but... they are all an old version of my Google contacts. I've gone into the Google Contacts website on Chrome & the correct contacts are displayed there, so I tried to "restore" them... it didn't work
Does ANYONE, have ANY helpful information for me, please!!??!!

Thank you so very much,
Scorpio2177

I've run into this before, and it wasn't fun to fix.

Go into settings, accounts, and open the affected Google account. Check to see when the last sync was between Google and your phone's contacts. If sync is off, you've found the issue. Turn it back on- Issue fixed. If it hasn't synced in a long time but is still on, continue to the next paragraph. If it just synced, skip the next paragraph and go to the following one.

Turn off the contacts synchronization in the affected account. Before proceeding, make sure that the web version of Google contacts displays everything perfectly and is not missing any contacts, because your phone's data is about to be deleted. Update the online versions if necessary. Then go into the apps list (settings-apps) and you will find one called Contacts Storage. While this isn't an app you can open per say, it contains all of the contacts in the phone, and is the source of the issue. Clear the cache and data of this app, then turn contact synchronization on the Google account back on. After a few minutes, all of your contacts will come back and the data should be correct. Comment on this answer if that does not work, because I ended up having to do more steps than just this, even though I shouldn't have.

This paragraph is if the data on synchronization says it is updated. Open the Google contacts online version and the contact on your phone and do a comparison. If they are the same, then everything is working properly and there is an issue in your contacts with Google, not the phone. If they are different, there is some witchcraft going on that even I can't explain. If the data on the web version of Google is correct but the phone isn't, follow the procedure in the preceeding paragraph. If the phone is correct but Google isn't, you're going to have to manually fix the online version and then follow the procedure on the preceeding paragraph.

I apologize for the large number of cases in this answer, but there are many different ways that this could be addressed this and I wanted to cover all of them.


Installing the English (United States) language I recently got my Desire HD, and it came pre-installed with Deutsch, English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, each in a (Spain) or (Portugal) flavor. Is there some way of getting an English (United States) or English (United Kingdom) on it?
 Removing the other languages as well, would be nice.

Android's language/locale/internationalization support is pretty bad at the moment.  I'd recommend flashing a US or UK ROM on it, which will have the language built-in.


Bootanimation is changed but the official logo of penta is show I have just remove my official boot animation & the new animation is work but the logo of company is show when before boot animation.

I have Penta t-pad callpro3G.

From your updated description, you're referring to the 1st screen (sometimes called "splash"). It's encoded and built into a separate partition of the device (not /system), which can't be changed easily. Only on popular devices can devs bother to figure out the location and the format of the stored logo, thus making it accessible to us modders.


Where does the standard Android Web Browser keep its history files? As in, the included web browser (which isn't Chrome or Firefox).

I'm using a Lenovo ThinkPad, by the way. But the results might be generalizable to other tablets.

I believe the history files will be in the .db file located at /data/data/com.android.browser/databases/browser.db

However, you will require root access to be able to work with the files.


How can I make Windows remember my Galaxy S3 Whenever I tether my Galaxy S3 to my laptop, using the built-in functionality from the Network Settings, Windows considers it a completely new connection: It labels the network "Network X" (with X being an incrementing counter) and asks for information on the type of network.

Is there a way to let Windows treat all of my tethering as a single connection and make it stop asking for the connection type?

You either have to forget the network connection,by navigating to Settings >> Network and Internet >>  WiFi >> Manage known networks, and choose "forget" for the appropriate network, then reconnect and see if problem persists or unistall the device driver.

If its USB tethering try unistalling the Network adapter:

Go to device manager >> Network Adaptor>> Right click on your wireless adaptor and select uninstall. (Also enable "show hidden devices" and delete old instances of this network adapter, its usually RNDIS Device)

Reboot and reconnect your device. Sometimes its just occurs because of some corruption in registry.


Saving battery life: pressing home button or back button My friend said when using an app, pressing the home button saves battery life instead of pressing the back button. He thought by pressing the home button, the app stays in RAM so that when you reopen it it just open, android doesn't need to create the app and store it in RAM, which costs battery. Is it true?

That's basically what Android does in many cases, yes.  But I don't think it's true that it will have all that much of an effect on battery life.  Most apps don't take long to start up at all — it would take repeatedly opening apps that take multiple minutes to start to noticeably affect your battery life, I would think.  Android does automatically close apps when needed, and apps normally can't run in the background (just services), so there is not much reason to back out of an app rather than just using the home button.


List of banned market apps I recently came across fireplace market, which hosts fired apps banned by google. However it's apparently down.

I'm not really interested in the market app, I just would have liked to browse what Google does not like. Often such places offer nice to know niche apps.

Is there a list of banned-from-google-play apps?ds

EDIT: Does someone know what fireplace used to host?

No. Such list could never be exhaustive as all the developers who got booted would need to collaborate to it.

Most warez markets don't exclusively deal with banned apps either, they usually host free and paid apps available in Play Store as well.

For the record the term "apps that Google doesn't like" is quite misleading. It's usually carriers or another external force that ask for removal of apps.


E-mail usage for your device? I have a "serious" e-mail address that I use for human (to write and receive email from people that I really know) and another one as a nickname that I use in forums, registrations and so on when I use the PC.

At the serius e-mail address I have no SPAM, while in the second there is a lot of SPAM.

My Nexus4 is registered with the seriuos email address because I use a lot the e-mail on mobile.

Now many apps ask my email address to send me info, what e-mail do I have to set in the android apps? The device suggest me to use the seriuos one but I think that this choice can generate a lot of SPAM.

You can use any email you want to register for apps. Use the forum one to keep app spam off the serious one. Remember, purchased apps are still on the primary Google account, no matter what other address you register the app account with.


What is true name of android (download/fastboot/odin) mode? i saw every where to write something and named it this mode as download mode or fastboot mode or odin mode ..? what is true name of this mode? in iphone we named DFU mode that like this mode in android and done. What is the true name?

It is Download mode you boot the device into to use Odin. I've included a bit more info if you wanted anything deeper.
 See this post "What is Download mode"

As for Download mode, for example ODIN is commonly used on Samsung devices to flash ROMs, those devices needs to be in download mode prior to flashing. However, ODIN is not the official way to do it, rather Kies, is the official route in upgrading the firmware, this is for Samsung devices for example.

You can boot into Recovery mode also to use your recovery to make backups, wipe data, flash ROMs directly on the device.
XDA Wiki on Android Recovery and here is a short extract.

Recovery is stored in a disk partition separate from the main Android partitions (boot/kernel, root/system). It contains its own Linux kernel, separate from the kernel of the main Android system. Because of separate kernel+recovery_apps, the device is able to boot into the recovery mode even if the main system is broken, allowing the user a set of tools to fix the device. The recovery is completely independent of the Android system.

 See here for the CyanogenMod wiki on Fastboot and an extract:

fastboot is a small tool that comes with the Android SDK (software developer kit) that can be used to re-flash partitions on your device. It is an alternative to the recovery mode for doing installations and updates.
Because fastboot mode can start on your device even before Android loads (and can even run when Android isn't installed at all), fastboot mode is useful for updating the firmware quickly, without having to use a recovery mode. In fact, it's frequently the preferred way to initially install the recovery image on many devices. Fastboot can also be used for developer operations like unlocking the bootloader of Google's Nexus devices.


Can't tell if HTC One V is GSM or CDMA I recently won an HTC One V and I want to sell it, but I'm not sure what carriers it supports. I won it from an HTC stand I went to, and all they said was that the phone was unlocked so that it could be used with any carrier. How can I tell if it's CDMA or GSM? I can't remove the cover to see an ESN or HEX number, and I don't see any spot for a SIM slot. On the label of the phone it has an IMEI number, an S/N number and a P/N number. Any ideas?

I see listings on ebay that say GSM and other listing that say GSM/HSPA. How do I tell?

Based from an article on Wikipedia regarding to Electronic Serial Number (ESN),

  ESNs are currently mainly used with CDMA phones (and were previously used by AMPS and TDMA phones), compared to International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers used by all GSM phones.

(Emphasis mine)

So, if there is IMEI, then it's GSM. Otherwise, it's CDMA.

Alternatively, theTuxRacer suggested on the comment

  Remove the back cover on the chin. Under the "Made in China" sticker, there should be a small box which should mention something like HTC One V T320e... They are called as Primou U and Primou C for the GSM and CDMA version respectively!


Problems using Whatsapp on HTC One V I'm facing a problem using Whatsapp. Many times if I received 2-3 pics or a large conversation on Whatsapp, the phone's title bar (where it shows date, battery status & network status) disappears automatically. Also when I open Whatsapp it opens and disappears so in that case I have to select any pic/note & select option share on Whatsapp. Then Whatsapp opens after forwarding that pic/note. I have to use the option of clear conversation and then everything becomes normal.

This is really a very irritating procedure. I don't know why this happens. Many friends of mine who use other company mobiles with the same configuration as my HTC One V don't have this type of problem. Please suggest what the problem is.

HTC One V users can now take the software update. HTC has provided the update for whatsapp crash. Go to Settings>About>Software Update


Where can I see all my +1 and app ratings? Where can I see all my +1 and app ratings?

In Google Play Store, click the My Play activity link.

Source.


Pop-up notification from carrier What is this type of notification called and how can I block these?

"MTS" is the name of the carrier. The messages are all ads. I've never seen one of these in the UK, but I receive one every 20 minutes in Ukraine. I've not installed anything recently, I only swapped SIM cards.

I have since found that this is neither a push message nor a cell broadcast. I disabled both, yet still received these. One of the two was already disabled by default, can't remember which.

Apparently by inserting the SIM card, I got an "app" called "MTS Menu". This is the app that shows the messages. Using App Master, I found that this app comes from /system/app/Stk.apk:

"STK" appears to stand for SIM Application Toolkit, basically a feature of SIM cards that enables operators to bundle "value added services", aka bundleware/crapware.

It is really stupid that Android comes not only with this feature enabled, but also makes the source of these pop-ups very difficult to trace.


Google Play Movies with restricted accounts I've created a Restricted account for my daughter to use my Pixel C. I've enabled Google Play Movies. However,  when I open the app none of my purchases are visible. This seems contrary to how it is supposed to work, and I can't see how this app would work with Restricted profiles at all. Any advice appreciated.

My end desire is that I can let her watch movies, but lock the rest down.

It turns out it Google Play Videos was defaulting to my other Google account which has no content. So I just needed to switch accounts and it worked perfectly.


What is the "Duplicate Provider" error? I have installed Angry birds from the official android market. I tried installing the Angry Birds Seasons free version today, and while installing I got a pop-up message saying "Duplicate provider" and the installation terminated. I am running ICS on Nexus S, if it's relevant.

That means something's wrong with the package setup. For your reference, here are a few links with more detailed information:

android duplicate provider authority - Stack Overflow
Android duplicate provider authority problem - Stack Overflow
Angry Birds Seasons Summer Pignic Now Available | AngryBirdsNest (search for "duplicate provider" on this page, should appear around the middle)
Duplicate provider authority error when installing K-9 mail - Google Groups

Recommendation: Contact developer (for security reasons both developers, in case somebody faked the signature). It's most likely a copy-and-paste error during the packaging process, so the developer might release a fixed update soon.


"Switch to mobile data" setting - Will apps configured to do updates etc while in wi-fi only mode use mobile data if wi-fi is down? I have a number of apps that have settings to require a wi-fi connection in order to synch/update/download and I have them configured as such.  What I'm wondering is if I have wi-fi on and configured to switch to mobile-data when the wi-fi connection is lost and now the only connection I have is via mobile data, from the Android/app perspective, is this still considered wi-fi mode and said apps will update using mobile data?

Depends on the app.

It is possible, for the app developer/creator, to check if you are using wi-fi, and it is also possible to enforce the app to only use this kind of connection. However, there can be apps that are not well made that doesn't make these checks. Usually, if they have this configuration, they will use only wi-fi (if that's the way you set).

The best way to check if the app you are using is reliable is reading user comments of each app - usually, if one user notices the app was supposed to use wi-fi only and it doesn't, he posts a complaining "one star" comment there.


What is the difference between a proximity sensor and a light sensor? I've run across the specifications for this Android device, the HTC One V. On the PhoneArena site, the specs have it that the phone has both a proximity sensor and a light sensor. I thought a proximity sensor uses light to detect proximity. What is the difference between these two?

If the proximity sensor worked by simply measuring received light, it would be useless at night :) There are various methods this sensor can work, but the main idea is to decide if the phone is being held up at a person's ear. This is a yes or no question so the sensor doesn't have to be able to measure the distance, there just has to be a designated treshold, which, when crossed, triggers the output value from 0 to 1 (and thus, it turns off the screen).

The light sensor, however, needs to measure the brightness the phone is exposed to, usually to be able to adjust the screen's brightness. This way, for example, it can turn up the brightness in sunlight and reduce it at night.


Android widget to lock my android phone Is there any android widget which allows me to lock my phone?
The 'power' button on my android phone is broken? I can't use that to lock my phone screen.

Thank you.

Short answer is no.

[Extended Answer]
This would require the use of PowerManager.gotoSleep(long time), and the use of that method requires the android.permission.DEVICE_POWER permission. DEVICE_POWER is only available to applications signed as system applications. Only applications that ship with the device and signed by the manufacture would be allowed to use the method.


How can I get the apk file of an app? A while ago, I asked a question which has been deleted by Community

  Some Android apps are in fact ebooks. For example, Learn Lisp

  Is it possible to convert android app ebook to pdf or some other document file types? Are there apps to
  do that?

Andrew T. commented that:

  For this particular app: get the APK, open it with zip viewer, and
  browse the /assets folder; they're in HTML files. I can't answer if
  there's an automated way to convert it to PDF because the content
  structure will not be the same for other apps.

Firelord commented that

  @AndrewT. good approach. You can add certain tweaks and I think it
  would make a good answer, well at least for some apps, if not for all.
  In Android, download busybox, get the APK, and then do unzip -l APK_PATH | grep -E "FILETYPE$". If there exists a file with your
  extension, its path in APK would be listed. If the developer went to
  lengths to change the extension and hide the file, then this would
  fail.

My questions are:

How can I get the APK file of an app after installing it from Google Play?
Once I find the APK file of an app, can I copy it out of my android phone to my Ubuntu laptop and then extract the hidden document file in the apk file? Or do I have to extract on my android phone?

Thanks.

How can I get the APK file of an app after installing it from Google Play?

Multiple ways, but the easiest one, I suppose, is to install a backup type app such as App Backup Restore. Take the backup of the the target app and its APK would be saved inside a directory under the default storage (/sdcard).

  Once I find the APK file of an app, can I copy it out of my android phone to my Ubuntu laptop and then extract the hidden document file in the apk file? Or do I have to extract on my android phone?

An APK is an archive (MIME type: application/zip). You can copy it to your laptop alike any multimedia file.

As for the extraction of the contents, there are multiple apps on Play Store which supports extracting a ZIP file, so it is up to you to extract the app on Android or in your PC to explore its contents.


How to get black keyboard layout for Lollipop keyboard? I just updated my Nexus4 from Kitkat to Lollipop. The most obvious change for me is the background color of the theme and especially the keyboard. It used to have a black background, now its color is the brightest of whites hurting my poor eyes. Can I change the background color back into blackness, and if so, how?

Note: I like to avoid keyboard apps from third parties. I know they exist in different flavors, but I like to keep it native.

Your current layout is called "Material Light". To change it, though there isn't a pure black version, go to

  Settings > Language and Input > Google Keyboard > Appearance and Layouts

The dark material setting is called "Material Dark" and looks like this:

I'm assuming you want material design as you are keeping it stock, but there are the old KitKat 'Holo' themes in there also.


How can I Recover deleted WhatsApp Images on Samsung Galaxy S2? The day before yesterday I was browsing my WhatsApp images. Upon browsing them, I accidentally deleted one image that means a lot to me.

I've tried Dr.Fone did not really work.
I've heard that if I uninstall it, I'll be able to restore my data (but I am not sure, I am afraid I'll lose my data).

If you have ROOT  ACCESS
Try Undeleter

This app scans and recovers deleted files from SD cards and internal
storage.

Features:

Restore any file that has not been written over
Works with documents, images, video, music, archives and binaries
Save files directly to Dropbox, Google Drive and Sdcard

If you DONT HAVE ROOT ACCESS

The first thing to do is to connect the phone memory (internal or external) as a Mass Storage Device to your computer, ie, via USB.
Then download Recuva (you can use either the paid or free version), which is a program to recover files for windows.
When you run Recuva, the first thing to do is select the type of file you want to recover: Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents, etc. and set a specific folder to attempt recovery from. (In your case select image recovery from Sdcard/Whatsapp/Media/Whatsapp Images)

Other Free Data Recovery Softwares:
* ZAR
*Card Recovery
*Pc Inspecter File Recovery
*PicaJet Photo Recovery


How to Refresh Gallery instantly? I am using Kitkat 4.4.2 on my android device.

When I mount USB drive to my device then all the images,videos in USB drive are shown in the Gallery. After unmounting USB drive, images,videos are still there as a thumbnails.

Can't I refresh my gallery without rebooting?

The system itself AFAIK doesn't expose a GUI element to do so. However, you have multiple options to trigger the Media Scanner:

Reboot the device (not that convenient)
unmounting/remounting the SD card (via Settings; better, but still not convenient)
using one of the apps/widgets available in the app stores. One that's reportedly working with Kitkat is SD Scanner (see my answer here)
using ADB to trigger it (telling it the card has just been mounted – so basically we fake the second option):

adb shell "am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_MOUNTED -d file:///mnt/sdcard"

Edit: Some ROMs (e.g. CyanogenMod) seem to have a GUI element for it in Settings › Developer options › Developer tools › Media provider – where you can find a button labeled "SCAN SD CARD"


Flashing a firmware for SC-02H model on SM-G3950 model of Samsung Galaxy 7 Edge Problem:
I have a phone I bought from HK and using in Japan. It has been working perfectly fine for 2 years until recently when I changed the service provider. Unfortunately, the service provider has washed its hands off the problem claiming
the country of origin.

Possible Solution: I read in many forums that it could be an issue with the CSC. So I am presuming that if I can start updating the phone with Japanese OTA it might work so I intend to flash my phone with the Japanese firmware though I can't find a reference where the different firmware are claimed to be compatible.

My concern are the following:

Where can I determine if the firmwares are compatible and if the
worst comes to pass can I reset my phone to default factory settings?
If I download a HK firmware and reset CSC to SMB (I think it is for
Japan), will i actually receive OTA updates for Japan even though the firmware itself is for another location?

Question #1 Answer: http://willmyphonework.net

Question #2 Answer: Since you are looking to flash firmware that did not come on the device by default you run the risk of bricking the device. Definitely ensure if you have a bootloader that can be unlocked, and I would advise flashing twrp to begin and follow it with a full backup in case something goes wrong. You will always have the option to return to stock (make sure OEM Unlocked is ENABLED so you don't accidentally FRP Lock your device if it bricks, as this will result in a much more difficult to save situation than just a bad flash!!). As far as if your device can receive OTA updates.... typically flashing anything other than the stock firmware will result in you not being able to take OTA updates, but in the context you have asked it almost sounds as if your carrier uses a similar system to US CDMA carriers, in that it requires the "activating" or "programming" of the device to enable service. If that's the case then you just need to flash the radio.img or modem.img of the correct carrier while in TWRP recovery (only after you have backed up your current radio.img!) and then see if the phone boots and receives signal.

Second answer is a bit rough around the edges, but let me know if anything goes wrong or if you need further help and I'll be happy to help where I can.


Why does my phone show less storage than it's supposed to? I have a Lava Iris X1 (8GB ROM), but the storage shows up in two types.

Internal storage total space is 3.54GB:

Available                         : 2.52GB
Apps (app data & media etc.)      : 0.97GB
Cached data                       : 48.17MB

Phone storage total space is 2.50GB:

Available                         : 8.55MB
Apps (app data & media etc.)      : 27.54MB
Pictures, videos                  : 1.85GB
audio (music, ringtones etc.)     : 313MB
Downloads                         : 25.92MB
Cached data                       : 64.14MB
Misc.                             : 223MB

I am confused about why my phone memory is less than 8 GB. Is my phone's total ROM capacity 8GB or not?

The flash chip inside your phone is 8gb, but not all of that space will be available to the user - some of it will be used by the other partitions, such as /system/ where the Android OS is installed, and the /cache/ partition which is used for temporary storage, among other things.

You can install this app to see how your storage is partitioned:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cls.partition

For example, my Xperia SP also has 8gb storage

According to that app:

/lta-label - 16mb
/system - 1211mb
/cache - 542mb
/data - 5500mb

The /data partition is the one you'll see as internal storage.

Note that this doesn't actually add up to 8gb (more like 7gb) - the other point to remember is that device manufacturers always lie about capacities - e.g. my 16gb microSD card is actually 14.8gb. (It'll usually be a gig or so below what's reported, possibly much more for bigger devices.)


how to change the default download folder on android pad From time to time, you need to download files into your android device, but the downloaded files always end up in the default folder. Is there any way I can change that default folder or make the device prompt me every time I need to download files?

You should use the dolphin browser. While downloading file from the internet a popup appears and allows you to change the destination to save the file wherever you want. Hope you are looking for that. (Still figuring out android pad?)


Skipping Android Security Updates? I am rooted on my Nexus 6P and I used Flashfire to install the March security update. I didn't install any of the previous updates and haven't installed any after the March one.

This has made me think of a few questions:

Does the March update contain all fixes from prior updates as well?

Do I have to install each incremental security update or can I just install the May one without installing April's?

Should I go back and install the previous patches and if yes, will this negatively affect anything?

I have noticed a lot of random reboots and the device running hotter than before, although I am not sure if this is because of the manual updates or a bad app.

Any insight is appreciated.

You do need to install security updates incrementally, as each release has its own /system image that has had all the previous patches already applied to it. When installing an update, most of the time, /system is completely wiped and then replaced with the new image in your update file.

About the negative performance, a common issue is that the update is dirty flashed, meaning that the /data partition was not wiped with the new system image install. Try first wiping your Dalvik/cache partitions from your recovery. If that doesn't help, you can try wiping /data to see if that will solve your performance issues.

Wiping /data will remove all user data from the device, so be sure to back up any important data before performing a factory reset.


How to restore adb backup on Nexus 4 (boot loop)? Recently I have flashed unofficial cyanogenmod 10.2 for my Nexus 4. After testing some features I the device came into a "bootloop" (stays on cyanogenmod logo launcher).

I tried to reflash it with cm 10.1 (wipe dalvik cache and /cache partition) but the same effect.

Now I have completed the adb backup but if I restore it I get the same effect as described above.

I can launch the device successfully on clear cm 10.1 but it won't boot after restore of my backup. What can I do now ?

Do not restore the full backup taken, but Restore only part of it. And do it "piece by piece", so if the error re-occurs you at least know where it comes from and can skip the faulty part.

Edit: As I was not fully clear about where I pointed to: Titanium Backup is capable of restoring parts from nandroid as well as adb backups.


Downgrade Android N beta to M I opted into the N beta and installed it via OTA. Now I want to downgrade back to M and opted out of the beta. The page says that the downgrade should automatically come via OTA, but my device (Nexus 5X) doesn't seem to see any available updates (downgrades).

Should this be instant or can it take a few hours to get the OTA?

Ok solved it.

I opened g.co/androidbeta directly in Chrome on the device, opted back in and out again. Did it via a Desktop browser the first time and didn't work.


is fastboot a part of firmware I was thinking of installing kali linux on my phone but before that I just had few doubts.
Is fastboot a part of firmware and can any one overwrite it to brick my phone?

"Fastboot" is another name for the bootloader.  On the devices I've used (Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 5, Nexus 10), the bootloader is stored in a partition called "bootloader", and you can use it to overwrite itself by running fastboot flash bootloader (filename) from a PC.  Overwriting the bootloader partition with something that isn't a working bootloader will presumably brick the device, though I've never tried it.

Google's official factory images for Nexus devices include bootloader images, and flashing a factory image begins by overwriting the bootloader with the version from the factory image.  Custom firmwares (such as CyanogenMod) don't include a bootloader, so the device will keep the one from the official firmware.

On a rooted device, it's possible for apps with root access to overwrite partitions (including the bootloader partition) from within the running Android OS.  On a non-rooted device, apps can't do that.

I've never installed Kali, but looking at the installation instructions, it apparently installs as a chroot environment, which doesn't involve fastboot or any partition images.  So I'm guessing that your concern isn't with the installation of Kali itself, it's that a remote intruder who gets into your Kali installation might be able to overwrite your bootloader.  That seems unlikely to happen, but it's possible if your Kali installation is able to run programs as root.


How to export Astrid tasks into csv now that website is closed? I was a little behind when the Astrid website was closed down because I only used the Android app and not the web app. I saw that the devs provided an export functionality to the web app, but I cannot find it in the Android app, and I could not find any clue on the web on how to do that.

Is there a way to extract my Astrid tasks now that the web app is closed?

I have looked on the whole web and could not find any way. So I tried to use the same method that I have recently seen applied to a similar problem: assume that the database is stored in a common format (like SQL) and is accessible in the data/data folder of the root partition (equivalent of Windows's Program Files).

This is what I did, and it worked. Here are the steps:

1- Use a rooted explorer like Total Commander for Android and explore in the root partition the folder /data/data/com.timsu.astrid/databases.

2- Open your rooted explorer and copy the file database (there's no extension) to your SD card so that we can extract it and copy to the computer.

3- Copy via USB or your BlueStacks emulator the databases file onto your computer, and open it using a SQLite browser like this one.

4- Now you should be able to see the tables structures and contents. The interesting stuff are in the tasks and metadata tables (the latter contains tags and notes).

5- Execute the following SQL statement to neatly format the pertinent data:

SELECT date(t.created / 1000,'unixepoch') as date_created,date(t.modified / 1000,'unixepoch') as date_modified,m2.value as tags, t.title as title,m.value as comment
FROM tasks as t
LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT task, GROUP_CONCAT(value,' ;; ') as value FROM metadata WHERE key = 'note' GROUP BY task ORDER BY created) as m ON t._id = m.task
LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT task, GROUP_CONCAT(value, ';') as value FROM metadata WHERE key = 'tags-tag' GROUP BY task) as m2 ON t._id = m2.task
GROUP BY t._id ORDER BY t._id

6- Export the result into the file format you want, like .csv.

It's interesting to note that this method is quite generic and may also work for other Android apps.


How can I block ads from using my cel phone data plan? I'd like a way to block ads from using my cell phone data plan. I've reviewed this but it didn't cover my specific question. The upshot is that I have roughly 1000 times the data available on my wifi connection as I have with my cell phone providers data plan. I get that developers need to keep the lights on and do so by serving us ads, however I resent having my high-speed data from my cell phone provider used up in this manner and would prefer to only receive ads over my wifi connection. How can I accomplish this? I've tried ADP (ad blocker plus) but it only proxies out wifi which is the exact opposite of what I have in mind. I have a Samsung SGH-T399 (aka Samsung Galaxy Light) running Android 4.2.2 The device is not rooted but I'd be willing to try that in order to obtain the desired result.

You can turn off access to mobile data for all apps on the Samsung Galaxy
Light by going to Settings->Connections->More Networks->Mobile networks and clearing the checkbox next to Mobile data This won't allow any data over the cell network, but data over wifi is still active. Note that this will likely have a negative impact on usability of a number of apps that require connectivity to operate as expected if you aren't connected via wifi, so you wmay want to flip it back on if your heading out.


Can you use the screen on a Samsung Galaxy S as camera flash for the front facing camera? The Samsung Galaxy S doesn't have a camera flash, are there any apps for Samsung Galaxy S to make use of the front camera and screen as a camera flash?

For a samsung galaxy s android phone.
could that work?
I couldn't find one.
it would be useful.

Even on models that have a built-in flash, using it isn't worth your time.  Point flashes almost always make the picture look bad, especially when the camera is a crappy phone camera.  I suggest making sure the subject is well-lit instead.  That all said, the screen isn't bright enough for a flash.  Best case it would provide a little "ambient" lighting in a dark room and you'd have to take the picture up close.


Is Cerberus capable of surviving phone flashing? If I install Cerberus on a rooted phone, will it survive flashing the phone?!!

Depends on what you flash. Living on the /system partition, it will survive a factory-reset. But flashing a new ROM would overwrite that partition and thus remove Cerberus.

If, on the other hand, you e.g. just flash GApps, Cerberus would survive – as that doesn't wipe/overwrite the /system partition.


How to unlock my device after blocking with "Find my device"? I lost my phone in a taxi and blocked it using Find My Device. I managed to get it back but now it has a button to call my home and a lock icon, but won't unlock.

You must restart your phone. Turn it off. When you turn it on again you'll be able to enter your password.

Update: after doing this, it will lock again. You must really login again using your account in "Find my Device". The option is somewhat hidden in the suspension points button. See:

Maybe you don't need to restart your phone after login in "Finde My Device". The restart allows you to enter your device with your password, but sometime latter it will be blocked again. You must really go to the "Find My Device" web page.


How to take screenshot on GT-19100 with ICS 4.0.4? My Samsung Galaxy GT-19100 phone is stopped taking snapshot after my up-gradation from ICS 4.0.3 to ICS 4.0.4.
Volume (-) key and power button pressing together is not taking snapshot now.

Is this version of ICS doesn't have screenshot facility or something else is the reason?

You can do this by holding the power button + the home button simultaneously.


Device no longer connecting to wi-fi network I have a Samsung Galaxy Core 2 for the past two years. it was working fine but all of a sudden the wifi in the phone is not working. Instead it shows "saved and secured" but doesn't get connected. What should I do?

The first thing I would try is switching the phone off completely so that means holding the off button down until the whole phone turns off (Reboot) Then see if it it works.  If not then go to the Wi-Fi setting on your phone and long hold on your connecting and click forget.  then click again and connect. that should work.
craigshawtech.com


How to insert bookmarks inside Google docs for Android without using desktop browser? I need the functionality of inserting bookmarks within the Google drive or Google Docs Android app. I can do that from within the desktop browser.  Is this feature already there, and I am just not seeing it?

This is not the same thing as adding a shortcut to the Android devices home screen as indicated by: Can I make a Google Doc shared with me more accessible on my Android device?

Google is a large company. When it creates apps for Android, it needs to be on parody with the desktop browser unless there are specific technical reasons why that's not possible, and sometimes it is not possible, but not in this particular situation for sure.

It is (still) not possible currently to insert a bookmark with Google Docs for Android (version 1.20.494.04.33). The only option to insert a bookmark is via the computer as stated on Docs Editor Help: Work with links, bookmarks, section breaks, or page breaks:

Add a bookmark
Bookmarks are not available on Android; you’ll have to use a computer.


HTC One volume too low My HTC One is kind of old (2.5 years) and the volume is progressively deteriorating.  I can barely hear the other side when the volume is on highest.  Is there any way to adjust the volume beside the volume button, which is already maxed?

Try to carefully clean the speaker with a toothpick


Disable calendar to sync events to exchange server I've added an event to my calendar locally on a phone. It was a meeting in the evening after my working hours. How am I surprised to realize that my stupid phone sync this event to exchange server and let this information publicly available to everyone on my work. How to disable such an updates? Local calendar should be local. I like how my phone download an information about ongoing events on my work and inform me but not vice versa.

Your "local and private" Android calendar is your Google calendar. When you've created that personal event it defaulted to your Exchange calendar. In order to avoid this is the future make sure that you create events in the calendar you want  to. Usually it defaults to the last calendar you've created an event in.


Power management on Android — is app CPU correlated to power usage? 2 questions:

Is application CPU usage on Android correlated and how highly to battery usage? In other words, are apps that suck a lot of CPU also draining the battery or not necessarily?
Is there a way to itemize and display the phone's power use by application, at any given point in time as well as within defined time buckets and maybe view charts and such? Sort of like a diagnostic monitor for power usage by application or system component?

Thanks

Yes. CPU is not the only thing using power but definitely a major one (when not idling).
Most Android devices have a 'Battery' section in settings which lists what applications are using up your battery. I think it gets reset every time you plug in a recharger. There might be 3rd party apps which collect that information over longer term and display it moer pretty.


batch processing SNB files I am running Android 4 on SAMSUNG Galaxy Note 10,1, and using the S Note app,
Is there a way to process multiple SNB files at once? For example, S Note can export 1 SNB to PDF but not multiple,
but it would be better if there's also a way to export multiple SNBs to a single PDF

Yes, it is possible.

Try to go at the root of the note program. From a note, click the back button, then click on 'most recent notes' to see all notes. If you select "share", you'll be given to select more notes, or even folders.

For more information on compatibility, please provide with your exact version of s-note.


My HTC sense won't turn on at all and it was fully charged. I just called someone less than 5 minutes ago, sat my phone down, and now it will not turn on. I charged it, took the back off, put it back on, and nothing worked.

Take the battery out, put it back again and boot in recovery mode. To do that, press the Volume Down key and Power button simultaneously until recovery boots. Then there should be an option to reboot. Select this option. Your phone should turn on. If not take it to a service center or wipe data/factory reset from the recovery menu.


Long delay for Google Voice prompt if dialed from "Contact" home screen shortcut I have Google Voice set up to prompt me (whether to dial using GV) every time I make a call (in GV app Settings -> Making calls -> Ask every time I make a call.)

When I dial via the Phone app, or via "Direct dial" home screen shortcut, the "Google Voice" prompt appears instantaneously.  However, if I add a "Contact" shortcut to my home screen, tap it and select any number to dial, the same prompt takes over 5 seconds to pop up.  The logs are showing no other activity during this time:

I/ActivityManager(  223): Displayed com.android.contacts/.quickcontact.QuickContactActivity: +332ms
I/ActivityManager(  223): START {act=android.intent.action.CALL_PRIVILEGED dat=tel:xx-xxx-xxx-xxxx flg=0x14000000 cmp=com.android.phone/.PrivilegedOutgoingCallBroadcaster} from pid 2814
D/PhoneUtils(  636): checkAndCopyPhoneProviderExtras: some or all extras are missing.
D/dalvikvm(  223): GC_EXPLICIT freed 2189K, 18% free 23216K/28103K, paused 2ms+6ms
I/ActivityManager(  223): START {flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.google.android.apps.googlevoice/.CallConnectingActivity (has extras)} from pid 1646
D/dalvikvm(  636): GC_EXPLICIT freed 107K, 4% free 13700K/14215K, paused 2ms+4ms
D/OpenGLRenderer(  636): Flushing caches (mode 1)
D/OpenGLRenderer( 2814): Flushing caches (mode 0)
I/ActivityManager(  223): Displayed com.google.android.apps.googlevoice/.CallConnectingActivity: +5s25ms (total +5s167ms)

Specifically, the line I/ActivityManager(  223): Displayed com.google.android.apps.googlevoice/.CallConnectingActivity:+5s11ms(total +5s302ms) shows the actual "lag" time.

I cannot see anything different than if I try dialing out from a "Direct Dial" type of a shortcut:

D/dalvikvm(  612): GC_CONCURRENT freed 607K, 7% free 15178K/16199K, paused 3ms+16ms
I/ActivityManager(  223): START {act=android.intent.action.CALL dat=tel:xx-xxx-xxx-xxxx flg=0x14000000 cmp=com.android.phone/.OutgoingCallBroadcaster bnds=[185,50][360,250]} from pid 671
D/PhoneUtils(  636): checkAndCopyPhoneProviderExtras: some or all extras are missing.
D/dalvikvm(  758): GC_CONCURRENT freed 423K, 5% free 13369K/13959K, paused 1ms+4ms
I/ActivityManager(  223): START {flg=0x10000000 cmp=com.google.android.apps.googlevoice/.CallConnectingActivity (has extras)} from pid 1646
D/dalvikvm(  636): GC_EXPLICIT freed 210K, 4% free 13690K/14215K, paused 3ms+4ms
D/OpenGLRenderer(  636): Flushing caches (mode 1)
I/ActivityManager(  223): Displayed com.google.android.apps.googlevoice/.CallConnectingActivity: +265ms (total +354ms)

I am running CM9 alpha (ICS: Android 4.0.3) on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, but the same thing was happening on my Atrix 4G running stock Gingerbread (Android 2.3.4) and CM7 (Android 2.3.5.)  This makes me think that this is not a general Android issue, but rather a bug in Google Voice app.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem?  Other than posting on GV feedback forums, how do I go about resolving this?

This has been resolved in Android 4.1, a.k.a. "Jelly Bean".  Now Google Voice prompt appears instantly no matter how it's triggered.  Since the Google Voice app has not changed, my original thinking that it's the app's fault was incorrect.

Still no idea what's causing it on earlier OS versions.


I forgot my email address and password for my galaxy j7 how to bypass google verification How do I get I into my account when I forgot email and password. My 4/ year old messed up my phone plz help

Well you forgot a heck of a thing man ,  there are recovery option have u tried that ?  Might be there are chances to recover email password if you have given any alternate email or phone no.

Other thing you can do is just factory reset or hard reset your device to by pass the verification or to remove it.

This link will help you By pass google verification