How can I view/transfer non-image files from my Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini to my computer? I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini running Android 4.4.2 (KitKat), and a computer running Ubuntu 12.04.

When I plug the phone into the computer using the USB cable that came with the phone, the phone gives a notification that says "connected as an installer", and it shows up on my computer as a folder containing some unidentifiable files.  When I click the phone notification I can change it to connect as either "Media device (MTP)" or "Camera (PTP)".

When I connect with MTP, the phone shows up on my computer as a folder containing all the same folders that it actually contains (as viewed from ES File Browser on the phone), but from the computer those folders all appear empty.

When I connect with PTP, the phone again shows up on my computer as a folder containing all the correct folders, and this time most of the folders' contents are shown as well.  However, only image files seem to be shown (for example, I see .gif, .jpg, and .png files, but not .ogg or .mp4 files).

So, two questions:

Is it possible to make the other files show up, or not?
If not, is there any app that makes it possible?

First, when you say unidentifiable files what are you referring to? Second, PTP is only gonna display video based files(exactly the types you listed although .ogg is usually used for ring tones and such). Keep in mind that even though Android is a GNU based operating system, it may sometimes require a few tweeks in the terminal along with ADB to get it functioning properly with your device, hence the computer folders appearing empty.


How active should I expect my Jelly Bean system log file to be? When using aLogcat to view my Android log files, I find very few messages showing up in any of the views.

Selecting Verbose level and no filter, I see that Main contains mostly garbage collection debug and info messages, but I rarely more than about 20 messages every minute. Events mostly contains info log messages from alogcat itself, at about the same rate, while Radio remains steadfastly empty.

Being relatively new to Android, I wonder whether this is normal. Is this rate typical of the main system log file on Jelly Bean?

Not very active if you use apps like aLogcat. The permissions system regarding to logs was changed with Jelly Bean: The permission to read logs "READ_LOGS" is now systemOrSignature, which means that an app that is not signed with the ROM/system key can only view its own log. You can still view the full android log with adb logcat from the SDK.

I think that this was a long overdue change in the log system.


Google Play Music frequently flashing in notification bar and notification tray Recently, Google issued an update for Google Play Music.

Now, I frequently see the Google Play Music icon briefly appearing in the Android notification bar (aka status bar).

It will appear for about a tenth of second, then disappear, then do the same a second later.  This happens on and off throughout the day.

I think it is also flashing up a brief notification in the notification tray, but it's hard to tell, because it just flashes there for less than a second.

This happens when Google Play Music is not even running (although it presumably has some background tasks).

This never happened before the recent update to Google Play Music.

It's distracting to have this icon sporadically appear.  Also it can cause all the left-side notification bar icons to shift due to this "fluttering" of the Google Play Music icon.

What's going on, and is there a way to fix it?

(Oh, I should mention: I don't want to turn off all notifications for Google Play Music, because they are useful on days it is actually used.)

Update: This symptom has been confirmed by two other Android SE users.

I also saw thius notification flashing briefly. As far as I can tell, it is related to connectivity changes (switching from WiFi to mobile and vice versa). For the time being, I've disabled notifications for Play Music but hope they'll issue an update to fix this behavior.


Rooted Phone but still can't uninstall Apps So I finally temp-rooted my HTC Desire HD and set about trying to uninstall some of the stock apps that came with it (Stocks (no pun intended), Facebook for HTc and so on). But it won't let me - the 'Uninstall' link is disabled inside Settings-> Applications.

Do I need to do a 'full' root to achieve my goal or am I missing something?

Thanks for reading.

The Settings application doesn't let you uninstall system apps; it's got nothing to do with root.  It doesn't check for root, or anything like that.

I recommend using Titanium Backup to remove system apps, it works wonderfully.  I even had a regular app yesterday that the Market just couldn't uninstall for some reason, and TB took care of it.


How to set data usage cycle to non-monthly value? My network operator charges to my account every 28 days rather than every month. How can I change the data usage cycle length under Settings > Connections > Data Usage accordingly?

You have no option to do so in the stock data usage controls. You will be better off installing a third party app, such as onavo count.


moto g4 plus booting back to twrp on installing supersu or magisk I have a moto g4 plus android 7.0 for which I have unlocked the bootloader and I have flashed twrp and ran root.bat. After installing supersu, I have wiped the cache and dalvik and tried rebooting the system but it takes the phone back to the twrp main page. I have tried to start through the bootloader menu too but the same thing happens there too. I have also tried echo systemless and magisk. how do I boot back into android 7 with root privileges?

Clearly your changes have broken your Android system partition. You need to re-flash the stock Android system image for your phone.


fastboot flash recovery img never completes My Nexus 10 stopped booting. It shows an open padlock on startup and the Google text in the middle. So I figured my son unlocked the bootloader somehow after creatively following instructions he found on youtube.
I then tried to proceed to installing a fresh rom. Saw that CM has the "Manta" roms.
I have handy the main rom: cm-13.0-20160820-SNAPSHOT-ZNH5YAO0J6-manta.zip.
I found two recovery roms: twrp-2.8.7.0-manta.img and cm-13.0-20160820-SNAPSHOT-ZNH5YAO0J6-manta-recovery.img.
I'm able to get fastboot to see my device, after doing the vol up+down / power thing. But then the command fastboot -w flash recovery cm-13.0-20160820-SNAPSHOT-ZNH5YAO0J6-manta-recovery.img never completes.

Creating filesystem with parameters:
    Size: 29783752704
    Block size: 4096
    Blocks per group: 32768
    Inodes per group: 8192
    Inode size: 256
    Journal blocks: 32768
    Label:
    Blocks: 7271424
    Block groups: 222
    Reserved block group size: 1024
Created filesystem with 11/1818624 inodes and 158176/7271424 blocks
Creating filesystem with parameters:
    Size: 553648128
    Block size: 4096
    Blocks per group: 32768
    Inodes per group: 6768
    Inode size: 256
    Journal blocks: 2112
    Label:
    Blocks: 135168
    Block groups: 5
    Reserved block group size: 39
Created filesystem with 11/33840 inodes and 4363/135168 blocks
sending 'recovery' (7860 KB)...
OKAY [  0.932s]
writing 'recovery'...

That never finishes. The tablet shows, aside from the laying down Android picture and the info, a blue line: "FASTBOOT STATUS - flash:recovery". It never gets past this.
I tried this with both the recovery img files I found.
Anyone have any idea why my Nexus 10 can't seem to complete this fastboot recovery installation? I'm doing this using Xubuntu 15.04 btw, and I don't have Windows handy. I seriously hope it isn't a Linux limitation thing. adb has always worked great. Fastboot sees and interacts with the device, so, that part should be good I hope.

Don't use CM recovery. Get latest TWRP here. Report back if this doesn't work either.

Also, you're supposed to get other partitions up-to-date to ensure compatibility with new ROMs. If you're not sure, flash a factory image.


System time not updating while screen is locked Device: ASUS MemoPad 7 (K013), running the latest ASUS ROM based on Android Lollipop 5.0 (updated automatically with the included ASUS updater).

When I lock the screen, the system time stops ticking until I unlock it again.
After unlocking, it does not update to current time, instead lags behind for the amount of time it was locked.

The time zone is set correctly and the device has stable Internet connection via Wi-Fi (no packet data option available on this device).
The date/time update setting is set to "Use network time", which disables manual time adjustment. After unchecking "Use network time" I can set the time manually.

Interestingly enough, after adjusting the time and re-enabling "Use network time", the time instantly skips back to the "lagged" value (how it was before manual adjustment).

Rebooting the tablet forces a time update, although the problem keeps persisting on screen lock, which renders the system clock, and thus the device, useless for my purposes.

A similar problem used to occur for me on a different device, but the time was updating automatically a couple seconds after unlocking. This is not the case here.

Please advise.

Wiping cache with stock recovery seems to have solved it for me.

Power off phone (be sure to turn off fast reboot in settings first). Boot into recovery by holding volume-down key and then holding power key until boot menu appears. Volume down to RECOVERY and tap power to select. HTC logo appears followed by a blank, dim screen. Wait about 30 seconds for red triangle icon to appear.
Now, hold down volume-up and tap power button. Recovery menu appears. Volume-down to "Wipe cache partition" at bottom of list and tap power key. Cache gets cleared. Then select "reboot system now" by tapping power key again. Done!


How to make ringtones louder so that I can hear it in a loud environment? It seems that the only ringtone I was able to hear was the one in my old Nokia phone, 10 years ago. Nowadays, in the era of smartphones, no matter which ringtone I chose, I have problems hearing it when I am out in a loud environment. And yes, regardless of the fact that the audio level is set to max.

How can I make my ringtones louder on my phone so that I can hear them easily on a noisy environment? Maybe there is a setting to make ringtones high-pitched?

Though the is a little bit vague in nature, seems a very useful question for a larger community. You can use high pitched ringtones which are very common around the internet.

Also I came across this post at XDA which seems quite useful for you. (did not test them myself  though. even if me or anybody did, the level you require might be different.)

In the Google Play Market, there are apps like Super Loud Ringtones, Loud Ringtones, LOUD Ringtones

You must consider the suggestion made by Shywim as well.


What's the purpose of the data.info file in TWRP backup? I've backed up the /data/ partition of my smartphone using TWRP recovery. It created 4 files on a SD card: data.ext4.win , data.ext4.win.md5 , recovery.log and data.info . I know what's inside of the first three files, but I don't really know what's inside of the data.info file. It looks like the file is a binary one, at least I can't simply view it in any file editor. Does anyone know what's the purpose of that file?

As you thought, data.info (and any file created by TWRP and with said extension) is a binary file. Given it, I've inspected it with the Linux tool hd, which lets me see an hexadecimal dump along with the decoded output.

Dump of the file

00000000  0c 00 62 61 63 6b 75 70  5f 73 69 7a 65 00 0b 00  |..backup_size...|
00000010  31 33 31 34 36 37 34 36  38 38 00 0c 00 62 61 63  |1314674688...bac|
00000020  6b 75 70 5f 74 79 70 65  00 02 00 30 00 0b 00 66  |kup_type...0...f|
00000030  69 6c 65 5f 63 6f 75 6e  74 00 05 00 37 31 30 37  |ile_count...7107|
00000040  00                                                |.|
00000041

As you may have guessed by looking at the rightmost column, those kind of files contain information such as backup size and type, as well as the file count.

Before you ask, do not delete those files. Should you do so, TWRP won't probably be able to restore your backup. Delete them only if you're brave and have a backup.


Changing Android Studio Emulator from localhost:port to 192.168.x.x I am trying to figure out how to change Android Studio's Emulator so that it can be reached from a different IP from the host machine. Currently I can access it at localhost:5554. I am trying to start a listener on port 64006 of the emulator but anything I send to that port from my host machine doesn't reach the Android because it is running on port 5554 and listening on port 64006 within that.

SOLUTION
I was able to fix this issue by doing the following:

Telnet onto the emulator (telnet localhost portNum)
Auth using the auth command and token in your user folder (.emulator_console_auth_token)
Use the redir command once authenticated "redir add tcp:123:456" (This command says to send anything destined for host port 123 to port 456 on the android emulator)


Android - how to install apk from SD card Is it possible to install an app to an Android phone from an SD card?  To install it without a data connection, the marketplace, or using ADB?

I've tried searching for this but no luck so far.

If you have a file browser app installed, such as ASTRO, you can browse to the apk file on your SD card, click the apk, and it should pop up the apk installer.


Is the old app uninstalled when it is upgraded? i want to know when an upgrade is available for an app
obviously a new apk is there. So is it that the old apk is uninstalled and new apk is installed ?

Not quite, no. When you uninstall a package, it also removes other data to do with that package: for example, the app's own private data, its data on the SD card, your default preferences for that app. It also tells any other interested apps that you've removed the app, via an intent broadcast. Other apps receiving that broadcast might take further action based on that: for example, a launcher (home screen app) would remove desktop shortcuts and widgets from that app, since they won't work any more.

When a package is upgraded (that is, replaced with a new APK file with the same package name and a later version code), the old version is stopped, so that nothing from the app is running any more. The old APK file is removed and the new one replaces it, but the other uninstall actions aren't performed: the private app data and default preferences are kept, and the uninstall broadcast isn't sent. Instead, a different intent is broadcast to tell any interested apps that the package has been updated.

So while the old APK file is removed, the effect of an upgrade is quite different to uninstalling the old package and then installing the new one.

In Google Play the situation can be a bit different if the developer has enabled delta updates (called Smart updates by Google).

In a delta update only the changes between the two versions are downloaded and applied to the existing APK. For example, if you have an app that is 15MB in size, and the developer decides to change the background image, you don't need to download the entire application again, you can just download the delta (difference), which includes the new image. The old APK is then duplicated, the new content is injected to the copy of the old APK, and if successful the old APK is removed. The end result is the updated APK.


Difference between WhatsApp audio and WhatsApp voice notes What is the difference between WhatsApp audio and WhatsApp voice notes?
If I record a voice conversation, where is it going to be stored? Is it in WhatsApp audio folder or in WhatsApp voice notes?
In which folder  all of my received voice notes get saved?

The folder WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Audio/ contains the downloaded audio files that you received as an attachement from a contact. The file names usually start with AUD-.

The folder WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Voice Notes/ contains the voice files that you recorded using your Whatsapp. They usually start with filenames containing PTT- and stored under corresponding folders with date of the recording.


How to install Google Apps And Services on Lollipop AOSP ROM? I have a Lollipop AOSP ROM without any Google related service (Google Play is missing also).

To get Google Play working it seems(but I'm not sure) that I need to install:

Google Play apk
Google Services apk
Google Services Framework
Google Login Service

I have also read that I have to convert them into system apps. My device is rooted so it should not be too difficult to convert these apps into system apps, but I have no idea of where I could find the updated version of the needed files. I have only found some tutorial for old kindle devices with an older OS.

Could someone help me to find updated version of needed files for Lollipop 5.1?

Any other solution is welcome.

You don't install all the APKs individually. Since you've installed an AOSP ROM, what you are looking for is a gapps package that you flash in a similar way to how you flashed your ROM. You can get a minimal gapps package that will install everything you mentioned here.

You need not worry about converting them to system apps. When you flash the package from your recovery, they will be installed as system apps in the system parition.


Can KingRoot Brick my Nexus 9 and HTC One Hello Android Enthusiasts,

I was wondering if KingRoot can potentially brick my HTC One and Nexus 9. I have not rooted either yet for my warranty is still active. If either is bricked, is there a way that it could possibly be recovered? If possible, could you please provide me with some statistics or percentages regarding the likeliness of one of these devices becoming bricked? Here are a few more specifications about my devices:

HTC One M8 Harman Kardon Edition from Sprint

HTC Google Nexus 9 (No carrier, WiFi)

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Ani

As usual, the answer is:  any attempt to modify O.S. files can brick your phone. But you can try to root your phones.  Just make sure you made a full backup of your phone software (not only /data), including boot.img and other sensitive parts of O.S.(system.img and so), and keep those files safe saved on your computer (so you can reflash your phone in case something goes wrong). Before attempt to root your device, the oem boot loader must be unlocked. The apk of KingRoot in itself does not produce to much harm on O.S. It just install a necessary su  binary to allow getting root access to system, and also some other files. The primary scope of any rooting tool is indeed, placing su somewhere in /system/bin and symlink it (maybe) in /sbin. If you don't know about flashing your device, don't ever try to do things you actually don't master.


Stop Evernote from using Location based services? Here is a screenshot from Evernote app:

How do I stop Evernote from using this service? I have looked around the settings but did not find anything.

1.First Turn -On your GPS
2.Go to Evernote Settings
3.Under General Settings you can find "Other Options"
4.Uncheck "Use GPS Satellites" option. Also Uncheck "Use wireless networks"

If you didn't turn on your GPS, "Use GPS satellites" option get greyed out.
Now your note will not store your location.


can my Device ID # on my Android Samsung Epic be changed? I was Banned from an App (for quoting Monty Python no less!) but want back in.  Is there a way to change my Device ID # so that I can start anew and sign up with the App again?  I don't want to get a new phone, and I'm not super techie, so if there is a way it has to either be relativly easy, or smeone I can ask to do it for me.  Thanks

I don't believe @Mark Dorsey is talking about the IMEI, I think he means the Device ID that android assigns to a device.
This ID is generated when the device first boots, but it will be recreated if you do a factory reset.
Reference

More specifically, Settings.Secure.ANDROID_ID. This is a 64-bit quantity that is generated and stored when the device first boots. It is reset when the device is wiped.
ANDROID_ID seems a good choice for a unique device identifier. There are downsides: First, it is not 100% reliable on releases of Android prior to 2.2 (“Froyo”). Also, there has been at least one widely-observed bug in a popular handset from a major manufacturer, where every instance has the same ANDROID_ID.

With that said, there is no guarantee that the application you are looking to gain access again with uses the Device ID, it may use other means to identify the device, like mac address, or some other information, or even a combination of them.


Google Books in Android emulator Has somebody been able to run Google Books in the emulator?

I've installed this app, but when I run it, the only thing I get is a "Google Accounts" - "0 accounts" banner, with the rest of the screen in black.

I've configured the e-mail in the "device" with a Google account, and it works sending and retrieving messages.

I really hope this is a noob question with a really simple answer. For the moment, I don't know what the Books app is expecting or where's it looking for that Google account.

Thanks! =)

You would need to configure the account information in Settings -> Accounts and Sync. That is where the "Google Account" needs to reside.


I am unable to paste. Is there a solution to this bug that doesn't involve rooting or factory-resetting the phone? I recently updated my S3 to Jelly Bean (v4.1.1) and now cannot paste.

Example steps to reproduce my bug:
Compose message

Compose SMS
Type "hello" in body
Long press "hello"
Click copy icon
Click after "hello" to bring cursor / blue handle
Clicking "clipboard" does nothing (just dismisses handle)

If you're not having the bug, everything will work fine, I know. Please don't answer "it works for me". I know what should happen, but for some reason it doesn't work on mine.

Notes:

The bug is present everywhere you would input text (for example, in the gmail app, or pasting in an address bar etc.).
Pasting by using the options when long-pressing the cog in the keyboard doesn't work either.
Restarting the phone doesn't help.
The phone is not rooted.

Any other ideas?

I updated the software to 4.1.2 and the problem has gone :-)

I don't know if the bug has been fixed, or the process of upgrading has corrected the faulty state the phone was in. I'll update this post if the problem comes back...


Deleting system files I've been trying for a few weeks to root my android device. I'm running a ZTE Whirl 2 (Z667G) and none of the 25 one-click root programs have worked on it. I've given up on that path.

So I started researching rooting with ADB but I've had so many different problems there. Here are all the different methods I've tried, and their error messages:

psneuter: 'Failed to set prot mask: inappropriate ioctl for device'

zergRush: does nothing at all

adb root: 'adbd cannot run as root in production builds'

adb remount: 'remount failed: operation not permitted'

mount -o remount,rw /system: 'mount: operation not permitted'

All I'm trying to do here is remove the useless system apps from /system/app. I'd like to root my phone but the main reason I'm doing so is to get that crap off my device. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me!

PSNeuter and ZergRush are too old-school (2.3.x-era), no wonder why they won't work.

This is a very unpopular phone so it doesn't have a custom recovery either. If the one-clickers (usually comes with the latest exploits) won't work then you're out of luck for now.


How do music players survive hot reboot? When I do a hot reboot, everything is killed and restarted, but I never ever experienced any interruption in music playback. How?

System: Samsung Galaxy S (ICS)
Music Players: Stock music player, PlayerPro, Rocket Music Player

The typical implementation of a "hot reboot" does not actually shut down the OS and restart it (see What does Hot Boot mean? for related discussion). In essence, it's killing the UI and other foreground processes, then restarting the UI components, making it somewhat analogous to restarting the X server on a *nix machine.

The music player spawns a background service that actually handles playback, and services simply aren't interrupted in the hot reboot process. Using the *nix analogy again, restarting your X server typically doesn't kill your daemons, but it will stop any currently running X applications. It's a similar principle on every hot reboot implementation I've seen.

Now I should probably also qualify this with a disclaimer that this is based on my understanding of one such implementation of the "hot reboot" feature. There may be others that do it differently, but since this is not a standard/native feature and it's generally not documented anywhere you'd likely have to reach out to the developer of your particular app or ROM for more information. Heck, this may even vary depending on the music player you're using - the above is just my analysis based on the limited information I've found available on the subject.


Why doesn't Samsung Kies show an update for my Galaxy Ace? My phone has Android 2.3.3, build GINGERBREAD.XWPKY. I have the latest version of Kies and my phone isn't rooted. But I believe I should see an upgrade to 2.3.5 there. Any clues?

Note: When I first plugged my phone into Kies, it found a firmware update. I wasn't very sure what it was, but after the update the version is still 2.3.3 (which is the version before I did that update.)

My phone is also on 2.3.3. The updates get pushed out depending on a number of factors including region (as mentioned by Crashhh in his comment) and carrier.

From my understanding, often the releases will be controlled by the manufacturer (and in the case of Samsung and most others, customisation occurs). Once the manufacturer is ready to support it in a particular region, it will release the software to the carriers. Many carriers will also make their own modifications (and add their own bloatware). Only once this process is complete, will the update be available in Kies.

With the release of Gingerbread in Australia from my carrier, I know that the release went back and forth between Samsung and the carrier a few times, delaying its release to customers.

I'm speculating, but the update you received may have been some sort of patch to the manufacturer/carrier specific software, and therefore I wouldn't expect it to increment the version number of the OS.


Is there a direct repo for various Android Build Numbers' update.zip I am looking to wipe my phone. I have a motorola droid currently running one of the first Nexus One 2.2 builds (no mod) that could be rooted to the droid. I tried downloading a version of Froyo and using sprecovery to update using the update.zip method; however it wouldn't pick up on there being an update.zip to use, and it would not allow me to specify which file to use (since it wasn't in .tar format; ie not a backup).

According to phandroid (and no anger in the comment section), the two versions I downloaded should have worked. I did not MD5 all three copies, but downloading three copies and not having one of them work due to corruption seems unlikely considering nandroid spits out corrupted copies.

Anyway, I did a factory reset/wipe and I am back to the basic install of the 2.2 build I started with. However, I want to implement the official motorola droid version (either FR22* or FR33*). I would be willing to put up a ROM (likely CM6).

Where can I download this from?
What did I do wrong?
Should I use a .tar ROM or a .tgz instead?

Some questions, and hopefully some answers:

So you are currently rooted, running one of the earlier leaks of Froyo for the Droid?
You are willing to switch to a mod CM6?
Or do you want to go back to plain vanilla stock without root?

If you are currently rooted and willing to try out a mod like CM6, then go to the Market and downlaod ROM Manager.  Make a Nandroid backup of your phone before you do anything.  Then download and install CM6 via "Download Rom" -> CyanogenMod.  You want 6.0, not the RC version.  When you download and install it, make sure you include Google Apps and wipe your data and cache.

If you are wanting to go back to plain vanilla stock, be noted that apps like EasyRoot (one click root access) will not work for the latest version of Froyo for the Droid.  You'll have to downgrade to 2.1 to get root access back if you go this route.

With that said, if you are rooted, go get ROM Manager.  Under Download Rom are "Stock Images".  One of those options is 2.2 FRG01B with the option of root/unrooted.  This should put you on the right path of plain vanilla stock.

Hope this helps, let me know if I misunderstood you and I'll try to clarify.


My phone's wifi wont stay closed Every time I close my wifi, it switches back on straight away. I got a Moto G 2nd generation with android 6.0. How do i stop this? Thanks.

As a power user, the following things come to my mind for troubleshooting such an issue -

Try rebooting the phone.
Use any of the reputed android utility apps to check the status of phone software/hardware.
Trying out a soft reset of the phone with a data backup.

If all these fail, then definitely contacting Motorola or a service center for assistance will help.


ARP-Scan / aNmap alternatives on Android? Are there alternatives for these utilities on Android that can be invoked using shell commands? I need to fetch a list of connected hotspot devices, the only method I have is to flush the ARP cache and fetch the new list by invoking arp -n. Which isn't that accurate anyways.
What others ways could I approach this? aNmap didn't work for me, it simply listed nothing about the clients with either -sn or -sP switches.

Credit to Firelord for linking me to the solution. Original response by Squidly. The solution was to use ip neigh show dev <interface> if you're rooted.

If there are active clients you should get something like this -

In case the clients aren't active and you're looking this up for OUI lookup purposes, I also added grep -i -e reachable -e delay | grep -o ' ..\:..\:..' to filter them.


What is "share-sheets" in Android Q? What is this feature and how is it better than the " Direct Share" feature, which was present in earlier versions?

I came across this feature in a recent update to FairEmail and thought of sharing (pun intended :-)

Getting Started with Sharing Shortcuts in Android Q has technical details but for users :

It's faster than Direct Share

  The new API uses a push model, versus the pull model used in the old DirectShare API. This makes the process of retrieving direct share targets much faster.

Android Police says

  .... has new previews for links and images before sharing them, eight direct share targets, and four suggested apps on top, plus it uses a strict alphabetical order for apps....apps can no longer hijack the share sheet by naming their targets as "Add to" .

From my experience in FairEmail, it shows contacts directly in the share sheet, so it makes it faster to share with a specific contact that you've been messaging recently. Favorite contacts become share targets (contacts with photos take precedence, which I believe is a feature from Android 8.1). The same behavior is shown outside of FairEmail, for instance if I want to share a Chrome page, these share targets appear first (without having to go through the mail app)

Picture below shows the difference. On the left is Share Sheet and on the right is Direct Share

(click to enlarge)


How can I re-flash stock firmware for my Nokia 6.1? I've developed an issue since the last Android 10 OS update where the phone doesn't charge unless it's in 'USB Controlled by device' mode, which it usually fails to switch to. I'd like to try flashing stock firmware to it, as resetting to factory default didn't fix the issue.
I've tried downloading a stock firmware file and using the recovery mode option to install from SD card, but alas the timestamp on the file was older than the current OS, and so it refused to downgrade.
Since I'm a complete newbie to the android hacking world, I'm looking for an easy to understand solution to install a fresh stock firmware / ROM (not sure what the nomenclature difference is) or failing that, backing up the existing firmware and re-installing that. Naturally, the phone isn't rooted nor is the bootloader unlocked etc, nor do I currently know how to do those things.
Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Warning: Before flashing, always make sure that you have the correct tools, ROMs, etc. because you can brick your phone if things don't go as expected.
I found at least 2 threads from xda-developers. Before you start, your bootloader must be unlocked.
From the first thread:

Install the OST tool.
Replace the EXE file in the program files with the patch file you downloaded.
Delete the Onlineupdatetoolexe.config file. If you don't do this, the program will not start correctly.
Put phone into download mode ( either by powering it off, pluging into USB cable and immediately hold power and volume down. Or if you can boot into android with ADB debugging, just do a adb reboot bootloader.
Pick firmware file and click next.

From the second thread:

Download Nokia-SDM660-Tool.zip & Copy Nokia-Tool.exe
Download latest HOME BREW Stock Rom And extract in one Folder and name it as STOCK ROM
Now add Nokia-Tool.exe in to that respective STOCK ROM Folder
Now connect phone to pc
Go to download mode
Now Open Nokia-Tool.exe
Now select Button according to your Phone code
Example Iam Using Nokia 6.1 Plus & My phone code DRG & so i will choose [ DRG B2N CTL PL2 ] same option for 6.1 , 7.1 & 7+ but for 7.2 & 6.2 users choose [DDV SLD]
i will click on [ DRG B2N CTL PL2} According to my phone as i explained in point no.8
wait for 10 min Tool will flash the rom & your phone reboots to system.
So finally this is what the exact standard method to flash stock rom on Your devices

Important: Read the linked threads (and others). If there are steps that you don't understand, ask the authors questions so they can guide you throough the process.
Nokia 6.1 (2018) ROMs, Kernels, Recoveries, & Other Development


WhatsApp group messages are not in order For the past 3 days, my WhatsApp group messages are not getting downloaded (when I switch on WiFi) in order of time. Rather, it looks like they are grouped as per contacts. I looked into this site, and as suggested, tried the following:

Change your phone to use "Automatic Date and Time": didn't help
Reinstall WhatsApp: didn't help
Checked the WiFi connection: no issue with the WiFi, web is running perfectly in the same phone
Removed unnecessary apps which might delay things by totally resetting my phone to factory default, then reinstall WhatsApp: didn't help

What else should I do?

It is a known problem/bug and no solution has been found to this problem. So, your phone is working perfectly, no need to worry. When Whatsapp team gets a solution to this problem,  they will probably release an update.


Nexus 6p won't charge on included charger Not sure what to make of this one.  I have two nexus 6P's.

Phone A won't charge on included charger+cable+outlet, however it does charge on a variety of other chargers I have access to.
Phone B charges on the same charger+cable+outlet Phone A won't charge on

Any ideas as to what's wrong and how to resolve?

Edit: From comments Both phones charging on the same setup (charger/cable/outlet).

The uncooperative phone started charging again on the included charger setup after a reboot.


Play books pdf upload title unknown filename? I have several pdf books ranging from textbooks for class and free downloads from linked in that I moved to play books to make for easier reading from my tablet.

I moved them to google drive and uploaded them using my tablet but all of them have their title as "unknown filename" even though the title is on the first page and the name of the pdf file.

  Is there any way to give the books their proper titles?

I have looked at the play books faq, tapped everything I can in play books, and I looked at stack overflow, here, and google and haven't found an answer.

Everything else seems to work fine save for the organization of my library.

I have a samsung galaxy tab 10.2 GT-P5113 model running 4.2.2

Apparently you can't upload from a tablet. I repeated the exact same steps from a desktop and the titles carried over fine.

I am unsure if this has to do with my tablet being old, or if it's just better to access cloud from computer rather than tablet.

But my library is now fine.


How does Android calculate battery consumption by apps? How does Android measure energy used by individual hardware component?
How does Android measure energy used by each individual process?

Android tracks events that affect battery usage and stores this information in batterystats.bin file. Some examples:

length of time screen was on with a specific brithness setting
which application (or non Android app process) and how long held a wake lock (prevents device from sleeping)
CPU usage per process (Android app or other process)
phone signal strength
GPS usage
etc.

Android computes how much power each Application or component (e.g. screen) uses based on configuration information included on the device by the manufacturer.

Not everything is measured so the statistics can be sometimes misleading, but it gets better with every Android Platform release.

Battery statistics can be dumped from the device using:

adb shell dumpsys batterystats

Here is interesting fragment of a post by Diane Hackborn with more details about wake locks power consumption:

  There are two ways power from wake locks is computed.

  On some chipsets, simply holding a wake lock needs to prevent the CPU from going to a full deep sleep. In the reported battery usage,
  this extra power use will be distributed across all apps holding wake
  locks.
  Even if the wake lock itself doesn't cause power use, holding a wake lock in one app can allow other applications to run and CPU when
  they wouldn't otherwise. (For example, some app may have a { sleep(1);
  do something; } loop that wouldn't run if no wake locks are held.) To
  address this, half of the CPU usage of applications is distributed to
  be blamed on the ones holding wake locks.


NullPointerException, getPhone error when trying SKD-21, Messages displaying on Samsung Galaxy s4 after update to Lollipop 5.0.1 Yesterday I updated my Samsung Galaxy s4 to Lollipop 5.0.1. It is important to note that my phone is not moded in any way nor has it been rooted. It is the standard user version phone.

After the update however, there is actually programming error messages popping up on the screen. They only appear for a few seconds at a time so I was lucky to catch a screen shot nor do they only appear when using specific apps, they seem to be at random.

Here is the error message that is displaying for me verbatim:

  Trying SDK - 21 ----- getPhone error - java.lang.NullPointerException:
  Attempt  to invoke virtual method 'java.lang.String
  com.woodslink.android.wiredheadphoner
  outingfix.phone.enumPhones.name()' on a null object reference

Any ideas on why this is displaying or what to do to fix it or get rid of it?

Thanks in advance!

The error is being generated by a package named com.woodslink.android.wiredheadphoneroutingfix, which appears to be the package name for SoundAbout. Based on the surrounding context, it looks like there may be a bug in the app that is causing it to misbehave on Android 5.0+, at least in your case. Essentially, the Android upgrade broke SoundAbout.

You could potentially try to downgrade your device if you wanted to, but that would have larger ramifications as well. A better alternative would likely be to simply report the issue to the developer of SoundAbout. You can do this by using the email or contact us feature provided by the developer of the app. I'm sure they'd like to get it fixed, and if you provide the error message it should give them at least a decent start for their debugging.

Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to fix the error on your own (aside from the aforementioned system downgrade).

Note: SoundAbout is no longer available on Play Store.


Where can I get Android 2.2 for HTC Desire How can I get the 2.2 version of Android on my HTC Desire and when?

I just got the update notification (unbranded Desire, Germany).

So the answer to "when" is: Now.


Is there a way to get my Android report to my cell phone company that it's not a smart phone? I have a phone, but it doesn't need internet (I use it as a regular phone + wifi). However, the cell phone company decided that if I have a smartphone, it needs to come with a data plan.

Can I do anything (including modify my rom) to look like a regular flip phone to my carrier?

I have a sim-card phone.

As far as I know, phones don't report to the carrier if they are smartphones or not. They only report their unique IMEI number, from which they can't tell the type of your phone. (Unless they ask the manufacturer.) Also it is illegal to change. The carrier forcing you to pay for a data plan simply because you have a smartphone would be weird and highly unacceptable.

What I think is happening here is that your carrier has a "default data plan" with no subscription fee and a high rate, which is available to all customers by default. Your old "dumbphone" didn't use it, so you didn't get billed for it. Your new smartphone, however, uses it by default when it isn't connected to WiFi, so you get billed for it. (My old carrier did this with the price of $0.05 per 10kB, restarted at every connection to the mobile data. So every time I turned on my phone or moved out and back into coverage I got billed. I didn't even have a smartphone, just a semi-dumb one which could visit simple web pages. I was pissed when I found out.) The solution could be

Disabling mobile data in the settings
Asking your carrier to disable this default data plan
Setting wrong APN names so that your phone isn't able to connect to the mobile data


Access Android log files for specific periods on android 7 Is it possible to access old log files,lets say 3 months old, to see the usage on the android device, by usage i mean, any app installed or unistalled, time spent online, via wifi or cellular, time offline, times switched on and switched off,apps used and any other usage data.

Is this possible through the ADB on windows? I want to be able to connect the tablet to my PC and access all the logs for the last 3 months, currently am just getting the current date only, i cannot even get logs for yesterday.
The command am using is adb logcat > currentdevicelog.txt
Any help would be highly appreciated, the version of android on the device is Nougat-7.0

Android does not store the output of logcat in flash memory. Instead logcat uses a ring buffer in RAM of usually 64KB up to 4MB (depends on what is configured). RAM is much faster than flash memory and also flash may fail earlier if constantly logmessages are written onto it.

A ringbuffer means that if the buffer is full the oldest entry will be overwritten by a new entry. Therefore logcat usually only contains the last minutes or hours. And only log messages after the last reboot as the logcat buffer is not saved on shutdown and the RAM memory is also lost on reboot.

Therefore there are no old log messages you can access.


Is there a way to view HTML files/sites on the Nexus 7/Android 4.2.2? I am trying to get my new Nexus 7 to display my offline web site that I made with HTML, CSS and Javascript. I have been looking for a way to display my site off the tablet as sort of a demo for people to play with. A fully working site, no screen shots but something interactive.

I kinda know how to put the files on my Nexus, and by that I mean I can get it on there but then I cant find it when I browse though it. I put it in the download folder but I don't see the folder. It's not zipped or compressed, i'ts just the folder in there. Any advice would be great.

Once you transfer files to your Nexus 7 use one of these apps to get to the files:

Solid Explorer or ES File Explorer

explained here:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/google-nexus-7-tablet-2012/201344-how-view-files.html

NEXT STEP:

To View on the html file on your Nexus 7 use the HTML Viewer app.

Would love a quicker solution, but this works!


Battery of Samsung Galaxy S5 drained in 5 hours on Android 5.0 I received the over the air android 5.0 update a week ago for my Samsung Galaxy S5. I installed the update and since that the my fully charged battery is depleted in 5 to 8 hours. Before the battery was depleted in 24 to 36 hours.

I have a spare battery with the same behaviour.

Below screenshots of the battery usage. Note the second battery:

High battery usage of Google Play Services could be caused by a number of things. A few suggestions I could make to help rectify your issue would be to:

1) Force stop the app; clear the cache and then allow it to restart.
2) Install 'Greenify' from the PlayStore and prevent the app creating wakelocks.
3) If you are rooted; try reflashing an Android L 5.0 Gapps package with recovery.


Location Tracking as Evidence With location tracking enabled in Android, I see entries in "Your Timeline" in Google Maps. I know it's possible to add/remove/edit entries in this timeline, but is there are a way to get a reliable, unmodified export of what has been tracked that could be used as evidence? I understand that tracking and times might not be 100% but I essentially want to see if there's a way to get a version similar to the KML export that hasn't been edited that I could say "this export can't be edited".

I've been told the red dots that appear on the map can't be edited and can be relied on but I'm not so sure if there's any non-editable version of Android's tracking history?

All personal data in your Google account, including timeline data, can be exported. here's an article showing how to do it.
https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/how-to-download-your-personal-data-from-google/


Is it safe to switch from dalvik to art runtime? How can I tell if it would be safe?

I am running ViperOne 7.0.1 on an HTC One m7.

On my Xperia M, running the latest nightly CM, it always causes trouble (every 10 seconds an app crashes), so I occasionally try it (Is it working yet? - No, well, I guess it's time to switch back), but I never use it - others say it's working fine for them. If you are able to switch to ART, I assume you are rooted and have a custom ROM installed, so you are also able to make a full backup from the recovery. You can try it, but make a Nandroid backup first, as it could screw up everything to the point you won't be able to switch back from inside Android. I'll say this again: switching to ART is NOT safe! Always do a full backup from the recovery before you try it!

On the first boot with ART, it's going to take a lot of time to compile everything, be patient. Good luck!


Cannot disable com.motorola.ccc.ota Since "Motorola Software Update" decided to download Nougat OTA without asking my opinion, I declared a war. But the weapons I use are broken.

Withot su:

shell@athene:/ $ pm disable com.motorola.ccc.ota
Error: java.lang.SecurityException: Permission Denial: attempt to
change component state from pid=22598, uid=2000, package uid=10009

With su:

1|shell@athene:/ $ su
root@athene:/ # pm disble com.motorola.ccc.ota
Error: Could not access the Package Manager.  Is the system running?

How can I disable this app?

I wouldn't like to rm the app entirely (if possible), have everything system-less so far. If relevant, I am using Moto G4 with Marshmallow.

To stop OTA updates (and notifications) on Moto devices, you don't use Package Manager, you will need to "freeze" the service...

Google Play Store has many apps that will allow you to 'freeze' the OTA Update service. Titanium Backup is a common example.

Alternatively, with a 'root access' file explorer, you can delete or rename the following files:

/system/etc/security/otacerts.zip
/system/priv-app/3c_ota/3c_ota.apk

These additional files can be removed or renamed: (If you still get an OTA Update notification)

/system/priv-app/3c_checkin/3c_checkin.apk
/system/priv-app/3c_devicemanagement/3c_devicemanagement.apk
/system/priv-app/3c_notification/3c_notification.apk

Reference


Recovering contacts from my phone My boyfriends phone was stolen & all we want out of it is the contacts. The phone is currently activated & being used. Can we retrieve the contacts & put them on another phone? If so, does the new phone have to be activated first?

Are your contacts backed up on Google account? If so, they will be automatically added to the next device you login to with the same account.


How to change the boot animation in Galaxy Tab 2 GT-P3100? I tried changing the boot animation in my Galaxy Tab 10.1  by this tutorial:

http://mobilecon.info/how-to-change-android-bootanimation.html

and it worked too but when I tried doing the same in Galaxy Tab 2 ICS it doesn't work the files are in different places..
Can anyone help me with a way to change the boot animation?

Provided you're rooted and your ROM supports changing the boot animation, there are a number of apps in the Play Store.

Here's one - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jrummy.apps.boot.animations


How to mirror an Android Screen on Laptop My Android device screen touch is not working, it's just damaged, so I have done the hard reset on it. But it still doesn't work. And now when I start the device I'm not able to proceed further from the Language Select option due to touch not working. So I need help, if someone can tell me how I can mirror my screen on laptop in this situation, if possible.

Thanks in advance

You can use this Chrome plugin to mirror your Android screen to your laptop:

http://www.vysor.io/


Nokia 6.1 stuck in "Download mode" One day my Nokia 6.1 goes into "Download mode" and rebooting doesn't help.

Flashing TWRP doesn't work:

$ fastboot boot twrp-3.3.1-0-PL2.img
downloading 'boot.img'...
OKAY [  1.235s]
booting...
FAILED (remote: unlock device to use this command)
finished. total time: 1.236s

Unlocking doesn't work:

$ fastboot oem unlock
...
FAILED (remote: Flashing Unlock is not allowed
)
finished. total time: 0.000s
$ fastboot flashing unlock
...
FAILED (remote: Flashing Unlock is not allowed
)
finished. total time: 0.000s

Repeatedly calling fastboot continue just prints a bunch of system info on my phone screen (e.g. DEVICE STATE = locked).

How do I recover the phone?

Factory reset

For some reason, my device was on slot b:

$ fastboot getvar current-slot
current-slot: b
finished. total time: 0.001s

After changing to slot a,

$ fastboot set_active a
Setting current slot to 'a'...
OKAY [  0.009s]
finished. total time: 0.010s
$ fastboot continue
resuming boot...
OKAY [  0.319s]
finished. total time: 0.319s

I got a menu offering a factory reset, after which the phone booted into the OS.


AOKP Permission Manager? I am running Paranoid Android and love it, but it is hard on battery life. So I am looking at flashing back to AOKP.

In looking around, I've seen some vague references to a "Permission Management" (such as mentioned here) in the latest AOKP... but after googling for a couple days, can find no real details on it.

Is this something that is in the current stable builds of AOKP, or is just referring to the built-in one from Android 4.3 in the latest AOKP nightlies?

If anyone can point me to an article with a some good information on this feature and its current build status, I'd be very grateful. Been missing this functionality since LBE Privacy Guard died with Jelly Bean.

Mind you, I am aware of other options such as LBE, PDroid, XPrivacy.
I'm looking specifically for more information about AOKP's permission management.

Thanks!

Well, I've gone and flashed over to AOKP, so figured I'd update this with an answer about their Permissions management. It is found towards the bottom of the root Settings screen.

For each user-installed app it lets you turn off specific permissions. Essentially a very basic version of what LBE Privacy Guard used to let you do.

Some features that are missing:

Ability to group by a permission (e.g. Access Location) and see all apps that use it with ability to disable them in this view
Ability to change permissions on system apps (e.g. camera to disable geotagging completely)

So all in all, it's a nice feature, and more than available in most ROMs I know of without extensive modding/flashing of additional frameworks and things.

Potentially the 2nd item above could - at least in some cases - be gotten around by using something like ROM Toolbox to convert the system app to a user app... but I'm not sure what other ramifications doing so would have.


What is that icon that looks like a ships wheel with a line through it and how do I remove ir? I've tried every thing to remove this.Help!

that would be the location icon. By the looks of it, your location service / gps has been turned off. This means when you use maps applications, it won't be so accurate. You may preserve a little energy by turning off location service. Please go to the main "settings" on your phone and you can find the location option there.


adb connection problem on Kubuntu 13.04 x64 I'm facing a problem with ABD connection under Kubuntu 13.04 x64. Every time I try to push/pull/shell ls the adb disconnects from device. I tried the following solutions:

Added device ID into .android/adb_usb.ini but nothing helped
Added new udev rule and also nothing helped
Flashed the ROM and nothing helped
I re-installed my Kubuntu 13.04 x64

Some notes :

USB Debugging activated
Device is Prestigio PMP5080BRU (Rooted) - Android Gingerbread 2.3.1
I'm using the latest Android SDK available on official web site
The ADB works very well on Windows 7 x64
Even when ADB disconnects, I still can see device via lsusb
command
ia32-libs already installed on the system
jdk and jre installed on the system and works as expected
Paths configured and working properly
ADB works as expected with my Samsung Galaxy S II (Jelly Bean 4.1.2 -
Stock)

dmesg :

[ 5571.640498] usb 3-2: new high-speed USB device number 13 using xhci_hcd
[ 5571.657013] usb 3-2: config 1 interface 1 altsetting 0 bulk endpoint 0x83 has invalid maxpacket 64
[ 5571.657426] usb 3-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bb4, idProduct=0c02
[ 5571.657433] usb 3-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 5571.657436] usb 3-2: Product: rk2918
[ 5571.657439] usb 3-2: Manufacturer: RockChip
[ 5571.657442] usb 3-2: SerialNumber: 0123456789ABCDEF
[ 5571.664067] scsi13 : usb-storage 3-2:1.0
[ 5572.659163] scsi 13:0:0:0: Direct-Access     PMP5080B                  0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 5572.659453] scsi 13:0:0:1: Direct-Access     PMP5080B                  0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 5572.661211] sd 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 5572.661525] sd 13:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 5572.662492] sd 13:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
[ 5572.662947] sd 13:0:0:1: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

Any one got an idea?
Regards,,,

I've had a similar problem with a Rockchip device.  Short adb shell commands worked, but ones with multi-line output just disconnected randomly, sometimes before producing any output.

On plugging the device in, the kernel syslogged the following:

Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.016178] usb 9-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.032476] usb 9-1.1: config 1 interface 0 altsetting 0 bulk endpoint 0x81 has invalid maxpacket 64
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.038276] usb 9-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=2207, idProduct=0006
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.038281] usb 9-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=4
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.038284] usb 9-1.1: Product: rk30sdk
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.038287] usb 9-1.1: Manufacturer: rockchip
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox kernel: [ 1153.038290] usb 9-1.1: SerialNumber: 0123456789ABCDEF
Dec 30 20:38:03 icebox colord: Device added: sysfs-rockchip-rk30sdk

Out of desperation I moved the device from a USB3 socket on my Linux box to a USB2 socket, as follows

Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.844024] usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.976394] usb 1-3: config 1 interface 0 altsetting 0 bulk endpoint 0x81 has invalid maxpacket 64
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.976889] usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=2207, idProduct=0006
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.976893] usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=3, SerialNumber=4
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.976896] usb 1-3: Product: rk30sdk
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.976899] usb 1-3: Manufacturer: rockchip
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox kernel: [ 1572.976902] usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 0123456789ABCDEF
Dec 30 20:45:03 icebox colord: Device added: sysfs-rockchip-rk30sdk

and adb shell then worked perfectly. You will notice the warning bulk endpoint 0x81 has invalid maxpacket 64. This means the Rockchip device is not compliant with the USB standards. My guess is that the Linux ehci-pci driver is more forgiving than the xhci_hcd driver.

Interestingly enough, I saw exactly the same behaviour on a Mac laptop, when I plugged in the Rockchip device. There, the kernel syslogged:

Dec 29 21:54:33 dhcp13 kernel[0]: USBF: 889121. 50      Endpoint 0x81 of the USB device "rk30sdk" at location 0x26400000:  converting Bulk MPS from 64 to 512 (USB 2.0 Spec section 5.8.3)

and adb shell broke in exactly the same way.

TL;DR:

Plugging into a USB2 port instead of a USB3 port might solve the issue.

Good luck!


Can I remotely control an Android device using TeamViewer? I have installed TeamViewer on my PC and mobile. I can operate/remotely control my PC on my mobile, but can I do the opposite and operate/remotely control my Android device from my PC?

Yes, it is possible to remotely control an Android device using TeamViewer, but not all devices are supported yet.

There are a couple of different apps for TeamViewer:

TeamViewer for Remote Control is the app that allows you to remotely control your PC from an Android device.

TeamViewer QuickSupport is the app that is needed to control your Android device from your PC.  It will provide the ID necessary to establish the connection to your device.  This app doesn't work by itself though.  You will also need to install the appropriate QS AddOn pack for your particular device.  If there is not a QS AddOn for your device, then you won't be able to control your Android from your PC with TeamViewer at this time.


Android default calling app don't suggest other calling apps even after reseting defaults Good day.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 mini (GT-I8190N) with its default Android 4.1.2 and default Phone application.

When I try to make a call with it, it never suggest other calling apps, so I will be able to chose.
I have tried to "Reset app preferances" from settings, I have even wiped my phone, but it didn't suggest me other apps to call.

Have anybody came across that problem? Are there any suggestions how to solve it?

Thanks in advance!

Your question indicates that you expect Android to present a list of available calling applications when you press the call button in an application. This is not the case.

The "open with" dialog only appears when an Intent is broadcast for which there are multiple applications that have registered to receive that Intent with an Intent Filter. When a call is started using the default phone app, no such Intent is sent.

Your question doesn't specify what Intent you are trying to listen for, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it is ACTION_CALL. An ACTION_CALL Intent is broadcast when an application that does not have calling functionality wishes to initiate a call (and thus allow another app to handle it). It is not broadcast from the default phone app because the default phone app can make the call itself.

I would recommend reading through the Intents and Intent Filters documentation again to ensure that you understand how they work and why the behavior want doesn't happen.


Google Search Bar Missing (after OTA update) I recently discovered the Google search bar which used to appear between the notification area and the topmost Widget has disappeared. Shortly before, I had received a largish OTA system update and at around the same time my father had gotten at my phone and accidentally knocked some things off the screen the way that fathers will.

Note that this is not the search widget, but the toolbar that appears (appeared) above the widgets.

I found one similar question
"Google Search Bar Widget is gone from Galaxy S5, it is not in the widgets section anymore"
but that didn't solve my problem. (The toolbar does not appear on the "Disabled" tab of App Manager.)

I have a Kyocera DuraForce E6560C running Android 4.4.2 unrooted. Any help is appreciated.

The widget may be listed under the ridiculously renamed Google Search app called "Launcher3" - find the 4x1 widget and drag to the desktop.


Enable rotation of stock home screen How can I enable home screen rotation of Google Nexus 5(stock) with root enabled?

I've found launcher.force_enable_rotation=true, but it doesn't worked... Anything similar for Google Nexus 5?

It doesn't support this out-of-the box, but you can swing it by using the Xposed Framework and the Xposed GEL Settings module:

Install the Xposed Framework installer
Open the XF installer and select "Framework" at the top of the menu, then press the "Install/Update" button on the next page
Reboot
Install Xposed GEL Settings, either from Google Play or via the XF installer's repo interface (the "Download" item on the main menu).
Launch XGELS and open the app drawer (tap the top left icon or swipe from the left edge). Select "General" from the drawer, then switch on "Rotation" on the list of settings.
Go into the XF installer and select "Modules" from the main menu. Check the box next to XGELS to enable the module.
Reboot again


How to make phone boot automatically upon battery insertion (unlocked bootloader and root: yes)? By battery insertion I mean current flowing on the battery pins, not the micro USB port.

Description

The phone in question is a Samsung Galaxy Xcover 4, the bootloader is unlocked, and I have root access. Its intended purpose is as a kiosk device that will be sealed inside an external hard plastic enclosure. This means that the power button is unavailable for booting the phone. The phone is powered directly from the wall by means of a custom-made battery eliminator PCB, and I need the micro USB port for host mode UART communication, which means it will never be charged/powered via the micro USB port.

What has been attempted so far

As mentioned, the device is rooted, so I've tried modifying the BOOT partition image and flashing an updated one. The modifications I've been looking at pertains to the program

/init

in the root directory. and its associated

/init.rc
/init.samsungexynos7570.rc
/...

files. For example, I was able to make the phone boot upon receiving charge via the USB port by overwriting the contents of the file

/system/bin/lpm

with the script

#!/system/bin/sh
echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger

because /system/bin/lpm is referenced in a service specified in the charging section of /init.rc. I was also able to make it boot via USB port charging by removing the existing "on charge" triggers in the init.*.rc files, and simply adding

on property:ro.bootmode=charger:
    trigger late-init

For more details about what I did, see this link. But this is not a solution for me because I want to make it boot simply by powering the battery pins, not the micro USB port (which is preoccupied with being in host mode, so it definitely can't be charged).

Further thoughts

However, since modifying the /init.rc file changed its behaviour even while "off" (i.e. it now boots upon micro USB charging as opposed to not), this seems to tell me that the phone is never really completely off when "off", and that the /init program is constantly running as long as there is enough charge on the battery pins (please derail this thought train asap if this is completely wrong). Which would mean the kernel and the /init program should start automatically when there's sufficient charge on the battery pins. So my thinking was to simply add something along the lines of

trigger late-init

or

start <my_service>

(where my_service for example could be the lpm script I mentioned above) in an early init trigger stage, so that it would boot simply by virtue of the /init program running. But so far I've had no luck.

Does anyone know whether something like this would possible? Thanks for your time.

I soldered the pins of my Nexus 7 2012 Gen 1 and the device did start up. The soldering simulates a always pressed power on button.
However I tried the same with the Nexus 7 2013 Gen 2 and it turned itself off again, because the button was always pressed. So I needed to solder a capacitor and a resistor in series so simulate a short button press. This worked for me, but the software solution would be more elegant.
I could measure only a few uA when the battery is plugged in so I can't image a part of the bootloader is powering up on the mentioned devices. My idea is now to solder the power supply directly to the micro usb port as for data only 2 pins (USB2.0) are used. USB Pins: https://www.giga.de/downloads/microsoft-windows/tipps/usb-anschluss-farben-stecker-bedeutung-und-erklaerung/

Then the device will start up with the lpm script or the "Fastboot oem off-mode-charge 0" change.
An other solution would be really appreciated.
Thanks and Cheers


How to delete a system app? How can I delete any system app? I deleted a wallpaper app in my app folder but I don't see any changes? I want to delete some apps especially default factory-installed apps. Is there a simple way?

Root:
You can install Titanium Backup to uninstall unwanted apps easily.

Without Root:
I found an interesting article which helps you creating a script to remove certain stock APK files.
Check it out here.

Download the recovery flashable BloatKill script in zip. Do not
extract it: bloatkill.zip.
Download and install a zip manager program on your computer, such as
WinRAR or PowerArchiver.
Double click the bloatkill.zip to open the zip
Now browse over to META-INF\com\google\android\
Right click the updater-script file and extract the file to
desktop. You can also extract this file by dragging it to the
desktop.
Open the file with a suitable program like NotePad++, or Adobe
Dreamweaver. The opened script file should look like this:

ui_print("Unwanted stock apps remover.");

ui_print(" ");
ui_print("Partitions mount");
#Properly unmounting to avoid issues
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "umount", "/system");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "umount", "/cache");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "umount", "/data");
#Then mounting
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "mount", "/system");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "mount", "/cache");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "mount", "/data");

ui_print(" ");
ui_print("Unwanted stock apps remover");
delete("/system/app/StockApp.apk");

ui_print(" ");
ui_print("Unmounting partitions");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "umount", "/system");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "umount", "/cache");
run_program("/sbin/busybox", "umount", "/data");

ui_print(" ");
ui_print("Finish");

The line delete("/system/app/StockApp.apk"); being the app you want to delete.

When the editing is over, save the changes and exit NotePad++ or the
    editor you are using.
Now drag the updater-script file back to its place:
META-INF\com\google\android\ folder in bloatkill.zip
Now copy the bloatkill.zip file to the root/main directory of your
phone’s SD card (/sdcard/)
Open phone Settings and enable USB Debugging Mode from Developer
 Options.
Turn off your device and boot it into Recovery Mode. The method
 involves a special combination of hardware keys that are pressed
 simultaneously and differ from device to device.
In the recovery mode use the volume keys to scroll/highlight and
 the power key to select an option.
Scroll to an option called apply zip from sd card and select the
 bloatkill.zip file.
Confirm your choice by selecting yes.
Finally, select reboot system now.


Crash while adding google account Facing trouble while adding Google account to my android device. In logcat I got these two messages:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to create service com.google.android.gms.gcm.GcmService:
  java.lang.SecurityException: attempting to read gservices without permission: Neither user 10073 nor current process has com.google.android.providers.gsf.permission.READ_GSERVICES.
  java.lang.SecurityException: attempting to read gservices without permission: Neither user 10073 nor current process has com.google.android.providers.gsf.permission.READ_GSERVICES.

Screen shot of my device Samsung Galaxy S3 (4.2.2)

Screen shot of my device Samsung Galaxy S3 (4.2.2) / while restarting

Reinstall CM with minimal gapps, your /system folder is most probably full due to gapps-kk taking up too much space.

http://goo.im/devs/BaNkS/GApps/4.4.3


deleting contacts in watsapp If I've deleted a contact from my phone, but they still show in watsapp is this because they haven't deleted me from their phonebook? Also, if messages deliver but are not read, does this mean your blocked? Or is it more likely read receipts are off or your 'muted'? I cant understand how calls are blocked but watsapp messages deliver? Thanks

The contact which you deleted from Contacts list might still appear on Whatsapp, if the Contacts list of Whatsapp isn't refreshed. However, on newer versions of Whatsapp, this happens instantly. And no, it has nothing to do with your number being saved on their Contacts list.

Coming to the scenario related to blocking, once you block a contact on Whatsapp, the message is sent from their phone but not delivered to you, in which case they get a single tick, this however stays the same even after you unblock them, i.e. you still wouldn't get their message. This is so because the message sent by them is stored on Whatsapp servers rather than being delivered to you because they were blocked. With calls too, the person who is blocked cannot get their call through to you if they are blocked.

I would like to suggest you to first search for information already present on Google before posting a question.


I lost all my contacts on Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 Yesterday I lost all the contacts on my GT-I9000. Nothing strange happened, there was no warning, suddenly they were just.. gone. This is the second time this happens. Is there any method to get the lost contacts back?

Do you have contacts on your Google account? If yes, re-login, and load from Google.


Change wallpaper via ADB/terminal Is there any terminal (ADB) command for Android to change the launcher wallpaper?

I know this thread is old and dead, but it came up when I was searching the same topic. So I'm posting a response anyway for posterity.

This works for me on Android 5.1

am start -d file:////data/local/tmp/black_white.png -a android.service.wallpaper.CROP_AND_SET_WALLPAPER -f 0x1 com.android.launcher3/.WallpaperCropActivity


Jelly bean upgrading Problems My new Samsung Galaxy Advance S is running with android Gingerbread. I am thinking to upgrade it to Jelly Bean. I am very new to Android devices.

I have following basic questions

Are there any known advantages and disadvantages in upgrading my device to JellyBean?
If I upgrade to Jelly Bean do my all apps remain works?
Upgrading OS, does it void my warranty?
Is there any official instruction to upgrade my phone to Jelly Bean?

Thanks in advance

Yes, there are many advantages. Your phone's usable RAM memory increases from 555MB to 625MB.
Camera zoom is possible, but only digital zoom is available. So it's of no use.
All your old apps will work fine in JB, but games will lag unless you root your phone.

Upgrading to Jelly Bean if you are in India will void warranty.

There are no official instructions to update. You will have to do it manually. If you are new to Android, get help from someone who has Android knowledge. Otherwise, you may end up bricking your phone.

I would suggest you don't upgrade, because JB update for S Advance will be available in India soon.


How to connect Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom to MAC? I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to connect my Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom (os 4.2.2) to my Macbook Pro Retina running OSX 10.8.4. I have Kies for MAC installed, I'm connecting my device with a USB, and I'm Scanning for devices using Kies via Wi-Fi on my phone. No luck, this shouldn't be a terribly difficult thing, does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Try a different USB cable, for some reason not all cables will connect your device as a Media Device.


Bad root on Galaxy S7 needs unrooting So I'm not sure exactly what happened, but Dr. Fone by Wondershare seems to have messed up my root.

I'm on a Galaxy S7, Android 7.0 with Nougat.

My phone is acting like it's rooted (VoLTE icon and "hurricane" symbol in the notifications bar, "unauthorized actions" notification appearing) and when I plug it back in to Dr. Fone, it tells me it's rooted and gives me no option to unroot.
But when I open any root checkers or unroot apps on the phone, it says it's not rooted so I can't undo it.

Any advice?

I had a similar problem and was able to un-root (and later re-root successfully) using the Kingo Android Root (PC Version) which runs in Windows and roots/unroots via a USB cable to the phone with a different process than the on-phone apps.

I hope you were aware before you started that there's always a chance that root will "break" your phone, rendering it useless from then on.  (Hopefully this isn't the case for you.) There are also a lot of downsides to rooting; certain apps and features that become unusable (not the "free for all" I was originally lead to believe.)


Does the T-Mobile G2 have 2 GB or 4 GB of storage/memory? I just received my new G2 from T-Mobile, and I checked the settings, and it has 2 GB internal storage. However the Google Phone site says it should have 4 GB internal storage. What is the deal?

The G2 does indeed have 4GB of internal storage, but not all of it is visible to the operating system.  The internal memory (/dev/block/mmcblk0) shows up as 2256 MB which place it solidly in the this-is-4GB-of-memory camp.

There are several reasons for confusion on this point. Of the 2256MB of internal memory visible to the OS, 1.3GB is allocated to /data (Storage for apps).  This 1.3GB is what you see when you look at "Internal Phone Storage" in Settings->SD Card & Phone Storage. Partitioning in this was has been standard on all android phones.

The new part with the G2 is where the rest of the 4GB of internal memory are.  There has been wild speculation on this point, but a backup copy of the entire OS portion of the phone or space for future updates make the most sense.


How to know my nexus device is file encrypted? From android n new feature called file encryption is supported.
How to identify if my device is file encrypted.

If i create any new file inside /data parition using touch . Will i will see that file when i do ls -l.

Will file name will be shown as secured name when doing ls -l after creation of file, if the device is file encrypted.

If you have 'Developer options' enabled you may see a 'Convert to file encryption' option. If you see this option it implies that you are not using file encryption. Clicking this option shows a warning stating:

  Convert data partition to file-based encryption.

  !!Warning!!. This will delete all your data.

  This feature is alpha, and may not work correctly.

  Press 'Wipe and convert...' to continue.

I don't think that any devices that are upgraded to Android 7.0 will use file encryption automatically as it requires wiping your device in order to turn this on. Any new devices (such as the new Nexus devices coming later this year) should use file encryption by default.


setting kind of semi - airplane mode In airplane mode, both SIM(s) and wi-fi are disconnected. Is there a way to just disconnect the SIM(s) and keep wi-fi connected without root privilege?

In your Dialer / Phone app, enter *#*#4646#*#*
Select Phone Information
Select Turn off radio

Or use an app like Cell Radio ShutOff.

Note also that you can turn Wi-Fi back on during Airplane Mode (though it can definitely be annoying to have it turned off in the first place).


What internet browsers are able to provide text wrapping (fitting the screen) when zooming (beside Opera)? I am not sure I am using the proper terms, therefore I will exemplify them with screenshots. Please help me improve my terminology if I am wrong.
(I'm not sure Browser which always allows scale/zoom? is about the same topic, as I don't grasp the meaning of terms like " viewport metatag parameters user-scalable" and "meta viewport tag".)

Taking a Wikipedia page:

Simply zooming it - whether with forced zoom enabled or not - would give this (like in Chrome), where the font size appears larger but the text body is not seen in its entirety, as it doesn't fit the screen:

while what I would like to see would be this - what I call text fit or text wrap, where the font is enlarged without losing the entirety of the text body, which in this case fits the screen:

I know this is available in Opera. I would like to know what other browsers have this feature.

I will also try to answer my question - and update the answer if possible.

Beside Opera, which seems to provide this by default, I have seen this working in the Yandex browser, but not by default. I has to be enabled under Settings - Text zoom and auto-fit. (It also has a feature that I personally like, of sliding horizontally across the scren to switch tabs.)

UC Browser has this text-fitting feature by default. (Another interesting feature it has is that sliding horizontally across the screen would navigate within the same tab to previously visited pages: left-to-right=Go back one page; righ-to-left=Go forward one page.)


How do I tether over wifi in rooted Xperia x8? I would like to tether over wifi rooted Xperia X8 running Android 2.1.
I used wifi tether app but I just saw error message "Sorry, but your kernel does note have all necessary feathers for running this application."
What kind of setting should I change?

Download Barnacle Wifi Tether  This app will load it's OWN drivers and actually use your phone as a modem. I have used it once before with my X8 Android 2.1 also.


Speaker and Mic stoped working on MotoG (1st Gen) after upgrade Problem:

One day my mobile was dead because of empty battery. I recharged the battery and turned on the mobile. Mobile showed a message "Android is upgrading" while turning on. After that Speaker and Mic are not working. There is no any type of sound coming out of mobile and I cant input my voice through mic. Sometimes Phone app acts very slow.

Configurations:

MotoG 1st Generation
Android 5.0.2 (Lollipop)
Build No. LXB22.46-28
Dual Sim
Internal Memory 16 GB

What I have tried:

Restarted my mobile many times (No Result)
Restarted my mobile with Safe Mode (No Result)
Factory Reset (No Result)
Clear Cache Partition (No Result)
Once I restarted with QCom option from power options (Speaker and Mic started working . I restarted again with normal mode and still speaker and mic was working but after some minutes speaker and mic were dead again)

Any suggestions?

Surprisingly I was able to fix this issue in my phone by changing following wi-fi settings:

Go to advanced wi-fi setting. You will find a toggle option "Scanning always available". Disable this option.

Worked for me.


Widgets are not updating post-boot on CyanogenMod nightlies I am using the Moto G 4G (Peregrine, XT1039). Cyanogenmod 12.1 latest nightly. I update once a week. Widgets are not updating post-boot on CyanogenMod nightlies. Do you know why?

I have not deactivated background data and no battery saving plan is running. I can receive WhatsApp messages and emails but my homescreen widgets stay the way they were when I started the phone. So today it is still Thursday on my calendar widget.

The problem was solved by installing TK-Gapps micro on top of the pico that were installed.

A day later it stopped working again. If I use the google now launcher instead of trebuchet it does work.


Difference between ADB drivers and MTK drivers? Flashing a ROM in an android through PC requires  drivers along with softwares in order to make the process success ,in case of drivers which drivers are needed and when ,what is relation between ADB drivers and MTK drivers are they same and if not how are they different .I appreciate the answer in detail

Firstly it's not ABD driver it's Adb driver.Adb means Android Debug Bridge.ADB is a command-line utility included with Google's Android SDK. ADB can control your device over USB from a computer, copy files back and forth, install and uninstall apps, run shell commands, and more.When your device is in Fastboot/Download mode you can access your phone only through Adb.
For example if something goes wrong while flashing a rom and your phone is softbricked.Only way to access a bricked phone is through Adb.Adb mainly not used for flashing rom, It's used for flashing recovery/bootloader.


Stock Android Shortcuts So I believe the Android keyboard shortcuts vary among version, but what are the stock android shortcuts?

I have not found a complete list anywhere.

I think this should be a community wiki.

For completion I am posting the typing shortcuts here.

  • Alt + Spacebar: Insert a special character

  • Shift + Del: Delete the character to the right of the cursor

  • Alt + Del: Delete an entire line

  • Shift + Shift (press it twice): Activate caps-lock; press shift once
  more to exit

  • Alt + Trackball-Left: Move cursor to beginning of line

  • Alt + Trackball-Right: Move cursor to end of line

  • Alt + Trackball-Up: Move cursor to top of page

  • Alt + Trackball-Down: Move cursor to bottom of page

  • Shift + Trackball-Left/Right: Highlight text for cutting or copying

  • Menu + X: Cut text (will cut all text on-screen unless specific
  characters are highlighted)

  • Menu + C: Copy text to clipboard (will copy all text on-screen
  unless specific characters are highlighted)

  • Menu + V: Paste text from clipboard

  • Menu + A: Select all text in the current field


Walking: counting steps when walking back and forth in a circle I am aware of the fact that Android devices can count the number of steps taken by a person as they walk. However, I am uncertain as to how they do this. Do they rely solely on GPS? If so, if someone keeps on walking in a circle so that their position does not change much and stays within a few meters, then is the device successful at reporting number of steps walked?
If not, what other data do they use and how do they carry out the computation at the device level and how does the computation work?

The step counter is usually not GPS based. Instead the accelerometer sensor of your phone is used.

When walking for every step your body moves up and down a bit which can be easily measured by this sensor. Using the accelerometer instead of GPS has multiple advantages:

The accelerometer requires only very little battery
The accuracy is better - no need to define your step length
It works at location without GPS signal (indoor, staircase)


"SD card is damaged - You may have to reformat." How do I fix this problem? I had this before, formatted it and now it's happened again.

I suspect it's the problem mentioned here but I don't understand how to apply the fix from that thread.

I thought I had to download the file, rename it to update.zip, stick it on the phone's internal SD card, go into recovery mode and run "apply sdcard:update.zip" but I get an error when I do that which says:

  E:signature verification failed / Installation aborted.

I'm not even sure if the fix is the right fix or the process is correct either, but if they are how do I get around this signature error?

It's a Galaxy S, running Froyo.

Have you tried removing your SD card, putting it in a SD card reader and plugging into a PC? Windows will auto-detect and repair a lot of file system errors if you let it. See also this previous question.


How does Samsung's Voice Recorder's Speech-to-text function store the text and sync it with the audio? I am using Samsung Galaxy S7 and recently, I used the speech-to-text feature in the default Voice Recorder application. When I play one of the audio files that was recorded with that feature, the application is able to show the text in sync with the audio. I saw that there was the text stored in another text file together with the audio file, but it was just the raw text. I'm trying to figure out how this works.
Is this information for syncing the text and audio stored in the audio file? In this case, all the recordings are only in M4A files. Hence, I tried searching what M4A files can store, like if they can store subtitles because it would seem that it could be subtitles that enable this syncing. However, I can't seem to find any information on this. Or it could also be that the application just has this information stored in some sort of storage or cache, which would mean that if I moved the files over to my computer, there would not be any text synced with the audio.

I guess I have found the answer after looking within the M4A files themselves. The text and the timestamps, if I am correct, are stored in the M4A files.
I looked through the binary data of the file using a hex editor and just the normal Notepad application in Windows and I found all the text within a location and it looks like Java was used. I am guessing this is only a feature designed particularly for the Samsung Voice Recorder application.
A sample is shown here (with some parts and most of the weird characters removed):
;com.sec.android.app.voicenote.common.util.VoiceRecorderData
mCategoryNamet Ljava/lang/String;L mEffectNameq ~  java.util.ArrayListx sizexp 2com.sec.android.app.voicenote.common.util.TextData ConfidenceScoreI dataTypeJ durationJ elapsedTimeJ   timeStamp[ mTextt [Ljava/lang/String; [Ljava.lang.String;{
t The pppppppppsq ~
t
recording pppppppppsq ~
t to pppppppppsq ~


Is it possible to transfer one app from my old phone to my new if my phone is not rooted? I have recently purchased a Galaxy S5. I would like to root it, but so far, it seems that the "Towelroot" approach does not work on my model (purchased in Japan from Docomo), and other options are at this point too complicated for me.
So, my old phone, an S2, is rooted, but my new phone, an S5, is not.
Cut to today when I discovered that the calorie counter app I preffered, Calorific, is no longer available, and has been replaced with a feature bloated new version that ruins everything I liked about the previous version.
I still have that previous version on my old phone, so, if possible, I'd like to move that app over to my new phone.
Of course, I've looked on this forum for solutions, but other questions I've seen so far presume either that one's phone is rooted or that one is trying to completely recreate all settings from phone to another.
I would like at this point to just move one app. Is that possible?
My previous phone has Titanium Backup Pro, if that helps.

Do you want to just install the specific version of the application you have in your old phone? If so,

a) run an application like Titanium Backup on the rooted phone

b) backup the app

c) find the .apk in the backup folder

d) transfer the .apk to your new phone

e) run the .apk to install the application on the new phone. I believe some phones do not do it out-of-the-box and you might have to download some kind of app (search for "apk install") to do it. Try without an app first, though.

In case you also want your data to be transferred along with the app, I'm not sure whether TiBu can do this for non-rooted phones. Someone else will be better suited to answer.


Restricted Google Play Service hangs up the booting process I use oneplus one with CM13. There is a privacy guard that allows to block any permission for any app/service. I applied this feature to Google Play Service. Now it asks me allow some permission and hangs right after device booted so I can't even unlock the screen for letting the service do what it asks.
I can boot to recovery mode and do a factory reset but I would like to keep some files/fotos from my android. The device is on the stock recovery and firmware with OTA update. Not rooted. No USB debugging mode is on.
Is it possible to bring the system back to the normal state or at least to pull the files from it?

Thanks.

This is a known issue when blocking Google Play Services using Privacy Guard on CM13. However there is a workaround if the device has a custom recovery like TWRP installed.

Boot into recovery
Open File Manager
Navigate to /data/system
Delete the file named appops.xml
Reboot.

Since you've not rooted/installed custom firmware, the only option is a factory reset from recovery. You'll lose all apps, but data stored on the device storage will be safe.


Upgrading Sony Xperia E to Android 4.3 I have the Sony Xperia E and want to use a Bluetooth Smart/Bluetooth Low Energy Heart Rate Monitor with it.

Unfortunately this requires Android 4.3 and Sony stopped upgrading it at Android 4.1.1

Is it possible to install a later version on Android on this phone? I looked at the Cyanogen website (http://download.cyanogenmod.org/) but couldn't see the Sony Xperia E listed, the phones product number is C1505.

I'm happy to root the phone, flash it etc as long as I have good instructions to follow.

Thanks,
Andrew

Note: Partial answer to address Cyanogenmod unavailability.

The reason why you couldn't find your device here is because Cyanogenmod(CM) didn't port it on your device model for some reason. To be precise, there is no official CM for your device. That said there are some unofficial custom ROMs (including CM) available for your device.
(Click here to know the difference between official and unofficial CM.)
According to a user in this link, the official XDA thread for your device is here, and the relevant ROMs are:

CM11 (4.4.4): http://forum.xda-developers.com/xper...-11-0-t2648316
AOKP (4.4.4): http://forum.xda-developers.com/xper...4-4-4-t2795440
CarbonRom (4.4.2): http://forum.xda-developers.com/xper...icm11-t2783757

(The instructions to flash are mentioned in the corresponding links. Otherwise, you may go to the official XDA thread.)

Be cautioned to check the "Status:Stable" for any unofficial ROM that you want to flash.


Cannot use internal memory partition in my Nextbook 7 16GB tab I have just purchased a Nextbook 7 16 gb tab. I have installed only a few apps and then got the message of "Insufficient Memory". I looked in the storage section and found the tab has TWO partitions under "Internal Storage" One has space of 0.98GB and another internal storage has 12.22GB. All my apps are installed in the first partition. How to use the larger partition for apps? So far I have been unable to do so. KINDLY HELP!!!

Every user of this tablet is having this issue. The company supposedly put out a firmware fix, but when you download the files to install it, they are corrupted. Which either means they are incompetent or purposely put out files that are corrupt so they can say "oh sorry" and never address the issue. Either way I'm not too optimistic.

http://nx700qc.blogspot.com/2014/11/trying-to-update-firmware.html?showComment=1417564996972#c1557705469401201898

http://www.nextbookusa.com/download.php


is it possible for an app to crash the phone at the logo screen stage? My wife has a Samsung Galaxy A5 running the carrier-supplied Marshmallow. Carrier is Tesco Ireland which I think is reselling the O2 network. Anyway the phone is completely standard in that respect, not even rooted, no custom ROMs or bootloader.

Edit: It may have just done an OTA update, as at some points it would start into the 'optimizing apps' sequence and get a certain number of apps into that, then reset again.

She had problems last week with it restarting itself and getting into some sort of boot loop. Sometimes it would just restart to the initial Samsung A5 logo screen, sometimes would start the animated 'Samsung' loading screen, and then restart again.

Initially I wiped first the cache then cache+data via the recovery menu, to no avail. It didn't seem like a battery or other hardware issue as it would quite happily sit in the recovery menu for any length of time.

As it's still under Samsung warranty I brought it in and got it back in a few days wiped and with Marshmallow on it.

She then went about reinstalling all her apps and that evening had it charging when it started into the reboot cycle again. The last app she had put on was the FitBit app. Eventually got it to start and removed the FitBit app and it has been OK since.

My question is - I can understand how an app could affect a successful boot later on in the process but could it affect things so that the phone won't even get past the initial switch-on splash screen which I assume is in the firmware?

Apps start only after successful boot of Android OS. There is no way in Android app can start before or while booting.

Your case looks unclear to me. The issue has to be of a system app.

Did you phone had a software update recently?


How to set a distinctive tone for SMS or phone call from a particular user/ phone #? I find that I'm getting "alert fatigue" and ignore most of them, even thought I've disabled all but SMS and maybe a couple of others.

If I am out doing something like riding my bike/skiing/etc.  I want to ignore all but ones from my wife or kids.

I'm on Motorola Razr-M w/ Android 4.1.2

Open contacts, tap the name of the contact you want to set the distinctive ringtone, then open action overflow menu (the three dots) and tap "Set ringtone", select a ringtone different to default one and tap OK.


Cannot install / update apps Since a short time ago, I cannot update / install apps.

E.g., if I try updating a given app, it is downloaded and shown as installing.

But as soon as the installation finishes, it shows again as available for updating, and I keep having in my phone the same "old" version.

What can be the cause, and solution for this? (I mean not to factory reset my phone...)

Could it be related to some setting in
Settings -> Apps -> Special Access -> Apps that can change system settings ?

Using Samsung J7 Prime, Android 8.1.0

Here is a detail step by step that will hopefully keep you from doing a factory reset. There's a couple things to touch on before beginning. Placing your phone in airplane mode will ensure updates don't start until you finish the entire process. If you are rooted disable all applications that require root (Task & Scripting Apps, Firewalls, Adblockers, etc) Also anything of that nature for non-root, any 'run at boot' type App. Feed Readers, Podcast Apps, basically anything that wants to sync on reboots and/or connection changes.

First be sure that you have plenty of storage to proceed. More than 1 Gb at least should be free on your internal memory
Also be sure your SDcard is working correctly.
Eject & remove your SDcard, then re-insert it.
Reboot before starting this procedure, we're trying to get everything in the freshest state possible.

1) Turn Off & Reset Networking

 1. Turn ON airplane mode.
 2. Open the Settings App.
 3. Under the "Wireless & Networks" header tap More > Reset Network Settings.
 (Samsung: Settings > Connections > More Connection Settings > Reset Network Settings.)

2) Remove Google Account

This will remove Information linked to your account until you re-add your account Make sure you backup important information before this step

 1. Open the Settings App.
 2. Under the "Personal" header tap Accounts. (No header on Samsung)
 3. Tap Google > Select the account you're using with Google Play
 4. Tap More > Remove Account.

3) Clear Cache & Data from Download Manager

 1. Open the Settings App.
 2. Under the "Device" header tap Apps. (No header on Samsung)
 3. Scroll to and tap Download Manager.
 4. Tap Force Stop.
 5. Then tap Storage.
 6. Tap Clear Cache.
 7. Then tap Clear Data.

4) Clear Cache & Data from Google Play Services

 1. Open the Settings App.
 2. Under the "Device" header tap Apps. (No header on Samsung)
 3. Scroll to and tap Google Play Services.
 4. Tap Force Stop.
 5. Then tap Storage.
 6. Tap Clear Cache.
 7. Then tap Clear Data.
 8. (if available) Tap Uninstall to uninstall system updates.

5) Clear Cache & Data from Google Play Store

 1. Open the Settings App.
 2. Under the "Device" header tap Apps. (No header on Samsung)
 3. Scroll to and tap Google Play Store.
 4. Tap Force Stop.
 5. Then tap Storage.
 6. Tap Clear Cache.
 7. Then tap Clear Data.
 8. Tap Uninstall to uninstall system updates.
 9. Repeat these step for all other existing Google apps. **Backup your data**

6) Things to check in the Setting App before rebooting
  Use the Search in the Settings App, some of these may not be found in every Android version.

 - Reset App Preferences in the Apps settings menu.
 - Reset Permissions in Privacy Guard and set it to OFF.
 - System Profiles are set to OFF.
 - Developer Options are set to OFF.
 - Under the "System" header tap Accessibility, Switch all to OFF.

7) Reboot, Connect & Sign-In

 1. Power on / Reboot your Device.
 2. Open Settings > Display > Screen Timeout. Set it to Never.
 3. Plug your device into a power source.
 4. Allow a couple minutes to pass then turn OFF airplane mode.
 5. Turn Data off.
 6. Open Google Play.
 7. Choose your network.
 8. Sign into your Google Account.
 9. Tap the Home button.
10. Set your device down for 10-15 minutes and let Google process updates, sync, etc.
11. Reboot and access Google Play as you normally would.

All information can be found in the Play Store Help: extra steps to fix Google Play Issues