A script to get a random file Dear developers,
I have an issue with my script switching from Android 9 to 10 (devices from a Umidigi S3 Pro to a Umidigi F2).
I have installed Bosybox App on the first and Busybox Magisk module on the latter.
Now the script does not work because the command:
list=(`busybox find "$dirs" -type f -name *.$ext`)

returns an empty array.
This is the complete script:
#!/system/bin/sh
echo
if test "$1" = ""; then
     echo "Randomfile script by Uranya <@uranya7x> v1.4 01.01.2021"
     echo "Usage:"
     echo "sh randomfile.sh <sourcedir> <extension> <destdir>"
     exit 1
fi
dirs=$1
ext=$2
dird=$3'/'
dest=$dird'random'
delim1=""
delim2=""
last='last.txt'
# create filename's array
IFS=$'\n'

list=(`busybox find "$dirs" -type f -name *.$ext`)

# count number of files
num=${#list[@]}
# generate random number in range 1-NUM
let "ran=(${RANDOM} % ${num})+ 1"
echo Random from $num files is $ran
sour=${list[ran]}
sourn=${sour#$dirs}
sourn=${sourn:1:${#sourn}}
date=$(date +"%Y.%m.%d %H:%M")
day=$(date +"%d")
hour=$(date +"%H")
minute=$(date +"%M")
message='---------------------------------------\n'$date' - '$num' >>> '$ran'\n'$delim1$sourn$delim2
if ([ "$day" = "01" ] && [[ "$minute" < "29" ]]) || [ ! -f $dird$last ]; then
    echo >$dird$last $message
else
    sed -i '1i'$message $dird$last
fi
echo $delim1$sourn$delim2
# rename the old file
cp $dest.$ext $dest'_back.'$ext
# copy the file
cat "$sour" >$dest.$ext
echo File copied as $delim1$dest.$ext$delim2

Can you please help me to understand why this happens, and how to fix it?
Thank you very much for your attention!

Dear friends,
after a couple of hours debugging the script, finally, I have found the mistake!
The line to be used is:
list=( find "$dirs" -type f -name "*.$ext" )
it is a very subtle difference: the space after and before the parenthesis!
(even, the word busybox is useless)
Oddly in the Busybox app (I have had on my S3 Pro) the spaces are not mandatory, whilst in the Busybox Magisk module those spaces ARE mandatory!
I'm using this script for almost 8 years to have an every day different music for my wake up.
I'm using Tasker to call it just before my alarm get off, so the same file contains every day, a different song.
I have done a change also in the array index that did not began by 0
So, here it is the right script:
#!/system/bin/sh
echo
if test "$1" = ""; then
    echo "Randomfile script by Uranya <@uranya7x> v1.5 (26.03.2021)"
    echo "Usage:"
    echo "sh randomfile.sh <sourcedir> <extension> <destdir>"
    exit 1
fi
dirs=$1
ext=$2
dird=$3'/'
dest=$dird'random'
delim1=""
delim2=""
last='last.txt'
# create filename's array
IFS=$'\n'
list=( `find "$dirs" -type f -name "*.$ext"` )
# count number of files
num=${#list[@]}
# generate random number in range 1-NUM
let "ran=(${RANDOM} % ${num})+ 1"
echo Random from $num files is $ran
sour=${list[$ran-1]}
sourn=${sour#$dirs}
sourn=${sourn:1:${#sourn}}
date=$(date +"%Y.%m.%d %H:%M")
day=$(date +"%d")
hour=$(date +"%H")
minute=$(date +"%M")
message='---------------------------------------\n'$date' - '$num' >>> '$ran'\n'$delim1$sourn$delim2
if ([ "$day" = "01" ] && [[ "$minute" < "29" ]]) || [ ! -f $dird$last ]; then
    echo >$dird$last $message
else
    sed -i '1i'$message $dird$last
fi
echo $delim1$sourn$delim2
# rename the old file
cp $dest.$ext $dest'_back.'$ext
# copy the file
cat "$sour" >$dest.$ext
echo File copied as $delim1$dest.$ext

I hope it will be useful to someone else that loves to be waked up by music.
Peace everywhere!


How to root LAVA Iris Atom2 which runs Android 5.1 Can anyone help me to root my Lava Iris atom2 which runs android 5.1 OS,
I had tried almost available softwares like kingoroot , iroot , masterroot, towelroot. But Nothing works.

http://d.kingoapp.com/default/KingoRoot.apk
Take easy root lava atom 2 5.1


Cloning Android Phone Is there a way to image an android phone and flash that image onto another Android phone WITHOUT rooting the device? I don't want to just backup the data onto a new phone. I want to completely clone the system. If you know of a way to do this by rooting the phone, please also include that. If I absolutely have to root the phone, I will, but I want to do it without rooting the device.

Even if you would have two identical devices (from hardware perspective) cloning an device is impossible for most modern devices because devices are by default hardware encrypted.
This means that there is a special section in your flash that is bound to your CPU, not to the type of your CPU but to the CPU chip in your device. This section contains the the encryption keys which are therefore bound to the CPU.
Even if you would manage to copy the complete content of the flash chip to a second identical device the new CPU would not be able to decrypt the CPU bound section and therefore all your user data could not be decrypted.


Where are actions of buttons' long pressing stored? I want to remap the long press action  of the menu button to open the dialog box that appears when the power button is long pressed. I know the keybinds are stored mainly in /system/usr/keylayout/Generic.kl but I can't find where the long press settings are stored.

The settings menu allows me to remap the action of long pressing, but it doesn't offer an option to invoke the dialog box of power menu. As far as I am concerned, the Android API doesn't provide any option to access the power button so I need to change the action inside proper system files. Also, the API doesn't allow me to map the screenshot taking what is the main purpose of mine. So I want either to map the dialog box of power menu or screenshot taking to the long press action of menu button.

I own Samsung Galaxy S3 with Cyanogenmod 14.1 Android 7.1.1

So there appears to be several apps on the app store.

Button Mapper: Remap your keys is one such example.
Buttons remapper (no root) is another.


Navigation Bar Becomes Transparent in Recent Apps Panel My nav bar becomes transparent in the recent apps panel, so my nav bar collides with the recent panel buttons at the bottom of the screen. How to fix this? Thanks.

Check your styles/theme it may be u chose the full screen activity layout or the color scheme of your nav bar is set to a transparent background e.g #aa000000


Calendar Plays Wrong Sound I have set the sound in both Personalize->Sound->Notification Sounds->Calendar and Calendar->Menu->Settings->Select Notification to the same sound, but Calendar refuses to play the correct sound. It always plays some chime-sounding thing that doesn't get my attention at all. Any ideas how to fix this?

For a quite comparable reason (missing appointments as I missed the "alarm"), but with a different cause (alarm didn't repeat until it got my attention), I've found two different solutions. Both are involving a third-party paid app, but there might be free alternatives as well – so let me use my solutions as examples first:

At first, I used Calendar Event Reminder. Here you can define per calendar what sound to use, and how often to repeat alarms until dismissed. You also can "snooze" an alarm to "buzz you later".
Finally, I've switched to a different calendar altogether: Business Calendar Pro (which has a free test version to try out first). Same principle as described above concerning repeating buzzes and snoozes, and of course you can select your sound.

What both solutions have in common is using an independent alarm system. So both recommend switching the notifications off in your default calendar, and only using the "new alarm system". Both variants worked perfectly for me, so I can really recommend them (depending on your requirements, chose what better fits you).

As for alternatives, you might wish to take a look at my lists on Calender-Alarm-Fixes (alternatives to CER), or check whether another calendar app comes with its own alarm system (I vaguely remember there was at least one more).


Optimize TeamViewer for android bandwidth consumption I am using TeamViewer for Android to remotely control my computer and it works great, but I recently noticed it uses up a LOT of bandwidth, even in Optimize Speed mode. I have a limited 3G plan and I would like to reduce TeamViewer's bandwidth consumption as much as possible, at the expense of image quality. For example, I would have no problem with going to grayscale, or 256-color mode, but this option is not available on the android client, as far as I can tell.

Is there any way to optimize the bandwidth consumption of TeamViewer for Android, beyond choosing the Optimize Speed quality setting? If not, is there any other remote desktop client for android that you can recommend which does a better job that TeamViewer in this category?

Thanks

I use Teamviewer and love it.  Before Teamviewer I used several of the pocket VNC versions you can find for Android.  Some of those version have grayscale options.  The drawback is you will have to forward a port on your router to get VNC to go through.  The other option you may look at is if the program or programs you are looking to control have a web API you can hit rather then the whole PC.  below are some links for the other programs to control your PC via ANDROID.

EDIT: thought about it a little more and remembered you can use LogMeIn Hamachi and VNC.  Set up the LogMeIn Hamachi client on the PC you want to connect to, then you can VNC into the Virtual IP the Hamachi client provides.  This will enable you to use the advanced display setting in some of the VNC clients.  Hamachi

Android Remotes
More Remotes
Some more


More internal memory or less memory + SD card I am thinking about buying Samsung Galaxy S3. The problem is that difference in price between 16Gb and 32Gb is significant, and it is much cheaper to buy SD card and compensate this difference. Is it good idea or not? What are disadvantages?

This is a question that I asked myself and the short answer is to always get as much memory inside the phone as possible, just to be sure.  But saying that, it really depends on how you use your phone.  I've gone for the largest amount of internal storage in my SGS3 as I could get (32Gb) and then a 64Gb external sd card, but I wish that I'd waited out for the 64Gb phone - reasons to follow after the tech bit:

The way that the version of Android you'll get on your SGS3 works is that it stores all application data on the internal storage and doesn't let you move that to the external SD card.  This is probably to keep a good user experience - things will start going very wrong if you moved all your data to the external SD card and then removed that SD card.  To note, older versions of Android did allow you to move apps to the external SD card. So when you download a game like NOVA, which clocks in at around 2GB of storage for the extra data it downloads, you will see that 16Gb or 32Gb internal storage is going to fill up soon.

To make matters worse - there's an extra layer to this:
Android automatically assigns a private folder to each app, located in a protected folder on the internal storage.  If you are non rooted, you won't be able to see this data, but it's what gets cleared when you 'clear data' within an application settings screen.  If you are rooted it's located at '/data/data/'.  This data is kept private so that only that app can look at the data, hence apps can't look at potentially sensitive information belonging to other apps.  This data will always be located on the phone memory for security reasons.  Some apps store a lot of data in these private folders: the newer version of Google music is a prime example - it stores all cached music in this folder (as mentioned in a comment older versions stored the music to the SD card, but this has changed in the newer versions to much annoyance)

So all your apps store all their data to the internal storage and there's not much you can do about it. After using my phone for a few months (installing applications, downloading music etc) my internal storage had 4Gb free (out of 32Gb) and my external SD card still had 60Gb free from my 64Gb.  It seems that unless you root your phone and hack it a little, there's very little which will natively use the external SD card (I think you can relocate where photos are stored but that's about it from the native apps).

Hence I suggest to get as much internal storage space as possible, as that's the space which is going to be used first and fastest.

In regards to the other comments about installing apps to the ext card - I think they must still be using Android 2.x as this hasn't been an option since then, for the reasons explained above.  To re-iterate - you won't be able to install apps on your ext sdcard using your SGS3 on a stock ROM


Transfer apps and data from a rooted phone to a phone without root I used to use TitaniumBackup to transfer apps and data from one Android phone to another when both devices are rooted. Recently I got a phone which currently does not have root access, so TitaniumBackup would not be useful. Most apps are not an issue, but I have trouble transferring a few apps and their data.

I was thinking to use adb, and tried using "adb backup -f appname.ab -apk app_package_name" on the old (and rooted) phone, but got the following error:

  Now unlock your device and confirm the backup operation.

The strange thing is that there is nothing there for me to accept when I unlock the phone or when I keep the phone unlocked. Someone also had the same problem here.

Any suggestions as to how to handle the transfer? Any better alternatives?

I tried your command and in the logcat an error was given "no backup packages supplied and neither -shared nor -all given" so I assume you are missing some parameters.

I tried the following command "adb backup -all" and the backup window successfully popped up. My advise is to check your logcat or modify your adb parameters. As per this post the command

  adb backup -apk -shared -all -f c:\backup20111230.ab

should work fine.


Verizon Email Sign-In Failed This is Error message is for a Verizon email account on a Samsung S5 phone. This afternoon it started saying the password changed and wants me to put the new password in, but I did NOT change my password. So I have no clue. This isn't the first time this has happened. I don't remember what fixed it the other times. Is it a Verizon issue or my account or my phone. So frustrating to keep hearing the notification over and over.

Have you tried to call Verizon? If not, it might help. Also try clicking forgot password. Sorry if this advice do not help. I'm only 14


Is it possible to run two instances of android on your phone at the same time? Sorry if I am misusing 'instances'. What I mean is the following: I want to run an master OS. The 'only' thing that master OS does is let me boot/kill/switch between  OS 1, OS 2, OS 3, etc. I want apps to believe they run on a normal Android phone. So if I run  app X on two OS, namely 1 and 2. I want each instance of app X to believe it runs on a different machine. I understand you can do this with a dual boot. However I want both OS at the same time. I interact within OS 1 and switch to OS 2 to continue where I left.

Sounds like you want an Android virtual machine host, like VMWare on desktops/servers.

As far as I know, there are no Android OS virtual machine hosts that can host Android OS virtualized instances. (There are desktop/server hosts that can host Android OS guests though--think AVD, GenyMotion, etc.) I'm guessing an Android host isn't a common case, to want to virtualize multiple instance on a single embedded device. And because of the complexity in doing that, it would have to be pretty low level, maybe even tied to specific devices. So it is unlikely someone will create one any time soon. Sorry.


Switching to TouchNooter home from Stock Home So I have just rooted my Nook with TouchNooter.

When I press the home button it asked me which I want to set as the default GO Launcher or Home. I chose Home as the default.

Now, I can't figure out how to get back to the TouchNooter homescren. How can I do so?

Thanks

You can go to Settings>Manage Applications> All Applications> then, find & select the Home app--- scroll down, and select "Clear Defaults"

The next time you press your home key, it will give you the same dialog asking which app to use.


How to kill the screen recording "Start" dialog After starting the Screen Recording app the "Start" dialog with the red circle is now always there. How can the app and that icon be closed?
This is Android9 on an Xiaomi Redmi 8A

The Start/red circle does have an X on it. I had tried it a number of times and nothing happened.  Now I tried it again and it did close the recorder (after a confirmation dialog).  Not sure why it is so difficult to accept the click.


Is there a realtime Task Activity Viewer for Android? Is there an Android app that can show the nature of activity going on with running apps? Something like XP Task Manager. There are many times when an app just stops responding and I'm not sure whether it's still working on something, or has just gone dead. Titanium Backup has done this on a number of occasions. If I could just see a list of apps and what memory and CPU percentage each is using I'd have a better idea whether to wait or kill the app.

BTW I do not like the Android Wait/Force Close dialog since it usually comes up prematurely. Thanks for your thoughts.

Sounds like OS Monitor might do what you want. I believe it just uses the top utility to get process info. Screenshot:

And note that tapping on one of the rows will expand it to show info like memory use, priority, and so forth.


Fastboot setserial command I noticed that a lot of descriptions of fastboot mention a command named setserial which not available in the current version that comes with Android SDK.

You can see the complete list of commands including setserial, for example here. The missing setserial command is not the only command missing in the current version.
The setserial command sounds very interesting for some tests I want to perform.

Does anybody has experience with that command and know where to get a fastboot binary that supports it?

Furthermore it would be interesting if current Android devices still allow to change the serial - may be this was only possible on the G1 and Nexus One?

The option has been moved to the oem subset of fastboot functions. Since every vendor is using their own proprietary ways to handle serial numbers. So there is no universal solution available. It is not a matter of finding a "fastboot binary that supports it". Fastboot binary  just sends commands to the device's bootloader. And "setserial" commands are proprietary.


HTC People Widget - Improve Touch Accuracy? I have HTC's people widget on one of my home screens.  I like its functionality but sometimes when I touch a contact, another one gets selected. A completely different contact gets the green selection box and it starts to call them.  With my luck this usually results in calling my parents at some ungodly hour.

I've used touch visualizers to see if that area of my touch screen is having problems but all looks fine. The people widget is the only thing that seems to be affected.

I've also tried removing and re-adding the widget.  Is there a fix for this? Or a comparable replacement?

You could try Call Confirm, which gives a popup to confirm if you want to call said person.

I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard it is recommended for accidental touch screen issues.

QR Code for Call Confirm:


Treble devices not same as A/B devices and vice-versa. Why? This XDA blog How A/B Partitions and Seamless Updates Affect Custom Development on XDA has some Q&A's, of which :

My device supports A/B partitions, does that mean I can make use of a Project Treble Generic System Image?

Not necessarily. Project Treble and A/B support are unrelated. The Motorola Moto Z2 Force doesn’t support Project Treble, yet it supports the A/B partition scheme.

My device supports Project Treble, does that mean I have an A/B partition scheme?

This is not always the case. The Honor 9 Lite is a prime example as it supports Project Treble yet does not have an A/B partition scheme.

(Emphasis added)
I thought Treble and A/B devices are synonymous in the sense having one implied other. That's not the case
Why is this? What are the differences?

Both technologies have nothing in common, really, so everything is unrelated:

The A/B partition technology is the horizontal separation in the following image, whereas Project Treble defines the vertical separations inside each partition.

Project Treble diagram source

A/B partition scheme

Basically the A/B partition scheme for "(Seamless) System Updates" is nothing more that two operating systems installed side-by-side, each in its own system partition. The unusual part (compared to e.g. having multiple OSes installed on a PC) is that both OS installations use the same user data partition. Also, when installing updates the active OS installation applies modifications to the other, inactive OS installation, instead of to itself.

The A/B partition layout does not make any assumptions about the OS that is installed inside the partition, hence it does not matter if the OS is Project Treble compliant or not.

Project Treble

Project Treble applies to the internals of each OS installation and how the different layers within the OS communicate with each other. Hence for Project Treble it is totally irrelevant if there are one, two or many OS partitions. The A/B partitioning scheme is compatible with, but separate from, Project Treble, and vice versa.


Voicemail indicator won't go away On my Atrix running 2.3.6, there is a permanent icon in my notification bar saying that I have unread voicemail. I understand that this icon is flagged on the SIM card itself: sure enough, if I pop the SIM card into another phone, the icon shows up there too.

How do I get rid of it? I've tried every suggestion on Google, which amounts to leaving myself a message and then deleting it, or calling customer service. The only kosher method of getting rid of it is to have my carrier send me the special SMS that clears the icon, which is normally sent when you listen to your messages (but it's not happening for me). Customer service reps seem to have no idea what this means so I can't get them to manually send that SMS. For what it's worth, I'm on Rogers in Canada (but my Atrix is running the AT&T build of Android).

Some versions of Android allegedly have a "Clear voicemail indicator" setting, but I have no such thing.

If it's possible through executing code on the Android, then:

Has someone written an app to clear it from the SIM card? I can't find anything, but I can't imagine something like that would be allowed on the market since it would use hidden libraries.
Does anyone have experience writing apps that use hidden libraries and can point me in the right direction? I've been able to follow tutorials that set up an Eclipse environment  for compiling apps that use hidden libraries, I just have no idea where to start with the SIM card stuff.

If not, then do I just have to live with it?

EDIT: Using standard carrier voicemail, not Google Voice.

Simply long press the notification and select app info. Then tap on FORCE STOP.


Make Emergency Alerts stay Occasionally, I receive emergency alerts on my Android phone, through the stock/default mechanism.  It makes a loud, alarming/attention-grabbing sound and vibrates strongly.  The alert is displayed on the screen (which was locked) and there's a big OK button, which is the only button, and when I push it quickly to silence the alarm/vibration, the message disappears.  This may be before I've had a chance to actually read what it says in as much detail as would be appropriate.  Is there any way to get those messages to stick around and be dismissed manually, so that they can be read after the alarm is silenced?

In Apps->Emergency Alerts, you can see a list of the previously received alerts and when they were received.


No sound whatsoever on phone (on calls, or while playing a video or mp3) I have a DOOGEE DG500 running Android 4.2.2. Apart from automatic updates for installed applications, no other applications have been changed recently.

I switched my phone to the silent audio profile so that I could sleep. The next day I set the audio profile to general again, but no sound can be heard from the phone.

The phone has not been dropped or misused in any way.

I have tried turning the phone off, removing the battery for a few seconds and re-assembling everything together again but I had no luck.

How can I fix the sound?

it turns out some cold connection was the problem - not the speaker itself.
I had to open the mobile phone case and spend sometime figuring out which connection was cold.

Once I found it I re-soldered it. If you're not into electronic your best bet is a local repair store.


No Music Showing in Any Music Player My Samsung Galaxy S2 I9100 is rooted + 3rd party Jellybean 4.1.2 XXLS6 MIUI rom

Music apps tested: DoubleTwist | Songbird | Google Music

In all of these apps, the music list shows empty.

I have tried:

Reboot recovery & "fix permissions"
Launching music files directly from File Explorer (WORKS)

I have a feeling it may be partition or mounts or permissions related. That the apps just can't read the file-system or something?

Can anyone suggest what other things I can try?

If you are rooted and have a 3rd party ROM that has not been tested, it might be a bug or a glitch, I would contact the developer.


Fondi 4.4 Wifi Tablet - Pattern locked and can't remember the gmail log in and password My Wifi tablet Fondi 4.4 is locked with a pattern and I can't remember the gmail account settings for this tablet or the password how do I retrieve this?  The tablet was locked in July 2017 and I have been struggling ever since to open it, please advise how do I get logged into the gmail account for this, the tablet does ask for the gmail login and password after I have done the pattern 5 times wrong

If your account has recovery settings, you should be able to regain access to the account, and therefore the tablet. Understandably, Google does not want entry methods that bypass the built-in security. If you cannot provide the details, there are no legitimate ways of gaining entry that I am aware of.

If you simply want to make the tablet useable, you can factory reset it.


Backup link between gmail, facebook, twitter contacts I have contacts from my GMail, Facebook and Twitter account. In my GMail accounts, I've saved my contacts with their first names or nicknames, so I end up having to manually link most of my Facebook & Twitter contacts with my GMail contacts. If I do a factory reset I have to repeat this process all over again. Is there a way I can backup/maintain the link between my contacts so that, after a factory reset, I can simply restore the links between contacts?

I believe backing up the data for the Contacts Storage and restoring it should restore linked-up contacts.  You can do this with an app such as Titanium Backup (requires root).


How can I use internal sd for ClockworkMod on a Motorola Defy? I've got a Motorola Defy I want to install CyanogenMod on. I have been following these instructions: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_jordan?setlang=en

I have got as far as running ClockworkMod but when I select "choose zip from sdcard" I get the following errors.

E:Can't mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p1 (or /dev/block/mmcblk0)
(no such file or directory)
Can't mount /sdcard

A bit of Googling suggests that I won't be able to access my SD Card using ClockworkMod on the Motorola Defy and need to use the internal SD instead.

So what I'd like to do is put my ROM .zip files in the internal storage and have ClockworkMod access them there.

There seems to be a reference to this on the CyanogenMod wiki instructions:

  "If you boot directly to recovery and have an internal sdcard, you may
  need to run adb shell mount /data or mount data through the recovery
  menu before transferring."

But I don't understand what I need to do for this to happen.

Any help would be much appreciated.

It means that the recovery does not mount the internal memory by default, and you need to do so manually.

On your PC download and install Android SDK tools which gets you the ADB utility.  Reboot your phone in Recovery mode and connect it to your PC via USB cable.  Install the drivers if prompted (use drivers that ship with SDK tools under the \sdk\extras\google\usb_driver\ subfolder.)  Now run Command Prompt, navigate to where you installed the tools (e.g. cd C:\Android SDK\sdk\platform-tools\ ) and issue the following command:

  adb shell mount /data

You now should be able to use the "adb push" command in Windows Command Prompt to copy files from your PC to the phone using the following syntax:

  adb push [path-to-file-on-your-pc] /data/

After the copy completes, you should be able to find the copied file in the Recovery's file browser.


Nexus 6 OTA from 5.0.1 to 5.1 fails - Error in block.map I am trying to upgrade my Nexus 6 with version 5.0.1 (Build number LRX22C) via OTA to Android 5.1.

The OTA update is downloaded successfully and after pressing "Restart & Install" I see a dead droid with the message "Error!".

The phone was rooted and I unrooted it via SuperSU. Did not help.
Wiping cache partition also did not change anything.

These are the logs:

Finding update package..
Opening update package..
Verifying update package..
Installing update..
Verifying current system..
/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system has been remounted R/W: reflash device to reenable OTA updates
E: Error in 0/cache/recovery/block.map
(Status 7)

Installation aborted.

I would really like to upgrade without wiping the data.

Unfortunately it will not work, google checks some files for integrity (meaning: that they were not changed) and it seems that some of the files have been changed, possibly by the  root process.
I assume you have no other option but to install the image manually, which will wipe your phone entirely.
You can learn more about the process here:
https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images


Mac's Android File Explorer and SSH are not in sync I transfered some photos using the Android File Explorer application for Macs.

However, I accidentally put them in the Music/ folder and Android File Explorer doesn't allow me to move files. So I decide to SSH into my Nexus 4 and move the photos into the Pictures/ folder via the mv command. This went great - everything was moved successfully according to ls.

Unfortunately, when I go to Gallery, it doesn't detect the photos. Worse yet, every time I start up Android File Explorer, it isn't updated with the new location of the photos, they still show up in the Music/ folder.

I'm running Jellybean 4.2.2 on a Nexus 4, connected to a Macbook Pro via Android File Explorer.

Any ideas?

I ended up just using an app that runs the MediaIndexer.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.addz.mediascanner&hl=en

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clypher.mediascanner

Rebooting works as well, thanks user133312!


bash - How can I check if a computer exists on my network WITHOUT IP (i.e. by device name only)? I would like my phone to execute certain shell scripts via Tasker if my phone is on the same wifi network as my laptop. My initial idea is to edit the /etc/hosts file, but this wouldn't work since neither device is constrained to be on only one wifi network.

A much more costly idea would be to just ping every possible address on the network from my phone, then attempt to send a command via ssh (say, echo $ANDROID) and listen for the response.

The best way to do this is to just be able to see if a device named "myLaptop" exists on the network.. (or, actually, I could use MAC address too.) but I have no idea if this is possible in bash. Is it?

(I'm also open to implementations in Perl, since I can use SL4A to implement Perl scripts.)

Dynamic DNS service would work. Get your laptop to update your dynamic domain with it's local ip, and then whenever your phone connects to a new wifi network, resolve that domain, if you get a hit, you're either good or happened to find someone with the same local ip!

Similar to that, you could get your laptop to post it's ip to a server somewhere (web, email, w/e) that you can retrieve from a script on your phone.

Short of setting up a DNS server, I'm not sure there is any means for resolving host names that aren't named in your local configs.


Unknown error code during application install: "920" while installing Google Keyboard Unknown error code during application install: "920" while installing Google Keyboard on Android ver. 4.0.4

Possible solutions:

Clear the cache several times. Settings > Apps > All > Google Play Store: Force Stop, Clear Data, Clear Cache
Re-add Google account.  Settings > Accounts > Google > Click on your Gmail email address > Remove account. Then, add it again.
Restart Wi-Fi connection. Turn off Wi-Fi on your phone, and reconnect.

Sources:

Could not be downloaded due to an error (920)
Android Fix for error 920 or App could not be downloaded due to an error 920


How can I disable notification for a specific gmail account during certain hours? My work and personal emails are attached to my phone. I'd like to avoid getting any notifications of work emails after hours.

If this can be done with Tasker, I can't figure out how. I can disable notifications in the gmail settings manually, but not sure how to affect this setting with Tasker.

I still want to receive notifications to my personal email
I still want to receive notifications in general
I still want my work email to sync (so I can check if I need you)

Toggling the syncing of Gmail for the account is the best option.  Turning of Gmail sync on a Google account in Android does not prevent you from fetching mail for that account via a method such as "pull to refresh" when you are viewing that account in the Gmail app.

I use Synker to integrate with Tasker, though I know there are other apps that expose Tasker control of specific sync settings on an account by account basis.

The basic outline I have is as follows:

A profile named "Work" whose conditions are a combination of a time, 9am-5pm, and a Date, Mon-Fri.  It has the same entry and exit task.
A task named "Work" that has two items: one to set the sync options of my work Google account to have Gmail sync on that is conditional on if %PACTIVE ~ *Work*, one to set the sync options of my work Google account to /not/ sync Gmail if %PACTIVE !~ *Work*

If I want to read work email when sync is not on for that account, I just open Gmail, switch to that account, and swipe down ("pull to refresh"), fetching the messages from the server.


Is there a way to edit my personal maps within Google Maps or any other application? I remember that there was an application from Google to edit my personal maps. But it stopped working from Android 2.2 on and now it's even removed from the Market.

Are there any plans of integration that functionality directly into Google Maps or is there any other application out there where I can edit my maps?

Via the layers in Goole Maps I can view my personal maps, but I didn't figure out how to edit them.

Unfortunately I couldn't find My Google Maps Editor either.  I can't read Google's future and couldn't find any indication of such a feature but Google's My Tracks does allow you to upload a map to your maps but I'm pretty sure you'll actually have to run/walk/bike/move-in-some-way over the course you want to map.

I also did a Google search for "my maps editor apk" and looks like you can still find the apk somewhere (I'll leave that to the you) but I can't say if it will work or not and you should always be careful downloading apps from unofficial sources.


vibrate notifications only when receiving emails from certain addresses? Is it possible to set vibrate notifications when receiving emails from a list of email addresses but not when receiving emails that don't come from that list? Either using the default Gmail app on a 2.3.5 Android phone or something else.

I have a bunch of labels defined, but on the Gmail App I got the following menu: Notification settings with:
 Email notifications [x]
 Labels to notify

In Labels to notify I only have:

Inbox off
Priority Inbox Zeta, Always, Notify once for new emails

But I can't add more labels to this menu...

With Gmail if you set up label, you can set different notification sound including vibration per label.

This means in Gmail.com first of all you've to create a filter to apply a label to email address you want different notification.

After that Open Gmail in your phone, go to Menu -> Settings -> Your email address -> Manage Label -> Select created label. Here set the desired notification scheme.


Do 360/3D videos in Chrome and YouTube app work on a phone without gyroscope? I'd like to buy a new phone, I am considering a Nokia 5.3. I just noticed in its specification that it doesn't have a gyroscope. I wonder if embedded 3D/360 videos in Chrome ( and such videos in YouTube app ) would work on this phone ( + Google cardboard ).

Google Cardboard appears to require a gyroscope to operate.
From: https://support.google.com/cardboard/answer/6295046?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en

Check phone requirements
Note: If you get a device incompatible message, you may not have a phone fitted with a gyroscope.

Using a gyroscope improves the orientation position of the handset so that turning your head to the left 45 degrees actually feels similar to a 45 degree turn rather than something else.
Note that if you want to view 360 degree video and are willing to deal with swiping/dragging on the screen to move around, that shouldn't require a gyroscope.
I believe there are various apps which will play 360 degree video/3D? without a gyroscope, YMMV.
If you really want to do VR/AR type behavior with your phone (in Cardboard or not) you are better off getting a phone with a gyroscope.
As ARCore is Google's AR platform, and they list supported devices here if you want to find something guaranteed to work.


How can I reduce the length and intensity of SMS notification vibrations? After upgrading my Galaxy GT-i9000 to Gingerbread, the vibration when receiving an SMS is unbelievably long and hard. Before the upgrade (2.1?), the vibration was two short vibrations. How can I customize the vibrations, or get the "normal" vibration? This long vibration is not pleasant.

P.S. The vibration intensity config is only applied for the vibration when hitting a button, not for receiving SMS.

P.S. 2: And the camera is extremly slow when taking picture..it is focusing everytime, and it takes 2-3 seconds to take a photo. Before the upgrade it took like millisecond:/

One option is to disable the notfications from the built-in messaging app (in the Messaging app, press Menu, select Settings and then scroll to the bottom and take the tick out of the Notifications box).

You can then use a 3rd party app that gives you full customization of the notification options, like SMS Popup which gives you control over the vibration duration and pattern, as well as a lot of other notification options.


How can i disable android permission manager notification? I have an android 4.4.2 device and permission manager app enabled.

I have facebook messenger installed for example and i deny it permission to read my sms or phone contacts.

It works, but keeps displaying "Messenger is denied " in the center bottom lower screen for ages. Sometimes i need to reboot my device to make it go away.

absolutely annoying

"Toasts" are implemented in an app's java programming, so that needs to be modified in some way, assuming the app doesn't give you the option to configure toasts. The following assumes you're rooted.

The easy way: Use Xposed. There are many modules available to block all toasts, block toasts for a specific app, or even customize toasts, e.g. EnhancedToast and UnToaster Xposed. Xposed supports Android 2.2(Froyo) and up, with increasing support for 5.0+(Lollipop). If your Android is bootloader locked, aka no TWRP/CWM recovery, you can see if your device can run FlashFire to install Xposed. Note: To use Xposed modules on an app, it needs to be deodexed, e.g. data apps, apps you download from the Play Store are deodexed.

The hard way: You can usually decompile an app into smali code, edit the smali code to disable toasts, and then recompile the app. Without smali modification, this process is known as deodexing. If you're interested, check out this Lollipop compatible deodexing guide for decompiling an app's java code, and this smali code editing guide to learn how to edit smali code.


Stock OS vs Custom, Proprietary Camera So i no stock manufacturers, roms have the blobs drivers for full potential of the camera.

Does this only apply for the stock camera app say from Samsung? if i download third party apps while on stock rom do they also make use of the proprietary drivers? if they don't then is the quality the same as it would be while using lineage os for example?

Appreciate all answers.

The short answer is that like custom ROMs, it depends on which phone model.

The camera driver in the ROM implements Android's standard Camera2 API, which is common to all phones. Any app can use this API to access the camera. As you've pointed out, on some phones this requires having a binary-only camera driver in the ROM: without the binary part, only some modes may be available (e.g. lower resolutions), or the camera might not function at all. But if you have the binary driver, any app gets the full functionality of the Camera2 API, which is usually the full functionality of the camera.

The answer's not quite a flat "yes" because some phones have extra features. Phone manufacturers like to add extra camera features that aren't present in Android's API (yet). This mainly applies to the flagship phones from the big names like Samsung and LG, who compete on extra features not in stock Android. These extra features are only present in the manufacturer's own camera app, and they might use a special API to communicate with the camera driver, as well as Android's API.

These extra features will only be available from the manufacturer's camera app, and usually only on the stock ROM. Third-party camera apps will still be able to use the full functionality of the Camera2 interface: they just won't have access to these added features.

Note that image quality isn't just a property of the drivers. Many camera apps (both stock and third-party) do some amount of post-processing to make the image look better. You might find that a third-party camera app produces worse images just because its image processing isn't as good as in the stock camera app. Or you might find that a third-party camera app produces better images, if it uses an algorithm or technique that the stock app doesn't use.


Repartitioning Internal Memory of Android Device How can I repartition my device such that the storage for device internal usage (i.e application storage or internal memory) can be increased in lieu of decreasing the User available memory.

Currently, I have:

Internal memory = 740 MB
User Available Space = 2.0 GB

How can I repartition to move some Phone Storage/User Available Space to Internal Memory?

I have an External SD card for Media Storage. So, I don't require 2 GB in the phone storage.

You can repartition the internal memory. In essence it can be done, but what many others have answered is basically correct. Not only is it quite difficult and risky to perform it, it also requires specialized skills which the average user may not have. There is one solution to the problem though.

The easiest way to do this is to look for a custom ROM for your phone. Many custom ROM providers recognize the issue already and have a fix for it in some way or the other.

Your phone model can provide more information if you like.


How do I get the new Android Market running on Cyanogen 2.2 HTC Magic? I'm running Cyanogen 2.2 on my HTC magic.
The Android Market is still the old version and not the one that has been discussed in the news.

http://mashable.com/2010/12/11/new-android-market-coming-soon/

My wife's Samsung Galaxy 5 runs this new version which has stock 2.1.

Does anyone know how I can get the new version running?

Thanks.

There are some flashable .zip versions floating around, but people seem to have mixed success with them. Generally speaking, installing the .apk in a traditional manner will cause FC issues.

There's a couple of threads over on the CM forums with links to zips you can try. Here's one such thread for Market v2.2.6 (the first version with the new style). You might need to do a little hunting if you want the most recent version (2.2.11, I believe).

Some people have also reported success using the latest MDPI version of gapps instead of the MDPI-Tiny version, but I'm not sure how likely that is to work.

As with most other modifications, I'd recommend making a NAND/Ti backup before you do this. I flashed a newer Market on my EVO but it caused a bootloop the first time I tried. I think I ultimately ended up clearing my data/ and cache/ partitions, then clearing my dalvik-cache, then flashing the new Market. You might not have to do something that excessive to get it to work, but it seemed to do well on my phone.


Samsung phone won't turn on A brand new Samsung phone, a 2017 A3 in this case turns off and is not turning back on.
The only workaround is to press "Power button + Volume Down Button" simultaneously for 10 seconds, but this keeps happening.

Problem

The phone is never actually turned off. It is just the screen that it is turned off. And it seems that there is no way to turn it on. BTW if you connect your device through abd you will verify that the device is indeed turned on.

Why it happens

It seems that a ""feature"" that Samsung haven't devoted any time to test it is causing this. The feature is called something like:

  Avoid accidental screen awake when the phone is in your pockets or in your bag.

When it happens

It happens when this feature is enabled, and then you leave your phone in a relatively dark room for some time ( >30mins perhaps).
Then it looks like this feature is putting the phone into a state where key presses on the power button or the home button are ignored.

Solution

Reboot the phone

To do it hold Power Button + Volumn Down for 10 seconds, as adb reboot won't be working when the phone is in this state.

Once the device boots up disable that stupid "feature"


Is it possible to get LineageOS working on Samsung Galaxy S6 T-Mobile USA (zerofltetmo, SM-G920)? LineageOS offers an official International Samsung Galaxy S6 build, which does NOT install on the T-Mobile USA S6, but there's an unofficial T-Mobile USA build that does, but after installing it just hangs on boot. (To install I used TWRP and adb sideloaded LineageOS, Stock Open gapps, SuperSU in that order)
Has anyone had success running LineageOS on the T-Mobile version of the S6?

I was able to install this cryptic NexusOS version of LineageOS by Team Nexus.

I have no idea if it's safe, or a good ROM, The github is here but it's lacking information, an issues page, or a website on it, and it only seems to be referenced in broken english blogs, and scam searches appear when searching
nexus-roms.eu on duckduckgo, and their site is down. So I would not recommend it.
It does seem to install & boot on the T-Mobile USA Samsung Galaxy S6


How can I save / get to Walmart's e-receipts from their Walmart app? Where are the files stored? The Walmart app has a section called Savings Catcher, which allows one to scan a barcode from their receipt or to submit some numbers from it, and for the app to find lower prices. Anyhow, an exact digital duplicate of one's receipt is then shown. This receipt can be accessed at anytime (as far as I can tell). One can also zoom in on the receipt to view it at what looks to be 100% zoom.

I really would like to be able to save these receipts in jpeg format. When one is looking at the receipt, there is no option for saving or sharing the receipt.

Now, I am hoping that maybe the receipt gets saved somewhere on the phone or sd card, and am assuming that if it is, it might have an odd file extension (based on previous experience with another picture app. The file would open in photo programs and also if one would change the extension to .jpg.)

I have used ES File Explorer to search for anything named Walmart, but nothing shows up. I have no idea where the files are saved?

Does anyone have any idea as to where the Walmart app's files are saved?

My Android version is 4.0.4

Not sure which version this is supported on, but on mine, there is a share button at the top of the receipt, so you can share with email and the jpeg will be attached. Note, this is on the itemized view, not the receipt image view.


Internal SD card accessible through PC even after encryption I recently bought a OnePlus Two. The first thing I did after getting the new phone was a full encryption under security settings.

But even after that, the files in my internal SD card, such as  WhatsApp media files, images and more are accessible via a PC.

How to prevent this? Am I missing something?

You can't prevent that. It is because your device is mounted to the computer via MTP. It's supposed to be visible. However, whenever you boot up, a password will be required to decrypt your device before any data can be accessed, so you need not worry. Also, MTP connections won't display any data if the device is locked. This is a security measure. In Lollipop, not even a factory reset can remove your lock.


How do I prevent apps from blocking a second screen? I used Google cast to cast my phone's screen. That worked. But all4, the Channel 4 catch-up app, wouldn't display on the second screen. A message popped up saying "all 4 doesn't work on secondary screens". How can i stop the app from detecting this? I'm rooted and xposed, s5 touchwiz lollipop

Try xPrivacy.

You might be able to limit the permissions of the all4 application you mentioned in such a way that it cannot tell if Google cast is running.

The Github page has the full options on what is available.


Can I run the same app simultaneously with two users? In Android 5.0, can the same app run simultaneously under multiple users?

Yes it should be possible with multiple user profiles.


Using Odin to flash a custom rom Nearly bricked my Samsung Epic Touch 4G. Managed to boot into Odin Mode with a USB jig. I'm back where I started now and need to re-evaluate what to do next.

The phone is rooted, won't see the SD Card or Internal anything. My only option is using Odin to get a custom ROM back on there. Can someone point me to a step by step? My last attempt at this led me to having to work with the USB jig to get another crack at it.

Thanks!

You'll want to Odin a stock (or nearly stock) ROM after a softbrick.  This guide on XDA looks pretty good and includes a pre-rooted but largely stock ROM that should work for you.  If step 4 fails, disconnect and reconnect your phone to the PC; if it still fails, reboot the phone and try again.


Paired with unknown device Galaxy S3

I noticed that my Bluetooth is turned on (I never use it and keep it off) and my phone is paired with an unknown device called "Deborah's iPhone".

My "Messages" application duplicated itself on the home screen.

Must I assume that my data was stolen?

How can I be asked to pair when my bluetooth is turned off in the first place?

No. The application on the home screen is just a shortcut and must have been created by mistake. You can unpair by clicking on the options button next to the iPhone's name. Also, iPhones don't support Bluetooth transfer with android so you needn't worry!


Stock Mail App - Outlook Sync, File As Problem My MD now has a Desire and I notice something strange happening when he syncs his outlook contacts.

Now I know from both sides (outlook, Android) , it doesn't really matter what you file someone's name as because when you search, it still appears either way. However, he is very particular so here is my problem.

When he syncs his outlook contacts to the device, on outlook they now appear as first name, last name. Even though they are set to File As Lastname, Firstname. Now if I open a contact in Outlook, flip the File As back from and to what it was, it then appears in outlook correctly (well how he wants it to).

However, next sync it will re appear as first, last... although file as is still last, first (Outlook)

Anyone have any ideas or noticed something similar?

I appreciate this is a minor issue but I would like to resolve it for him if possible.

Thanks for reading and any help appreciated.

Currently there is no way to do this on an HTC phone. The People app from HTC will automatically display names as First and Last.

However if you connect the phone to exchange, as I have mine, then all Exchange contacts show up as Last and First, including in Mail and in People. So as of right now I would say if you can get his phone on Exchange, only display contacts from Exchange, and tell him to put them all in Exchange, then it should be a workaround to the issue.


x88 Max+ Android Hide On Screen Keyboard This little box is so close to replacing my PC but it has a number of frustrating issues that I would like to fix (it's running Android 9.0).

The on screen keyboard won't go away. I have show virtual keyboard turned off in physical keyboard settings but it still appears.

The enter key enters the currently selected key on the physical keyboard instead of enter. I know how to fix this by rooting the device but I don't know how to root the device (and I'd rather not root the device if I can avoid it).

The cursor keys control the selected key on the on screen keyboard instead of the cursor position on the screen.

Selecting a suggested search term in Google Chrome with the mouse while typing in the URL/Search bar doesn't work (does nothing).

If I can fix the on screen keyboard issues this box will be good enough to replace my PC! Any help appreciated.

You can use External Keyboard Helper Pro app to do this on the T95Q, I assume on the X88 MAX Plus too (I got rid of mine as it cannot do VPN over Ethernet).


How to move a folder to another path and to move back to same tree merging its contents on Unix? On my Android phone, I have:

A cron job to move files at 1:59am from /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media to /sdcard/wppmediabkp folder before WhatsApp backup at 2:00am:

mv -f /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media /sdcard/wppmediabkp

A cron job to move files at 2:30am back (from /sdcard/wppmediabkp to /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media):

mv -f /sdcard/wppmediabkp /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media

The "cron jobs" are tasks on "Tasks!" app (scheduling them with 00 59 1 ? * * and 00 30 2 ? * *). The commands are tested in Termux app also.

Aim:

To exclude Media folder from backup, but to also restore image "link" to chats (to do not download again).

On restoration of wppmediabkp folder to /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media:

Sometimes it works well (it creates the /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media with all its contents). It happens when /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media folder does not exist. For me, it is the expected behavior.
Sometimes it creates a subfolder (/sdcard/WhatsApp/Media/wppmediabkp). It happens when /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media folder exists. For me, it is the issue - I would like to restore original folder tree, merging its contents.

I think it was reduced to a Unix issue, because I can use all Unix basic commands.

How to solve it (to get Media folder back merging its contents) using mv command?

One approach is not to move directories. Let them exist all the time, move their content back and forth:

mv -f /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media/* /sdcard/wppmediabkp/
# and later
mv -f /sdcard/wppmediabkp/* /sdcard/WhatsApp/Media/

Notes:

* will not match hidden files/directories;
with too many objects you may hit "argument list too long" error.

In case any of this is an issue, the solution should use something like find … -exec mv …. Either way move what is inside the directory, not the directory itself.


Android HTC Touch2/Mega Possible Duplicate:
  Can I install Android on my non-Android device?

Language Turkish.

Merhaba ;

Benim HTC touch 2 bir telefonum var.Çok uzun süredir araştırma yapıyorum fakat bir türlü android yükleyemedim.Android yüklemek acaba mümkün mü?Bu konuda bilgi veriseniz çok sevinirim.

Teşekkür ederim...

Google Translate:

Hello;

I have a phone in my HTC touch 2. A kind of research I'm doing for so long now, but could not load android. Is it possible to install Android wonder? Information on this subject I would be glad veriseniz.

Thank you ...

If the translation is correct, it looks like you are trying to install Android OS on a Windows Mobile phone?

There appears to be a decent guide about this here. It wildly varies by which device you have.


Google Play music won't play album in order I've made a custom album/playlist and imported it onto my SD card on my phone. However, when I got to play the playlist, not only does it break up the album by artist, it won't even play in order. Every song has a track number, but it seems to be ignoring this. How I can I get it so the album is grouped together regardless of artist AND have it play the playlist in track order?

Sort by "time". Pick an album and set it. That will change the settings when playing the songs in the database. It will re-order the songs to the way they were loaded onto the memory card. They were originally loaded with a time stamp in sequential order, with one being slightly older than the other. It appears to be ignoring the proper order. That is how I got it to work without downloading another player. Nothing worse than trying to play "The Wall" out of order!


How do I find the Mac address of a paired device? There is a Bluetooth Headphone which paired to my Android Device.

I want to know what is the Mac Address of the Headphone.

Is there any way to find the Mac Address of the paired device?

if your Bluetooth Headphone Paired with Device, you can find Mac Address with this Apps :

Bluetooth Finder

or

Bluetooth Address Finder


Can I use Android's Holo theme on versions earlier than Ice Cream Sandwich? I have recently used Ice Cream Sandwich and I really like the Holo theme. I would like to be able to use this theme for lower Android API versions (Gingerbread, Froyo, Eclair, etc). Is there a way to port this theme to older versions of Android, or any other way that I could use it?

There are Holo themes available for the T-Mobile/CyanogenMod Theme Chooser. If you have the theme chooser you just download a Holo theme from the market select it.

You can find out more about CyanogenMod (has the theme chooser built in) here.


How can I disable Facebook button on HTC ChaCha without voiding warranty? I'm interested in the HTC ChaCha but I don't like the Facebook button. I'd prefer it to link to my address book or something like that. Is it possible to do that or in the worst case disable it?

Is impossible for you to attempt to make the change withouth the device been rooted.

According to XDA Developers Thread, you need to go into your system folder located in your root, to change the keyboard layout file located here: /system/usr/keylayout/[devicename]-keypad.kl.


Flash Stock ROM (Mediatek) over Fastboot I want to flash a stock ROM for my device with MTK6572 CPU which is meant to be flashed through SP Flash tool (scatter-based ROM) but I want to flash it through Fastboot. So can I do it by flashing all the images one by one?

fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash cache cache.img
fastboot flash recovery cwm.img
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash data userdata.img
fastboot reboot

Is this method safe for my device? If yes, do I need my bootloader to be unlocked for this? And how will the rest of the images be flashed? (secro.img, ramdisk.img, ramdisk-recovery.img, EBR1, MBR, logo.bin, preloader.bin)

If your phone's bootloader is locked then you definitely need to unlock it before performing those operations or non of them will succeed (the bootloader throws an error of some sort like "FAILED (remote: Command not allowed)"

I ran this command on a phone with locked bootloader

C:\AGUSTINO_ROOT\2014-08-02.21.07.25>fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

target reported max download size of 301989888 bytes

sending 'recovery' (6144 KB)...

OKAY [  0.265s]

writing 'recovery'...

FAILED (remote: Command not allowed)

finished. total time: 0.281s

According to my experience, any partition recognized by the bootloader can be flashed using fastboot, to get list of known partition run

fastboot getvar all

This is my brief sample output:

C:\Users\kjhn>fastboot getvar all

(bootloader)    partition-size:logo: 300000

(bootloader)    partition-type:logo: raw data

(bootloader)    partition-type:userdata: ext4

(bootloader)    partition-type:cache: ext4

(bootloader)    partition-size:system: 28a00000

(bootloader)    partition-type:system: ext4

(bootloader)    partition-type:ebr1: raw data

(bootloader)    partition-type:mbr: raw data

(bootloader)    partition-type:preloader: raw data

(bootloader)    version: 0.5

all: Done!!

finished. total time: 0.031s

Note the partitions names logo, mbr, ebr1 etc..

This method is as safe as the files you are trying to flash, make sure the ROM is compatible with your device before attempting this.

I also advise you not to temper with the preloader unless you are absolutely certain as it results into unrecoverable brick


Blank Locked Samsung S5 I have been searching internet for hours.  Ran over my phone so LCD not working.
Does not appear I had debug activated on this phone.   Phone comes up locked and I can't unlock it.    Any suggestions.  Really need help as is a work phone.
I can connect ph to computer how do I bypass this so I can backup all my contracts and get my photos.

There is a software for Windows that emulates a second screen of an Android phone. Used it for a similar situation where I had a broken LCD screen  and USB debugging mode ON! I don't know if it will work for newer Android version. Just give it a try.

Download Droid@Screen from the official page.

Grab the application JAR file (droidAtScreen-xxx.jar) and double-click it.

Plug-in your Android device using the USB cable and a device frame will shortly pop-up.

Prerequisites:

Java installed
Android SDK, installed and configured.
Environment variable ANDROID_HOME (or ANDROID_SDK_HOME) pointing the the Android SDK installation directory
USB drivers for the  Android device installed


How to hard reset of a Samsung Galaxy GT-I9000 which I cannot put in recovery mode? I don't have much hope. Here is what's happening

Galaxy S GT-I9000 keeps crashing at startup :
com.sec.android.provider.logprovider crashes
and other ones android.process.acore

So I cannot reach any settings to disable some system settings like Settings/Privacy
So I cannot connect usb (it's never seen by my PC)

And a very good joke : it cannot be put in recovery mode !
http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_Series#Recovery_Mode
Does nothing

Somebody have notices some i9000 in this case :
http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/fix-3-button-combo-download-recovery-mode-in-samsung-galaxy-s-gt-i9000/
Too bad I can't do this : "Now plug the USB cable into the phone. Start a new command prompt window and navigate to the folder/directory where you have installed ADB."
As my phone is not able to make the usb work !

So is there a way to reset the phone the hard way ?
I mean by opening it and erasing the memory to revert to an empty phone fully ...

PS : I cannot tell the android installed on this phone. It's not mine. All I know is that it's pretty old and that it's a custom "Orange" ROM.

Did you try this:

Turn the power off. If your Samsung Galaxy S is frozen, pull the battery out and reinsert it
Hold the Volume Down button
Press and release the Power button
You are now presented with a menu that allows for Fastbook, Recovery, Clear Storage, and Simlock
Select Clear Storage by pressing the Volume Down button
Press and release the Power button
Now simply confirm your decision: Volume Up for YES and Volume Down for NO

(Source: KnowYourCell.Com -- the first hit on a little Google Search)

UPDATE: Alternative approaches are listed at Hard-Reset.COM, e.g.:

charge your battery fully before doing a hard reset
PRESS AND HOLD VOLUME UP + Home Button (or VOLUME UP + DOWN)
Keep pressing these 2 buttons + press Power button for 2-3 Seconds
Release only power button, but KEEP pressing Volume up + Home Buttons (or VOL UP + DOWN)

You also might check with the following question here: SGS doesn't go to download, recovery mode nor does it connect via USB after installing a battery MOD


Sharing Windows PC Internet via USB cable I cannot see any option to share My Windows PC Internet via USB cable.

How can I share PC internet to phone via USB? Please help.

what do you want to do, usb is not capable of sharing INTERNET.

If you are referring to sharing files, they you don't need usb, if you have wifi, where both your pc and phone connect, preferably a private home wifi.

to use the ftp on wifi: phone to pc, set sharing on phone, and pc will ftp. while pc to phone,  set sharing on a folder and use ftp or file explorer like es-file explorer to folder. I use this all the time to transfer photos. es if i want to post to intsagram from a digital photo(after transfer from camera to pc)


How to understand Android 5.0 internal memory usage? I have a Samsung Galaxy S5(SM-G900F) which should have 16GB eMMC as an internal storage:

Are Android OS system files stored on the "System memory" portion of this internal storage? Or is there a separate non-volatile, but writable(because phone supports OS upgrades) memory for this? Is this internal memory partitioned? What is the difference between "Used space" and "Miscellaneous files"?

Samsung simplifies the breakdown a lot more than stock Android (I'm using a Moto X 2014) but I can help you understand what each portion of your storage is used for.

Total Space: Obvious, but going to cover it any ways - this is the total amount of storage space your device provides for ALL it's storage needs. This will be broken down into the sub categories below.

System Memory: The definition of "Minimum amount of storage space required to run the system" is an over-simplification, but it's correct. This memory chunk contains the portion partitioned to hold things like the kernel, bootloader, recovery, and (Samsung-modified) Android system files. Also contains whatever modifications the manufacturer shipped with Android (in your case, all of Samsung's proprietary apps and features). This isn't some special type of memory for these files, just a separately partitioned part of your available 16GB.

Used Space: This is the part of memory dedicated to self/Google installed applications (not the pre-installed Samsung ones).

Cached Data: This is the part of memory dedicated to storing the cached data apps use to function.

Miscellaneous Files: This is essentially data stored on the device that isn't an app, an app's cached files, or Android system files. Things like music, videos, pictures, and anything else you throw onto the storage via USB or some sort of FTP ends up here. Some apps also create folders to store large amounts of non-cached data on the device, that will end up in here too. Feel free to tap on the "Miscellaneous Files" to see a basic breakdown of folder and data that fill this portion of memory.


Does Samsung Galaxy support MMS? Does Samsung Galaxy support MMS? I have got Galaxy 1.8 version mobile. MMS is not sending in it.

I am using Samsung Galaxy 3 with Android 2.1 update
MMS works in this.


Can I dismiss an upcoming alarm on standard Samsung S7? On a Samsung S7 (running 6.0.1) with standard apps, is there a way of "pre-dismissing" the next occurrence of a repeating alarm without turning the alarm off altogether?

I have a regular alarm set to wake me up in the morning. Sometimes, I'll wake shortly before the alarm is due to go off. In effect I want to say "I'm up, don't sound the alarm this morning" without turning it off completely and having to remember to turn it back on again before I go to sleep.

Note, this question "How do I dismiss just the next occurrence of a recurring alarm?" and its answer concern the stock Nexus clock app. However, I'm asking about whether this can be done using the Samsung stock app.

You can try Recurring task reminder FREE

It has more recurring reminder, filter & customization options than other apps in play store.


Accessing shared Outlook folders on my Samsung Galaxy S3 I have worked out how to access my work emails via the Microsoft Exchange Server and also access any meeting requests. However any of the calendar entries on our shared calendar cannot be accessed.

I've tried Touchdown without success as it does not support shared folders. We are an events company that needs to be kept informed in what each of us are doing (along with our rosters) so I have no use for my own personal work calendar entries.

The iPhones can do it, what is the problem with the Androids?

Currently android doesn't have native support for multiple calendars, your phone is working just fine. The Touchdown app is awful, avoid it like the plague.
Basically, the calendar, mail account and everything associated with your personal account are a single item. It may be possible to add the account that relates to the shared calendar as a second Exchange account on your Samsung and access the calendar that way.
Of course if it's a colleague's inbox that's not practical. Maybe talk to your IT about setting up a dedicated team calendar that anyone has access to?
You can definitely add a second exchange account to your phone, you could do this to access the new team calendar.
Worth a try?


Get internet access via bluetooth Possible Duplicate:
  Is Internet  tethering possible on Android phone via bluetooth or WiFi?
  Tethering Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (GT-P3110) via Nokia E71

In the era of PDA's most of them could connect to internet by pairing them with internet enabled dumbphones.

I would like to do the same with an android device however I can't seem to find ANY app that would allow me to do that. There's a few that allow you to share the android devices internet access via bluetooth but not the other way around.

Is there an app out there that would allow me to access internet via bluetooth? Is it available natively in some android version? (Device that I have is 2.3.5 and I don't have access to newer versions)

(Maybe someone would like to write one?)

What you are looking for is called reverse-tether (or "reverse tethering"), the word "reverse" explaining what your question mentions as the other way around. Reverse Tether is available via WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB -- but in most cases requires your device to be rooted.

You might want to search the playstore for "reverse tether", results are limited (currently 9 apps show up). Also follow the tag-link in the previous paragraph to find other questions. One that certainly matches your request is Is Internet tethering possible on Android phone via bluetooth or WiFi?. Also take a look at the questions mentioned in the "Related" section of this page (on the right-hand, if you're using a desktop browser).


Accessing the internal phone memory by swapping out the SIM card Is it possible to access an Android phone's internal memory by switching out the SIM card?

My Android phone, with no SD card, has been stolen but access to the phone is locked via the "graphical pin".

Will it be possible to read internal memory after changing the SIM card? I am concerned mainly with the Gmail password I have stored on there.

Gmail will ask you to login again if it detects change of SIM card.
Gmail doesn't store your credentials in internal memory unencrypted.
Phone has to be rooted to read from internal memory.
Your phone can't be unlocked without the correct graphical PIN combination.


Facebook app uses a lot of data storage while not logged in I occasionally check my mom's Android phone to see if everything's still running smoothly, just regular maintenance. Today I noticed that the Facebook app on her phone uses 33.46MB of data storage besides the application's size of 27.62MB. Plot twist: she doesn't have a Facebook account and the app on her phone has never been used. Needless to say, the amount of data the app supposedly stores here even though it's not logged in is quite alarming. Does anyone here have any idea what Facebook might be storing and/or tracking here?

I've heard from various sources that Facebook (and other companies, frankly) do track geo-locations for various purposes, the first and foremost being that they want to serve you ads that you usually see around the web. I've also seen that they really do snoop around a lot (on all of your devices, and yes, even without an account), so geo-locations are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

You might want to check your privacy settings for Facebook just to see what data is being collected. If you're tired of Facebook eating up the storage on your mom's phone, uninstalling should take care of that. Of course, if you want your mom to be out of Facebook's peering eyes, good luck, because you really can never escape Facebook trackers unless you suspend yourself from technology.

Hope this helped.


Asus TF700T Does not prompt for forgot password I've read through the many posts about being locked out of a tablet/phone, but haven't found one where the forgot password / forgot pattern option is missing.

I haven't used my Asus TF700T tablet for a couple of months and have forgotten the pattern unlock. After attempting a few times, I get the standard "you have incorrectly drawn your unlock pattern xx times". However, there are never any on-screen options for "forgot password" or "forgot pattern" or similar.

I've tried Google's device manager site: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager however, I did not set up this tablet to be remotely locked (shame, because apparently I set up my phone to use the service).

I've also gone to the Asus device tracker site: http://devicetracker.asus.com/ and entered the serial number, but the site fails with a "command failed" response. (fwiw, I verified the serial number).

TLDR;
In summary, I have tried the pattern unlock 65+ times and still do not get a forgot password or similar prompt. And the tablet is associated with a Google account and the Google play store.

Short of performing a factory reset, is there a way to force the "forgot password" prompt to login to the tablet?

After trying to recall my lock pattern a few more times, I noticed I had previously overlooked the "forgot password" text that was an inch or two below the lock pattern. The text blended in with my tablet's background and was barely visible. Chalk this one up to a clear case of operator failure.


Tegra2 device, Preparing for entering recovery mode I have a 10" Android Tablet which is based on NVIDIA Tegra2 (Ventana) chip (boot image shows something like: GO MOVIL, Conectate Sin Limites). It comes with Android 3.2 and works fine, and I would like to upgrade it to Android 4.0 ICS using the OS image available from NVIDIA.

I can press-and-hold Volume-down key while boot-up to enter fastboot mode, and it displays the following message on screen:

Preparing for entering recovery mode...

I've tried several key combinations but couldn't get into recovery mode. Could somebody please show me some hints?

I think it'is a very easy question to answer
your device don't found the recovery partition
When you flash are you leave original schema partition intact ?
NO ?
I hope you have a backup .....
AZ2012


Google music: offline listening after subscription expires? I am thinking about getting a subscription to google music after seeing so many good reviews (plus, the same subscription will allow you access to Youtube Red when it comes out! source).

I just have this doubt: if I can't renew my subscription one month, will I be able to hear those albums that I made available for offline listening? How does that work?

Thanks

Google music doesn't store the songs you save offline like if they were normal downloads, instead it saves them

  in a randomized folder structure with obfuscated file names.

So you can't just browse them with a file manager and have access to them; they are in a cache of sort. When the subscription expires, Play music provides to delete them from your phone. If you think about it, this would make the subscription system useless, resulting in a financial loss for Google. You can try, though, this app (root required) which is able to locate the files and "decrypt" them, to make them available as simple stored files. Note also that the app currently doesn't work on Marshmellow. For more information and a guide on how to use Play music exporter check this article.


can't connect my Android device to the router dwr 712 how can i make my Android IP address static so that I can enable my phone to connect to my router when I enable WI FI MAC address filter

If you're talking about your own WiFi network, a network address must be agreed upon by your router and your Android device. This is usually done via DHCP, with your router managing available IP addresses and assigning them to devices which connect to it.

Now, those addresses are usually assigned dynamically, and „time out“ when the „lease time“ configured in the router is running out and the device has not been connected within that time frame. That's done so the router doesn't run out of available IP addresses, which are (in a class C network, which is commonly used here) limited to 254.

So if you want your Android device always to use the same IP address, there are two approaches you can take – depending on what your router supports:

tell the router to „always assign the same IP to that device“
use an IP address outside the configured DHCP range and configure that as „fixed IP“ with your Android device.

The former is easier to achieve, and there's nothing you'd need to configure on the Android device for that.

For the second approach, you first need to check with your router about the DHCP range (wich might e.g. be 192.168.0.200 and higher), then pick an address outside that range but still in the same network and not already used by another device, e.g. 192.168.0.199 with the mentioned example (don't use .0 or .255, which are reserved for special use). Then configure that in your Android device, by editing the settings of your WiFi network:

Go to Settings › WiFi (where the networks are listed)
long tap the entry of your WiFi, and chose to „edit“ its settings
chose to show „advanced“ options
enter the IP address (from above calculation), gateway IP (your router's IP), name server (e.g. consult your router what it uses, or try with the router's IP again), and the network mask (with a class C network, that would be 255.255.255.0)
Save


How do I enter a new line in a cell in Google Sheets? When accessing a spreadsheet in Google Drive on a computer with a keyboard, I can enter a new line in a single cell by pressing alt+enter.

My keyboard on my Android doesn't even have an alt key.

How do I enter a new line on my Android device?

For a keyboard on my Android, I'm currently using Swype, but I am assuming, and hoping, there is some kind of general approach that is not specific to a particular keyboard.

Easiest way:  add an extra letter at the end of the line. Select that letter. Hit enter. The letter will be replaced with a new line.


What exactly is Device Memory and is it possible to see it's contents? I'm using Sony Xperia L (Non-Rooted, Stock OS) which shows me I have 1.52 GBs of Device Memory. "Apps and Media" are taking up 0.98 GB and ~240MB is remaining free. I don't understand where all that extra memory has gone to.

So what exactly is this Device Memory? I read that it's "the memory where Android installs Apps". That doesn't really answer my question because I'm trying to get a better understanding of the missing space here and I hardly have Apps installed. So does anyone know:

1) What is the location on the Internal Memory that is considered as Device Memory? I mean is it a Folder?

2) How exactly does Android go about calculating that "Apps & Media"

3) Is there any way of seeing the File/Folder contents of Device Memory?

If we go to Settings> Storage we have a section called Device Memory. Here is a screenshot from my phone.

Notice how the space breakup doesn't add up here.

After a lot of searching around and trial and error I stumbled across the answer to this.

  1) What is the location on the Internal Memory that is considered as
  Device Memory? I mean is it a Folder?

Yes. Device Memory is calculated from the Data folder present under root.

  2) How exactly does Android go about calculating that "Apps & Media"

  3) Is there any way of seeing the File/Folder contents of Device
  Memory?

The "Device Memory" includes all the contents of that /Data folder.

Apps: (apps that are actually installed on my phone),
Data: that is used by these installed apps,
Core. I'm yet to find out about this.
Dalvik Cache: Which gets created for each app that is installed. There is a particular file that is taken from each apk file installed on the phone and put here on the Dalvik Cache.
Free Space: Finally the much needed answer to where all my free space went off too. It got consumed by the way "Device Memory" is architectured. So if you install around 400MB of apps that is enough to actually fill up 1.5GB of Data folder.

Hope this was of help. Here is a screenshot for reference.


Can't see Nexus One as a USB drive when connecting to Windows 7 I've connected my N1 to my Windows 7, and I don't see it as a USB drive. I don't see any message on the phone that allows me to enable this (in the past, I used to see a notification about the phone being connected, that allowed me to enable it as a USB drive. Now I don't)

What should I do to access the files?

Under 'Settings' there should be an option 'Connect to PC'. From here you can change the connection type or get the phone to ask you each time it plugs in. (Apparently this is an HTC Sense specific setting(?) so not as relevant here). edit: an answer here has directions to the USB settings.

If it is still not working after changing the settings it may be worth trying another USB cable. Are you sure the cable is working ok? Does the phone indicate that it is charging when it is plugged in to the PC? The cable needs to be capable of data transfer (some will only supply power for charging). Also, the USB port needs to be USB 2.0, not 1.0 or 1.1

If you are sure the cable is working and the phone is still not recognised this might be a Windows problem perhaps. Try re-installing the device driver by 'uninstalling' the phone in Device Manager (see link below for details):

Info in answer from this post here


How can I set different ringtones - one for new email and one for new SMS in Nexus One? Currently I can't find the selection box anywhere in the configuration in my Nexus One to allow this; i.e. they are the same and when I'm expecting SMS from my friend, I get distracted by the emails and vice versa...

So, is it possible everyone? And if it is please show me how. Thank you!

If I go to Message - Settings I see options to choose different ringtones. Similarly if I go to  Gmail - Settings - Main account, I can see options to choose ringtones. But I am using HTC Desire.


Network Issue after flashing Cosmic ROM at Galaxy S Duos I am a Galaxy S DUOS S7562 user and I have flashed Cosmic ROM v2.5 to my phone. However, I face some connectivity problems. My phone is dual sim but now it forever activates and deactivates both sims and it has started getting on my nerves! Besides, I cannot make calls. What's going on? My dmesg output.

Did you have the required baseband and did you use CWM recovery to install the zip file?
If yes, flash the Stock ROM again and root the phone, intall CWM and install v2 zip file first and then v2.5.
I have been using Cosmic ROM v2.5 from the past one month and don't have any issues.
You seem to be having issues only because of some goof up during installation.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2503230
He has given the .bin file for the supported baseband. Flash it via odin.


What is the best way to delete all contacts on the handset? I was trying to clean up the contacts on my Droid X and part of the process (after turning off sync) was to delete all contacts on the phone.  I didn't have many, so I manually deleted each on (read: tedious).  Is there a way to bulk delete contacts on a handset?

From the home screen hit the menu button and go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications. Make sure yo are in the "All Applications" tab so you see the system apps and choose "Contact Storage" and click "Clear Data".  This will delete all your contacts without disturbing anything else.


does factory reset delete my gmail contacts, drive files, google plus photos e.t.c? I have a Note 4 and this is my first smartphone ever. So I'm illiterate about all these sync, backup, restore, reset stuff on smartphones. I setup the phone to sync all my contacts, google drive, google photos etc with my phone and it works fine. I even setup remote lock, locate my phone thing online. Now if I loose my phone or sell/give it to somebody else, I need to make sure I'll erase everything on my phone but keep all my data on gmail contacts, drive, photos untouched. I'm not using SD card.

If I do factory reset

Do my gmail contacts, files in my drive, photos will be erased too or not?
Do I need to change my google password or my other accounts passwords after factory reset?
Wipe my device on findmymobile.samsung.com does it erase my online contacts, files in drive and photos?

Any data that is synced to your google account is safe. Factory Reset will only wipe data that is stored locally on your phone. Resetting your password won't hurt, but it's probably not necessary, especially if you use multifactor authentication.

Update

Ars Technica is reporting on a study that shows some information on some devices may remain after a factory reset. This could potentially include login credentials. For extra protection, it is recommended that you encrypt your device with a very secure password (more than 11 characters) prior to doing a factory reset. This will make recovery of that data less likely. I would add that many services allow you to revoke access from individual devices. For instance, devices may be removed from Google by going to security.google.com/settings/security/activity, selecting your old device and clicking remove.


adb install upload location/cache In such cases when performing adb install fails, where does the uploaded APK end up and does it get removed automatically?

I'm trying to workout if there is a cache somewhere that I should be removing after successful/failed installs to save space (without uninstalling the actual app)?

Cleanup should be handled by the operating system.

Logically any temp files generated during installation or a failed install will be reclaimed at some point.

If you are checking the app size in settings: from an end-user perspective one reason why your app is bigger than just the APK is due to Ahead-Of-Time Compilation as well as any resources unpacked from the compressed APK file.

See: Discrepancy between sizes of apps listed in Play Store vs. actual installed app size for more details.


I logged into one of my freinds phone with my gmail and logged out this afternoon. Still it is syncs all my contact list on gmail though I logged out of my gmail from her her phone. Please let me know how can I fix it. I want to delete the unwanted ids from her phone. It would be really time consuming job if I do this manually, delete one by one. Is there any better way for this?

Although you've signed out you most likely still need to unsync. What you can do is go to the apps where your information was synced in this case it's the contacts I'd assume, go to accounts and unsync from any gmail account then. In some Android systems this can be done through settings and not the contacts app.


How can you find which carrier a Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300) is locked to? I bought a S3 and it came locked to an unknown carrier. All the unlock services require the information of which carrier the phone is locked to give me an unlock code. So, how can I find that out?

Depending on where you are in the world, and which carrier you're with, your phone will have a unique model.
You can find your phone's model number by going to Settings > About device and it'll be around the middle of the page.

North American models

Carrier Name                Model Identifier

AT&T (US)                   SGH-I747
Bell Mobility (CAN)         SGH-I747
Moblicity (CAN)             SGH-T999
Rogers Wireless (CAN)       SGH-I747
SaskTel (CAN)               SGH-I747
Sprint (US)                 SPH-L710
T-Mobile (US)               SGH-T999
Telus Mobility (CAN)        SGH-I747
U.S. Cellular (US)          SCH-R530
Verizon (US)                SGH-I535
Videotron (CAN)             SGH-T999
Wind Mobile (CAN)           SGH-T999


Reinstalling Windows Phone to Android Is it possible to change phone OS from Windows Phone to Android?

All my research tells me mainly **No**. There are ways of doing this on older Windows Mobile Phones, and on full-fat x86 Windows tablets (not 'RT'), but there seem to be no ways of doing so on Windows 7/8 phones for levels early-adopter or higher. The reason for the unusual wording of the previous sentence is that I am almost positive that this is doable, but would require some serious, pioneer-level hardware/software chops, as very few people have a motivation to make this work.

For Google and Microsoft, the conflict is obvious. Each would rather you buy a phone from their partners, and then use their services. Android phone geeks would likely consider it not worth the effort, as they would have to illegally hack the Windows phone to figure it out (their internal bits are proprietary), and Android devices of almost any category can now be had for less than $200. Windows phone geeks face the proprietary thing, plus they would rather you use Windows Phone OS.

The last time I saw a real effort to port Android to a device less popular than IOS and Windows Desktop was the HP Touchpad running WebOS. This was a 10' tablet selling for $99 in a fire sale, when most/all other tablets cost $400+. So there was a real value motive involved.

If your phone is "Windows Mobile", (read: several years old), there likely are ways of installing older versions of Android on it. But most of them are device-specific, so I would need to know more to help you out.

Bottom line: probably not worth the effort, even on the outside chance that I could send you a list of instructions that a non-professional could understand and carry out.


android tablet locked after too many unlocking pattern attempts After too many unlocking pattern attempts, my android tablet have locked me out..

How do i fix this? Is there a manually direction on how to unlock my tablet?

Try resetting the tablet by using reset button, usually this button is not very visible and would need a pointed object to press it, check manual to find location.


How to find files related to a process I was using adb shell to have a peek at what's going on a Sony Xperia Z phone. I've noticed a few services (e.g. com.sonymobile.socialengine.plugins, com.google.android.youtube, etc.).

I'd like to know more about, like where would such a service live and what files it uses.

So far I've using find or other typical linux commands, but the phone isn't rooted so I'm a bit stuck.

Is there a way to do that ? If so, how ? If not, what are my options ?

Applications normally store their data in /data/data/com.foo.bar but you won't have access to that via adb on an unrooted device, by design.  I don't think there's a way around that without rooting the phone.


Jelly Bean OTA fails on Galaxy Nexus, how to fix? The company I am working for has hundreds of Galaxy Nexus handsets which are used as the standard operating platform of a company specific app. The app is not important.

We have found that about 70% of the devices fail to install the standard OTA Jelly Beans update. We are running completely stock OS (4.0.4 ICS) and the devices are not rooted.

My questions are:

Why does the OTA fail for completely standard builds? Factory reset makes no difference.
How can I get some idea as to why the OTA fails?
Where does Google provide support for this situation?
Can I disable the OTA updates? We are getting very frustrated with the regular interruptions to normal service when the OTA notification pops up no matter what the user is doing.
Is there a Google web site that describes how to do the OS update manually? Perhaps we can manually handle the hundreds of handsets, costing us thousands of dollars in labour costs?

I have reported this to the code.google.com Android issues list, no response from that.

I tried to post a notice on Android Developers but the moderation process there seems to take four or more days, perhaps never.

This must be happening tothousands of non-developer users of the Galaxy Nexus, they can not be expected to hack their way around it. Where is the Google fix (or does Google simply not care?).

Try the old trick of doing this, from ICS, tap on Settings > Apps, tap on the tab called 'All', look for 'Google Services Framework', then tap on 'Clear Data', you may need to do this a few times and restart the handset.

This is known to work with the Galaxy Nexus line of handsets.


Lock screen shown when notification selected I am starting to get some strange behaviour with my Nexus 4 running the latest JB os. I get a notification such as an email or sms, so I unlock the screen before dragging the notification bar down and selecting it. Upon selecting the notification the lock screen pops back up asking me for my pin before sending me to the relevant app.

Any ideas?

If you have any custom lock screens, un-install them. This will make the annoying behaviour stop. At least it did for me. There was some funky systems settings between the lock screen app and next launcher that you get prompted for. This made the default lock screen come up (not the one I was trying to use).

To recap, this happened with the NeXt launcher (very good, btw), Go Lock Screen and stock android 4.1.1 unrooted on the Samusung Galaxy Note II (Rogers - like AT&T).

Hopefully this helps someone pin down the real reason this happens.


Launcher without home screen? Is there a launcher software for my Android device (in this case Galaxy S2) that doesn't have a home screen, but only the App drawer?

If I can give example it would be an iOS; you unlock and you are instantly on applications. The reason for this is I don't really use widgets at all, and I don't see the point in having a home screen only for apps shortcuts if I would have only menu (app draw).

Espier Launcher might be the closest thing you can get to an "iOS experience".

I gave it a test run, it does not have an app drawer...  It's pretty much exactly like iOS.

Note: Espier Launcher is no longer available in Play Store since 2013.


PDF reader and trusted identities Acrobat Reader has a nice feature "manage trusted identities" that allows to import CA certificates to validate the signature on a document.
Is there an option to define trusted identities in the Android version of the reader (or in any other free pdf reader for android)?

[Disclosure: I work for CoSign]

I just viewed a digitally signed PDF in Adobe Reader for Android version 10.6.0.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that the app will verify the digital signature. It does display the graphical representation of the signature, but there is no Signature Panel and no message about the signature's verification status.

Hopefully they'll add that feature to the mobile version someday.

Please submit your own answer to your question if you find any Android software that will verify a digital signature.

In the meanwhile, you could roll your own solution if you're willing to write an app. See the Signature API guide at www.arx.com/api for info.

Or you could use CoSign Web App, Box or Google Drive. All of those apps work in mobile and include integration with CoSign. By opening the doc in CoSign, you'd see the doc and its signature verification status. See screen shot below.


How to make packages from f-droid to be treated as from a "known source" (if I have root)? I usually get packages from http://f-droid.org/ repository through their package browser (because then I have a guarantee that I use free (= libre) software); and they are signed with their key.

I use CyanogenMod 10; and I have root access.

I don't like allowing packages from "unknown sources" for this.

Can I set up the system so that f-droid counts as a known source, and packages from all other unknown sources are not allowed to be installed by default as before.

Perhaps, something can be patches in the CyanogenMod distro to add f-droid's key as a key for a "known source" of packages.

Almost every F-Droid app is signed with a different key, though all keys are in the same key store. In order for the switch to be bypassed, F-Droid client would have to be installed as a system app and made to work safely as such. Some code has been supplied for this to work, but it hasn't been integrated yet.