Facebook for Android app no longer displays og:image of website served via home computer's IP I've followed the advice given in this post. I have updated the Facebook cache, and shared a website on Facebook on my Facebook timeline (shared only with me for testing purposes) via a web browser. When I do this, the image in the sharer looks fine, and when I go to my Facebook page I can see the shared link details as well as its corresponding image, which is a 1200x630 PNG (the text is displayed immediately but the image takes about 6 seconds to load, despite the fact that I thought such image would have been stored in the FB cache).

The story is different on my Facebook for Android app. I had previously shared a website whose site image is a 1200x630 PNG, and I can still see that image on my FB Timeline despite the fact that it's been removed from my site a few days ago and replaced with another image. The problem is that the newer og:image I've updated on my website, which is the same size and format as the older one it replaces, displays fine on my mobile phone's web browser and on my PC's web browser, but does not show up in my Facebook app for Android, and a blank ligh-gray rectangule with the shared og:title and my home computer's IP but no og:image shows up in the shared post. A whole day has gone past since I've updated the FB cache, and I've tried the Facebook Debugger Tool once again, but the image just won't show.

How do I fix this?

I've tried installing the Facebook app on an a friend's Android phone and the images display fine there, despite the Android app on my phone, which is even faster, still doesn't display the image. This means the problem is a caching problem (e.g. I previously shared from my site while it had a bug, and the cached information is not being updated).

So, since I couldn't find a place where I could delete the Facebook for Android app's cache, I deleted the Facebook for Android application and all its data, and reinstalled it.

That fixed the problem.


How to write android shell history to file Using Terminal Emulator for Android, is there a way to enable a persistent command history?

So far, I've tried the following:

initial command of export HISTFILE=$HOME/.mksh_history
user mksh profile /data/data/jackpal.androidterm/app_HOME/.mkshrc containing export HISTFILE=$HOME/.mksh_history
system mksh profile /system/etc/mkshrc containing export HISTFILE=/data/data/jackpal.androidterm/app_HOME/.mksh_history (though preferably the solution does not involve writing to /system)

I'm able to get other Android shells (ash and bash) to write histories into app_HOME without issue. I'm also able to get mksh to write HISTFILE on Linux without issue.

mksh developer here.

We disabled persistent history for mksh on Android, in order to not tax the flash memory with too many write requests.

You can re-enable it in a custom ROM by setting -DHAVE_PERSISTENT_HISTORY=1 in LOCAL_CFLAGS in Android.mk. You can also recompile mksh like that and copy that onto your ROM, if it’s rooted and the base OS version is the same.

Furthermore, you can copy any statically-linked binary for the same architecture on the phone and use that. The mksh-static binaries in the Debian package, however, also exclude persistent history.

If you really think this feature is worthwhile, persuade Google to enable it; for that, they need to edit mkmf.sh and remove the following lines…

# even the idea of persistent history on a phone is funny
HAVE_PERSISTENT_HISTORY=0; export HAVE_PERSISTENT_HISTORY

… then rebuild Android.mk from it (which they do for every new version anyway).

Oh, and you could ask the Terminal Emulator for Android developer to bundle a version of mksh with history enabled. This is probably no bad idea anyway, as it’ll be newer than what you get in the stock ROMs, and it won’t overwrite the system shell /system/bin/sh, but be available to CLI users.

That all still won’t enable persistent history by default (I’m strictly opposed to it, as it’s a surveillance feature), but enables users to set $HISTFILE themselves to enable it.


Where map applications get live traffic data? Nowadays, there are a lot of traffic applications that help us to choose the better path to being arrived at the destination.
Therefore, it's the common question for people, "How does it work?"

I need some professional information about it. Please tell me in deep detail.
Any help would be appreciated.

UPDATE:
I don't mean "How does Google know where I am?" or something like that which asked in THIS link.

Look at this picture and you'll understand my objective.

I can't go into 'deep detail' about the exact mechanics as I simply don't know them.

Google own the 'social' navigation app Waze.
Waze allows you to report traffic accidents and roadworks and such so that other users can be made aware of them before they get to the affected area and, hopefully, adjust their route accordingly.

One of the permissions you give Waze in exchange for this free service is the permission to track your location.

Waze and Google then use this information to calculate your speed.

Obviously live traffic mapping wouldn't work very well if there was only one person using the app.
Thankfully many people use Waze every day and Waze and Google use the data from all  users to accurately map out traffic jams and calculate average speeds and journey times.

I can't say for all places but, in my local area I know the local radio station help to report traffic accidents and roadworks on Waze and also use Waze for their traffic updates.

For a brief explanation on Waze specifically you can read this page https://support.google.com/waze/answer/6078702?hl=en


Is NTFS file system supported on Huawei u8160? I have a Huawei u8160 running Cyanogenmod 7.2 .

I have a 500GB portable hard drive which is file system is NTFS , I connected the hard drive using OTG the phone didn't recognize it at all.

So I was wondering if my Android system supports NTFS?

and if it doesn't how can I make it supported?

EDIT:

I've formatted a flash drive to NTFS ,the phone detected it but it couldn't mount it,how can I mount NTFS file system on my phone?

I haven't seen any Android system supporting NTFS out-of-the-box. Could be some CustomROMs do, or there are some "root mods". So without root, it might get hard (though there might be some UserSpace mods as well, technically spoken).

If your device is rooted, you could take a look at NTFS Mounter, which might or might not support your Huawai (take care to have a backup at hand anyway until you can be sure everything works as expected).

Moreover, there was an article at XDA-Developers in June on Full NTFS Read/Write Support for Android you might want to read: According to the OP, he compiled a generic NTFS-3G driver for Android that should work on all ARM devices with a fuse.ko module. As it involves a kernel module to be loaded, it again requires root. And also again: It might or might not work on your device, take care for backups.

A third source is Paragon's NTFS & HFS+ for Android (also available at Google Play). Paragon is quite well-known with disk utilities on Windows, so I'd trust them to get the NTFS part right. But as you might have guessed: This tool requires root as well, plus the above mentioned fuse module.

If you need more details, try the Google Search for "android ntfs" where I got above results from, all on page 1 ;)


My phone is making weird music when I am not touching it My Moto G play just stared to do weird stuff, it started to play a really creepy music that I didn't even have on my phone. Google play music an Spotify (which are the two apps that I use for music) are not open. I never download a hacked app and my phone have not been rooted And I never been on suspicious websites. Can I solve the problem without reseting all the phone?

Put your phone in Safe Mode and see if you are still hearing that music. If it stops, that means a user installed app is running in background. Now, depending on the Android version you are running, you can check for running apps in Settings> apps> Developer Settings> Running Apps and try to stop all the apps from running and see which one was playing the music.

(If you don't see developer settings goto Settings> About and tap 7 times on the build number)


Google play services won't run unless you update Google play services I am constantly getting a notification about every 1 or 5 minutes since I had updated the Google Play Services app. It's a very strange type of notification. It says "Google Play Services won't run unless you update Google Play Services". See the screenshot below :

What is the cause of this problem and how to fix it ?

I have solved the problem myself, like this :
Previously, I had updated Google Play Services from an APK file. So, this time, instead of updating Google Play Services from an APK file, I had updated it from the Play Store, and the notification went away.
So, for some reason, updating the app from an APK file was causing the problem.


Is it possible to recover deleted WhatsApp messages on Android? I have obtained a copy of the current version of the database of the WhatsApp instance running on my phone. I can see that deleted messages do not show up, and that there are missing IDs corresponding to those messages.

I have not checked, but I assume that the crypt12 backup files on sdcard0 do not contain these messages either. These backups are generated daily.

I have seen plenty of apps that claim to undelete WhatsApp messages. I can understand how a message that is not part of the current database version can be recovered if it is present on one of the backups.

However, is it reasonable to expect these apps to recover messages that have been removed so quickly that they have not been backed up?

Does Android allow some sort of low level hardware access to try and find data that has been marked as deleted, just like data recovery tools such as testdisk?

If you've saved the conversations then I think that they can be found saved within the WhatsApp directory in phone storage, this can be accessed using the file explorer.


Problems with changing the default country in Google Play Store I need help regarding changing my country on the Google Play Store. I tried everything from hard resetting my phone to changing all the details in the settings but it didn't work. I changed all my Google Wallet details to the US address, even added a US-based payment method, set the US address and payment method as default, then I tried clearing the cache, purchasing an app using the new payment method. I even did another hard reset, but unfortunately for me, nothing has worked so far.

I would be really grateful if you guys could offer me some help regarding this problem.

Please don't redirect me here: How do I change the Google Play country?

I tried that already but doesn't work for me.

Unfortunately I also can't root my device (Xperia Z Ultra) since root is not yet available for it and I am using a Mac.

unfortunately you can't do it in google play.but can login to your google account, and there you click on edit next to your email id and here you can see the option to edit information in the country field. Now you can change your country whatever you want.
but if this won't help you and want to access the playstore apps that have a country restriction, you can use apps like Hideman hideman VPN playstore link  to access play store apps via their servers at USA and you can actually download them.


How to stop "Cell Info Display" in HTC Desire X Duos this question is with regards to HTC Desire X dual Sim. I have this device and since the day I purchased this device I am suffering a lot with the CID massages, in a minute I am getting 10-15 messages, and I am not able to turn that off. So please suggest me how to turn the CID massages off.

Put the SIM in another HTC mobile like Wildfire and go to settings > call > cell broadcast > uncheck it and delete any subscribed channels like 50.


Google Reader is "de-syncing" I've noticed that for the last couple of days any time I open or refresh the Google Reader app (the official one from Google) it marks the last 200+ items that are in my feed as Unread (which it then syncs out to my account! So viewing them online shows the same unread count), and seemingly refuses to sync out which articles I have read (though it does seem to sync starred articles correctly.) I've made sure that syncing is turned on, but this doesn't seem to affect it one way or another. Any idea's for how to fix this behavior? Anyone else seeing it too?

Beyond that, I'd be open to suggestions for an alternate reader app. My wishlist is for one that allows me to easily star an article from the list, only shows me unread articles unless otherwise requested (sorry, Pulse) and preferably has a widget that notifies me when there are unread items.

Try clearing the data and cache for the app (Settings -> Applications -> Manage apllications) and then syncing. Hopefully it will work after that.


Can't use mobile data on non-default sim, even if inactive when the second sim is open call I'm using OnePlus 7T with dual sim.
Sim #1 is my default sim, and Sim #2 is a data sim which I'm using only for mobile data.
Obviously, I've defined Sim #1 to be the default sim for calls and sms, and Sim #2 to be the default sim for data.
When I'm in an active call on Sim #1, Sim #2 is automatically blocked.
However, instead of using Sim #1 for data, the phone is simply not getting any mobile data at all.
Any ideas on tackling this problem? Thanks.

It all depend on your network strength and ability to handle voice + data.
Like 4G VoLTE has no issue about this. It can handle voice and mobile data simultaneously.
If you have other network, then make sure in your area network strength is high and your sim provider can handle both voice and data simultaneously.
Also mobile hardware and android os has features to handle voice + data.


How to prevent play store from detecting VPN? I live in China so in order for me access play store I must use a VPN. Play store however, has disabled me from accessing and downloading updates via VPN.

I can activate (after each time I upgrade the system) play store by not being in China or setting up a VPN on a router and then connect my phone to the router. Either way is a bit annoying.

Then when I need to download updates or a new app, I must first navigate to a specific page, tap update or install, and then switch off the VPN for play store to start downloading and then quickly switch on the VPN before the download fails. This is quite annoying too.

Is there a way via some root trick that I can just disable play store from knowing I am using a VPN?

I am on Android-10 and play store 18, some older devices don't have this problem, btw.

One of the most successful methods I use (which you can also use in this case) to bypass VPN detection is using an anonymous or elite proxy.
To implement the proxy on a per-app basis you can use ProxyDroid or any similar application.
After connecting the VPN simply grab an elite/anonymous proxy from paid or free sites like this one: hidemy.name.
Open ProxyDroid and input the elite proxy and filter to use with Google Play (or other apps if desired).
Connect and download.


"Insufficient storage - The device does not have enough space to download…" error only when downloading a language pack in Swiftkey I'm always getting this error message when trying to download another language pack in SwiftKey:

  Insufficient storage - The device does not have enough space to
  download [language]. Consider deleting apps or content that you no
  longer need and try again. [Screenshot 1]

However, I have 3.33 GB of available space in internal storage [Screenshot 2] and 3.68 GB in the SD card [Screenshot 3]. This error never occurs in any other app, even those installed after SwiftKey. And it only happens when installing another language pack within SwiftKey. It does not happen when reinstalling SwiftKey or when changing the theme in SwiftKey. I've already tried:

Uninstalling even more apps
Moving apps to SD card (for those apps that allow moving to SD card)
Clearing the cache and data of SwiftKey and retrying the language pack download
Uninstalling and reinstalling SwiftKey (also tried clearing cache and data before uninstalling)
Running the SD Maid app's AppControl and CorpseFinder cleaning modes after uninstalling
Searching for files with 'SwiftKey' in their names in SD Maid to ensure that no SwiftKey files are left behind after uninstalling SwiftKey. Also tried searching with the Amaze file manager app (root mode). No files are found in both searching methods.
Used the Delete old messages app to delete many of my old messages

Solutions suggested by answers in other related posts:

Languages wont download [SwiftKey forums]

Tapped on 'Update languages'' in the language download menu and after that tried downloading the language pack again
Attempted deleting the 'languagePacks.json' file at
/sdcard/Android/data/com.touchtype.swiftkey/files/. However, there is no 'languagePacks.json' file under the 'files' directory.

Why am I constantly running out of space on my Galaxy S2?

Dialling *#9900# to attempt to delete dumpstate/logcat but I'm getting a "Connection problem or invalid MMI code" error message
Deleting contents of /data/logs but there is no 'logs' folder under 'data'. There is a 'log' (no 's') folder, though, and I've deleted all of it contents.

Install/Update Apps gives “Insufficient Storage Available” error, although I already cleared the cache and other data

Deleting contents of /data/app-lib/APP-PATH [that has this error]/lib while SwiftKey is installed, however the 'lib' folder does not exist.
Deleting /data/app-lib/APP-PATH [that has this error]
Deleting /data/app-lib/APP-PATH after uninstalling, however this path does not exist for SwiftKey after it has been uninstalled (it seems that an uninstall clears it properly)

Titanium Backup “insufficient free storage space” error

Unticked 'Mount namespace separation' setting in SuperSU

How to empty (clear) the logcat buffer in Android

Tried the adb logcat -c command

I've restarted the phone after doing the above-mentioned attempts, but they haven't fixed the issue. The error message still appears when I attempt to download another language.

Is there anything else I could try to resolve the issue?

Details:
Device: Huawei Honor 3C H30-U10
Android version: 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
The device is rooted. Superuser management app: SuperSU.

Turns out this was a bug with SwiftKey and was fixed in version 6.3.6:

  Fixed: ‘Insufficient storage’ error message will not appear when downloading languages

Before that version, I did a workaround by restoring a backup of SwiftKey's data using Titanium Backup (requires root) from another device with SwiftKey and the language pack already downloaded and installed. This will however, keep the settings and logged-in user data of the source device, so you'll to log-out the existing user and edit the settings after you have restored the SwiftKey data.


To encrypt or install security app like Prey? I have just bought an Android tablet and would like advice as to whether I should encrypt it or install some security app like Prey.

If I encrypt it, then if it is stolen the thief won't be able to access it and so could just reset it to factory settings. In this case my data would be secure but I'd have no hope of getting the tablet back. On the other, if I don't encrypt it then the thief might not factory reset the tablet and so an installed security app like Prey could be used to track the tablet and there would be some hope of getting the tablet back at the risk of perhaps exposing my data.

Are these my only two choices or is there something else that can be done to secure data AND have some hope of retreiving the tablet?

The Cerberus app allows you to remotely track and wipe your Android device, as well as a lot more.

If you have root, you can install it as a system app, and it will survive a wipe - which is really handy, it can also be hidden from the app drawer.

I believe that this app will be the most use to you.

Please not that I am not affiliated with Cerberus at all, and am just a customer.


How to find local IP when connected to VPN? I have connected an android device to a VPN using the native Android VPN client feature. I need to know the IP the device has been assigned on the VPN subnet, but I can't find it on any Android menu nor with any tool.

Android's VPN uses TUN interface on OSI Layer 3. So you can find what IP is assigned to that interface using Android's built-in command ip. From any terminal app or adb shell:

~$ ip addr | awk '/inet.*tun/ {print $2}'


I can't retrieve my contacts from Google I can't retrieve my contacts from Google I back them up with my old phone I've got a new phone and it won't give them to me

Clear app data of Contacts, restart. If that doesn't work, remove Google account from phone, clear data of Google Play Services, restart, sign in.


Download stuck in Gmail I had started downloading a attached file from GMail app, suddenly it hang. When it resumed, notification bar was showing download process but it was not being downloaded in the app. i retried and downloaded it. Its been 3 days but notification bar still shows the file is being downloaded. I have tried switching off the phone but doesn't work. Can anyone tell me what I should do. Thanks for the help.

You might need to clear the cache of the Download Manager. Go into:

Settings -> Apps -> All (tab) -> Download Manager

Here tap Clear cache and for good measure Clear data


Where is this Twitter App hiding? I changed my twitter password a while ago, and periodically, when my phone has been off or totally offline, I'll get an alert: "Twitter sign in failed" but the Icon looks like a twitter icon, not Seesmic or Tweetdeck, the two apps I use. I'm assuming the problem from the app perspective is that my password isn't working. From my perspective, the problem is that I can't even figure out what app is sending these prompts. Seesmic and Tweetdeck have my new password, and I don't see a "Twitter" app in my applications anywhere.

How do I even begin to figure out where this alert is coming from?

It's probably the Social Networking Service (SNS) or a similar application, rather than a Twitter-specific app.  I have this service on my Samsung phone and there's a widget that can display social networking posts on the home screen.  You can manage it via Settings -> Accounts and sync, as Al said.


Baby likes to play with the mobile screen while watching cartoons; how to disable touch? Device: Sony Xperia Z Ultra

Whenever baby is watching cartoons he likes to pick up the phone and his touch then stops the video or if he slides, it changes the app. How can I disable touch screen while the video is playing so even if he is playing with the screen the video keeps on going and nothing happens?

P.S: He probably thinks I have to burst these guys too, just like he does on bubble burst type games. He is 8 months.

You can use MX Player (adware or pro version), which has a "Kids lock" feature under
Settings > Player > Controls > Lock mode.

P.S. you should not give your phone to 8 months old.


How can i restore my S8+ to an older back-up? ok i have a samsung s8+, just switched from iphone. ive only had the phone a short time but needless to say it has backed up to both google and samsung accounts at least a few times if not more. i know how to restore from the most recent backup on both but i would actually like to restore from an older backup, even preview them if possible. any way I can do this ??

It's my understanding that a new Back Up overstrikes the previous one. So you can only restore the latest backup.


Unsafe certificate protection in Android? Maybe I'm wrong. If so, please let me know.

Here is my question. I've followed the instructions here and installed my personal certificate stored in a pfx file (PKCS#12) in my Google Nexus (ICS 4.0.4). A little problem here is that it is not listed in "User" tab in "Credentials". It works anyway.

But the big problem IMHO, is the way Android protects your certificates by default. It only requests the user to set a pattern, PIN, or password to unlock the screen. I'm missing a password-protected access to my credentials like IE does in Windows for instance every time your certificate is requested by a site.

Is there a method to enhance security of your certificates in ICS?

Thank you

Not sure if it helps any, but have you seen CACertMan (also on GitHub) yet?


How can I clone an adopted SD card? I adopted an SD card as internal memory and one day it just suddenly stopped working.
With tremendous help from the member @alecxs I was able to make an img copy of it and browse the files in it. Here is some of the basics of how that was done.
I'm not sure why it failed on the phone since if it was a physical problem with the SD card then shouldn't it NOT have been possible to read or decrypt it?
In any case, I have another (new) SD card and I would like to clone the old one on it so that I can effectively start using it as if it was the old one...basically everything to be as it was pre-SD card failure.
Is there a way to do that? How?
I'm able to see my photos which is a HUGE relief but my concern now is the app data that is un-viewable unless it's put back in the phone and opened with it's app.

Try the following

first copy sd.img to new MicroSD Card (it will finish unsucessful "error writing, not enough space")

create another sd2.img from new MicroSD Card (the one which ended unsucessful, we just need raw sd2.img with correct size)

run kpartx to map sd.img into /dev/mapper/loop1p1, /dev/mapper/loop1p2 and sd2.img into /dev/mapper/loop2p1, /dev/mapper/loop2p2 (may vary)

create two new block devices for /dev/mapper/loop1p2 and /dev/mapper/loop2p2 (see link in your question)

now lets assume /dev/mapper/loop1p2 is /dev/mapper/crypt1 (= sd.img) and /dev/mapper/loop2p2 is /dev/mapper/crypt2 (= sd2.img)

crypt1 should be mountable as ext4 partition to any mount point (that's your old MicroSD Card)

crypt2 is probably broken because of less size and must be formatted with mke2fs
mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/mapper/crypt2

now crypt2 should be mountable as ext4 too, mount to another mount point

next, copy all files from one mount point to another. make sure you preserve secontext, xattrs, uid and file permissions. this can be done with busybox cp -ac or tar --selinux --xattrs -p

i am on mobile and busy today, will improve that answer later. btw i am not sure that's how it works at all (the dmsetup part)
good luck


Random apps keep installing on the phone Here is a screenshot of these apps. I never downloaded them:

Screenshot (click image for larger variant)

Many times these have been deleted by me but they are download as well as installed by themselves again and again. What should I do? Also, these apps I never installed all at once rather one by one.

There are several ways of trying to treat this.

Download some antivirus apps and see if they can find the app responsible. Unfortunately, this is not likely to be successful.
Run a factory reset. If the malware has not embedded itself into the operating system, a factory reset will delete whatever is causing this.
Flash the stock operating system. Almost all cases of viruses inside an Android device end up having to use this solution. By reflashing the stock operating system (essentially reinstalling Android), there is absolutely no chance the virus will survive the process. The stock ROM can be found  on the manufacturer website for almost all phones. Guides for how to flash ROMS exist for almost every popular phone ever produced. This is not for the faint of heart or those who are not good with computers. If this is the case, try to contact a friend who is. If the phone is still under warranty, this process will void it. Therefore, if I is under warranty, try to contact the manufacturer for repair first.

Good luck!


Firewall software not working as expected on Samsung Galaxy S5 [G900H] I bought a Samsung Galaxy S5 [G900H] and I installed custom rom from here to get rid of most unwanted applications and having a pure and de-bloated android on my smartphone.

After installing this rom it's working perfect except that when I install (root)firewall applications like DroidWall they do not work as expected and if I create an allow rule for an application, application could not be connected even when I set it to be allowed to use wireless/mobile data. But if select allow rule for all rooted applictaions it works fine but its useless this way.

I also tried to use unroot firewall but it is giving this error message "The VPN is not supported by your device."

I also checked blacklist/white list mode and mode is set to whitelist only.

Does any expert know what problem should be and is it required for me to install other roms to cross over this problem?

Update:

Now I restored my android to its official stock version (I had created a full backup before installing a new custom rom) and tested both DroidWall and AFWall+ and the problem still persists. Seems this problem is a bug coming from Samsungs TouchWiz.

I finally solved this problem in the case of very strange and share my experience here; maybe useful for someone with same or similar problem:

After a few days struggling with this, Using AFWall+ enabled on my restored official stock android, I tried to change Wifi settings (got to wifi->advanced->[disabled most of Samsung/Google features being there] plus using manual IP[192.168.1.129] and DNS[192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.2]) and finally I found out the problem has gone away! So after that I tried to test which option was causing the problem (trying to remember restore my previous choices) to restate the problem but the problem did not restate and everything is well till now.


How to adjust brightness alternatively? What if system brightness control does not work ?

How to adjust brightness of android phone alternatively ?

I am on HTC One X. I just noticed my phone's system brightness control is not working as I recently got my phone repaired. My phone's display IC has been changed as display was not working as my phone got wet.

I doubt the one who repaired a phone changed display IC of other phone, that's why the brightness control is not working.

So, is there any alternative way to control the brightness in android phone ?

Whatever app so far I have installed regarding brightness control seems to do the same thing what system brightness control does. So, nothing worked for me.

You may want to use the Screen Filter app by haxor industry. I use it primarily for keeping my screen dark at night for reading, but it may be a suitable temporary solution in your situation.


Was unable to install any app - how to find out what was blocking the installs? I was unable to update/install any apps earlier today, using either Play Store, F-Droid, or Play Store in my work partition, even though I had over 500MB free on my phone (Pixel XL running Android 9.0).

I have 2 theories about why this happened, and I would like to find out more low-level information to try to figure out definitively why it happened. I think it's happened before, as well.

Theory 1 is that the flash memory on the device is being wear-leveled, and some of it has become unusable because it has been written to too many times and is "dead", but for some reason Android, or maybe the underlying Linux kernel, is still reporting the unusable blocks as "free space". So while it looked like I had 500MB free, I really had less.

Theory 2 is that Play Store in my work partition is somehow silently causing installs on my personal partition to fail until it "gets its way" and manages to install the updates it wants to install. (This seems very unlikely to be intentional, if so - there was no warning about this in any of the terms and conditions I signed up to when I created a work partition, to my recollection. Also, it doesn't explain why even 500MB free is not sufficient to install a relatively small update.)

When I freed up even more space (by uninstalling 2 apps in my work partition) Play Store in my work partition was able to update all 5 apps that were due to be updated, when I manually hit update on them. Then F-Droid was able to update apps again. So it looks like I'm good, for the time being... oh wait, I spoke too soon, it's happening again.

The two work apps that were uninstalled then automatically got pushed to my device and reinstalled, which to me casts doubt on the theory that it was about lack of space / unusable space (theory 1).

I uninstalled them again, and now I'm able to install apps again... for now.

Can I get some additional information on what was going on using adb or something like that?

I've already tried df in termux and it's not showing me anything useful - only one partition's free space is changing. I've read through the wall of text of previous solutions but they either don't seem to be relevant or are not making a lot of sense to me.

There is a low space threshold of about 500MB (depends on the device), and any app install or update that would take you over this limit always fails. No-one really explains this, least of all Android itself.

This is actually a badly-implemented "feature" - it is supposed to prevent you hitting 0% free so that system apps don't start failing, but it doesn't fully prevent that. You can still hit 0% free - and get into a terrible situation where system apps pop up error notifications every fraction of a second - by uploading/downloading files to the phone.

(The reason the 2 apps were able to reinstall themselves, is probably because I cleared some caches for some of the apps in settings as well as uninstalling those apps.)

The only way around this problem involves root access - which I am not allowed to do because it violates the terms and conditions of my work partition on my phone.

So the only thing to do is free up enough space...


Are files created in "/storage/emulated/0" supposed to appear in "/storage/sdcard0"? From what I guess, internal storage is available by every user. If emulated storage is a storage location, made for a specific user, are files created in /storage/emulated/0 supposed to appear in /storage/sdcard0? I assume no, because files that are user created should show up in emulated only, otherwise files created by the user would be available for all other users to see.

I've checked on one of my devices, and as the comment chain already suspected, you don't need to worry about everyone having access to everybody elses data. First:

/storage/sdcard0 -> /storage/emulated/legacy

Which means, it's just a symlink which always points to the data of the current user:

/storage/emulated/legacy -> /mnt/shell/emulated/0

(the first user – in my case the only one). Second, where you usually look for it:

/sdcard -> /storage/emulated/legacy

Same game again. So for the emulated SD card (aka the "internal SD card), the Android system takes care to map it accordingly for the current user. Not sure about the external SD card (if that e.g. could be used to share data between multiple users). This is usually found in /storage/sdcard1:

$ mount | grep sdcard
/dev/block/vold/179:65 /mnt/media_rw/sdcard1 vfat […]
/dev/fuse /storage/sdcard1 fuse […]
$ ls /mnt/media_rw/sdcard1
/mnt/media_rw/sdcard1: Permission denied
$ su -c "ls /mnt/media_rw/sdcard1"
[data from external SD card]

So you can see the external SD card can only be accessed directly with root powers, why "ordinary users" have to go via a FUSE mount overlayed on that. So the system again might take care that each user can only access his/her own data in that place. I'm not familiar enough with the internals to say for sure (or even to say what exactly is done there).

Now for your explicit question, whether files created in /storage/emulated/0 supposed to appear in /storage/sdcard0: Assuming you're speaking about /mnt/shell/emulated/0 (I couldn't find /storage/emulated/0 on my device), empirically they of course do, as both are the very same location: /storage/sdcard0 -> /storage/emulated/legacy -> /mnt/shell/emulated/0 – which means that /storage/sdcard0 shows what's contained in /mnt/shell/emulated/0. But your concern is unwarranted: due to the "middle-man" (/storage/emulated/legacy), /storage/sdcard0 always points to the storage of the "logged-in user" – so if e.g. the second user looks there, (s)he will see what's in /mnt/shell/emulated/1 (or which ever his/her emulated storage area is).

So as a PS, let me sum up things from the comments, as a short FAQ:

I wonder what would happen if a different user tries to access and save data in a different user's emulated storage?
He receives an error message that it's either not there or not accessible.
Why are these symlinks needed?
Multiple reasons, many of them historical (one word: "compatibility").
What are those symlinks and how do they work, in laymens terms?
They are basically "signposts", saying "please look there". Other than you initially assumed, they don't contain any data themselves – they are really only signposts or "pointers". The data itself resides at the "targeted location", and only there. For more details, please see the Wikipedia article on symbolic links.

Also see:

Accessing the File System
Let's clear up the confusion regarding storage in Android once and for all, including adoptable storage in Marshmallow.
How does the multi-user feature work in terms of paths on Android?
(contains another little FAQ, not only for developers)
The Storage Situation: Removable Storage
Storage (Android documentation)


How i open winmail.dat files on my android? How can I read winmail.dat. files on my android?

I currently get error message do not have app to view

winmail.dat files are Microsoft proprietary files created by Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. Usually Email apps from Microsoft should be able to handle such files. However searching for winmail.dat in Google Play Store shows that several other apps are claiming to be able to open such files.

If you receive such files the sender is using Outlook via Exchange and your contact is misconfigured. Contact the sender and ask to change your contact to plain text format then you will no longer receive such attachments.


Unable to turn off auto-correction on HTC one I just received a HTC one.  I cannot turn off the autocorrect for 'Word Prediction' (under prediction preference) in the > HTC Sense Input Setting > Advanced section. The words are gray colored and the checked box does not respond. Other functions I can turn on and off.

Any suggestions on how to disable this function would be appreciated.

You have to turn off the keyboard trace. Unfortunately  through a very poor design, you can't have trace without the autocomplete.


Unlocking Nexus 4 with cracked screen Recently a short fall broke not only my Nexus 4's cheap phone case, but the digitizer as well. The LCD and everything else is perfect, however the touch screen only works on the top quarter of the screen. I have no bluetooth mouse/keyboard and USB On-The-Go doesn't work for Nexus 4.

Unfortunately USB Debugging is disabled (I really regret turning it off). How can I unlock it or back up the data on my phone?

This is word for word from http://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-4/help/broken-digitizer-to-enable-usb-t2206706/page2 response from Dabyd64. I copied this in its entirety for reference and to have this on the Stack Exchange.

"I finally get it working by installing CWM recovery, which has ADB, and enable the adb debugging.

adb shell
mount -a

(if the following two commands show error "file doesn't exist", don't worry, it's ok!)

rm /data/property/persist.service.adb.enable
rm /data/property/persist.sys.usb.config

echo "persist.service.adb.enable=1" >>/system/build.prop
echo "persist.service.debuggable=1" >>/system/build.prop
echo "persist.sys.usb.config=mass_storage,adb" >>/system/build.prop"
/system/xbin/sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db "update global set value='1' where name='adb_enabled'";
/system/xbin/sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db "update global set value='1' where name='development_settings_enabled'";
sync
reboot

If the sqlite3 command shows error (command not found) then your phone doesn't have sqlite3 installed.
Still, you can do it!
First extract settings.db:

adb pull /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db

Copy that file to a usb drive or whatever.
Now you need linux. It's ok to use a live Ubuntu DVD, but you need to be connected to internet.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
I recommend to use the 32bit version for compatibility.
Usually sqlite3 is not installed by default.

In ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install sqlite3

You will be asked for the root password!

Now we can edit the settings.db:

sudo sqlite3 /path_to_your_folder/settings.db
update global set value='1' where name='adb_enabled';
update global set value='1' where name='development_settings_enabled';
.exit

Now we have the settings.db changed and ready!
Copy that settings.db again to a pen drive or whatever, go back to windows or keep in linux if you already have a working ADB.

adb push settings.db /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/
adb shell "chown system.system /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db"
adb shell "chmod 644 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db"
sync
reboot

Done! ADB should work when in starts.
I had to use "mass_storage,adb" because "mtp,adb" or just "adb" didn't work. Thought, the phone was not working in mass storage, but who cares! ADB was!"

I have used those on my Nexus 7 when I broke my digitizer and adb was turned off. It worked perfectly, should work just as well with TWRP.


Need help LOCKING a Moto G6 XT1925-13 after restoring stock OS I had semi-bricked / soft-bricked my Motorola Moto G6 smartphone as explained here: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Moto-G6-Moto-G6-Plus-Moto-G6-Play/Need-help-unbricking-a-Moto-G6-XT1925-13-and-restoring-stock-OS/m-p/5013164
And I was stuck trying to install the stock ROM again. Finally, I was able to install the stock ROM onto the device, but I am unable to LOCK it again. The problem I'm facing because of that is that I will not able to upgrade the OS at all.
fastboot.exe oem lock
(bootloader) WARNING: This command erases all user data.
(bootloader) Please re-run this command to continue.
OKAY [  0.021s]
Finished. Total time: 0.029s

fastboot.exe oem lock
(bootloader) Check 'Allow OEM Unlock' in Android Settings > Developer
(bootloader) Options
OKAY [  0.029s]
Finished. Total time: 0.058s

When I boot into the OS, in the Setting > ... > Developer Options, "OEM unlocking" is already unchecked, as "Bootloader is already unlocked".
In its current state, I cannot upgrade the OS. It's currently at: Android 9.
When trying to check for upgrades, it says:
Android version: 9
Current version: PPSS29.55-37-7-10
Security patch level: April 1, 2020

Here is what the bootloader displays (I've hidden only the serial number):
AP Fastboot Flash Mode (Secure)
BL: MBM-2.1-ali_retail-32ffece02ed-200416
Baseband: M450_23.31.10.89R ALI_INDIADSDS_CUST
Product/Variant: ali XT1925-13 64GB PVT2
Serial Number: [removed]
CPU: SDM450
eMMC: 64GB SAMSUNG RH64AB RV=08 PV=05 FV=0000000000000005
DRAM: 4GB SAMSUNG LP3 DIE:8Gb M5=01 M6=06 M7=00 M8=5F
Console [NULL]: null
Tools Mode Config: DISABLED
Battery OK
flashing_unlocked
Transfer Mode: USB Connected

Install Magisk directly after a factory reset before it boots up and the device will be eligible for OTAs. You use 'fastboot boot TWRP.img' instead of flashing TWRP. Make sure to install Magisk Manager and select options to hide Magisk (2 different options) and reboot a couple times to see the effect.
This works on my Moto G6.


Which Android version/phone can control per-app access permission? The only reason I am still using an iPhone is due to the fact that most Android phones did not allow control of per-app access permission. The App Ops feature was once there but pulled.

I know some Chinese Android phones, such as XiaoMi and Huawei, provide the app permission feature. Is the feature available in mainstream Android phones, such as the Nexus, Samsung, LG, HTC ... for latest version of Android 4.4.2 or upcoming Android L?

No, App Ops is not available on Android any more since Android v4.4.2 and probably won't be reintroduced with Android L but might be resurrected some time later. It was apparently dropped as some apps would stop functioning so the user experience would suffer.

Some optimal solutions:

Find a device that is supported by a Custom ROM like Cyanogenmod. This aftermarket firmware includes a feature called Privacy Guard that works similar to App Ops.
My preferred solution: Buy a phone that is rootable and use the 3rd party solution called Xprivacy. It is an Xposed module that has the most advanced permission control with a very dedicated developer. As long as your device is rooted you will be able to use that tool on any ROM > Android v4.0. Downside: Not easy to handle.
Use one of the other optional methods for permission management listed and compared by the Xprivacy developer here.


SMS not received on new Android I just purchased a new Moto G Power (Android version 10) and replaced my old iPhone 6s backup phone. When I put the Sim card in, everything worked except incoming SMS. Outgoing SMS worked fine, just not incoming. I figured it might be related to the Apple account and iMessage, so I found a link that would disconnect from iMessage. I saw on a website that it might take a few hours to take effect, so I was patient about it.
That happened yesterday afternoon (around 3 PM). It's quite a few hours later and I am still not receiving incoming SMS on my device. When I put the Sim card in the iPhone messages come in, and they come in as SMS rather than iMessages. So I'm not sure why it's not going to the Android device.
Does anyone have any recommendations for next steps?

You need to reach out to your carrier's support team...
If you can send SMS and make/receive calls, then the issue likely isn't with your device. SMS uses the same transport and registration as is used for phone calls, so this likely falls on your carrier.
This has occasionally been an issue with some carriers when users are switching from Apple to Android, and a new SIM has to be issued sometimes.
Reaching out and working with the carrier's support team is probably best at this point.


Can I silence only certain notifications during the night? I would like to be able to set up a silent period (at night for sleeping) where email alerts - but ONLY email alerts - will be silenced.

I still would like to have text messages and phone rings be normal.

Is there any way to do this automatically, without needing to go into the email app every night and turn off notifications and then remember to turn them back on in the morning?

If you do not depend on a data connection, there may be some solutions around: The Google Playstore has a lot of automation apps to offer, which you can use to set up more than this. In your case, this would be a time-based scenario:

From 11pm to 7am, disable WiFi and mobile data

No data connection => no new mail => no new mail notifications. Apps capable of things like that include e.g. Timeriffic (free, and one of the top-apps in this section), Llama (also capable of location-based and other rules), and -- my favorite -- Tasker. Though the latter is not the cheapest one, it is the most flexible, and you can get a 7-day-trial at their homepage.

For examples what else you can achieve with Tasker, you might also want to take a look at What is Cell standby and how can I keep it from eating my battery?, and the examples at the mentioned homepage. Also, a Google search on Tasker profiles will list you a lot of goodies.

To accomplish your goal using Tasker, simply create the following profile:

Context:

Time (fill in your "from" and "to" to define the time frame)

Task:

Net->Mobile Data: Set Off
Net->WiFi: Set Off

That's all. Say you defined it as described above (11pm to 7am), Tasker would switch off WiFi and Mobile Data at 11pm, and return to the previous state at 7am.

More solutions can probably be found here: Is it possible to only silence certain notifications?


Copy all sdcard contents to larger sdcard Recently I've run out of room on my small (2GB) sdcard.  What I want to do is copy all the contents of this card onto something a little larger.  I have an FTP server (the one that comes with ES File Explorer) installed on my phone, and that's pretty much the only way I can copy from the card mounted in my phone to a computer or vice-versa (my computer has never recognized my phone's sdcard and only displayes /data).

What's the best way to copy all of it (including hidden files, non-readable files, and apps stored on the sdcard)?

The least tricky way is:

take your 2GB card out of the device, put it into a card reader, and attach that to your computer
copy all contents from the card to an empty directory on your computer
safely remove the card reader, replace the 2GB card by the newer, bigger one, and attach that to the computer
copy the contents of the directory from step 2. to the new card
safely remove that card again, and place it into your Android device

When in doubt about the hidden stuff, use Linux for the copy process. You can even boot it from a LiveCD. From a terminal command, use cp -R /path/to/source/* /path/to/target. On the other hand, if using Windows and you can see the files/directories starting with a dot (watch out e.g. for the .android_secure directory), they should be copied along fine.
See also:

How do I switch my Android device's SD card without causing problems?
Changing SD Card Just a Simple Copy & Paste
App2sd - Changing the SD Card
How to upgrade / swap SD card without losing data and installed apps?


"Print" option not showing up in share menu For quite a while now the print option does not show up under the share menu, as if the share action seems to be missing its share action.
After a while of searching with my google-fu, I have been unable to come up with a working solution, with the two things coming up is:
- Check in your share menu - If it was there then I wouldn't be looking for an answer
- There isn't any fix - yet

Objectives:

Get Print share action working/shown in Google Chrome
Get Print share action working/shown in any share menu (when applicable)

(Un-)Usefull Info:

Android Version: 5.1.1

Device: Samsung xCover3 (SM-G388f)

Chrome version (Stable): 55.0.2883.91

Chrome Flags Enabled(Chrome://flags):

#enable-media-document-download-button
#show-saved-copy
#enable-downloads-ui
#offline-pages-sharing
#enable-ntp-download-suggestions

Imgur Album Illustrating my point: http://imgur.com/a/cCxza

I believe the item disappeared front the share menu after rooting. I have then during that time and now reflashed the firmware and rest the device (for reasons not related to this). I can verify that printing works (I can print from Gmail, and the print APK is still enabled/installed.

Hopefully I've given enough of a picture/details to help narrow down the cause of the problem, and hopefully we will be able to get a fix.

It could be that in Android 10, they changed the print icon and moved its location. They also used the same icon several times over. To be sure it is the correct icon, you'll need to read the text under the icon.


My Daughter forgot her pin to unlock her screen on her tablet. help? I have an Asod 7 inch tablet. My daughter put in a password to lock the screen and can't remember what it is. How do I reset it so she can unlock and use her tablet?

If the device is logged into a Google account, try going to Google's Device Manager and click "Lock". Set the password you want and push it out.

I'm not sure what OS version introduced this feature, so if its too old an OS, i don't think this will work.


Will I be able to change the region on my HTC desire S? The RUU of the HTCdev cannot install to my Htc desire S. It always says that I need the correct RUU version and my region is SEA_WWE.

Is there any way to install the RUU without changing my region? or how do I change the region to make my phone compatible?

There is only one RUU available for Desire S in htcdev website which should work on all HTC Desire S.


What is Android's sleep mode Many developers speak of Android's sleep mode.

When exactly the device goes into sleep mode ?

What is st standby mode ?

How standby and sleep mode are different (or related)?

When the device goes to standby ?

What are the factors deciding whether standby or sleep mode ?

Is there any thing called deep sleep ? (or deep standby), If so, info on it please...

What services are shut down in sleep mode ?

What will happen to the shut services on device wakeup.

Consider I am downloading a file using ES Downloader, and gives the hide option.

Say it's a huge file like 100mb,
CASE 1 :
My device screen dims, then screen turns off, but not locked.
CASE 2 :
My device screen dims, then screen turns off, and it goes to locked state.

A few to much questions for a single post, though they are mostly related. Let's roll up from the end:

Deep Sleep is a state where the CPU has "nothing to do at all". Depending on the tasks the device has to perform, CPU runs in different "speeds" (frequencies). Say you've got a 1 GHz CPU, that doesn't mean it permanently runs at 1 GHz (and eats your battery); it will only "fully power up to that" if there is demand for it. On average, it will run on much lower frequencies, down to ~50 MHz. If there's really nothing to do, the system will "send it to sleep", and set a timer to wake it up later. This state is called "deep sleep".

Your device goes to Standby only when you've turned the display off, never when the display is turned on. IMHO "Standby" and "Sleep mode" are synonyms. But switching off your display is not the only criterium for entering Standby. Depending on your device's settings and apps currently started/running, e.g. running downloads might continue, as well as other "ongoing calculations". The "locked state" usually has nothing to do with it: that's rather a "security measure" against "unwanted access".

What services are stopped when you switch off the screen is something no generic answer can be given to: this very much differs not only between devices and Android versions, but also depends on what apps you have installed and how they're programmed/configured.

As for your specific example: This again depends. Say you've switched off mobile data, and run your download on WiFi. Your "WiFi Standby Policy" is set to cut the connection when the screen is turned off. Results for your download should be obvious then :)

Note that this answer most likely is incomplete, as the topic is rather complex – and your number of questions don't make it easy to answer in a short manner.


SMS-Email Gateway App Is there any combination of android applications which can connect to a POP3 account and:

transfers emails to SMS (by phone number provided in the subject of
the email)
transfers SMSes to an email?

Not sure how much reliable this is, but I found this app: SMS Gateway

Their description says that e-mails via POP3 can be sent via SMS, while SMS can be sent via HTTP GET request.


How can I change the notification sound to a custom but non-default sound? Ok, so the title isn't as clear as it probably could be, but here goes:

In the Facebook Messenger application you can click the profile/settings button (top right on latest version) and there is a menu option for "Notifications & Sounds".

In this sub-menu there is an option for "Notification Sound" which allows you to select the sound that will be played when you receive a new message.

This list appears to be a list of 'built-in sounds' with one exception... "Default ringtone (name of current SMS notificaiton sound)"

Basically what I am looking to do, is to change the notification sound to be different from my SMS message sound. (I actually used to have this working great somehow, but then my phone went for a repair and had factory reset).

The facebook app has a similar setting, but allows me to select from ALL my custom sounds. This is what I am hoping for.

Is it possible to get other sounds to be available in the list? How can I make it different from SMS notifications?

Samsung S7 Edge, Android 6.0.1

You'll have to add the desired tone to the /sdcard/Notifications directory (followed by a restart, possibly).

Alternately, you can install a file manager app such as ES File Explorer, which you can choose as the notification tone picker, instead of the default menu.


Do task killers actually work? Possible Duplicate:
  Do I really need to install a task manager?

I am using ASUS Transformer. I think it uses Ice Cream sandwich, from the UI. I tried many task killers but wonder if they actually work. When I kill tasks, I still see them when I click the "Window selector" 3rd button of the bottom left screen (the 2 boxes). They do appear to take a while to load, so I suppose the tasks were killed but the thumbnails are still there?

Task Killers do generally "work" in that they kill tasks.

They don't "work" in that most apps that you'd want to kill due to running constantly will simply be restarted by the OS, and Android already has appropriate task management built in.  A task manager will mostly just drain your battery and waste your time.

See also: How can I stop applications and services from running? and the question eldarerathis links in the comments.


where does default setting for Command Line Switches is set in kernel source code in android My android device is quad-core . But during booting only 2 cores are up . CPU_HOTPLUG is enabled . In dumpstate i found :

maxcpus=2

in command Line options.
I wanted to make this maxcpus=4 . I have all source code with me . I wanted to set this maxcpus value in source code (especially in default settings) .

So my question is : In which file does this default value setting is done ? I grep'ed it through source in platform and kernel. But i didn't get any clue .I think this code lie in bootloader .If so please guide me

I presume that CPU_HOTPLUG means hotplug cpu governor is enabled in your system.
hotplug cpu governor can make cpu core online or offline based on total system load.
So, It might be possible that your other two cores are offline at the moment.

You can check the exact cpu cores by,

$ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/present

This will display total cores on your system. Or you can do "ls /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*" then see cpu0,cpu1,... directories. Those are your different cores.

If you can not find 4 cores (0,1,2,3) in that directory, than there is some problem with your system.

You can change the cpu governor to some other for example, ondemand to utilize all four cores. But it may use more battery.

I hope this helps.

[update]
Also, if you are referring to set the default kernel command line from configuration then it is available at,

Symbol: CMDLINE [=]

Type  : string

Prompt: Default kernel command string

Defined at arch/arm/Kconfig:1766

Location:
-> Boot options

in kernel menuconfig window.

Generally in android, kernel commandline is part of boot image and not this default one, But you can still try that out. If bootloader is passing the kernel command line string than this configuration will be ignored.

Good luck.


HSDPA/3G not working and Power off when plugged to charger I am not sure whether anyone has this issue before. My phone is: Samsung Galaxy Ace GT-S5830.
From today morning onwards, 3G or HSDPA not working in my phone. When I plugged the phone to the charger or plugged into the data cable, the phone shut down automatically. Does anyone have this issue before? Or is there any application or a way to fix the issue or find out the issue

Thanks

This could possibly be software or hardware related. If you power the phone down first and then plug it in, does it start charging or does it do nothing? If it doesnt, I would start to lean towards some type of hardware failure (hard to say for sure though). Have you also tried a factory reset on the phone? If it is software related for some reason, then a factory reset may fix that up.

Did this issue appear out of no where, or did you recently install new apps or something when the issue started?


Galaxy S5 screen won't turn on, how to factory reset with Odin? So, my mom has had a Galaxy S5 phone for awhile, but I went into her room today and found her old Galaxy S5. She claims it's not working properly, so I offered to try and fix it. I spent a few minutes messing with the phone and I noticed that I could not get the screen to turn on, but the phone vibrates when I plug it in, and my PC makes the device connected sound. I'd like to know how to reset the phone to factory settings, but also flash a custom ROM onto it. (In this case, I want to flash Resurrection Remix) My mom will be okay with this since she doesn't use the phone I'm trying to work with anymore. The phone is of the AT&T variant.

Edit: I asked my mom about the screen problem. She stated that the top of the screen started to dim and within 48 hours the screen wouldn't turn on at all.

Follow this guide for restoring stock rom

https://www.idroidspace.com/official-stock-rom-for-samsung-galaxy-s5/

Follow this guide to install TWRP which is a custom recovery which is needed to install any custom rom.

http://www.droidviews.com/install-twrp-recovery-samsung-galaxy-s5/


What is the "u#_everybody" UID? In (multi-user) Android there are UIDs like these:

u0_everybody
u10_everybody
u11_everybody

Those seem different to the usual uXX_aYY UIDs used for the applications. What is their purpose? Is this a way to make files available to all applications (share between applications of a user account)?

As stated here:

  Cross-user interactions are blocked using the everybody GID.

Android reserves UIDs / GIDs ranging from 10000 to 19999 for apps. AID_EVERYBODY is one of the special groups, which is used to control app's read / write ability to external storage (/sdcard). This group has GID 9997 for device owner. If there are profiles or multiple users, GID takes form XX09997, where XX is UserID. So u11_everybody resolves to UID 1109997 and u11_a500 to 1110500.

Starting with Android 6, every app has it's own view of /sdcard, which is controlled by exposing /data/media/[UserID] with different permissions. This is achieved by making use of an emulated filesystem (previously FUSE, now sdcardfs) and mount namespaces. For device owner i.e. UserId 0, /sdcard appears with following three VIEWs of permission sets:

For processes running in root mount namespace such as init, netd, vold etc., permissions appear as 0.1015, 0771.
For processes having android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, permissions appear as 0.9997, 0750.
For processes having android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE, permissions appear as 0.9997, 0770.

Screenshot shows three emulated VIEWs with different gid and mask values to get different permissions sets:

* Files never have executable permission i.e. mask=6 becomes mask=7 for files.
* mask=23 is appearing wrong, may be a bug? In actual it's mask=27.

Considering three distinct VIEWs, we come with four situations:

Processes running with root privileges i.e. UID 0 have always R/W access to /sdcard. However if a non-privileged process running in root mount namespace wants R/W access to /sdcard, that would be controlled by group AID_SDCARD_RW (GID 1015). An example is ADB daemon which runs with UID / GID 2000 but 1015 in its supplementarry groups.

Since every app runs with its unique UID in a separate mount namespace:

Apps without READ/WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions won't be able to read or write to /sdcard.

Since every app is a member of everybody (9997) group:

Apps with READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission will be able to read the /sdcard.
Apps with WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission will be able to write to /sdcard. So the app has full R/W access to shared / external Public Storage including other apps' Private Storage.

There's an exception to above rules for apps; every app has always R/W access to its own External Private Storage. Let's take example of app com.xyz with UID 10500. Apart from internal data directory /data/data/com.xyz, app has a Private Storage directory /sdcard/Android/data/com.xyz with owner UID 10500. So this directory is always readable / writable by the app.
 Please note that /sdcard/Android/data is traversable for all apps, but no R/W access.

In the same way it works for other user accounts / profiles.

Opaque Binary Blobs: (OBB)

Some apps need additional storage to save large files which can't be included in .apk file due to 100MB maximum size limit. There are two possible obb locations where these files are saved: /data/media/obb/ and /sdcard/Android/obb/. The former was introduced before multi-users concept, so it's only available to device owner. Later is available to apps in multi-user accounts / profiles as well.
Access to former is controlled the same way as to /sdcard, while later is always accessible by an app as is the private external storage.

RELATED:

What is /storage/emulated/0/?
Public and Private files on External Storage
Why is the 'storage/emulated/' directory inaccessible?
How Android's permissions mapping with UIDs/GIDs works?
Are multiple-users protected from each other differently than apps?
How disk space is used on Android device? (see directories occupied by an app under APPS SPACE USAGE).


How can I track cause of "Android System" and "Android OS" battery usage I've got a Samsung Galaxy SIII which quite suddenly, though it was in airplane mode the whole time, started to drain the battery in less than 6 hours.  Updates to several bits of Samsung bloatware were accepted roughly at this time.

The battery monitor built into settings shows 60% of the usage is either "Android System" or "Android OS".

So the question: How can I determine what application or process is behind  "Android System" or "Android OS" calls?  Is there a way to count process wakeups? Will this require root access?

You can easily view processor wake-ups without root access.

If you’re running Android L, processor stats can be viewed by going to Settings > Battery and select an application from the list. Look at the overall percentage of battery used by every app. Watch for apps that have a long ‘Stay awake’ duration that were running in the background. Watch for long GPS durations and lots of mobile data. Long connection times can also bad – if the app was running in the background and didn’t have a reason for being connected. All of these actions consume extra battery power.
If you're running Android 4.3 or earlier, Wakelock Detector (WLD) is a great way to identify processor sleep problems. Look at the duration and number of wake locks. Trepn Profiler also shows wake-locks and allows you to view overall system power consumption. Check the power of your device idle and running various apps.
If you want to view processor wake ups on Android L, use Google’s Battery Historian. I use it to look at apps that keep the processor awake (e.g. wake_locks), the rate of discharge of the battery (e.g. battery level) and app syncing (it's line 5 in the chart). If you’d like to try it, there are installation and usage instructions below:

One-time setup in order to run Battery Historian

Download and install Python 2.7 (if it’s not already installed)
Download battery-historian from GitHub here
Extract historian.py from the .zip file and copy it to the Python2.7 directory

Running Battery Historian

Type the following into the Command Prompt after connecting to an Android 5.x device:

C:\>cd python27
C:\Python27>adb shell dumpsys batterystats --enable full-wake-history
C:\Python27>adb bugreport > bugreport.txt
C:\Python27>historian.py -a bugreport.txt > batterystats.html

Let me know if any of these things help you.


Google Keyboard Tab Key Any way to get a tab character out of a Google Keyboard on Android?

Checking through the various character sets etc. find nothing.

Searching the Internet finds nothing relevant.

The goal is to indent bullets in Google Keep to make sub-bullets.

Try Keyboard for Excel, by Microsoft, in the Google Play store.  Has tab, and the proper orientation for data entry on the numeric keypad, among other things...

Find it here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.keyboardforexcel


Some mail subfolders not syncing I have a new issue which just started where not all subfolders are appearing in the Mail app. Almost all subfolders are present, except for those that are part of a particular folder.

I'm running 4.3 on a Samsung Galaxy III, connecting to an MS Exchange server.

Everything appears normal in the Desktop client and Web client.

I realize this could be an Exchange question, but has anyone else run into this issue and are there any suggestions? It it possible this is a size issue related to the overall size of this particular folder?

Note: How can I get exchange email subfolders on my Samsung Galaxy S3? did not help me.

Try a different App?

K9-Mail is pretty good.


Weird Google search results on LG G4 The other day my Google search app search results started looking like this:

There appears to be a globe next to all results and it's just much less readable. The app is up to date.

When I change my account in tyre Google app to my secondary email account, the issue goes away.

Any idea how to correct this?

While I couldn't entirely reproduce this issue, I found a few points worth to share:

Seems the issue is caused by autocomplete feature in Google App.

Searching using autocomplete

  When you start a search on Google, you can find the information you're
  looking for faster using search predictions. Search predictions are
  possible search terms you can use that are related to the terms you're
  typing and what other people are searching for.

How autocomplete works

Predictions are made based on factors, like the popularity and freshness of search terms. When you choose a prediction, you do a search using the term you selected.

Where search predictions come from

The terms you're typing.
Relevant searches you've done in the past (if you're signed in to your Google Account and have Web & App Activity turned on).
What other people are searching for, including Trending stories . Trending stories are popular topics in your area that change throughout the day. Trending stories aren't related to your search history.

Here's what Google says about autocomplete feature:

  Search predictions aren't the answer to your search. They're also not
  statements by other people or Google about your search terms.

Change autocomplete settings

If you're using the Google app on an Android device, you can turn off Trending stories .

Open the Google app .
At the top left, tap Menu Settings Autocomplete .
Tap the switch to turn "Show trending stories" off or on.

What can't be changed

  Other than Trending stories, you can't turn off search predictions.
  Search predictions are built into Google Search to help you find
  information faster and easier. You can always choose not to use search
  predictions.

As I suggested in comments it maybe a feature associated with newer Google Chrome version, together with new features in Google App.

I suggest, who also check related settings in Google Chrome and look for any options suggesting autocomplete behaviour.
In addition look for any odd history and cache, delete the unnecessary entries, in these Apps as well as  when logged in to your Google account

Hope this helps

Search using autocomplete

Edit

BY default Google stores most of the users's activity in the My account section of Google account.
Here Google collects bits of information based on the user's activity (e.g played youtube videos, location history, browsing and search history)

The information is stored (even without consent) in order to improve user experience - at least that's Google best explanation of this annoying behaviour.

To find out any previous data collected, or at least gain some control over your account, you need to navigate to the "My activity section of My account
here you find most of the stored data, cache etc,and deleted these and also control what data is collected. ( I believe this is the cause for annoying predictions based on previously or commonly visited websites)

I managed to collect samples of the My activity section:

For multiple accounts, Google claims the default account may get to store more of this user data activity:

Carefully review this "collected data" be sure to delete any details you no longer need, I suggest remove everything no longer needed, clear the cache and start afresh. Do it for all Google accounts stored in device

Check if you still see this.

References


how to flash ROM in xolo opus3 with sd card? My android phone has been affected by malware.From the suggestions of my last question I'm trying to flash ROM to my phone by following  this link. In recovery mode the options I get are

reboot
apply update from adb
apply update from sd card
apply update from cache
wipe data/factory reset

and few other options
After selecting apply update from sd card , it doesn't recognises the zip stored in sd card.
Another method I read is using Sp flash tool,but it is not availble for linux 32 bit.
How should I proceed?

The zip file is not recognised probably because it's not a recovery flashable zip file. You need SP Flashtool to flash the device.

Download this firmware  and save it to the desktop then extract it.
Download MTK CDC and preloader drivers from here
Open SP Flash tool (download from above link) and click on Scatter-Loading
Browse to where the firmware is extracted and select the scatter file (a .txt file)
SP Flashtool should load all the file. Preferably untick all the check mark except for the android slot as you need  only the system partition to be flashed.
UNTICK the preloader slot (IMPORTANT), this will prevent the device from completely dead if something goes wrong.
Click on Download (Green arrow), power off the device, connect it to the computer and wait to till the end. You'll have a Green checkmark if the process succeed.


TTS speech from console Can I synthesize arbitrary text strings with TTS from the Android's console?

To give the idea, on Debian I would do:

festival --tts <(echo Buongiorno signore)

The TTS engine needs to be always available and run offline, thus Google TTS is not an option. The phone is a "Samsung Galaxy Fame gt-s6810p" with Android 4.1.2; it comes with an offline Samsung TTS engine installed.

I normally run android tts from android terminal, just the way on linux.

I achieve this with sl4a & Python4Android (github.com/kuri65536/python-for-android/releases).
Here is the wrapper script that I use for python environment in terminal.

Just Create a python program using sl4a tts api, like this ::

`#!/system/bin/py  # Change the Path to wrapper script

 import android
 import sys

 droid = android.Android()

 print 'Speaking ::' + sys.argv[1]
 droid.ttsSpeak(sys.argv[1])

`

Save as tts. Run it in terminal with your text as argument.

tts 'Hello, It's me TTS , running from console.'


Exporting Chrome bookmarks from Android to PC to import to IE11 Here's the scenario.

I have a Google Nexus 6 with build MOB30D and Android version 6.0.1. I am at work with a desktop PC that only uses Internet Explorer 11. Therefore, I cannot access my Google Chrome bookmarks using Google Chrome brower.

To resolve this, I would like to export my Google Chrome bookmarks from my Google Nexus 6 to an .html file. I would like to e-mail the .html file to my GMail e-mail account, and then I would like to download the .html file from my GMail e-mail account to my work desktop PC. I would then like to import the .html file to my Internet Explorer 11 bookmarks so that I can have access to the same bookmarks that I had on Google Chrome.

When I exported my Chrome bookmarks at home last night to a CD, it was in an .html file, as seen below. And, IE 11 has never had an issue before when I imported bookmarks from an .html file, so I know its a patent file type to import bookmarks to IE 11.

I see no way to export bookmarks from my Android phone. Any solutions?

P.S. My phone is rooted.

FYI: I did export Google Chrome bookmarks to .html file and save to a CD at home which I brought to work, but when I imported the bookmarks from CD to IE 11 on my work PC, it turns out that it did not import them all, for some bizarre reason. Hence my current predicament. I'm not sure if the fault occurred when I initially exported Chrome bookmarks to the CD, or if it occurred when I imported them to IE 11. In any case, at some point in the process, not all Chrome bookmarks are importing to IE 11 from the CD, so the CD is useless at this point.

I have just answered something similar... since I was looking for a way to export my history and bookmarks from Chrome on a Nexus 5X (Android 6.0).

You can use Google Takeout to download  json file of your Android Chrome history and Chrome Bookmarks.


Gmail 4.6 Does not allow "From"/Sender address to be changed to a different email address I did see this question, but it was from two years ago, so I know it does not apply to my question.

Before the 10/1/2013 update, I was able to easily switch my sender email account to a different email address, but now, I can't.  I have checked the settings in the app and for the email account.

Is there a setting somewhere in 4.6 that I am missing or did Google kill this feature for the mobile version?

If my question isn't clear, I apologize, and please let me know how I can improve it.

I'm using: Nexus 4, Android 4.3

After further investigation, it may be broken: gmail forum post

Thanks.

SOLUTION: Clear the app cache.  After I cleared the app cache, the "send as" was functioning as it did before the update.

Does this fall under as a duplicate of: App X Isn't working correctly.  How can I fix it?


How can I find a saved Wi-Fi password? I have an Android phone which is connected to a secured Wi-Fi hotspot.  How can I find out the password of the hotspot from the phone?

On my phone, the credentials are stored in /data/wifi/bcm_supp.conf.  You'll probably need root to see it directly on your phone but you may be able to use adb pull (requires the Android SDK) from your PC to get the file.

As noted in the comments, the location may vary based on your ROM or device (specifically the Wi-Fi chip; mine's a Broadcom).  Check /data/wifi/, /data/etc/wifi/ and /data/misc/wifi/ for relevant config files if you don't find the ones suggested by eldarerathis or me.


Can you Disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth from Google Apps or a MDM Server? This page claims:

  Wifi configuration from Admin console - Enter Wifi network settings in
  the Admin console, and they’ll automatically be pushed out to all
  managed Android devices.

Does this mean just connection settings, or can it be disabled remotely?

From looking at that page, I'd say it's just the connection settings. I don't think you can completely disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.


Can we change SD card after installing a custom rom? i have Samsung gt-19082 i recently rooted my phone and added cosmic cm 11, but i have a smaller SD card ? i want to know is it safe to change the SD card ? (as during installation we add all the ROM , g apps on the SD card . i am a newbie at this

During flashing of ROM your ROM is installed to your device from files kept in your sdcard to your internal storage, mainly /system and /boot partition. So it should be safe to replace your sdcard.


Remove user account in Android 5.1 I have a ZTE Blade L5 Plus with Android 5.1 that I was using for a while. Now I'm using a Samsung Galaxy phone. I want to remove the Google account from my old phone, so I can give it to a friend.

On the Samsung phone, I go to "Settings" then "Cloud and accounts" then "Accounts" then "Google" then I tap the Menu button (or vertical ellipsis⋮ - the three dots button) and I get two options: "Sync now" and "Remove account". So this is easy on Samsung.

But on ZTE, I go to "Settings" then on the third tab "Personal", I choose the third options "Accounts", then "Google" but here, if I tap the menu button, I only get the option "Sync now". In this screen I have the following three options:

Sign-in & security
Personal info & privacy
Account preferences

If I go to "Account preferences", I have the option "Delete your Google Account" but that's for completely deleting my account, not for removing it from the telephone.

This question already exists, but for a slightly different version of the OS: Android 5.0.1

In my phone, I went settings->accounts, selected Google. There I have two e-mails  registered, I clicked on the first one, and a set of details opens.

On this screen you see on the top right corner a menu, that allows you to remove the desired account. It didn't wipe my Google's account - if you are afraid, you could just put it on flight mode before taking these actions...

In your case, however, instead of just deleting the account, I would do a factory reset before selling my phone (even if it is to a friend, due to personal stuff I have in it, like pictures and whatsapp messages)


How to permanently delete stored images in /data I have a rooted HTC Desire HD with a Custom Rom. Now, I want to permanently delete the stored images on my internal memory (/data). Everytime I run the app Disk Digger, my old crappy photos seems to show up. I tried flashing again and again and doing a a factory reset again and again but the images seems to be always there. All i want is to remove that images from my internal memory so i can safely sell my phone. Can anyone help me? BTW, the exact location where the disk digger digs is /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.2/by-num/p26.

Can someone help me here?

Perhaps the reason why your old photos survive flashes is because there may be a secondary internal flash memory that is separate from both the memory used for the OS (root) and the removable microSD slot. (I know my phone is like this.) Not sure why they would still be there after a factory reset though. Have you tried removing them using a file manager app like ES File Explorer, ASTRO, etc?

Another suggestion would be to verify that the photos aren't owned by root. If they are you could try removing them using the Android Terminal EmulatorAndroid Terminal Emulator app with root privileges, or try connecting your phone to your computer and delete them using the Android Debug Bridge.


Do data-only SIM cards have a phone number assigned to them? Some providers offer a "data only" sim card. Do these types of sim cards have a phone number assigned to them? If yes, what happens if a dial out is attempted of if there's an incoming call?

A number has to be assigned so that the (rather old) system can recognise the SIM.

Just because it has a number though doesn't mean that any calls can be made or received and will already have been disabled by the network.

The provider can add services as wanted/needed though: SMS can be useful for managing routers.


How can I get a phone app on a tablet? I have a brand new Galaxy Tab 2 that is apparently not compatible with my bank's tablet app. Someone on another forum mentioned that they just use the phone version on their tablet, but they don't say how they got it. When I go to the google play store, I only see one version. I do have the app on my phone; is there any way to transfer it?

If you already have the app on your phone, you might want to take a look at AppMonster. This app allows you to create backups of your apps' .apk files to your SD card (the Pro version even can do so automatically each time you install/update an app, so you always have the chance to revert to a previous version if an update breaks something). You can then pick that .apk from your SD card, copy it to your tablet, and "side-load" it (i.e. install it manually). For this to work, you must enable "unknown sources" in your tablet's settings (otherwise it only accepts installs directly via the Playstore).


Why Swiftkey not visible in OxygenOS 3.1 Search? I have installed Swiftkey in my system. However, search does not show it. Going to play store, I see it is installed, and only there, I can open it.

Fig. 1 Search successful,
Fig. 2 Swiftkey visible in Play Store,
Fig. 3 Open button for Swiftkey,
Fig. 4 Frontend of Swiftkey,
Fig. 5 State of application after disabling and force quitting it,
Fig. 6 State of application after disabling, force quitting and "uninstalling" it

It started to persist in OO 3.1.
I created the ticket #712004 about the issue in Oneplus technical ticket system.

Uninstallation attempts

Unsuccessful uninstallation witohut disabling and/or force stopping application first.

I pressed uninstall the application.
However, doing so, it is not really uninstalled.
You see the situation in Fig. 3.
Reboot the phone, and you still get the same result.
You cannot uninstall it by dragging the icon to uninstall menu because no such icon exists.

Procedure for the partial uninstallation of the application i.e. deactivation, since there exists an evidence about its existence in Fig. 5 in the system

Press the Menu key and choose Settings → Apps → Manage applications OR tap 'Apps' (depending on device)
Scroll down to and tap SwiftKey
Force stop application
Disable application
Select 'Uninstall' in Play store now; OR uninstallation process will automatically start if you selected it before force stop and/or disable
Reboot

Output: the application is not active but we can see the application is still in the system register in Fig. 6 although we diasbled, force quitted and "uninstalled" it in Fig. 5.

Phone: Oneplus two
OS: OxygonOS 3.1

Official Oneplus answer about the topic

Revert OS back to 3.0 over remote session

  Since this issue have occurred after an update then I would like to suggest that you undergo a remote session. This could be a compatibility issue thus I suggest that you revert back to the previous OS version where you are having no issues at all.

This choice is one viable solution because the normal uninstallation of the application does not work.
However, I did not agree with them and required for more steps about uninstalling the specific application and studying the system why the condition exists.

I also gave 1 star rating for SwiftKey to signal the current problem. I will remove it as soon as possible the problem is understood and fixed in both sides.


What makes flashing ROMs risky? I would like to play with developing Android ROMs for learning purposes and for maybe I can fork my current ROM and change interesting stuff in it.

I would rather be not happy at all with a bricked device, but how likely is that to happen?

As far as I know,  if the bootloader is untouched, flashing even garbage should leave the device repairable since one can still go in flash mode and flash a new rom because the bootloader is fine. Right?

Also I presume hardware can't really be damaged by bad software, can it? (I need a compelling reason if you say yes)

So theoretically, my device can't really break by flashing and trying a custom ROM even if its faulty or even there happens an error during flash, no? (given I don't touch the bootloader)

As Death Mask Salesman pointed out, you need to be sure that the flashing process itself doesn't overwrite the partition table or the bootloader. But even if the flashing itself doesn't cause an unrecoverable problem, it's still possible for a broken ROM to break the hardware of the phone.

Here's a real-life example from when I worked on ROM integration. One of my colleagues bricked the development hardware we were working on by flashing a ROM where the kernel had had the CPU throttling and thermal cut-out disabled. The development board ran with the CPU at max speed for a couple of minutes and then melted the SoC.

Hardware can very much be damaged by drivers that have been edited or compiled with the wrong options. Overclocking the CPU or GPU (a popular feature in custom ROMs) carries its own risk of overheating - especially if your phone is slightly off-spec. Some kinds of screen backlight can be damaged by running them too hard, which the driver prevents in normal use. Also, some components such as NFC chips and secure elements have anti-tampering "fuses" - if you blow one of those by accident (by writing to the wrong hardware register), it might be irreversible.

This is why rooting or flashing a custom ROM voids the warranty.


T-Mobile Sidekick 4G Keyboard - Tilde and Backtick I still have a G1. I love it for its keyboard. Nobody, has made a phone with a better keyboard. It has 5 rows and allows me to type the full ASCII range and then some. The keys are spaced apart and not easily fat-fingered like the Verizon Droid line of phones. I have been holding out on getting a new phone, waiting for one with a keyboard as good or even better. I had hope in the Sidekick, but upon closer inspection of the keyboard, it does not appear to have a back-tick ` or tilde ~ key. Where the back-tick should be, I see a smiley face.

On Sidekick 4G keyboard, what is the fastest way for me to type a tilde and a back-tick? The person with the least amount of actions to accomplish this goal gets my vote.

I honestly don' think they characters can be typed with the sidekick hardware keyboard. As for the software keyboard, it would depend on the one you are using, but most likely would be close to this:

Switch to numbers / symbols
press the alt key
press the  `  or  ~  key


How to display contacts' pictures in a square instead of in a circle? Starting with Android Lollipop, contacts' pictures in the Contacts are shown as circles and not squared. (Which IMHO makes no sense, breaks the UX and wastes screen estate, but it's not the point of the question so let's not spend time on it.)

There is clearly no way to change that in the system settings, but is there any 3rd-party contacts app that shows pictures as squared?

Which IMHO makes no sense, breaks the UX and wastes screen estate

You're the first I'm hearing that from, as in the circles wastes screen estate compared to the square ones.

Well, if you could get the apk for this contacts app on Techno C8, it might be able to give you something closer to your heart desire.


GPS is always indicated as on I just recently bought a Samsung Galaxy Star S5280 which runs on Android OS, v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) and it keeps indicating that my GPS is on. I already deactivated my mobile network on both SIM cards. I have also deactivated my location services. Can anybody tell me what to do about this because it drains my battery without me even using it a lot.

Mobile Data doesn't have anything to do with the GPS. Go to your settings, then go to Location Access under Personal, and then turn both "WiFi & mobile network location" and "GPS Satellites" off. That should turn your GPS on the phone completely off.

You can also look in your settings to see if you can set up a toggle to quickly turn the GPS, as well as many other services on or off just by swiping down from the top notification bar.


Copy contacts from Google to SIM card I have recently got my SIM card replaced, and lost all contacts as a result. I was wondering if there is a way to copy them from Google Contacts to the SIM card. It would type them one by one but it seems like a waste of time. Surprisingly, though, I haven't been able to find an easy way to do it. Is there a way to dump contacts from the google backup to the SIM card?

You can export your Gmail Contacts list into a .csv file prior to
  importing them into FullContact (to have a backup) using these steps:

Sign in to Gmail.
Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
From the More actions drop-down menu, select Export.... Choose
whether to export all contacts or only one group.
Select the format in which you'd like to export your contacts'
information. Please note, some of these formats can lose some
contact information.

To transfer contacts between Google accounts, use the Google CSV
format. This is the recommended way to back up your Google Contacts.
To transfer contacts to Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, or various
other apps, use the Outlook CSV format.
To transfer contacts to Apple Address Book, use the vCard format.

Click Export. Choose Save to Disk then click OK. Select a location to save your file, and click OK.

You probably want the vcard format. Then use a contacts app that supports vcard importing. When importing it will ask you where to save the information (choose SIM). Note SIM cards can't hold many contacts.


Unable to flash CWM recovery to GS3 over stock 4.1 with Heimdall I want to root and upgrade to 4.1 a just-unboxed Samsung Galaxy S3.

After running the official OTA update with stock Samsung ROM, I tried to follow the tutorial here with openSUSE.

I installed Heimdall from YaST and run the tool with --param and --recovery options with the files I downloaded for rooting.

The problem is that after reboot I always get stock recovery.

Why doesn't it work with 4.1 OS but with 4.0?

While writing the question I found the solution.
Explanation
In Odin Mode, when the phone accepts a new recovery to be flashed, the original Samsung recovery of 4.1 ROM automatically does everything to avoid being flashed, that's actually re-flashing itself on reboot, just like a good ol' computer virus!
Solution
Run Heimdall with --no-reboot flag, or if you are using Odin for Windows, uncheck the auto reboot checkbox.
When flashed, physically remove battery and disconnect USB power supply. Congratulations, you just have ClockworkMod recovery installed!!


2G versus 3G: Does it really save battery? I often hear the recommendation that fixing your device to 2G saves a lot of juice compared to using 3G.

Is that true? Or is it really a myth?

Fast answer:
Nes. Yo. Well, it all depends... on how you use your device.
Detailed answer
Self-Experiment
I just did a self-experiment to find out. Until now, I had all my devices fixed to 2G -- as that should "save juice", like the question suggests. So for 4 days now, I have 3G enabled. Surprisingly: No difference which could not be explained by measurement errors or slightly different situations (after all, I had a. no lab conditions and b. just tested with a single device). Humm. Time to go for some facts, and do some calculations.
Hard data
I already posted some hard data on battery consumptions of components as answer to the question What can I do to increase battery life on my Android device?, more than half a year ago. So now I picked the relevant values, made an average over the two devices, and -- I admit -- slightly adjusted things to reduce differences:

I took the best GSM (2G) speed possible to make 2G seem faster
I took worse conditions to "slow down" UMTS (3G) to conditions which should be met even in areas where it was not improved to the "the latest cutting-edge" (oh, speaking of "edge": 2G assumes EDGE here).

And now I've got some surprising answers: Whether 2G saves more juice than 3G, or vice versa, depends on how you use your device. I created 4 different "usage-groups", and added a 5th special case at the end. Here are my results:

Few phone minutes, few data
Yeah -- that's me: 150..300 minutes talk per month, that makes not more than an average of 5..10 min per day. I have a 50 MB data flat, and hardly ever use it up (which makes for ~ 1.5 MB/day). So I'm mostly left with "standby":

~UMTS StdBy 15 mW
~GSM StdBy  10 mW

Consider that your screen uses 400..800 mW on average when turned on, a difference of 5 mW can safely be ignored. Besides, the little data even compensate -- but I get ahead of myself.

The 24/7 caller with no time for data
...better switches to 2G:

~UMTS Tel   800 mW
~GSM Tel    400 mW

As you can see, when on-call, 3G uses about twice as much juice than 2G would use (and you don't speak faster on 3G -- a call is a call, and will take the same time). So if you spend a lot of time in calls, and have only little data traffic, you're much better off with 2G/GSM.

Few phone minutes, but big data sucker
Here comes the big surprise: This group saves a lot when sticking with 3G/UMTS:

~UMTS XFER  1200 mW
~EDGE XFER  1000 mW

Doesn't look like a huge difference? OK: looking on "how much does it suck per minute" might not make the big deal. So we need a second component:

~UMTS speed dl/ul   7/1 MBit/s (HSDPA/HSUPA)
~EDGE speed dl/ul   200/100 kbit/s

You see I assumed max speed for EDGE, but not the state-of-the-art (20 MBit/s downstream) for UMTS. UMTS coverage might differ between areas, but the 7+ MBit/s should be available everywhere. Now let's look how long the download/upload of 1 MB data takes, and how much juice that corresponds to:

~UMTS 1MB dl/ul     1s/8s ~ 1200/9600 mWs
~EDGE 1MB dl/ul     40s/80s ~ 40.000/80.000 mWs

That's about a factor of 1:7 for upload, and even more than 1:30 for download!
So yeah: This group is definitely better off sticking to 3G!!!

Multi-Tasker: 24/7 on call while using full data
This now very much depends on what "full data" stands for, and if you're really a 24/7 on-call-boy (or girl). No clear answer for this, you must put your own data into the equation and do the calculation. It's rather 50:50 -- as with group #1, you might run a "zero growth" -- or tend to either group 2 or group 3.

Special case: The "hopper"
Especially in rural areas, coverage might be, humm, "slippery". Your device might be permanently toggling between 2G and 3G, always on the hunt for the better signal. Here all the above might become relative, as the toggling itself is drinking the juice. If you are in such a situation: Check to which of the 4 groups above you fit best, and fix your device to either 3G or 2G, depending on.
Btw: A similar situation would be if you've got the idea to toggle between 2G/3G whenever you switch your display off/on. As the toggling requires up to 10s full-power (to find the corresponding stations; 2G and 3G use different frequencies), you wouldn't really "save juice".

Epilog
Yepp, I completely forgot about 4G/LTE. But incidentally. First: I have no 4G/LTE device for a self-experiment. Second: I have no "hard data" on 4G/LTE. So all I could do is guessing. Doing that, OK, OK: It most likely will be the same as above -- just increment the numbers by one :)