how to view your accounts google play store money I bought a nexus 7 in 2012 and it came with a $20.00 gift card. When I went to install apps from the app store, it asked me to sign into my google account. I signed into my gmail account and received the $20.00 for the play store. I purchased one or two items but I'm positive I still have a good $15.00 left. Where do I go to check how much google play store money I have left on my account? I went to wallet.google.com and it asked me to create a payment method, but I know for a fact that I still ahve a good $15.00 left on that gift card... Do the gift cards expire?

According to the TOS, Google Play gift cards never expire.

You can view your balance by opening your Google Wallet page (you can also view your transaction history here to figure out where your money went) or by contacting Customer Care at 1-855-466-4438.


How do I recover my WhatsApp messages when the phone is lost? I lost my phone with some  unopened  important document in my WhatsApp account, and I can't get the  same  number because  I'm currently  out  of  the country where I can replace my line. So, how  do I recover  my  messages in such case?

Unfortunately it's not possible without using same number because Whatsapp runs only on mobile.

Whatsapp doesn't have any email id or login functionality.

Update : 8th Jan 2016.

Now Whatsapp added backup functionality using Google Drive. So you can also take your chat backup if you lost your mobile.

Screenshot - Click to enlarge


How do I enable Direct Boot feature on Nexus 6 running Android N Preview 1? According to these instructions there should be a "Convert to file encryption" option in Developer settings, but it's not there on my Nexus 6 running stock N Preview 1.  When I try to search for it in the Settings app, it does show up:

click for larger image

Unfortunately, tapping on it simply brings me right back to Developer settings where that option is not found.

The alternative instruction is to reboot to bootloader and issue the fastboot --wipe-and-use-fbe command, but it fails with "fastboot: unknown option -- wipe-and-use-fbe" error.  I am running the SDK Tools version 25.1.1 rc1, and Platform-tools version 24 rc1 from the preview channel of Android SDK, with latest fastboot utility (version 102d0d1e73de-android).

I performed a complete wipe (system and userdata), and flashed all the NPC56P images manually (bootloader, radio, recovery, system, cache, userdata.)  The phone is encrypted, Screen lock is set to "PIN", and Secure start-up (requiring PIN before boot) is enabled.

Is this feature simply not available in Preview 1 and/or Nexus 6?  How can I enable it?

I'm afraid that in Preview 1 this is only available on the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P. In Preview 2, support for the Pixel C is added. No other devices are supported at the moment. Sorry!


Chrome keeps logging me out of websites For the last few months, my Android Pixel 2 XL (running 8, now 9) often shows me the login page on my frequently visited websites. I've managed to reproduce it with these steps:

Open Chrome (68.0.3440.85)
Visit facebook.com and login
Using tab switcher, swipe away (close) Chrome
Open Chrome again

Behaviour:
Returns to the facebook page, but asks me to login again

Expected:
A cookie is stored that ensures I'm still logged in

I'm not rooted, have tried rebooting, have ensured I have the latest Chrome version. I haven't tried a factory reset but would like to avoid that if possible. I also have a password manager (Dashlane) that offers to log me in, if that matters.

As confirmed by OP disabling Chrome app fixed the problem (Settings →apps & notifications → select system apps→Chrome →disable app (to revert to the original version before updates)

I have no idea what caused this problem and only guess is Android Pie + Chrome updates didn't gel


Google account sign in problems Yesterday my HTC Tattoo (with software based on Donut) started giving me "No connection Retry" errors for Gmail, YouTube, Google Reader, Market and anything else that requires sign in with Google credentials.

After doing a "Clear data" on the Gmail app I get another message,

  There was a network error while trying to sign in to xxxxxx@gmail.com. Retry now or press the back button to cancel

Whatever "network error" there is, does not stop me from using the web browser. Indeed I am able to logon to the mobile (and unfortunately buggy) Gmail web app from the browser. I will note that I get "Security warnings" about the certificate for google.com.au: "the name of the site does not match the name of the certificate" when I logon via the web, although I saw that message months back and have been able to use my apps until now.

Any idea what could have triggered this? I've not changed my google account credentials, or switched SIM card, or done anything that I think could make it my fault.

I've the exact same issue on a Galaxy Tab P1000 with gingerbread 2.3.3 since about 2-3 weeks.
My current interpretation is that Google has updated its certs (the current one I get is dated 11/7) and the new ones are not trusted by Android anymore making it impossible to use any google account for mail/play store/etc... If this is the case, the only solution would be an update from the manufacturer or maybe rooting the device and convincing it that the new cert is good.


What is the purpose and function of the "Media Storage" application and the media scanner? I want to know what the purpose of the system app "Media Storage" and the media scanner is for and why for any reason a user would choose to not scan media on boot.

Media Storage, package name com.android.providers.media, is an implementation of MediaStore:

  The Media provider contains meta data for all available media on both internal and external storage devices.

It scans and stores media file info for quick access, and provides secure (content:/// scheme, as with all other providers) URIs pointing to the files for access by other apps.

By default, Media Storage has a broadcast receiver MediaScannerReceiver that listens for android.intent.action.BOOT_COMPLETED, so media scanner will launch on boot. Such receivers are unlikely to be disabled by end users unless with root permissions.


Wget using Termux download directory I just installed Wget using Termux on my Android. But, when I download a file, I cannot find it's location. Can anyone please tell me where it's located? And how can I change that location to my desired directory?

To quote Izzy,

  wget usually downloads to where you called it from – unless told
  otherwise using the -O parameter. So you either first cd to the
  desired directory – or try something like wget -O
  /sdcard/downloads/foo.zip http://example.com/foo.zip.

In your case, this directory is /data/data/com.termux/files/home and, as it's inside /data, only root and the files' owner can alter things here.

Since Termux is the owner, though, you can move, copy and delete files and folders inside the abovementioned directory.

Before moving or copying to the internal storage

If you run Android Marshmallow (6.x) or above, run termux-setup-storage and grant the requested permission to be able to interact with anything inside /storage/emulated/0.

To move files

To move files to e.g. the standard download directory, use the command mv source destination, replacing source with the file you wish to move, and destination with /storage/emulated/0/Download, which is the default download directory located in your internal storage.

To copy files

To copy files to e.g. the standard download directory, use the command cp source destination, replacing source with the file you wish to move, and destination with /storage/emulated/0/Download.

To delete files

To delete any file, use rm file, replacing file with the file you wish to delete.

To delete directories

To delete an empty directory, use rmdir directory.

To delete a non-empty directory, use rm -r directory. This method will delete anything inside the chosen directory.

In both cases, replace directory with the directory you wish to delete.


How to bypass the Goggle account password request on a Z353VL ZtE flip phone both touch screen and hard keys So I have this old ZTE and I can't find a way to bypass the frp I looked all over online and nothing for the touchscreen hard button model like this I just bypassed a galaxy s7 running oreo for a friend so I thought for sure this phone would have a bypass that you can do using the phone itself

I used this method on a old vodafone device i had a long time ago, almost certain its was a Zte.
 Ok when promted to connect with wi fi, you first connect to your network, then type any name in ad alternative network connection, tap and hold the name u just typed.
You wil get a option to share, on the share screen tap and hold gmail,  the "app info" screen will pop up, here you select notifications, go to the last option witch is "more settings", on that screen select the sub menu and go to "manage accounts"

Ok now you should be in your normal settings menu, here you need to open chrome to download files to help you finnish the process, depending the version of Android you have, there are various ways to do this, Mine was a kitkat simply go to applications and launch chrome.
 There is a way with the google app to launch chrome too, tap and hold the google app in the device manager the "app info" screen will appear again go to "notifications" and select "more settings" open the "manage card history" and select chrome.
There are many sites and apps with will assist you from here,


Android system recovery from Windows I have the cheap Android tablet. During my experiments, I had rooted it and removed application folder. Now I can't turn on my tablet it is loading forever.

I have read about ways to load new ROM on my phone. Most of them start from uploading some apps on phone. I can't do it.

Also, I tried adb tool. But command: adb devices don't see my device.

Is it possible to recover Android system in some if Android OS isn't started and adb tool doesn't see the device?

Deleting system folders can brick your device. That's what happened. Some files are part of the booting process and since they are not present the system can't go further. To be able to boot normally again, you'll need to flash the firmware/ROM for this model.

ADB can't find the phone on this state because android needs to completely boot for USB Debugging to be operational.

As this phone is a Mediatek device, you'll need SP Flashtool as the flasher software and flashing files need contain a scatter file which is a sort of phone internal chip memory "map".  Also you need MTK drivers to allow the phone be detected.

You can find thousands of video tutorials on how to flash a Mediatek device using SP Flashtool. Flash files can be found on Needrom


Forgot pattern lock on Samsung Galaxy J3 but want to keep the data I had my Samsung Galaxy J3 set a pattern by accident and have no idea what it is. It's been 3 days and still haven't discovered any answers and am feeling hopeless.

If I do a factory reset, all my data and important photos will be lost. My phone is set to waiting 64 minutes before trying another pattern and won't ask if I have forgotten my pattern and let me type in my ID and password.

Any solution?

The only way for you to unlock your device would be if you setup a Samsung account while setting up your phone.

Head into Samsung's Find my Mobile service.
Sign into your Samsung account. If you did not create a Samsung account or do not remember creating one, then try signing in with your Gmail ID and password.
Wait for your device to be located, and then click on More from the right menu.

4) Next scroll down and click on Unlock my Device option

On the pop-up enter in the password for your Samsung account


Can I delete factory apps What all apps that come factory on a LG 70 are safe to delete, or force stop, or disable without affecting the phones performance.

Not all apps are safe to delete or disable. Most are, though.

If you are able to remove an app that came with your phone, it is safe to do so.
If you can only freeze the app, then it is in the /system directory, that is why you can not remove it. You can disable nearly any app without bad consequences - but if other apps start to crash, try to re-enable these apps.
The apps you should never disable is the Settings app itself, the System UI and other core system components - without these, you may not be able to use the phone at all, so you can not even re-enable these. A factory reset can help this situation.


My S4 Mini won't (even try to) send text messages I tried to send text messages yesterday. When I pressed send, my text disappears from the text field but nothing else happens. The message doesn't appear in the chat log as sent or trying to send or in any other way.

I sent the messages to four different people. None received it.
I restarted the phone. Nothing changed.
I tried sending the messages in two different places, 50 kilometers apart from each other.
I tried sending the messages in those two different places, twice in each place, each time on a different day.
I'm with Rogers in Ontario. I was well within the coverage zone every time I tried.

How can I fix this?

I know this seems trivial but try turning on and off your flight mode on your phone. it worked for me. I had been fiddling around with my sim card and then had the same problem as you. anyways hope that helps


Limit sync'ed address book entries to bluetooth car-kit Is there an app (because I don't see it as a feature) to limit the address book entries to a particular category when accessing via bluetooth?

My car will only take 1000 phone numbers, but my address book on the phone is about 1400.  My colleagues car will only take 500, and his list is 900 long.

If there was a way to limit the list it would allow it to sync quicker and not miss vital people...

Anyone seen anything like this? When I was using WindowsMobile I used a product from http://www.jetwaremobile.com/ to do this - is there an Android equivalent?

-Craig

Please note, this solution will work on SOME Android phones, but not all of them.

As of right now your best bet is to make a group. Go to Contacts or People (depends on phone), view your groups, and then create a new one (usually done by selecting menu and then Add Group. Then add the contacts you want to that group (it might be easiest to go online from a computer and do this.

Then go into the settings of your groups or from the main contact screen and see if you can only show that group as visible.  On my phone I cannot select individual groups to show and not show. But I think other Android phones can do this. Look for a "View" option.


What data is included in Auto Backup? On my Android 7.0 phone, I see that I can set auto backups for the phone data.

(click image for larger variant)

For apps, it says that it will back up app data. I see that Android apps have both cache data and app data.

Android/data/com.myapp.app/cache
Android/data/com.myapp.app/files

Is cache included in the auto back up data?

Backup will never contain cache data.

Cache data is CPU specific and instance specific. For the same app, different CPU may create different cache depending on what part of the app is running as a process. Moreover, even the same CPU running at different instances may have different app cache. If you open an app, keep it running in the background, but never open it in foreground, the cache created will be different from the one created if the app has been running in foreground. Moreover, once the app has been closed and its process has been killed, then cache space for that data is allowed to be overwritten by new incoming data. So, cache data is never constant.


Captions on with every video even if I switch it of Ever since youtube last update captions with every video auto on, eventhough I switch it of in my settings. On a different noteI find the captions very irritating because the captions are realy bad not sync different of what the people say in the video and captions to slow. That is way I do not want any captions in my videos.

I u installed all the YouTube updates in the app store and now it seems to work OK, no more irritating captions.


Software recognizing phone numbers in documents? On an iphone I've seen a docx file with some phone numbers in it which you could call by just touching them. Is there any android software doing this?

There is a question here which seemingly implies that apple holds a patent on this feature, but I am still asking in case they allowed somebody to use it with android...

P.S. Answers to another question mention some apps which enable you to call a number from a text file once you have copied it; I would prefer to avoid that extra action...

Have you tried Google's Quickoffice? It detects numbers (and underlining them), and lets you click the number to open the dialer with that number.


Profile based on location(s) I am an independent contractor who has trouble keeping his time sheet up to date.

Is it possible to create a tasker profile or task to do either of the following?

When leaving from this list of locations between a certain time and day of the week, remind me to make a note of what I did (possibly using S Memo).

Between certain times and days of the week, record phone calls from this list of people and note how long the conversation is.

Want to know if this is possible before buying Tasker. Most of these places will have wifi, but a few will not. I have a Samsung Galaxy S4. Have at it. Please let me know and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your patience.

you can easily achieve the first with Llama, a free app (easier to use than Tasker, its location sending works with cell towers) but for the call recording I think you would need tasker for that (as call recording is not that easy to achieve on android)


reduce memory usage of "Internet" and "contacts" The DiskUsage app shows 14,8MB data used for "Internet" and 11,5MB used for contacts.

Is there a way to reduce memory usage?

I know I can delete Internet data using the general app settings but I fear this will also delete all saved passwords and I'd like to avoid that.

As for the contacts: In the global account settings (sync) I use only my two Google accounts and weather. I had Facebook sync activated while back, though, and it import a number of contact photos, which are still visible.

Any chance to reduce memory usage without removing too much useful data?

Assuming by "Internet" it means the default browser, then you should be able to go to Browser Settings to delete History and other cached data (press Menu button on the Browser, then select More, then Settings).

As for Contacts, if your address book are synced to your Gmail Address Book, you can Clear Data in the Manage Applications. After a short while, the Contact app will resync to Gmail Address Book hopefully without the Facebook contacts.


I can't install apk file: App Not Installed I recently got a HTC One M9, and I wanted to replace it's gallery with my old phone's gallery because I loved one of the filters that it had. This led to me having to download a third party APK file, but when I tried to install it, it just gave me an error that said "App not installed." I first thought it's because it won't install because the current gallery is still on my phone, but after disabling the app, I still get the error message. Is there any way I can fix this?

The APK file is MIUI's Gallery app if that helps.

Generally you can't install one manufacturer's built-in apps on another manufacturer's phone anyway. The built-in apps are written to take advantage of the specific hardware on that phone and/or extra libraries the manufacturer includes in their system image. Camera apps are a particularly bad culprit because often they rely on the features of the camera chip and on a custom image-processing library.

As well as the technical problems, this is software piracy. The app is made by the phone manufacturer to give that particular phone a competitive advantage. It's only licensed for use on that phone. It's not like on Google Play where you buy an app and then can use it on any phone.


How to get Gmail new message notifications without having to sync? How can I get Gmail new message notifications without having to sync an account with my Android phone?

I thought there may be a way by either :

going through XMPP somehow
configuring Gmail to notify Google+ when I get a new email and then I would get a G+ notification which would be fine.

I just want my phone to tell me "you have a new email" without having to actually sync anything.

Here is a (mostly) non-Android solution for you.

You'll need to (sign up for and) use If This Then That.

Create a recipe.1

Your This will be the Gmail channel, specifically the Any new email trigger.2

Your That will be however you'd like to be notified. I like Pushover but SMS will work just as well. You'll use the Send me an SMS action (or send a notification for Pushover).3

Now you can be notified of new messages in your Gmail without even actually having Gmail on your phone.4

1 If you prefer, you can just use this recipe (SMS) or this recipe (Pushover).

2 If you don't want to be notified on every new message, there are other triggers you can use, like "New email from" or "New email from search" that can be more specific.

3 Unfortunately there is no Google+ channel. There a lots of other channels for lots of other services.

4 IFTTT triggers usually don't go off more than every fifteen minutes, so don't expect your notification to be instantaneous.


Why can't I write to recovery using fastboot on A/B device? I'm trying to flash TWRP Recovery into my Mi A2 recovery. However I get the error when flashing:

~$ fastboot flash recovery twrp.img
FAILED (remote: '(recovery_a) No such partition')

Does anyone know how to fix this error? I did test flashing it to boot_b, and that did work. but that's not the recovery slot.

That's expected. Devices with A/B partition scheme don't have a recovery partition. You can only boot in recovery mode with fastboot boot twrp.img. But to permanently flash recovery to device which can be booted into by proper key combination, you need to unpack both of your boot.imgs (A/B) from device and replace the ramdisk with the one extracted from twrp.img. Then repack and flash boot.imgs back to device.

On TWRP this has  been previously achieved by flashing a special ZIP file, or one could do manually. Now the official TWRP release includes the option Install Recovery Ramdisk:

  Use magiskboot to allow repacking boot images for installing TWRP

Traditionally boot.img and recovery.img had two major components; kernel and ramdisk. On A/B devices, no ramdisk is required for normal boot because system.img is mounted as rootfs when processing Device Tree (dtb) which is appended to kernel image usually. So the ramdisk.cpio in boot.img is that of recovery. Since kernel is same for a device (other than build configurations), so only ramdisk needs to be replaced.

Sources:

Implementing A/B Updates
System-as-root


Tablets always turned on (usb-powered). Problems? I need to install about 20 tablets powered 24/7 (24 hours, all week). Is there any problem or potencial damage about it?

There should be nothing to stop you from doing so.
As long as you keep an eye on those tablets and make sure they are setup as they are supposed to they will work.

Small suggestion: Don't connect them 24/7 to the charger. The battery will wear out slower if you keep it's charge between 40-80%.
Android shouldn't be a problem for you.


How can I rename a removable SD card, or create a folder on it. Permission Denied I am not a programmer, I am a 'user'. I have bought a FonePad and added a 32GB SDHC card, naively thinking I could use it to store the maps I will need on a storage-hungry navigation software.

However, I find I cannot rename the device from Removable, I get the message 'Permission Denied'.  Same result when I try to create a subfolder. Same result if I try using a utility like SDCard Manager or Card Manager HD.

Coming from a Windows world, I am just completely lost.

Take SDCard Manager for example: when running it says that it has *Storage -- Modify or delete the contents of your SD card. I note that SD card is the 'built-in' device.

It sounds like you formatted the card using your computer, or another device. It seems like now your Android device doesn't have proper permissions to write to the card. You can fix this by formatting the card. If you don't want to format the card, just run this on Ubuntu or another linux based system:

sudo chmod -r o+w /path/to/sdcard

This will recursively give everyone permission to write to the card. If the card is empty, you probably just need to apply this to the root directory, with no recursion:

sudo chmod o+w /sdcard/root


marshmallow trouble with internal storage i have galaxy on5 device. its updated to marshmallow on last week but after update it start performing some error. biggest problem is with storage. in internal storage it showing 7.3 gb used but actually it used only 5.4gb. because of showing 7.3 gb used out of 8gb i uninstall some big apps but still it showing 7.3gb used only. actually i having same problem with my sd card but i just unmount my sd card and again mount it, then it shows the correct space used.
kindly tell me how to troubleshoot this problem.
email: shubhamhunter.swami@gmail.com

Did you try cleaning the cache? There might be junk folders and files you can delete also. Don't forget moving all movable apps in the SD Card. I would recommend you install ES File Explorer on Google play to clean your storage.


Android 5.0.2: Windows 10 does not recognize it in USB storage mode I bought Prestigio MultiPhone 3504 Muze with Android 5.0.2. When I connect it to my PC with Windows 10 installed, I can't find the device in explorer.

How to connect my phone to PC?

For your device to be shown as USB storage you need to set MTP as your usb-computer connection option.

Settings - Storage - Press three dots - USB Computer connection - Select Media device (MTP)

Now when you connect it to your Windows 10 PC you will be able to see the device's storage.


Help pairing bluetooth headset/microphone with Samsung Galaxy Tab & Skype? I have had some difficulty getting a bluetooth headset/microphone to work with the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and with Skype.

First, the bluetooth scanner can only find some headsets, not all of them. I tried to get a Motorola H350 headset to work, but it failed. Then I tried a Sprint Jawbone headset and it synced, but in Skype the microphone in it didn't work and it was using the microphone on the Galaxy Tab instead. I mean, I walked away from my tab and said "testing 1, 2, 3", and couldn't hear it. Instead, I heard someone near my tab saying, "testing a, b, c".

Second, I don't know if it's just a Skype issue or the Galaxy Tab hardware that's preventing Skype from picking up my voice over the paired bluetooth headset. Or perhaps it's the headset. Or perhaps I must use only a Samsung-brand headset.

In a nutshell, I want to use Skype calling on my Galaxy tab, and purchase a headset that lets me use the microphone in the headset.

Has anyone gotten this to work? What's the trick?

EDIT: I have since purchased these wireless headphones which also include a built-in mic. These sync'd up for audio output, but in Skype I could not get audio input. So, I then temporarily rooted my device (thank you z4 root tool) and edited /system/etc/bluetooth/audio.conf to enable some settings that Verizon Wireless and/or Samsung disables in the unit. I then reset the unit and did the headset repairing again. In the end, Skype would not do audio input from the headset. But I noticed this, however. The microphone on the Galaxy Tab is outstanding. It collects the audio input in such a way that drowns out background sound. So, in a sense, you can still use the headset with the tab and walk around in your cubicle, or even talk on a crowded bus, and for the most part it will clearly pick up your voice. It's a nice compromise since headsets with mics don't seem to work with the Galaxy Tab. This might be a symptom of Skype. Their tech support says they don't support audio routing through the headset. However, I noticed that headset audio on the Galaxy Tab also doesn't work with every other app I've tried as well.

I also have the proble second problem, and I found the skype staff said :Skype doesnt currently support routing the audio to a bluetooth device.
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=726263&st=0&gopid=3271265&
Maybe this is the reason...


Huawei does not accept password to unlock I have a Huawei tablet it was reset  now when i try to sign in with Google it gives me a message shown on the image.

What can i do? Thanks.

Please sign in using one of the owner's accounts for this device


Problem playing music via Chromecast In the last couple of Android updates I've found an issue when playing music via the Chromecast device on my TV. It seems once the screen sleeps the phone disconnects from the Chromecast and doesn't continue playing music. If the power button is pressed quickly it will usually start to play again.

The only way I've found to resolve this so far is to set my screen to never time out and turn the brightness down to minimum, but this not an ideal fix.

I'm using the built in music app on my Xperia Z5. I've tried other apps but they all do the same thing. There was an app called N7 that when used along with Toaster Cast, worked okay, but then Toaster, Cast stopped working.

Does anyone know how to fix this. I don't think that the phone is disconnecting from the router as I still get notifications when the screen is off.

Had similar issue when streaming music from phone to wireless speakers via wifi. Phone, unfortunately, wont allow sleep mode to be turned off completely (only when charging phone). Best solution I have is using app called INSOMNIA. It allows you to switch sleep mode off completely. Worked with Huawei P8 lite.


How to turn off Wi-Fi 15min after it had been turned on? I seek help creating a Tasker profile/task to turn off the Wi-Fi 15min after it had been turned on.

Is this possible in Tasker?

I am not familiar with Tasker , in Macrodroid another versatile automation app:

Trigger : WiFi state change → connected (choose network)

Actions:

Wait 15 minutes
WiFi configure → disable Wi

Constraints: None (Run always) or set up your Constraints under which macro runs


Prevent a file from being overwritten An app, due to an unfixed glitch, keeps overwriting an important file

How to lock that file so that it cannot be overwritten ?

Have root. Don't have xposed

You can remove write permission on your file. You would need toybox (inbuilt in Android since v5.0) or busybox. Assuming you have toybox already, use these commands in a terminal emulator:

su
cd /data/media/0/DIR              # replace DIR with wherever your file is. E.g. if the file is in /sdcard/Download, then DIR should be Download, so that the whole command looks like /data/media/0/Download
toybox chown 444 FILE_NAME        # this would set read-only permission for every user in the system for that file. Change 444 to 666 to revert changes.
chattr +i FILE_NAME               # alternative to above command. This prevents writing as well as deletion of the file. Change +i to -i to revert changes.

If you're wondering why the commands are performed on file under /data/media/0, read the answer here from Irfan Latif.


How can I diagnose this problem: Can't flash ROM to my Samsung Fascinate When I boot into recovery all the text moves so fast I can't read what's happening, then it just boots normally without the new ROM.  Is there any log I can review to find out what is happening?

Here's a little background on what I'm doing:

I started with a stock Samsung Fascinate fresh from a factory reset.  I rooted it using this method.  I installed ROM Manager from the Market then I installed Clockworkmod with this method.  Finally I tried to install jt1134's Super Clearn 0.9 (DJ05) from ROM Manager.  It downloads the ROM offers me the option to backup my current ROM (which I decline because it's already backed up) and the option to wipe cache and data which I choose then hit OK.  From here it boots into Recovery and then the text scrolls up the screen so fast I can't see whats happening, then it boots into the regular stock ROM which would suggest the ROM installation failed.  One other note, ClockworkMod recovery appears to work except when I manually boot into it and choose "reboot" it hangs on the clockworkmod icon.

It sounds very much like the recovery is borked.  I recommend using Odin to re-flash recovery (or even the entire ROM if you can get ahold of an Odin-flashable version).  Here's a recent guide from XDA.


Screen brightness keeps switching to auto & timeout to 500min My Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7" (Android v4.1.1) has been having a bizarre problem since I installed (and uninstalled) Aldiko reader.  It has been setting the Screen Timeout to 500min (which isn't even an available setting in the Display options) and the brightness to "Auto".  Regardless of any changes I make, it changes back immediately to those settings - I can actually watch it happen.

Little help?

While I wasn't able to directly address the issue, I found an app called Screen Control that can modify screen timeout and brightness settings for all applications... using this to reset things and then uninstalling it seems to have done the trick.


'No pictures are available on the phone' after selecting contact picture After upgrading my Nexus 5 to vanilla Lollipop a few days ago, I'm no longer able to assign pictures to my contacts. I can tap "Choose photo" and select a picture, but when I confirm I get the error "No pictures are available on the phone". How can this happen? It doesn't make any sense. I already tried wiping cache from recovery because some people say that it can fix some upgrade problems, but that didn't solve anything for me.

You need to have a gallery app installed like the default "Gallery" or "QuickPic" app.

I had the same issue since "Gallery" doesn't come with Android 5.0 Lollipop, only "Photos" (which I disabled since I don't use Google+)


Playing live streams directly from web page? do you know is there any way to watch VLC streams from my android phone (nexus 5)? I found several pages that provide streams directly (e.g. http://www.gletvuzivo.pw/2015/02/rtl-2-uzivo-stream.html) and in this example you can see that first two tabs require x-google-vlc-plugin to play the stream. I can use the link with flash player but I'd prefer to watch them via VLC (either VLC player for android or directly from web page).

Is this even possible?

I'd like to thank anyone in front for the answer.

Regards, Yowitza

i think MX player is better than VLC so you can try Live Streams

or for VLC

Open Chrome web browser, browse to chrome://plugins
Now, you will see an option, “VLC Web Plugin”. If this line is available, you have successfully installed the VLC player plugin for Chrome.


Should the Dalvik cache on Android phones be cleared periodically? Recently, I rooted my phone (Samsung Galaxy On7, Android 6.0.1) using Magisk systemless root using TWRP. After the flashing was over, I also cleared the Dalvik cache, not knowing that this was not necessary. When I rebooted the phone, it took a long time to boot. It was showing, "Optimizing apps". I thought I had cracked the phone up and it was a boot loop. But later I found that everything was fine. In addition, clearing of the Dalvik cache actually freed up the internal memory by about 1GB.

I read on Stack Overflow that Dalvik cache is actually the optimized dex files that the dex compiler builds to ensure the smooth running of applications. Now, the last official update to this phone was back in April 2018. Is it possible that the phone retained the cache of all apps since then, including the ones I had uninstalled? It seems so, otherwise how could I recover about 1GB of memory simply by clearing the Dalvik cache?

If I am correct that clearing the Dalvik cache freed up space, does it make sense to clear the Dalvik cache periodically, say annually, so as to prevent misuse of the "precious" internal memory?

If you have the habit of removing apps on a regular basis, then you can clear it regularly. Once a year or once every 6 months should be fine. If you have root, then you can use Titanium backup as stated on this answer to remove dex files not link to apps.


How to access /storage/emulated/0/ from PC? I want to export the settings of the K9 mail app. This app exports a settings file to /storage/emulated/0/com.fsck.k9/settings-4.k9s. But if I connect my Nexus 4 to my PC I cannot see such a file or the directories.

The solution was to reboot the phone. The com.fsck.k9 directory is now visible on the top level of the phones file system.


Settings - Accessibility warning: "Downloaded accessibility application is required to activate" -- What should I do? If I choose the 'Settings - Accessibility' option on my Samsung Galaxy S, the following text is displayed: 'Downloaded accessibility application is required to activate'.

I searched the Droid Market for 'accessibility' but am not sure that this is the correct way to install this (system?) application.

Anyone any idea what and where from I should install ? Thx.


Will I be able to make video calls over Skype with ACME Tablet TB01? I want to buy ACME Tablet TB01 and I want to know if it will allow to speak over Skype using both front or back camera. Can I make video calls?

The current Skype Android app does not support video calling at all.

If it did, and your device ran the appropriate version of Android, you shouldn't have any problems.  However, just like using a desktop computer - your performance will be variable.  Using a less powerful device will result in a less optimal experience.

There is an alternative, using Google+ (and hangouts).  However, to use this, I am pretty sure you will need the Google custom libraries.  In that case, you need to check the device you are buying to see if it is marked as a "Google Experience" device.  This means it has the "blessing" to run Google apps.  Otherwise, the device is likely based on the Open Source version of Android, which is not as full featured.


Podcast app that can create playlists I asked before about a podcast app that is able to share it's episodes with the default music player. Does anyone know of a podcast app that takes it a step further and generates playlists for each podcast (playlists that would be visible in the default music player or any music player capable of handling m3u's).

So I've discovered that beyond pod will do this. It has an autoplaylist function that will allow you to build smart playlists. There is an option in the settings that will share this playlist with other apps (basically it generates and M3u and updates it as it downloads podcasts).

This works OK. I'd love if there was an app that could generate a per-podcast playlist, but for the time being having a single playlist with all my podcasts is better than having to search for them within my entire music catalog.


How to enable/disable lock screen from shell script when a special wifi SSID is present? My Java skills are low, but I'm mastering shell.

Is use LineageOS 14.1 (forked from cyanogenmod).

I would like to create a shell script on a rooted devive to enable/disable lockscreen (PIN).

I would like to unlock my screen at home when a special SSID is present.

I'm able to discover my known network by running :

#!/bin/bash

iw dev wlan0 scan | grep MY_SSID

Now, is there a command line to disable/enable the PIN based lock screen depending of the output of this command please ?

Maybe something based on

am <something> <stop|start>

Tried to make a diff from ps with and without lockscreen, but I only have cyanogenmod.snap as diff, tried to kill the process, but still the lockscreen.

Any hint please ?

The script below is a partial solution. Partial because it will not disable the Pin. What it does is to wake the device up when it is connected to a chosen wifi, input your password and unlock it.

#!/system/bin/sh

mySSID="no wifi present"

connected_wifi()
{
    #Get the network
    mySSID=`dumpsys netstats | awk -F '[/=|,]' '/iface/ {print $8}' | head -1`

}

echo 'Start running script\n\n'

connected_wifi

while true
do
#Check if connected to wifi or mobile data. If connected string is not empty
    if [ "$mySSID" != '' ]
    then

        if [ "$mySSID" == "YourHomeSSID" ] #connected to home wifi
        then

            echo "Connected to $mySSID\n"
            #Check if the screen is on or off
            screen_status=`dumpsys power | awk -F '[/=]' '/Display Power/ {print $2}'`

            if [ "$screen_status" == "OFF" ]
            then
                echo 'The screen is off, Will now input the password'
                #Press the power button to switch the screen on
                input keyevent 26
                #Simulate swipe up gesture
                input touchscreen swipe 320 940 320 100
                #Input your PIN. Change XXXX with your PIN
                input text XXXX
                #Simulate OK/Enter
                input keyevent 66

            fi

        fi

    fi #not connected to wifi nor mobile data

    #Wait for 3 seconds, then check again if connected to home wifi
    sleep 3
    connected_wifi

done

The main disadvantage of the script is that the screen will be on nearly all the time when connected to your home wifi. To stop the script from running, press CTRL+C from the terminal.

My phone doesn't have iw command. I had to use dumpsys netstats to get the networkID.


Is there any way to disable or remove the [ T ] Tesco navigation button on a Hudl? Some years ago we bought a Tesco Hudl (the first one, not a Hudl 2).  It features a small Tesco button  on the navigation bar.  Its presence on the bar is not an issue but there is a problem where the device periodically starts registering presses to this button, opening and closing the Tesco website every few seconds.  The only way to stop this at present is to lock the screen using the power button, wait a few seconds, then resume normal use.  The manufacturers were clearly aware of screen issues, as one of the software updates that rolled out claimed to address this and did help.  The device is so old, it would make no economic sense to physically repair but disabling the button that registers the click would make the user experience much better.

Yesterday I looked around for ways to disable or remove this button.  It seems that some years ago people on MoDaCo created a custom firmware for the Hudl that did not have the button.  I tried to download the binary last night and the server seemed to through errors, so I assume it does not have the file any more.  Further to this the version of firmware this mod seems to apply to the more recent version installed on the Hudl.  The Hudl is running Android 4.2.2 and a later ROM version than the 20130923 specified for this alternative image.

A few people also suggesting using some software to remove or disable the soft button without loading a new ROM image.  I have managed to ''root'' the Hudl and install the Xposed framework but I have not been able to find a tool that would let me modify the [ T ] softbutton.  I have been able to change the style of the other Icons (which might be a welcome relief to my partner as she hates the Lollipop NavBar icons on her Nexus 4), but not alter the Tesco icon.

Please can someone provide some simple instructions of how to remove or disable this NavBar soft button?  As I have mentioned it is a rooted Hudl 1, running the latest over-the-air firmware.

Well that took quite a bit of work.  In the end I was able to get the custom firmware for the Hudl mentioned on the MoDaCo forum.  After that the difficulty was getting the USB Drivers up and running to get the Hudl happy as an MTP device.  I think this is how it went...

Enable Developer Settings & USB Debugging - This Hudl is an Android 4.2.2 device so you got to Settings > About Device scroll down to Build Number and then tap it 7 times.  After that you will find that you can go to Settings > Developer options then enable USB Debugging.

USB Drivers - Honestly I don't know what I did to finally get this working.  Even with the Android Development Kit installed the drivers did not load correctly.  Some scrabbling around took me to the AndroidCentral Forums from which I downloaded a MotoHelper Driver, extracted the files from that install executable and then installed the 64 bit driver version under \MotoHelper_2.1.32_Driver_5.4.0\$TEMP\ (this took me two attempts).  After failing to get an Unknown Device to install as a composite mtp devices, I tried replacing some of the other ones that came up; a Hudl and an MTP device.  That did not work so I unplugged the device, plugged it back in.  Eventually a second Hudl device appeard and this I could choose to be a Composite MTP which then let adb devices -l see the thing.

Backing-up the old and installing the new SystemUI.apk - This turned out to be the easy bit.  Follow the instructions from the MoDaCo forum post.  Navigate to wherever you have the new .apk in a console and then:

adb pull /system/app/SystemUI.apk SystemUI.mybackup.apk
adb push SystemUI.apk /sdcard/SystemUI.apk
adb shell
su
stop
mount -o remount,rw /system
cp /sdcard/SystemUI.apk /system/app/SystemUI.apk
chmod 644 /system/app/SystemUI.apk
reboot

I am very grateful to PaulOBrien for getting the modified ROM setup and providing the instructions that got me most of the way.


HTC One (m7ul) not found by ADB + formatted filesystem = bricked? So, I'm really hoping that I haven't bricked my phone and that someone can help me figure out how to fix this.

I can't remember exactly the steps I took to mess it up so spectacularly, but they included trying to flash to the M2 snapshot of CyanogenMod 11 from a ViperOne ROM, relocking the bootloader, attempting to restore to a stock RUU (and failing because I accidentally downloaded an unsigned version), reUNlocking the bootloader, and formatting via TWRP.

Fastboot appears to recognise that the phone is plugged in (it reads FASTBOOT USB on the bootloader screen), and Windows 8 sees the device in Device Manager. However, when I attempt to do anything with ADB it returns error: device not found, so I can't use rebootRUU or push files to the /sdcard/ directory, and I have no ROMs to flash.

The bootloader screen reads:

*** TAMPERED ***
*** RELOCKED ***
*** Security Warning ***
M7_UL PVT SHIP S-ON RH
HBOOT-1.54.0000
RADIO-4A.17.3250.14
OpenDSP-v31.120.274.0617
OS-2.24.841.1
eMMC-boot 2048MB
Jun 21 2013,23:03:15.0

FASTBOOT USB

It also appears that I am able to use FastBoot to lock and unlock the bootloader using the unlock bin file I created earlier today, yet fastboot devices returns nothing and fastboot reboot returns < waiting for devices >.

Is there anything I can do short of using a USB-OTG cable to sideload a custom ROM?

I would be inconceivably grateful for any help which gets me closer to getting my phone working again. Thanks in advance!

EDIT 1: So, after rebooting a couple of times, *** Security Warning *** is no longer there and fastboot devices now returns my serial number. However, adb devices still returns nothing. Any idea what's going on?

Woah! I'm not entirely sure what happened, but it suddenly started working again - I now have CM 11 up and running.

Here are some notes on what I was doing which will hopefully be helpful for someone else who has the same problems I did:

First off, I was running Windows 8 in a Parallels VM. I don't know if either Windows 8 or the VM was the culprit, but either way, it was silly and probably didn't help things. Getting ADB and FastBoot up and running in OS X seemed to make a difference.
Also, there is a chance that there were some problems with directory partitioning/formatting - it suddenly started working after I wiped the system a few times with TWRP (Wipe > Format Data) and rebooted. Obviously you'll lose everything, but better to lose a few files and get your phone back!

Other info that I found that wasn't relevant to me but might make a difference:

Apparently USB 3 can cause issues - try different USB ports, particularly USB 2 over USB 3.
Windows 8 may not play nice - try Windows 7 or XP (or Linux!)


How to disable Android Wear's "Listening via TCP" notification? I don't have an Android Wear, but I always get a notification from the Google Play Services app with this content:

  Android Wear
  Listening via TCP on 127.0.0.1:5601

I want to disable this tracking. Any idea? Also, how is it tracking my phone?

Quick fix: stop the process.

rooted Device

Try downloading the Android Wear app. Open it up and see if it says Emulator Connecting in the top left. If it does, go to the menu and select Disconnect Emulator and then Forget Emulator. It worked for me. I was getting the same notification.


How to restore whatsapp media? My friend have sent me an image on Whatsapp, I downloaded the photo and later accidently deleted the photo on

  /storage/sdcard0/Whatsapp/Media/Whatsapp Images

Now when I click on the image on Whatsapp it shows

  'Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your SD card.'

How can I get back those Images?

It's not possible to get it back through WhatsApp, since they don't store images on their servers anymore after you've downloaded them once.

You can try and use your Photos app and then through the menu look at your Trash; deleted pictures should still be there for 30 days if I'm not mistaken.

Another option might be to check a photo backup service if you set one up (most suggest to automatically set it up on first access of the app, so could he set up without you remembering it). Are you syncing your pictures with Google+ or Dropbox perhaps? There the picture might still be accessible. If you don't have any of these set up yet, it might be a good idea to do so to avoid this situation in the future (please take privacy and battery concerns into consideration).

If all of the above fail, your last bet would be to remove the SD card from your phone and put it in a laptop/desktop (you will probably need an adapter for that). From there you should run some recovery software on the card.
Deleted items on the SD card are actually not deleted, but merely 'forgotten about' until something new is written over them. That means this method will have a much higher success rate if the deletion was recent.
If you need to resort to this solution, please search this forum with a query like "recover images on SD card" for much more thorough answers than I can give you here.


disabling data roaming on Nokia 6.1 (Android 10), service provider o2 (UK) I'm in Japan with my Nokia 6.1, running Android 10.  My service provider is o2 (in the UK).

I've done everything I can find to disable data while here:

Settings / Network & Internet / Mobile network / Mobile data: OFF
Settings / Network & Internet / Mobile network / Roaming: OFF
sent o2 a "NOTRAVEL" SMS on their 23336 number

I can no longer find my "Data roaming" option, but believe I have also turned it off.

Nevertheless, when my wi-fi fails, my phone has been switching to data over 4G, incurring hundreds of pounds of charges.  I have therefore selected "2G" for "Preferred network type". o2 are not helpful.

Is there a simpler way of killing data over the phone networks?  If it's "Data roaming", where should that option be?

Selecting 2G as preferred network is the wrong decision as AFAIK Japan has no 2G network anymore (has been switched off some years ago). The minimum is 3G.

Because of VoLTE the definition of "data roaming" is become a bit complicated. If your device connects to LTE and has VoLTE enabled it starts a data connection. A lot of providers fail to identify those connections as "Voice" and charge them as data roaming. Therefore VoLTE connection start-up are charged as data roaming.

Hence it is very important not only to disable data roaming but also disable VoLTE feature!

I also run into this problem on two-day trip abroad where my provider wanted me to charge data roaming for a few bytes every time when I switched on my phone or disabled Air-plane mode. Back from my trip I found a few mobile data roaming charges on my bill even with mobile data roaming disabled (phone has VoLTE capability). After complaining at my MNO they removed them from my bill by goodwill.


Changing ROM in Dell Venue 7 Wifi I have a Dell Venue 7 (only Wifi) which is a piece of crap - too many bugs and Dell has stopped supporting it. Is there a way to put Cyanogen or anything else on it?

You can root Dell Venue 7 and put some custom roms on it (if there are any). But I think, best you can do is root the phone and play with it.

Root:

Download One Click Root. Install One Click Root onto your PC or Mac.
Connect your device to computer by a standard USB cable.
Enable USB Debugging.
Run one click root.

Custom Roms with custom recoveries: (Read EDIT below)

Note: Sadly it is a Intel-based phone with less popularity, it doesn't have enough research or tools provided by developers to try out cool roms.

Here is the link to custom roms & recoveries for venue, you can try them

(I've doubt if they will work for Venue 7):

http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Dell_Venue/ROMs

EDIT: Pointed out by Andy Yan, that custom roms provided in above links are for the original Venue (phone) released back in the days of Android 2.2


The current version of Firefox is not available from Google Play I use Lineage OS on a Motorola G4 plus phone. I have Google Play installed and I can install and update all kind of applications (like Stack Exchange for instance).

I can also install Firefox but only the version 59.0.2. According to the Mozilla website the current version is 60. Until I updated Firefox manually (using side loading) the Firefox website warned me that my Firefox version was outdated (which it was).

Again Google Play does not show any issue on my phone. Other applications are installed normally and updated on a regular basis, even after finding the issue with Firefox. I tried to delete the data of the Google Play application on my phone, it did not change anything.

Do you have any idea why Google Play is offering me an older version of Firefox? Does anyone have the same issue? Could this issue be linked to regional or device restrictions?

The current version of Firefox for Android (Firefox 60 at the time of writing) is now available from Google Play on my phone. So the issue is not linked to regional or device restrictions. One possible explanation is unpredictable replication delays between the Google mirrors. Another possible explanation is staged roll-outs as suggested by eldarerathis.


How to make Google Play services and other default white-listed system apps Doze? Assume that I'm a user who doesn't like some system apps being automatically white-listed under Battery optimization settings and immune from battery optimization or is fed up with Play services consuming more than its fair share of battery. I'm looking for a solution which would revoke this privilege enjoyed by those apps and add them into the line where the rest of the ordinary comrade apps are waiting for the user to mark them with Don't optimize.

(Click image to enlarge)

I've already seen this answer and as noted in a comment it doesn't work for apps white-listed  by system.

As of now, these are the apps white-listed by Android 6.0.1 in my rooted Nexus 6:

I'm most interested in removing com.google.android.gms.

Requisites

A rooted Android

Optional:

A full ROM backup made through a custom recovery. It is for your own convenience. If something suggested in the next section causes boot issues or system/app crashes, you would have something good to fallback to earlier state.

Optimizing Play services may cause unforeseen consequences (including Android Device Manager or device tracking apps not functioning appropriately). You are advised to calculate the number of installed apps which depends upon Google Cloud Messaging and would be affected by this move. The answers here may help: Is there a way to see which apps are using GCM?
I preferred my own answer for simplicity.

FOR AVOIDING THE HASSLE
If you are targeting only Google Play Services and wants to avoid the hassle of editing system files, you can use Enable Doze for GMS or SysConfig Patcher Magisk Module. You would be needing Magisk framework and Magisk Manager.

As I noted here, Google Play services is white-listed by Google through the file google.xml located under /system/etc/sysconfig/. Among other things, the file notes:

<!-- GmsCore must always have network access for GCM and other things. -->
<allow-in-power-save package="com.google.android.gms" />

Comment out the highlighted line using <!-- at the start and --> at the end. The line should now look like:

<!-- <allow-in-power-save package="com.google.android.gms" /> -->

(Click an image to enlarge it)

Reboot the device and behold Google Play services now not available under Not optimized tab but available for optimization.
(Click an image to enlarge it)

I observed that the list of apps decreased too:

Note: I used ES File Explorer to browse to the directory /system/etc/sysconfig and used QuickEdit to edit google.xml. It is not mandatory to use these tools. You can use whatsoever you find convenient.
Now, for the rest of the names in the list, refer to corresponding files noted below:

com.android.providers.downloads : /system/etc/permissions/platform.xml
com.android.vending: /system/etc/sysconfig/google.xml -- I noticed that dealing with Google Play services automatically removed Play Store from the list
com.google.android.apps.tycho : /system/etc/sysconfig/google_build.xml
com.android.omadm.service : /system/etc/sysconfig/whitelist_com.android.omadm.service.xml.

Comment out the appropriate line, reboot and your tweak should work.
Note: I've extrapolated my findings with Google Play services here.
SystemConfig.java is used to read configuration from the directory /system/etc/permissions and /system/etc/sysconfig. So, if you have a white-listed system app not manually added and not covered in this answer, then focus your search into those two directories at first.


Xperia V heats up very much near the camera So I purchased this new Xperia V today, updated to last firmware 9.1.A.1.140, but when I do stuff on the phone even when not too CPU demanding, it heats up very much, and I mean really heated up, near the camera flash... What could be wrong?

That is most likely where the battery is located. I don't know what your definition of "not too CPU demanding" but i know when i use my Galaxy nexus for extended lengths of time it heats up noticeably over where the battery is. Even when the screen is not actually on and i am not interacting with it, it can heat up due to processes and services going on in the background such as email sync or music playback or social site syncing. This could be part of what is going on with you. Also, when I charge it it heats up. There probably is not anything "wrong" with it, just a lot of stuff running. If it makes you feel better, when it starts to heat up, turn it off and take out the battery until it cools down, then put it back in.


Prepend phone numbers with a calling card dial in number I use a calling card to call my home country and usually it's these steps:

Call the dial in number for the calling card company (e.g. 1 800 123 1234)
Enter the card PIN code (e.g. 1234 1234 1234)
Enter the destination number (which is saved as a phone in the contacts - e.g. +7 12 123456780)

I have several several contacts I call regularly and also plenty of one-offs.

Is there an app or way to automatically prefix the numbers from steps 1 & 2 along with pauses (p) and waits (w) so that I could dial the contact directly from the address book?

Thank you!

You might want to take a look at Prefixer, which lets you "prefix, suffix and/or replace numbers in your calls" -- sounds like exactly what you need. There are a few similar apps on the Playstore:

Prefix Dialer
Number Fixer
PreFixer

I'm pretty sure one of them will solve your issue.


Google Talk on Samsung Galaxy S II I bought a Samsung Galaxy S II, and it comes with the IM application for instant messaging, but the only messengers available are Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, and I couldn't find any Google Talk application on the market.

How can use Google Talk?

There is no Google Talk app within the Market. Google Talk is more or less wired to the Android release. It's usually an icon in the app drawer simply named "Talk".

Your phone seems pretty locked down by the carrier (or somebody else). If it really came without Google Talk, which would be pretty uncommon, your only chance is to install the Google Talk apk manually.


Status of a recently added contact Can I see a recently added contact if she is online?  Say she has not accepted my invitation.

Thanks.

Not until she accepts your invitation. That's part of the point of that feature: to prevent strangers from merely adding you and knowing if you're online.


How to unpack and edit boot.img for ROM porting? I recently downloaded this ROM for my Allview P5 (Allview P5 is the equivalent of Gionee GN700W/FLY IQ441/QMobile Noir A8). It`s called Primonex ROM and is made for the Gionee version of the phone.

Firstly, I tried to install it as it is but it got stuck at the boot screen.
After some research I found out that it could be a problem with the boot.img file and I don't know how to extract or edit it...

Can someone tell me how to do it?

Tools selection
The method I present here relies on CyanogenMod's Android source code.
While Google's AOSP only provides the tool to build the boot.img file, CyanogenMod also adds the unpackbootimg tool allowing you to unpack it. This tool does not seem specifically designed for CyanogenMod in any way, so most chances are that it will work for other ROMs as well.
There are, however, a relatively large number of alternatives to unpack the boot.img file which all work more-or-less the same.
Basically, such unpack tool will extract the content of the boot.img file and display a set of parameters you will have to pass to Google's mkbootimg tool to build a file whose configuration (mainly kernel parameters and memory addresses) will match the original one.
Here are a few examples, I did not test them personally so cannot recommend any and I present them only for reference purposes:

A few are open source or script based:

The Android Kitchen was apparently meant to be some kind of Swiss army knife for Android developers. The original author officially stopped maintaining the project, a few other users forked it like javilonas or cmotc.
szym targets easiness by adding shell script wrappers to its toolset to make the complete unpacking and repacking process more straightforward.
osm0sis proposes a fork of CyanogenMod's tools "forked and updated" according to the project's own description. This project seems indeed still maintained which is not very common in this area, however the actual advantage over CyanogenMod's original tools remains unclear to me.

Some are free closed source proprietary binaries:

Kuisma's unmkbootimg appears pretty often in help forums and seems to do a good job in helping to handle odd cases, outputting "human readable" English recommendation when some modification are required in mkbootimg source code and displaying the exact command-line to use to rebuild the image.
Xiaolu's mkbootimg_tools seems also mentioned quite often and allows to unpack and repack boot.img and the device tree file dt.img. Don't be fooled by the fact it is hosted on GitHub: it is a closed source proprietary binary and only compiled binaries are available on their repository (actually I'm even wondering about the exact interest of using a source-code repository to store binary blobs, but different people, different minds...).
CNexus on the XDA forum provides an archive with a selection of tools.
This answer in Unix.SE recommends some tools from the now seemingly defunct Android Serial Port project. The file names, however, lead me to think these should be old prebuilt versions of CyanogenMod's tools (the project being closed, there is neither documentation nor support).

All these tools (and others you may find with any search engine) should work the same way, but some may work better than others in handling some particular edge-case you may face with your own device. Most of them however, at least in the open source arena, do not seem regularly maintained, so the best bet in my opinion to have working, maintained and documented tools is to go with CyanogenMod's ones.
Some manufacturers produce ROMs which are more or less far from AOSP standard (unusual addresses, headers, file format, etc.). If the standard procedure below does not work, maybe one of these alternative software may do the trick. Otherwise, you will have to check for issues specific to your device: some seem to need a specific procedure or even specific tools (confer this question related to MediaTek devices, for instance).
Tools installation
Compiling CyanogenMod toolset for boot.img packing and unpacking is quite straightforward.

If you already have installed the complete Android source code tree (you can check my other answer to get more information about this), go in system/core/mkbootimg/ directory (as a reminder, Google's AOSP source code only provide the tool to build the boot.img file, they do not provide any unpacking tool),

If you haven't and don't need this for any other purpose, an easier and quicker solution is to only clone CyanogenMod's android_system_core repository:
  git clone https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_system_core.git
  cd android_system_core/mkbootimg/

Once in the right directory, compile and install:
gcc -o ./mkbootimg -I ../include ../libmincrypt/*.c ./mkbootimg.c
gcc -o ./unpackbootimg -I ../include ../libmincrypt/*.c ./unpackbootimg.c
sudo cp ./mkbootimg ./unpackbootimg /usr/bin/

Note that Google is replacing the C mkbootimg with a Python version, so in future versions no compilation may be needed anymore for this command.
You will also need to install Android tools on your computer to let it communicate with your phone. You will need adb (Android Debug Bridge, a shell utility allowing to communicate with Android's debug subsystem), adbd (the related daemon) and fastboot (a shell utility allowing to communicate with your phone's bootloader system).
Your favorite Linux distribution may provide them in a single or separate packages, but usually they are always called "android-tools":

Debian / Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install android-tools-{adb,adbd,fastboot}
Fedora / CentOS: sudo yum install android-tools
openSUSE: sudo zypper install android-tools

Fetch the boot.img file
Extract the boot.img either from ROM .zip file or directly from the device:

From the stock ROM .zip file: some applications like SuperSU may modify the boot.img directly on the device, replacing it with the stock one would break such applications.
Directly from the device: some people report read issue leading to corrupted boot.img. IMO, these issues are most likely linked to the use of poor USB cables or USB hub and can be simply avoided by using good quality cables connecting directly the phone to the computer. You also need the ability to run ADB in root mode (depending on the ROM used, this may be trivial or not).

The first method is very obvious: extract the .zip file with any ZIP software, the boot.img file should be right there at the root of the archive.
For the second method, you will first have to determine the (sadly device-specific) path to the storage device where boot.img's content can be retrieved. I know two methods for this:

ls /dev/block/platform/*/by-name/ (where * covers yet another device-specific folder name, chances are it is the only directory below platform/), the exact name to search is also platform dependent but makes usual sense (some examples: boot, LNX (acronym for "Linux")). The files in this directory are actually symbolic links and some people bother to manually go to the target, but I recommend sticking with the higher level name based path which, while longer, remains less error prone. So you will end-up with a path like /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/LNX.
On some (older?) devices, the right device could be found by investigating the output of cat /proc/mtd. If you see the device mtd2 associated to the "boot" label, then you will use the path /dev/mtd2.

Now:

From the phone's developer menu:

Enable debugging on your phone,
Allow root access to ADB (this step applies to phones running CynogenMod, other devices may require some potentially more complex procedure),

Connect it to your computer (and from there to the VM guest if you are running Android tools from within a virtual machine).

If this is not already done, I recommend to manually start the ADB server on the computer's side, this will allow you to directly validate the RSA key on device's side without affecting the behavior of the following ADB commands:
adb start-server

Then switch ADB in root mode:
adb root

Finally, you should be able to directly extract the boot.img file from the device using such command (the source and destination path and names are given as examples, adapt them to your needs and preferences):
adb pull /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/LNX ./boot.img

The command will copy the whole partition, both used and free space, so don't be surprised that the resulting boot.img file will be larger than the original boot.img file coming with the stock ROM .zip file, the content itself remains similar.
Once the transfer is finished, disconnect the phone and don't forget to disable both debugging and root access from the developer menu.
Unpack the original boot.img file
Unpack the boot.img file itself using the command compiled previously:
unpackbootimg -i ./boot.img

This will output several information essential to let you rebuild a new boot.img with the correct structure with respect to the stock boot.img. However, don't rush on your notepad since CyanogenMod's upackbootimg also saves the very same information in several files we will use later on.
This command generates several files with particular suffixes added to the input file's name:

*-second: This is the second-stage bootloader, optional and rarely used on end-user phones. If this file is empty (the most common case), then the phone's bootloader will directly call the Linux kernel.
*-zImage: This is the Linux kernel.
*-ramdisk.gz or *-ramdisk.lz4: the RAM disk used to populate the device's root directory. The extension differs depending on the compression algorithm used.
*-dt: The device tree, populating /dev.
The rest are small files each storing one of the values displayed in unpackbootimg output. These values define the command-line parameter to pass to the Linux kernel and the addresses where the bootloader will have to load each object at boot time.

Most often, one unpacks the boot.img to be able to edit the content of the phone's root directory. As seen above, this content is stored in the *-ramdisk.gz or *-ramdisk.lz4 file and it can be extracted using the commands below:
mkdir ./ramdisk
cd ./ramdisk/
gzip -dc ../boot.img-ramdisk.gz | cpio -imd

For an LZ4 compressed RAM disk, replace the last step with lz4 -d ../boot.img-ramdisk.lz4 | cpio -imd.
You are now free to do the modification you want before proceeding. However, it could be worth to follow the full unpack - repack - boot procedure once without changing anything to ensure that your tools are working as expected. Otherwise, in case of an issue, you will not be certain if the cause is your modification or some incompatibility (see my remarks at the beginning about some manufacturers requiring non-standard procedures or tools).
Rebuild to get the new new-boot.img file
CyanogenMod ROM building process relies on an internal tool, mkbootfs, to produce the boot.img file (this happens in build/tools/releasetools/common.py). However, the steps to build this tool seems uselessly complex to me, whereas using the system-provided cpio seems to work just as fine. The main difference between the two, as per my understanding after a (very) quick check in mkbootfs souce code, seems to be that the latter applies some sanity measures by not including dotted files and the /root directory in the resulting archive while the cpio-based procedure below will just blindly put the whole selected directory tree in the archive.
Conclusion: unnecessarily complex to compile with very few advantages, so let's stick on system provided tools!
Begin by creating the new RAM disk, from the ramdisk directory created above, type:
find . ! -name . | LC_ALL=C sort | cpio -o -H newc -R root:root | gzip > ../new-boot.img-ramdisk.gz

Or, if you need to generate an LZ4 archive:
find . ! -name . | LC_ALL=C sort | cpio -o -H newc -R root:root | lz4 > ../new-boot.img-ramdisk.lz4

The goal here is to create a new RAM disk file with properties as close as possible to the original one (for instance, setting the owner seems often missing in the procedures shared in forums and blogs, however this was required on my device).
Go now in the parent directory to generate the new-boot.img file itself.
cd ..

As seen above, CyanogenMod's unpackbootimg command generates a file matching each parameter expected by mkbootimg. Therefore, all you have to do is issue a mkbootimg -h to get a listing of all parameters, then set each one of them to the appropriate value using the matching file. Note that some parameters expect a file path while others expect to receive the content of the file as value. See an example of resulting command below:
mkbootimg                                           \
--kernel ./boot.img-zImage                          \
--ramdisk ./new-boot.img-ramdisk.gz                 \
--second ./boot.img-second                          \
--cmdline "$(cat ./boot.img-cmdline)"               \
--base "$(cat ./boot.img-base)"                     \
--pagesize "$(cat ./boot.img-pagesize)"             \
--dt ./boot.img-dt                                  \
--ramdisk_offset "$(cat ./boot.img-ramdisk_offset)" \
--second_offset "$(cat ./boot.img-second_offset)"   \
--tags_offset "$(cat ./boot.img-tags_offset)"       \
--output ./new-boot.img

Only two parameters are not set here:

--board: As per my understanding, this is just an informative field allowing to insert a model name in the resulting image.
--id: This one does not expect any value, it just prints out a unique identifier after the image has been built (combining a timestamp and a checksum).

Flash the new-boot.img file onto the device

Start the device in fastboot mode (aka bootloader mode, usually by holding power and volume up buttons).

Connect the USB cable.

Check that the device is correctly detected:
  sudo fastboot devices

Try to boot using the new ROM (without flashing it yet, so in case of issue you just have to restart the phone to get it back on trails, replace the ./new-boot.img file name with your own):
  sudo fastboot boot ./new-boot.img

If the phone works successfully with the new boot image, then go back in fastboot mode and flash it permanently:
  sudo fastboot flash boot ./new-boot.img
  sudo fastboot reboot

Conclusion
This procedure may seem daunting at first, but once you get it, you will see it is actually not.
The "daunting" aspect comes from the fact that there is not a single "Android system": a lot of manufacturers and ROM providers make changes which can range from a subtle path difference to a completely non-standard environment.
What you have to do is determine your particular device's posture, and then what are the few commands which are appropriate in your case. Once you get them, you can stick to them and even easily script them if you need them often.
I voluntarily went into relatively low-level details sometimes because it will make you troubleshooting your issues more easily. Would you use some "easier" opaque utility to build and flash your new boot.img file and see that your device cannot start with it, it would be harder for you to determine which step went wrong. Here, at each step, you will be able to compare the data you are manipulating with the data coming from the original boot.img file or the data as seen on the phone, or try for instance to rebuild the boot.img file with either the original or the newly generated RAM disk file to check if that makes any difference (this allows you to pinpoint if the issue comes from the boot.img or the RAM disk file generation procedure).


How to unlock phone using ADM application? I'm using Asus Zenfone and I'm not able to unlock it. I've tried ADM but without success. Utility says that password wont be used when there is a lock pattern. How to use this application?

here:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Android+Device+Manager+-+Bypass+Screen+Lock+on+any+Android+Device/34600

remotely unlock your phone


Automatically update all Apps I have some problems with the update feature for some apps. I cannot update them via Google Play, because there is no "Update" button, only the "Installed" button. However, there is clearly a new version (I've checked the version number of the installed app with the one offered by Google Play). Also, under "My Apps" in Settings, these apps are not listed, even though they are installed and run just fine.

What do I have to do, so that ALL apps can be updated, either automatically or manually through Google Play?

I am using a Nexus S with Android 4.1.2 installed.

Thank you very much for your time!

Go to Google Play --> Menu --> My Apps --> Update All

The "update all" should be near the top right corner. The default for most apps is "allow automatic updating". This can be changed for each app from this same screen by clicking on the app and checking the box "allow automatic updating".

BTW sometimes an app requires a manual update. The update all function will leave those out you have to click on each app and hit the UPDATE button.

I do know Google Play will not let you update an app if it thinks the update is not compatible with your version of software or hardware.


Device goes into bootloop My device goes into bootloop, and I don't know, why this is happening?.
Device Details:

PHONE:  Samsung Galaxy Core Prime SM-G360HU
Recovery:  TWRP
ROM:  CM12.1
Android Version:  Android 5.1.1 Lollipop

I think, this happened, when I changed the theme of the device. After that, the device powered off due to low battery. Then, I charged the device, and powered it on, and it goes into boot-loop.

I accidentally found the solution

Since, doing a Factory Reset (wiping Data, Cache, and Dalvik) does not solve the problem, I also wiped the System partition of the device.

So, that would be, wiping Data, Cache, Dalvik, and System.

After wiping, download your stock ROM (in this case, CyanogenMod), and place it on your SD Card, using another device.

Then, go into Recovery Mode, and flash that stock ROM on your device.

Reboot, and everything should be fine now.

You might, as well, want to install GApps for your device.


How to back up applications in Android? Possible Duplicate:
  How to backup an Android device?

If I have installed N number of applications including big games, and I would like to back up them, so I could restore the games as soon as I factory reset my mobile, how can it be done ?

Any free apps ?

You can use Titanium Backup, but your phone needs to have root. It has a FREE and a PAID version.


Good idea to transfer all phone numbers from SIM card to google contacts? I am new to the whole smartphone thing. Currently all of my telephone contacts are on my SIM card. I suspect it makes sense to move all my phone numbers from the SIM card to my Google contacts (i.e. adding the numbers to existing Google contacts who mainly contain only email addresses). The benefits would be: (a) no more duplicate contacts in my list, (b) automated backup of my contact's phone numbers.

Or, is there something I should be aware of before I do this effort? Will there be some workflow side effects? (apart from not having my contacts on SIM anymore)

Edit: I just transferred all. Actually, I did not remove the contacts from my SIM card, I just hid them using the contacts settings. So if I ever have to use my old phone as a backup, I'll have most of my phone numbers in there

I'm not going to answer if it's a good idea or not - you need to solve that for yourself :).

Having your contacts stored with Google Contacts will eliminate any duplicates (at least duplicates where you have the number stored in the SIM and e-mail in Google, or something like that) and allow you to manage/sync those contacts from anywhere you can access Google Contacts, like a computer.  You are correct that it will 'backup' your contacts so that if you were to switch phones or even carriers, you wouldn't have to worry about bringing your contacts as long as the phone you have supports Google Contacts (web or app).

Keeping your contacts on the SIM allows you to keep them from Google (if you're worried about privacy), and if you get another SIM-based phone, you can easily move them (provided you keep the same SIM).

Personally, having my contacts in Google Contacts has been great.  Easy synchronization, use photos from Picasa as contact photos, management from a computer... but you will have to decide for yourself which is "better".

You may want to see this answer to help you move your contacts from the SIM to Google Contacts.


Samsung Galaxy S3 4G notification center NFC button doesn't work UPDATE: This was fixed in the 4.3 update that came out for my phone lately. No need to think about it anymore, also I can't give any further details.

I have a quite new Samsung Galaxy S3 4G (GT-I9305). It is running an unmodified & unrooted version of Android 4.1.2. It works mostly perfectly fine, but there is a slight problem with NFC.

I have edited the buttons visible in the notification center. I have added the NFC switch to the buttons. My problem is, the button is not working. It is disabled, and has no green/gray indicator.

However, when I tap the S Beam button S Beam and NFC get enabled.

After this, if I tap NFC with S Beam either enabled or disabled, System UI crashes. When the UI reappears the buttons are as before tapping NFC, but now I can successfully turn off NFC, and also turn it on and off again. Restarting the phone brings the problem back again.

Another way to get NFC turned on while the button is disabled is to go to Settings > More Settings and turn NFC on. This also turns NFC on in the notification center, but again, trying to turn it off causes System UI to crash.

What could be causing this behavior?

This was fixed in the 4.3 update that came out for my phone lately. All done.


How can I enable DNS Suffix support on Android? (resolv.conf search) I would like to add Namecoin support to my Android phone (galaxy s) like this: http://dot-bit.org/How_To_Install_Dns_Suffix

I managed to mount the system as read-write and add a resolv.conf to my etc folder like this:

search namecoin-suffix
nameserver 8.8.8.8

Now it works fine with nslookup but not with ping or any other program. Is there anything else I have to do?

edit 2012-03-11:

looks like Android does not use resolv.conf at all.

tried these properties but no luck yet (can be read/set with getprop and setprop from the shell):

net.dns1
net.dns2
net.dns.search -> space separated domain search suffixes (used e.g. by VPN)

There are additional dns server properties that may have to be changed.
The properties are not persistent over a reboot.

I haven't tried this, but a quick look at Android's bionic libc sources seems to indicate that Android might use /etc/ppp/resolv.conf:

(from http://code.metager.de/source/xref/android/4.1.1/bionic/libc/private/resolv_private.h#113)

 92 /*
 93  * Resolver configuration file.
 94  * Normally not present, but may contain the address of the
 95  * initial name server(s) to query and the domain search list.
 96  */
 97
 98 #ifndef _PATH_RESCONF
 99 #ifdef ANDROID_CHANGES
100 #define _PATH_RESCONF        "/etc/ppp/resolv.conf"
101 #else
102 #define _PATH_RESCONF        "/etc/resolv.conf"
103 #endif
104 #endif


Lenovo IdeaTab A2109 reflash? I have a Lenovo IdeaTab A2109 I'm trying to get working.  When you power it on, it stays on the lenovo bootup logo.  I'm on a Mac, and I need to know how to reflash (or reinstall, or whatever the term is) Android to it so that it will (hopefully) be usable.

If you have other suggestions on how to get it working, I'm open to those as well.  Oh, and rooting instructions would be nice too (keep in mind I'm on a Mac).

So how do I reinstall Android on this thing?

I finally found an android image that worked.  Here's what I did:

Plug in tablet via USB
Open Terminal
Boot tablet in recovery mode
Scroll to 'Update from ADB'
In Terminal, run adb sideload [Path to zip file of image]
Let it run
All is well!

I found the link the the image on www.androidtablets.net.

Excerpt:

  Stock 4.1.1 (A2109_A411_03_13_121127): https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxNORR1JMMjZNTRIUlFlb2JBVTQ
  ACC89EE042C53BE7CC980DC4DAE6A3ED


Android updates for Nexus bought from Amazon Is there any difference in terms of either phone features, software versions or time to get new updates if I bought the Galaxy Nexus from Amazon instead of waiting for it to be sold direct from Google in the UK?

Any reasons I should wait?

Galaxy Nexus goes by variants such as yakju, yakjuxw, and takju. However yakju and takju will receive updates directly from Google. While the rest will be receiving from Samsung or probably network provider.

The difference between yakju and takju is that takju has Google wallet while yakju does not. Takju can only be purchased from Play Store.

I assume the one being sold directly from Google in the UK is the same one offered at Play Store which runs takju while the one on Amazon runs yakju.

In term of phone hardware they are exactly the same.


Why does my Android device generate more heat on an AC charger? My Huawei IDEOS u8150 is new and ever since I used the AC charger that was supplied with it, my device gets a bit hotter (a noticable 5 degrees Celsius extra compared to charging via USB from laptop).

Why is it not that hot when I try to charge it through PC/laptop?

I hear a whirring noise from the AC charger always and the adapter gets a little warm too.

Also, my device charges faster on the AC charger compared to the laptop charge method. Is this normal on all devices in general? Or all Huawei devices? Or is this something faulty I should worry about?

I'm not an electrical engineer, but I'm pretty sure there's either

more current flowing through a wall charger than there would be a USB charger or...
the same amount of current which is just flowing faster from the wall than from the USB port

which is why the wall charger will fully charge your battery faster.  That heat is totally normal and nothing to worry about (unless it gets hot enough to burn skin, then I'd recommend not touching it).


Samsung note 8 n5110, adb sideload I have a soft-or-hard bricked Samsung Note 8, n5110 and now would like to rebuild it to a somewhat workable state.  The device has a flaky power-charging system and may not be worth repairing.

I use an ubuntu 14.04 system with adb to talk to the Samsung and can get to the apply update from ADB dialog.

from the ubuntu side I use

    adb sideload filename

where some filename is a small text file.  The file is copied to the Android device. But of course this fails.

The devices expects an update file.  And this is where I am stuck.  What is this file and where do I download the correct version?

And, is this what I need to do to rebuild the system?

None on the internet however I did get this information  while searching here's the link

http://www.tomsguide.com/forum/id-1818822/galaxy-note.html

download and install the suitable USB drivers for your device, you can download Samsung KIES for verifying if the suitable drivers are installed on your PC.
Secondly, download the Official Jelly Bean 4.1.2 XXLT6 Firmware file and save it in your PC.
Now, download Odin app and save it in your computer, after the download is done extract the ODIN archive on your desktop folder PC and install the ODIN app.
Extract the downloaded update file on your PC.
Open Odin.
Power off your Note N7000 device.
Boot it into Download Mode, for entering into Download Mode for Galaxy Note N7000 device, you have to press and keep holding the Power + Volume Down + Home buttons on the same time.
Now, with your device booted into Download Mode, connect the device using its USB cord.
Verify into ODIN app and make sure there is a notified “added” message and the ID:COM zone colored on yellow or blue color.
In case there isn’t the added message or is different, you will have to safe remove the USB cable from the PC and to change the USB port for connection to the PC and also re-install the drivers on your computer; After you have done all these operations repeat the steps from the starting.
Now, from the Odin app select “PDA”.
Browse and select the update file from your PC.
Important: make sure that the Re-partition option is unchecked and also don’t perform any other change into ODIN interface.
Next, when you want to beginning the installation process, press the “Start” button from ODIN app, now the flashing process will start, and you need to wait.
After ODIN app will say “pass” message you can disconnect your device from the PC.
Reboot your device.


What is meant by "RAW" firmware? I want to use Asus Flashtool to restore stock firmware to my phone. The download page says I will need "RAW" firmware. What exactly is that? I have already downloaded the correct firmware file from Asus' own website. The site in question has a link to what it refers to as "RAW" firmware, but I would rather flash the firmware I've downloaded from an official source. Is there any difference? Is "RAW" firmware supposed to be something special?

RAW is just the archive format used by the Asus flasher (as opposed to ZIP, EXE, IMG, KDZ, etc.). If you're using the Asus flash tool (AFT) and you downloaded a .raw file, you should be all set. AFT does not support other formats.

If you want to install the stock firmware as it comes from the official source (Asus website), then you wouldn't use AFT. The exact procedure you would use varies depending on what you've got installed now and if it will boot.


Has anyone encountered (and resolved) the force close issue with Google Music Beta App? I was very happy to receive a Google Music Beta invite recently.  Unfortunately, when I try to play music via the app (on Droid X rooted with Liberty GB 0.5) the application force closes every time.  I am aware that since this is in beta, there may be no fix available yet, but I figured that I would ask the question and hope for the best.  Thanks for any help.

It seems that this issue was related to the ROM.  Since multiple re-installs of the app did not correct the issue, experimenting with another ROM (Apex 2.0 beta) did the trick.  After flashing the new ROM and installing the app, music streams quite well.

Update: I have learned that the Liberty Toolbox > Liberty Tweaks > Ad Blocker feature being set to "Block most ads" has been tracked down as the root cause of this issue.  Make sure to "Enable ads" under this setting and there should not be anymore FC issues.


Convenient way to retain accounts/settings/icons/logins between installs? I like installing the latest CyanogenMod nightly now and then. I do so by putting the zip on the SD card and installing it through ClockworkMod Recovery. But every time I do that, I have to do a lot of manual backup and recovery to get the system back to where I started:

Email accounts
Text messages
Home screen icons and widgets
Login settings for apps such as DropBox and Remember the Milk.
Wifi settings

My contacts and installed apps are carried over automatically as soon as I've connected the phone/install to my Google account.

Is there a convenient way to get the above points carried over automatically?

As a (partly) automated backup/restore process seems a welcome option, I might point you to Titanium Backup. At least in its payed version (I bought it long ago, so I don't remember the differences to the free version), it offers you automated/scheduled backups as well as restores. You can define "labels" (effectively grouping apps) and operate based on those, e.g. just backing up/restoring apps with a certain label. TiBu let's you diffentiate what you want to backup/restore also in terms of "app, data or both", so you've got a bunch of possibilities.

This app also has the possibility to keep a copy of its configuration on your SDCard. Starting for the first time (e.g. on a fresh ROM), it would check for that copy and use it, so its settings survive even a wipe.

You still might need to take care with "system data", as structures (e.g. in the SQLite databases) might have changed. But TiBu can even take care of that if you enable its "migration mode".

Summing up, while this isn't a nice one-click solution, it still might ease your upgrades. Even across different ROMs or even devices (I used it a lot for things like that, and got my apps & data from my old HTC Wildfire via Motorola Milestone² to my LG Optimus 4X that way).


how can i get back vold.fstab ,i accidently deleted it due to usbox was not responding after i edited it,plz help i had rooted my phone-sony xperia e c(1504) and then edited vold.fstab but then after i saved it the us box stopped responding so i deleted the file unknowingly .after that storage access is lost ,only phone memory is working ,how can i remount my internal Sd and ext sd card by any method which is having a stable output.

Ask for the the vold.fatab file of the same phone model to someone who has it. Then copy the file to your /system/etc/ and set the correct permissions.


Deleting home screens on Nexus 7 (2013) Android 5.1.1 Does anyone know how to remove home screen on Nexus 7(2013)? I tried to long press an empty screen but there's only options to change the wallpaper. HELP

Answer on this depends on which launcher you're using; for this I'm assuming you're using Google Now Launcher AKA Google Experience Launcher which should be the default.

All you need to do is remove all the icons and widgets that live on the home screen you wanna have removed. Once the homescreen become empty it will automatically be removed.

You can readd the screen by dragging an icon to the right edge of the right-most home screen you have an additional screen will be created.

The far-left Google Now screen cannot be removed though.

If you're using a different one than that let us know.


How do I launch a widget from a shortcut on Home screen? I use MultiROM manager to switch from one ROM to another. It has a widget which lists all of your installed ROMs and you can choose anyone to boot into.

(Click image to enlarge)

All good here, but I don't like keeping widgets on my home screen. I can only tolerate a shortcut (icon) on my Home screen.

I'm looking for a way to launch that widget (or any widget) from a shortcut icon on home screen. I think Tasker may be able to do it using Scenes.

While looking for a way to achieve the objective using Tasker I stumbled across the app named Popup Widget 2 (paid) on a subreddit. It does the job smoothly and I've given a use-case of it.

Usage

Install that app and launch it.
Tap + → choose a widget available there which  you want to launch from a shortcut → Create.
You may leave all the settings untouched since they are not integral to widget's launch or functioning of it.
Scroll down until you see your widget with sky blue outline depicting resizing functionality,

Resize it up to the ideal width x height you want for your widget and tap the floppy icon at the top once you're done with the settings.

Go to Home screen → Widgets → Popup Widget 2 → choose your newly created widget entry. You would find a shortcut now placed on your Home screen.

Tap that shortcut and it would display the widget.

Because the widget is available as a shortcut you can use it anywhere you want such as with:

GMD Gesture Control to launch from anywhere on Android using a custom gesture,
Gravitybox to make a quick setting icon,
LMT Launcher,


Is it possible to make a call without having access to the contacts list? Is it possible to make a call without giving access to the phone's contacts? I.E. say I let a friend use my phone, and lock my contacts such that it requires a pin for access - is there any way to allow a call to an arbitrary number that is not necessarily in the contacts?

In Android 5, a feature called screen pinning was introduced. The idea is to actually pin an active app screen so that it cannot be quit, no notifications are shown, and so on. Think of this feature as restricting yourself to a single app screen until it is unpinned again. More information can be found here.

To come back to your specific problem: start the call app, pin its screen and hand it  out to someone. This person is now able to use the pinned app screen, but cannot switch to another app. If you enable the corresponding setting, this person will also not be able to unpin without knowing your password/pin/pattern.

It should be noted that you need at least Android 5 Lollipop for this.


Cannot find HTC One in ADB, SD card not mounted, incorrect kernel for installed ROM, no backup Pretty much what the title says. I have messed up big time. Because I am switching carriers, I have to switch back to the stock ROM. It is stuck at the loading screen, most likely because of a kernel issue. My stupid self didn't remember to make a backup.

Because of this, all I have access to is the boot loader. I cannot side load anything because ADB does not recognize my device.

I am in the biggest pickle I've ever been in with electronics. Anyone who can fix this is going to win the entire internet.

If using TWRP you can sideload from within recovery.

Boot into TWRP.
Go to Advanced > ADB Sideload and slide to start.
Plug USB cable into PC.
If your device is not detected, manually add standard Google driver.
Then type adb devices and you should see: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx        sideload
Type adb sideload <filename.zip> and it will be flashed automatically.