Samsung I5503 Arabic Froyo Is there any Arabic Froyo rom for I5503 (Galaxy 5)?

There doesn't seem to be one right now. Check SamFirmware for official ROM updates. (note - that's not an official site, they just host the official firmwares).

This site describes how to install a 2.1 Arabic ROM on a Galaxy 5. Hope that helps.


Finding source of WiFi Connection Failures A while ago I got a used S5. I rooted it and put CM 13.0 on it, and was very happy with it until it started to fail to connect to any WiFi, on the WiFi setup page stating "WiFi Connection Failure". This happened on any WiFi with this phone, while all other devices would connect just fine with these networks. My router at home (FritzBox) laconically remarks "WiFi device logged off" in its event log. At the same time, 4G worked just fine and I also could connect by Bluetooth-tethering through an old phone I had. Only the WiFi failed.

I was pretty sure it was a configuration problem, but I didn't find what was wrong and my attempts – from deleting and re-adding the connections until just wiping all of /data/misc/wifi as described here – didn't help.

So I decided to wipe the whole phone. Since saving all your settings and accounts to re-install on the same device is a bit error-prone (if you don't want to feed it all to google), I got myself a new (used) S5, transferred everything over, and all was good. I then wiped the old one and, just as I suspected, the reset phone connects to any WiFi just fine. :-/

However, a couple of days ago the new S5 started to exhibit the very same behavior. I can now again no longer log into WiFi networks. I have again tried the obvious (deleted the connections, wiped /data/misc/wifi) – but all to no avail. Since I do not want to go through the hassle of having two phones and transferring everything from one phone to the other every other month, I guess I will have to get to the bottom of this now. This is a Linux system, after all, so there must be some logs of what's happening somewhere. Unfortunately I'm not a Unix aficionado, so I do not know this stuff by heart. So here is my question:

Where do I look to find out what's happening? What do I look at? Where do I start?

Any pointers are most welcome.

OK, after lots of pulled hair and bitten nails, I think I have found a solution. Rather than closing this question it might be better if I share my findings on the off-chance that someone having this problem might find the solution through google.

First off, I installed aLogCat Root, and waded through lots of debug output. That got me

    "Wifi connection closed with errorCode 20"

and

    "Client connection lost with reason: 4"

Googling found lots of issues, most of which obviously did not apply here, while the rest less obviously didn't. None of the solutions helped me.

However, due to the many times I rebooted while trying all these fixes, at some point the nagging message after reboot making me aware that my Location services are disabled caught my eye and I thought I could give this a try. Well.

I enabled Location and WiFi works now.

I confirmed it by undoing all the other things I had tried, none of which broke WiFi. However, the very moment I disable Location, WiFi stops working.

To me this isn't obvious at all, and if someone can shed some light on this, I'd be happy to get educated.


Will Project Treble for Oreo make it easier to develop and flash custom ROMs? I'm trying to understand how Treble will affect custom ROM development.

I imagine by separating out the parts of the operating system it would make it easier for manufacturers to issue updates fixing any root pathways.

From XDA-Developers:

  The reason why unofficial Android Oreo ports are slowly being worked on rather than just something developers can compile, boot up, and run is simple. In order to bring up a new Android version on an existing device, the kernel and the device tree need to be heavily reworked in order to make an existing Android phone work with a newer Android release. That’s because the current vendor implementation, including all proprietary binary blobs, is made to work with a single Android version, and thus need to be reworked and ported to the new Android version for the device to work properly.

  Almost all components inside the phone use an independent, proprietary blob, and requires to be patched and worked on independently so that the newer software can use it, also making sure the other ones don’t break in the process. This is truly a time-consuming task, and the main reason why most stable custom ROMs (like LineageOS weeklies or other, officially supported ROMs) don’t appear until 2-3 months after the final Android release drops to AOSP. All this effort also means that the resulting ROM will only work on one device or, in the best case, a handful of identically or similarly specification devices.

  This seems to be changing with Project Treble, according to Ron Amadeo of ArsTechnica and independently corroborated by custom ROM developer SultanXDA.

  Malchev says that Treble standardizes Android hardware support to such a degree that generic Android builds compiled from AOSP can boot and run on every Treble device. In fact, these “raw AOSP” builds are what will be used for some of the CTS testing Google requires all Android OEMs to pass in order to license the Google apps—it’s not just that things should work, they are required to work.
  To drive this point home, it means that because of the way the lower layer of Android was modularized, all Treble devices in the market will be able to boot a generic stock, AOSP Android build. This takes away most of the hassle of porting custom ROMs to an older device since a single, generic Android build can run on many devices. This moves Android devices way closer to something like a personal computer, where you can boot up the latest, cutting edge Windows 10 build or any Linux distribution on a 10-12-year-old computer.

  You won’t be able to boot up flawlessly-working generic Android 9.0 builds on your Treble device just yet, though – device trees and kernels will still require being worked on. It’s still a great start: thanks to the modularized HALs, the workload for bringing up the next Android version should be greatly reduced, and we could see stable 9.0 builds in a matter of days/weeks instead of months. We should have in mind that Project Treble, while it’s now rolling out, is still a work in progress as it’s still receiving changes in AOSP, and the vendor layer could eventually be standardized to the point installing a new Android version will be the same as installing Windows on a computer.

  This is a huge technical advancement, and it has the potential to significantly improve AOSP-based custom ROM development on our forums. But then, this only applies to devices with Project Treble, and currently the only Treble phones available out there are the Google Pixel, Google Pixel XL, Sony Xperia XZ1, and XZ1 Compact.


Find WhatsApp photo's sender in Gallery I lost my mobile so I lost all numbers. I really need to find my best friend's number. I have a photo on my hard disk which he had sent me through WhatsApp before.
Can I find his number through its details? How can I find the WhatsApp photo's sender in the gallery by its details?

you cannot find the sender details from the photo. There's no EXIF data added to the photo which can track its sender. So, that's the answer to your question.
Next, you do have other ways by which you can likely find the number:

If you sync contacts to any cloud service (such as Google contacts), you can check there and find out the number.
If you backup WhatsApp to your Google Drive, then you can install WhatsApp on another phone using the same phone number and then restore the backup from Google Drive. The backup will also bring in your old chats and hence the phone number.
Install WhatsApp on your phone and wait for your friend to message you. You'll get the number.


Simple To-Do widget that syncs between phones I have tried many widgets for a shopping/task list, but can't find one that fits my criteria. I would like it to:

Be SIMPLE - add and delete items right from the widget
Sync automatically between my wife's phone and mine
Not be date-based - I want to see ALL items until I complete them
Each item goes away when marked as complete

Any suggestions? Wunderlist is very close, but only shows "todays tasks".

Remember the milk. (RTM)

At least adding a todo from the widget is possible. You can use the widget to open the list of todos the widget is configured to display and then delete / mark as complete tasks.

You can share tasks with other RTM users (i.e. your wife). Tasks don't automatically go away from the widget (unless you configure it explicitly via a smart list).


"Invalid Input" error when trying to set a service center number On an LG G4 (Android 6.0), I'm unable to send SMS messages, when I called my provider they told me that I need to change the Service center number in the Messaging app settings. Currently it's +7, when I try to change it to the correct number (+97253989999) I get an "Invalid input" error.

UPDATE

When I restarted the device, the problem corrected itself and the correct number was set as the service center number.

Does anyone knows what the cause for this can be (it's not the first time this happens)?

I faced the same issue and finally found that the issue was SIM.
Changed my SIM by contacting service provider and it worked fine with me :)


How to show chat head facebook android manually? The new version of Facebook Messenger show a chat head when new messages arrived.

When closed, I don't know how to show the chat head unless waiting for the next message to come

A free app called Notification Shortcuts gives you the ability to set up a permanent notification that will open an app you specify when you select the notification.

You can set up multiple shortcuts and can even set up toggles for wifi, bluetooth, etc, if you want.

The downside to this is that when you receive a message, you'll have a second notification from the chat app itself. But since the facebook chat app lacks an option to set up a permanent notification, this 3rd-party app is the next best solution.


How to filter my Google contacts? I have synced contacts from my Google account on my Samsung Galaxy.

Now in my contacts are all kinds of people I've written once an email to, which Gmail stored in my contacts.

Some contacts even show up when I search, while they are not even to be found in my contact list on Gmail.

I would like to keep some control over which contacts I want to see in my phone or not. I would like especially to show those who have a phone number in my phone.

How do I filter my contacts from Google?

Click on the people (contact) app and click the menu button and go to Settings -> Contacts to Display -> Customize. Then make sure only "My Contacts" and "Stared in Android" are enabled. Google shouldn't be adding random emails to My Contacts (since those should be ones you specifically added and the "All other contacts" should contain all the addresses you sent emails to).

If those emails are part of My Contacts, I believe your only option is to manually go through your contacts and change it. Luckily, Google has a web interface to allow this at http://contacts.google.com. When you are there, you can click the checkbox on all the contacts you don't want shown on your phone and then click the Groups icon (3rd button over, it shows 3 people on it), and then uncheck the My Contacts checkbox. The next time your phone syncs your contacts, it will fix your contacts list.


How do I pass signal strength info from a phone to a tethered tablet? I regularly tether my Wi-Fi Xoom to a Galaxy Nexus. In the interest of preserving the phone battery I normally leave the screen off, however this can be frustrating when the connection drops since the Xoom reports a full Wi-Fi signal regardless of the 3G connection's strength.

Ideally what I want to do is replace the Wi-Fi signal strength symbol with the mobile's connection strength, however I'm anticipating it would have to be an extra icon in the "system tray" of the tethered device.

I'm now going to speculate about how it would be done *: Wi-Fi explorer reports the Wi-Fi signal of the connected device, presumably by dynamically writing the system data to the HTML file it serves. Something similar, paired to an app that reported the results in the system tray/dock area would do it.

* I think this is still in scope since it might help with an answer. It isn't a coding question since I'd never be able to build this!

Here's a version I developed that does it exactly like this - be aware there could be bugs in this, it may not work for CDMA/EVO as am in the EU using GSM!

It is a client/server based architecture.

Install

To install the application, do the following:

Plug in cable into device
adb install WifiTether3G-release.apk

The gist of the app is this:

Server

Activate the Wifi Tethering, then:

Launch this app - WifiTether3G
Hit menu
Tap on Settings
Set the app to either be a client or server.
If server, put in a name for the server - its a nickname, that can be anything you like. Default is *WifiTether3G_AP*. Likewise, set up the port, to be anything over 1024 and less than 65536 (Why? Internet reserves ports from 0-1023!) Default is 1337 ... :)

The above shall be for the server.

Client

Activate the Wifi to connect to the WiFi Access Point, then:

Launch this app - WifiTether3G
Hit menu
Tap on Settings
Un-check the box Server in order to make the application behave as client.

Tap on Start on the main application window, depending on which side is it - if it's server, it will run listening on the specified port.

If the application is running as client, it will connect to the server, and periodically waits for the incoming data and notifies the notification pull-down bar.

The message on the notification bar will be similar to "ServerNickname's 3G Signal is " followed by the following:

Crap - 1 bar signal
Alright - 2 bar signal
Good - 3 bar signal
Excellent - 4 bar signal

(Am not sure exactly how it would be for CDMA/EVO)

This will be followed by the date/time in square brackets for example, [05/09 19:33:01]

Edit:
I am in the process of updating the code, there's a widget in place but needs a bit more spit and polish... stay tuned :)

Update:

I have updated the application, there's a widget now in place, if running as a client, long press on home screen, pick WifiTether3G which takes up 1x1 space, the graphical image will change based on the signal. Also, for the settings screen, notification can be switched off as you wish. I will be uploading it to Google Play Store as a free app, shortly. (Linky updated) version


How can I stop facebook's notification about continuous contact uploads? Every day I receive something along the lines of this (often it's just "1 new notification"):

Seem pretty exciting, maybe I should see what it is. But it turns out it's just facebook pestering me to fork over my contacts list and takes me straight to this page:

There seems to be no way to say "no". Either I turn this feature on or I have a daily notification from facebook. Is there a workaround?

If I can't stop it, I guess I'll just uninstall the app. The only reason I have it is to get infrequent notifications and if most of the time it's spam it's not useful to me.

Some people have suggested accepting the contacts upload and then disabling the feature. However the notification comes straight back. Also, this isn't a solution for the people who don't want facebook to have their contacts at all.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask. If not, where's appropriate?

Go to the downward pointing arrow on desktop and then go to settings and then go to notifications you should be able to turn it off or tweak it there. Hope it helps you.


Although I was told to charge my Android device before first use, it was already charged. Have I been given a phone rejected by someone else? I have just received my 'new' HTC one V. The instructions clearly state to charge the phone up before first use, yet the the phone switched on and showed full charge straight away, before I had chance to charge it. My worry is that I have been sent a phone that someone else has had and I really want to be sure it is brand new to me.

It is not uncommon that rejected/refurbished phones find their way back to the market as "new" ones.

But in my (and at least Al Everett's) experience, batteries are almost always shipped with some charge. I wouldn't worry, as long as there are no other indicators that your device was pre-owned.


Lookout - Which application is trying to access the system with no authorization Is there any log where I can check which unknown source app is trying to access the phone without authorization? Lookout keeps popping up this message but don't tell me which application is! It happens whenever I connect to Wi-fi/3G. The application says that everything is normal after a scan. I don't want to remove all applications installed from unknown sources!

I couldn't get the message in english just switching the phone language, it only shows partially in english:

I don't use this Lookout app, so I cannot tell you whether it has this hint somewhere. But I can give you some clues how to "rule out innocent apps", so you don't have to "remove all applications". With some luck, this filtering leaves only a few candidates.

First indicator you gave: It happens whenever I connect to Wi-fi/3G. So it has to be a) an app with "some WiFi permission", which also listens to the "network changed" broadcast (to put it in easy words). So first let's check for apps with matching permissions:

Guardian Droid and Permission Explorer (source: Google Play)

Two helpful apps for this are Guardian Droid and Permission Explorer, as shown in the screenshots. They help you identify apps by permissions (and also apps with excessive permissions). Taking the Permission Explorer screenshot as a base here, your suspect app should be in one (or more) of the following groups: Internet, Access_Network_state. Most likely in both: it needs to know when Internet is accessible (so it's interested in the network state), and most likely wants to access it (Internet).

With this check, you will have ruled out some apps already. Probably not enough, as many/most apps will have the Internet permission even when not requiring it themselves – to load ads. So the next step is to check which of the filtered apps are listening to the "network state changed" broadcast (an indicator that your suspect does this is that the alert is triggered immediately when WiFi was connected, if I understood you correctly).

S2 APK Viewer and App Detective (source: Google Play)

For this we take a look at S2 APK Viewer and App Detective. Both of them allow to browse the Manifest of your .apks (Apps). Watch out for <receiver>s, which declare what broadcasts an app is interested in.

By these steps, you will not end up with the single candidate, but rather with several. But at least you don't have to check them all. As a broadcast listener can alternatively be declared dynamically by code (instead of in the manifest),  our friend might not be listed in the "reduced set" having applied all filters, but must be amongst those left over by the first (permission) scan.

Whilest not completely solving your issue, I hope this at least helped narrowing down candidates to an acceptable level.

As it turns out in this case, it still leaves ~200 candidates to check. So let me suggest something I should have thought of from the beginning: investigating Android's logs. There are multiple ways to do this, like using dedicated apps (CatLog, Gemini LogCat, and LogCat Extreme are good examples), or doing it via adb logcat (requires ADB to be setup on your computer, see Is there a minimal installation of ADB?). If something raises a security notification, it should show up in the logs at least as warning (so you can restrict your investigation to this loglevel and higher ones). Most of the LogCat apps let you setup filters via their GUI. For the command line tool, you can take a look at its help page. Moreover, there's a nice article on "adb logcat" Command Arguments - Output Filters, which should be quite useful here.

Start the logcat viewer. If possible, clear "past entries" from the output, or set a mark (if the app offers this). After that, connect to WiFi. As soon as the warning pops up, stop log recording (or set the "end mark"). Now investigate the recorded lines. I'm positive this leaves much less than ~200 candidates – and wouldn't even be surprised you'd end up with an exact hit.


Xperia V touchscreen doesn't respond I ordered this brand new xperia V a few days ago and recieved it today. everything's working fine (the power key, volume buttons) the phone starts up good but the phone doesn't respond to touch inputs.
I've talked to the vendor and they asked me to send it to them for replacement but i really don't want to wait another week (maybe more) to use this device

Can it be a software related problem? If yes, What should i try? sony update or something else?

Since you said the phone is brand new there is nothing wrong with the software. It is most probably a defect with the screen. Get it replaced and use a proper phone.


Rom flashed but phone is stuck showing boot logo I flashed my Xolo q2000 with CWM Recovery and an Xperia Z2 rom downloaded from Needrom.  All was well but some features were not working so I once again deleted the cache, and wiped data and so on.  Now when it boots it only shows the Xolo logo on screen, nothing else happens.

How can I deal with this problem?

Go into recovery (generally power + vol down or power + home + vol. down) and flash another stable ROM.
How do I know this? I have bricked many phones a thousand times ;-p


Incoming calls from unsaved numbers showing UNKNOWN NUMBER in my MOTO G I recently bought this phone for my dad and its upgraded to lollipop. But whenever any call is coming from an unsaved number, its showing "UNKNOWN NUMBER calling. " The phone happens to be brand new and i haven't yet added a google account or started using play store. Please help. Thank you for your kind attention.

This usually happens when your phone contract doesn't include caller ID. When you have caller ID, numbers will show and Google will do a search to show you who is the caller.


How can I translate Chinese and Japanese text without typing it? When I'm in Japan or China, there are barely any European alphabet and I want to use my camera to take a photo of a sign and convert it into English language. Is it possible to achieve that?

You can use Google Translate app, you can take photos which contain texts using the app and it'll detect it and translate it.


Is there a way to verify the integrity of a TA partition backup of Xperia phones? I unlocked the bootloader of my Xperia P (LT22i) before I could take a backup of the TA partition (which stores DRM keys, IMEI code, etc.)

Now I've read on several XDA threads and other websites that TA can not be backed up after the bootloader has been unlocked. And that once it's unlocked, everything in there is gone.

However, when I used the latest version of Backup TA on my phone, it could detect the presence of and backup the TA partition.

Now I'm not sure if the backup it created is a valid TA backup so is there a way to check its integrity and/or parse the contents of TA.img to see if it does contain valid DRM keys and other stuff?

P.S. I tried opening TA.img in a hex editor and searching for my phone's IMEI number. I found it in the file. I also found references to "marlin" and quite a few X.509 certificates. The uncompressed size of my phone's TA.img is 512 KB (5,24,288 bytes)

And if it helps, here's the part of the log from Backup TA where it finds and backs up the TA partition:

--- mmcblk0boot0 ---
Searching for Operator Identifier...-
Searching for Operator Name...-
Searching for Rooting Status...-
Searching for S1 Boot...-
Searching for S1 Loader...-
Searching for S1 Hardware Configuration...-

Partition found!

=======================================
 BACKUP TA PARTITION
=======================================
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
524288 bytes (512.0KB) copied, 0.030456 seconds, 16.4MB/s

=======================================
 INTEGRITY CHECK
=======================================
OK

=======================================
 PULL BACKUP FROM SDCARD
=======================================
2437 KB/s (524288 bytes in 0.210s)

=======================================
 INTEGRITY CHECK
=======================================
OK

=======================================
 PACKAGE BACKUP
=======================================

7-Zip (A) 9.20  Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov  2010-11-18
Scanning

Creating archive ..\backup\TA-backup-20140722.010348.zip

Compressing  TA.blk
Compressing  TA.img
Compressing  TA.md5
Compressing  TA.serial
Compressing  TA.timestamp
Compressing  TA.version

Everything is Ok

*** Backup successful. ***

It should be possible to check via the service menu of the phone.
Go to calls, enter *#*#7378423#*#* and go to service info-configuration (somewhere at the bottom). The lines should end with [Key OK][Active].


Getting the features of HTC Sense in vanilla Android? I've had an HTC Desire for a year or so and am due an upgrade. I'm weighing my options and I'm fairly sure I'm going to go with the Galaxy Nexus.

Thing is I've gotten used to HTC Sense and all the extra features it offers over vanill Android. What apps/widgets can I get to add the functionality that I lose by not having Sense?

Also what will I lose by not having sense?

You could replicate many Sense features with 3rd-party apps such as Launcher replacements, dialer/contact apps, various widgets, etc.  However, you will likely lose the deep system integration of such apps.  You will also most definitely lose the integration with the HTC Sense site.


Update Lava Iris X1 Grand to Lollipop I have Lava Iris X1 Grand. When I first bought it, the update was available. I was not interested at that time. Now I feel it should be installed but it doesn't work.

Anytime I click software update in About phone menu option, it doesn't respond at all. I installed third party app but it says "No update available & your device is already updated".

What to do then?

even I was facing this issue, but some how got the solution by trial and error. The funny part is its very simple. I hope you have downloaded the update package form the link: http://www.lavamobiles.com/support/iris-x1-grand/android-lollipop-upgrade
once you have downloaded it, just rename it from "Update_KK to L_SD card.zip" to "Update.zip", try the steps to update now.


Preventing apps from detecting other apps I have an app that does not allow me to enable certain settings because another app is installed. Every time I try to enable these settings it says "You cannot because app x is installed". I know they are both compatible but it has to do with buying certain features from the first app that are free in the second.

Is there a way to prevent the first app from detecting the second app is installed?

Device: Nexus 4
OS/Build: 4.4.4/KTU84P
MODs: Xposed
Rooted: yes (obviously)

After extensive searching found an Xposed module for it!
xPrivacy!

EDIT:

xPrivacy (http://repo.xposed.info/module/biz.bokhorst.xprivacy) is an Xposed module that allows you to control what data apps can access (it's more powerful than app-ops or ReceiverStop but more complex).

so what i did:
after installing xPrivacy

Scrolled in the app list to find the blocking app
Pressed on the picture
Scrolled in the restrictions list to "system"
pressed on the arrow on the left to expand
disabled relevant restrictions (serv_getInstalledApps,serv_getPackageInfo etc..)
Had Fun :)

Hope this helps
will be more than happy to add more info if needed :)


Apps disappear after restart After an android update, my apps disappeared. The apps cannot be seen in the apps list, and they are seen as 'com.something.something' in the settings app manager. Some of the apps are not in the SD Card and even Android System Webview disappears after every restart. Sometimes, my phone randomly restarts and all my apps come back. Please help.

Apparently it was a problem with knox, and it fixed itself after i rooted ny phone.


Is it possible to install Android on a PC? Is it possible to install Android on a PC?  If so, how would this be accomplished?

The HowToGeek has a set of instructions on how to Run Android on Your Netbook or Desktop here. It uses the Android builds from Android-x86.org but I don't know how active that project still is?

However if you just want to try Android out you're probably far better off just using the emulator on your PC.


Volume limit specific app? Is there an app that will let me set a maximum volume on JUST Spotify? Spotify at 100% is a LOT louder than YouTube at 100%. I never want to listen to Spotify at 100%, but occasionally I do want to do so for a YouTube video.

I'm asking because a few times, I've accidentally pressed and held the volume up button when listening to Spotify--I think I may have already seriously damaged my hearing that way.

Volume Limiter

I stumbled upon your question googling the same thing


GPS not working on Galaxy S II I have a Samsung Galaxy S2. My GPS doesn't work. It just says "Waiting for location" the whole time. At first when I bought the phone, I think it worked correctly, but now it doesn't. I tried: androidng.com/fix-galaxy-s-gps and similar stuff, nothing helped. How can I enabled the GPS function?

P.S. I installed a few apps for battery savings, I disabled them now, maybe it was a cause? But it still doesn't work. I could reset everything probably, but then my apps would be deleted, right?

I can't speak to the instructions you linked to, but @Ryan Conrad is correct in saying Galaxy S and Galaxy S II devices shouldn't be treated the same.

Whenever I've had GPS trouble the GPS Status & Toolbox app has helped me. In their tools menu you can use the reset or download A-GPS data options - those steps seems to reset my GPS when it hangs.


Is there any way to change the size of the text box in Messaging? I find it hard to edit text messages in the tiny Messaging box. Is there any way to increase the size of it? I'm using CM10 (JB), but the app looks the same as the CM9 (ICS) version.

You can use an alternative like Handcent SMS - it has a button to allow full screen editing. Also, you can customize the font size / style to something more suitable from within Handcent.


Jelly Bean resource Usage I have a phone with 512MB of ram. The company has launched the Jelly Bean update for the phone. Currently my phone is running Android ICS 4.0.4 which has alot of lag and frameloss issues, So I am thinking to update to JB. However I am concerned about the memory usage of JB.
So my question is:

Whether JB uses more ram than ICS?

Jelly Bean uses pretty much the same amount of RAM. There's not much of a difference.

Performance-wise, Jelly Bean is much better. It will even make phones with 512MB RAM feel smooth, with some lag still, cause you know.... 512MB RAM, but it should feel much better than ICS.


Disable personal language library feature of Swype I dislike the way keyboards build a personal language library. I currently use Huawei Swype and whilst yes, every now and then I can clear the library, I would like to not have to do that.

Is there any way to disable this feature on Swype?

Have you tried using the Google Keyboard application?
It pretty much allows you to disable personalized corrections and a few more options.

You have the option to change the following settings:

Block offensive words: Block Google Keyboard from suggesting
potentially offensive words.
Auto-correction: Set the spacebar and any inserted punctuation to
automatically correct mistyped words.
Show correction suggestions: Show suggested words while typing.
Personalized corrections: Set Google Keyboard to learn from your
typing to improve its suggestions to you.
Suggest Contact names: Use names from your contacts for suggestions
and corrections.
Next-word suggestions: Use the previous word in making suggestions.

source: Google Support Page


How to Backup when Samsung G S3 not booting stuck at Samsung logo? How to Backup when Samsung Galaxy S3 not booting stuck at Samsung text logo?

I can boot in the "Android System Recovery" Mode using "Volume Up"+"Home"+"Power".
I don't have ADB USB Debug set up.

When using ADB it can get the serial number:

  adb devices -l

  List of devices attached

  881aa70c       recovery

When using ADB pull to get all SDCard (the built-in 16G memory) - It cannot see any file on /sdcard/

  adb pull /sdcard/ C:\U_adt

  pull: building file list...

  0 files pulled. 0 files skipped.

When using ADB to pull the /sys/block/ where is the mmcblk0 which is mounted at boot as /SDCard/ it says skipping special file

  adb pull /sys/block/ C:\U_adt

  pull: building file list...

  skipping special file 'ram0'

  skipping special file 'ram15'

  skipping special file 'loop0'

  skipping special file 'loop7'

  skipping special file 'mmcblk0'

  skipping special file 'mmcblk0boot1'

  skipping special file 'mmcblk0boot0'

  0 files pulled. 0 files skipped.

When using ADB backup it says to confirm on the screen, but the phone can not boot to normal where may be the confirmation, and in "Recovery" there is no confirmation message.

  adb backup -shared

  Now unlock your device and confirm the backup operation.

I want to backup the DCIM/Camera and other personal data.

How can the backup of pictures on internal memory /sdcard/ can be done?

I read here How do I perform a full pre-rooting backup of an Android phone? that FACTORY RESET does not wipe the data from /sdcard/ internal memory.

But on my S3 in Android System Recovery the option is named "WIPE DATA/FACTORY RESET".

Will the option "WIPE DATA/FACTORY RESET" wipe /sdcard/ partition or not?

I used my S3 in "Android System Recovery"

The option "WIPE DATA/FACTORY RESET" seems to npt wipe /sdcard/ partition.

in my case it resolved the isue, now the phone is not stuck, and all the apps that were deleted are re-installed from the cloud by Android because I had backup them on the cloud.

Just as a side note, before  I used the above option to get rid of boot stuck on samasung logo, I couldn't use ODIN to install an original firmware downloaded from here:
http://www.sammobile.com/firmwares/3/?download=14509


Disable info popups on YouTube app ("ⓘ") When viewing videos with the YouTube app, constant info message popups during playback shows. Videos that show those info popups show a white circle with the letter 'i'.

Is there a way to disable that?

If you insist on using the official YouTube app, I'm unaware of any way to do what you want.

Your options

The best workaround is to use a different app to watch YouTube.

Lately, I've been using m.youtube.com inside Google Chrome. In my experience, m.youtube.com is unable to display info popups. (It's also unable to display end cards.) Alternatively, you can use:

another web browser, such as Firefox for Android; or
any of the numerous dedicated third-party YouTube clients available in the Google Play store.

Bonus tip

Firefox for Android lets you install extensions, such as uBlock Origin.  If you do install uBlock Origin, know that it includes an 'element picker' feature.  This feature lets you hide selected parts of your favorite websites.  For example, you can use it to hide all recommendations, or all comments, on the YouTube website.


How does Google map know my direction as I rotate? I realize the blue arrow on Google map, as you rotate the phone around, it will rotate as well. May I know how does it know the north south direction? It works too even my GPS is turned off.

GPS doesn't understand static direction at all; it can only infer direction from motion.  But there is an electronic compass inside the phone as well as the GPS.

You might want to download the "GPS Status + Tools" program from the Market; you can see detailed status information for both the GPS and the compass.


android rooting and security I read here that the way to become "root" in an Android device(Galaxy S3) is to use Rooting. However it has been said that if we do that, even normal applications will be running with root privilege. Is that the case ? For anyone with a Unix background, I am sure that allowing all applications to run as root is quite odd and dangerous. So my question is, isn't there the concept of Users as we have it on a *nix system ? For eg: in a normal operation as what user the Android apps run ? (we are not logging in as we do on a *nix system, so is there a default user ?).
Also, is there no way to restrict or to run apps without root privilege ?
Since I am a Linux/Unix guy, I would really like to get the command line. That is why I want to do the Rooting. However, I dont' want to make my mobile phone that loose and make it a Virus system like Windows.

Every app is under its own user (this is how permissions are enforced). When you "root" a device, you add an SU binary which runs tasks as the super user. Any app can run the SU binary but they have to explicitly do so. Without explicitly doing so, they continue to run as their own user.

Most (if not all) rooting methods will have an additional APK for managing what apps have access to SU, such as SuperSU. In my experience, the first time an app tries to use SU, you'll get a notification asking for access. This will allow you to deny root to apps that request it.

EDIT: I'd also like to add that you can get command line access on Android without rooting. I highly recommend Terminal Emulator if you want access from your phone. If it's connected to a computer you can use ADB to run things on your phone by running adb shell. To get ADB, you'll need to get the Android SDK and find ADB in it.


How to display current location on the home screen? In my old phone I had a setting called "Area Info - cell information". When enabled it would show the location information next to the mobile network name, like:

  Vodafone
Foobar Street

I can't find this setting anywhere in Android :(

Not all carriers support this. And Android does not show this by default IMHO. If you're still with the same provider and in the same area, you might want to check your app drawer. Some have an app called "Cell Info" pre-installed (I have it e.g. on my LG Optimus 4X – but in my area this feature is not supported).

Alternatively, you might want to look for some location widgets you could place on your home screen. Several weather widgets also display your current location along with the weather reports.

If the notification area would suffice, you also could take a look at GPS Notification or GPS Status & Toolbox. These apps display your current position in the notification area as long as GPS is turned on (not sure whether you can configure that to city/street, as I didn't try them out).

GPS Notification (source: Google Play; click image for larger variant)

Another possibility would be "self-made widgets" using e.g. Zooper or UCCW. Again, I didn't try one of those, so I cannot say for sure whether they would go down to street level. But at least those widgets would go directly to your homescreen, and you can customize them heavily.


System has been modified. Pls contact the manufacturer. Thank you. -- i don't know what this mean and something's wrong with my phone. --- I accidentally deleted my android device manager and other folders on my phone that i thought was not useful at all. After, this message on my lock screen appeared. And i can't unlock my phone without having to touch the upper portion of the screen where it will show you the time, date and the setting icon for your phone. So after doing so, i tap the "back" button or "home" just to see the phone menu and do stuff.. i know something on those deleted folders has something to do with this. This has been my problem for 4mos already. I've been to different technicians but all they do is charge me overprice. Can somebody help me pls? My phone is an SKK Prime Android 4.2.2. This was given to me by my boyfriend last December. He'd b broken hearted if he'll find out.. Pls help.. Thank You.

There are only two ways out of this:

restore the backup you (probably didn't) make before tampering with system files
try to backup what you still can, and flash the system (either with the stock ROM for your device, or with any matching custom ROM, whatever you prefer. If you don't know where to get that, take a look at Where can I find stock or custom ROMs for my Android device?

For the future please note that everything you delete in /system will be gone for good. Always make a backup before you play there – and make yourself familiar first with what you're up to do ;)


How to stop update notifications for disabled apps on a Family-Link managed device? Running Android 6.0.1 on Nexus 7 device, where I have disabled the following apps:

Google Play Movies and TV
Google Play Music
Google Play Newsstand
Google Play Books

Before disabling, I cleaned the cache and data.

However, the play store constantly sends me push notifications to update these apps, despite the fact they are disabled. How can I stop this?

I have also stopped all notifications from the Google Store app, this did not help either

Settings → Notifications → Updates is off
Settings → Notifications → Auto-Updates is off
Settings → Auto Update apps is off

And the worst thing is that you can't dismiss these notifications, so they stay all the time in the pull-down menu and push down the notifications I might care about.

UPDATE
The tablet has Family Link installed and setup, which seems to be preventing enabling Developer options, hence cannot enable USB Debugging to attempt to delete the apps via adb.

Have you tried resetting the Play Store?

It is possible (although very unlikely) that the Play Store has failed to detect that the apps have been disabled.

Go to Settings → Apps → Play Store → Storage → Tap the Clear data button.

Note: This will reset all your Play Store settings (update settings, notification settings etc.) to default. You might have to adjust these settings manually again.

If the above steps still don't solve your problem, try the below steps —

First, you'll need to enable USB debugging from the phone settings and download the Android debugging platform-tools package on your PC.
The official documentation for this can be found here.

Then, connect your phone to your PC with a cable and make sure your phone is listed as device as given in the above documentation.

Uninstall the culprit apps for the primary user account

adb shell

This will bring up a command line shell prompt of your phone. Then enter the following commands —

pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.videos # Remove Play Movies
pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.music # Remove Play Music
pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.magazines # Remove Play Newsstand
pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.apps.books # Remove Play Books
exit

The apps should not appear in your Play Store's apps list anymore.

EDIT - For Family Link managed devices (Based on OP's observations)

If the device is being managed by Google Family Link, then there is no way to access Developer Options on the managed device because Google Family Link makes advanced settings (like Developer Options, Install from unknown sources etc.) inaccessible on the managed device.
Also, as mentioned by OP in the comments below, if these settings are modified before enabling Family Link management, they are reset to their defaults as soon as management is enabled.

However, these advanced settings can be controlled by parents from the Family Link app for parents, and they can be accessed using the following steps —
Open the Family Link app for parents → Select your child → Look for your child's managed device → Tap Settings on the device card
Here, you should find controls for most of the settings which are not accessible from the managed device anymore. Look for the USB Debugging developer option and turn it on.

Then, by following the steps mentioned above to connect the managed device to a PC via ADB, you should be able to run the commands to get rid of the apps from the managed device.


How to root Android using CF-Auto Root Solution How to root using CF- auto root? How to use Odin with it?

When you decide to root your Android usually you have to pick a proper rooting solution next. Otherwise, you have to face a lot of problems. In the worst-case, you might have a bricked mobile phone or tablet instead of a rooted one. So in this article, I'm going to talk about one of the best rooting tools if you have a Samsung smartphone or a tablet. We are going to root it using CF Auto Root through download Odin.

Preparations before Root Android

So this an invention of the famous XDA developer Chainfire. The exploit is working for more than 300 common Android devices.  But today we are gonna focus on Samsung. If you want to work with this you better check the compatible list which is available in the XDA Developers forum. It usually unlocks the bootloader first. So make sure to keep backups unless you will lose your data. And the other special fact is that Samsung drivers are only compatible with Windows. So you should have a Windows PC for the task.

Android Rooting for Samsung

First, you have to make sure to install proper drivers. Check this
link out and you will be able to download them. You just have to extract the zip and launch the .exe.
The next step is to download the correct CF-Auto-Root file. There are
many. So to find your compatible version check the model Number and
the Android version. And then click the download.
Make a new folder and extract the downloaded zip file there. The file
should be located in the hard drive.
Then put your smartphone or the tablet into the download mode. Volume
down button, home button, and power button will help to do this.
Press and hold it simultaneously.
Now connect it with the windows computer using a USB cable.
Now browse to the folder that has extracted the content of the
downloaded zip file. On there you will see a .exe file with a name
ODIN. Right-click on that select to run it as an Administrator
Once Odin is running it will detect the device.
In the interface  "ID:COM" field should be turned to blue.

Click the AP button and keep the rest unchanged.
Again you have to browse to that exact same place that has extracted
the content and select CF-Auto-Root.rar.md5 file. Then click Open
When the log tab displays a message saying "Leave CS" click the
start.
Now the rooting process has been started.
When its finished the device will reboot back to Android.

Wrap Up

So this is an almighty process of rooting your Android Operating System using CF-Auto-Root and Samsung Odin. It is safe and pretty easy compared to some other tools. So if you want to check the root status you should download the root checker.


How can I view other people's calendar in Microsoft Outlook for Android? How can I view other people's calendar in Microsoft Outlook for Android?

On Outlook for Microsoft Windows, I can view other people's calendars when creating a new meeting:

The scheduling assistant on Outlook for Android works differently than the one for Windows.

In Outlook, click on the calendar --> new event, enter the people who should attend the meeting.

Select the date, then time of the meeting.

The attendees are listed on the bottom with green checked marked when they are free, red when they are not free.
The chosen time for the meeting will also be green or red whether it is free or overlapping with other meetings.

Clicking on an attendee will show either the person is free, busy or tentative.


How setup WiFi proxy in Android 9? I need to setup a WiFi proxy on Android 9  but it seems they removed the feature , all tutorials I found refers to old versions of Android.

The wifi proxy settings are still configured under the advanced options for your wifi network.

The reason you can't find them is just bad Android UX. They're in a scrollable area that doesn't look scrollable (it looks like it just says 'metered'). If you try scrolling down in the wifi settings window you'll see it immediately.


Installing HD Games on HTC Desire SV,low memory I have an HTC Desire SV, which has almost the same specs as Desire X. The problem is I'm unable to install HD games, since the phone storage has only 800MB space.

I have gone to Settings > Apps and checked for the option to move to SD card but there are only 2 options available move to phone and move to internal.

I cannot play games like Max Payne; it has cache files around 2GB. Since the cache is too big for the phone memory, I cannot install it.

How can I install games like Max Payne?

Short answer:
Thing is: you can't, obviously, as you don't have enough internal storage.
TL;DR
If your device is rooted, however, there are ways to work around this storage problem. You can fool your device by linking/mounting a partition on your SD card to be used as "fake internal memory". But while this would work-around the underlying issue (not enough storage), the Playstore still would refuse to let you install those apps, as your "official phone specs" have not been changed. If you could get hold of the .apk, however, you might be able to side-load (manually install) it. Also, having root, you could manipulate the system file responsible for this (build.spec?), fooling the playstore into thinking your device would be a Desire X (or whatever you chose).
So you see there might be work-arounds, but they are not easy to apply. Without rooting your device (and thus most likely voiding your warranty if you're living outside the EU), it simply is impossible AFAIK.


Which kernel versions does the udev exploit work? Which kernel versions does the udev exploit work? Upon googling this, I found articles claiming that it works on Android 2.1 and maybe 2.2, but there is no information about the kernel versions.

I'm actually not sure that the kernel version matters for this exploit. It was a bug that was patched in the platform_system_core repository, which I think comprises libraries and system files that live on in the /system directory (the README says as much). The patch was committed on July 19, 2010 (in the Froyo branch, anyway).

I'd wager that any kernel with a build date later than that also has the updated system files, so the system wouldn't be vulnerable. uname -a would tell you the build date of a given device's kernel, but beyond that I don't know that you could really line it up with a specific kernel version, especially on devices from different manufacturers/carriers/etc.


Any way to boost Wi-Fi on Nexus 7? My Nexus 7 seems to have poorer Wi-Fi reception than my iPad (1st generation). At home it is always able to reach the router, so not an issue. Occasionally when I am out the iPad will have reception when the Nexus 7 doesn't.

I was looking inside the back cover, and it appears there are a few antenna built into the cover. I am curious if the Wi-Fi antena is in the back cover, and if there is some way I could boost it by attaching an external perhaps.

iFixit has a Teardown that shows the Wi-Fi antenna is on the back. Interestingly, when I took it off and looked I saw that it was nicely labeled too. Also, the Wi-Fi reception seems much better after reattaching the cover. Maybe my Antenna wasn't connected very well.

It appears a simple mod could be done to attach an external Wi-Fi antenna if I needed to do that. A mod may be in my future.


Purpose of bookmark, imgcache and rev_geocoding files in cache? I have an Alcatel and on my Android internal storage in my cache has all of these files with question marks and I can't view them and these files are:

bookmark.0
bookmark.1
Bookmark.idx
img.cache.1
imgcache.idx
rev_geocoding.0
rev_geocoding(0).1
rev_geocoding(1).1
rev_geocoding(2).1
rev_geocoding(3).1
rev_geocoding(4).1
rev_geocoding(5).1
rev_geocoding(6).1

and they're all saying "file format not supported".  What does this mean what do these files mean and how can I view these files?

Those are cache files for specific apps and can usually only be read by the specific apps which they belong to.

If you really want to try to look at them (although they will probably not be readable by a human), you can install an app like ES File Explorer and open the file as a text file.


Voice typing -how to continue dictation in new line without restarting microphone? The solution in accepted answer here works on Nougat 7.1.2 using Gboard

What do I say to make a new line when using voice recognition?

But irritatingly, microphone switches off when you move to new line or paragraph and you need to activate it again, breaking the dictation and thought flow

How to prevent that on Nougat 7.1.2 ( not rooted)?

Please don't suggest any apps

You just simply say enter, as the enter key on the keyboard is responsible for adding a new line, same works with speech recognition.

I came across this thing when I needed to type a message on WhatsApp and the enter key was replaced by an emoji key. I tried this trick and it worked!


Why won't a fine-tip stylus work on my phones/tablet? I've been using my tablet/phone for sketching with my finger for a long time.  Over the last year or so, I've been trying to find a fine-tipped stylus to make drawing easier, as fingers are unwieldy and imprecise.  I've purchased a few but none of them work with my Nexus 7, SGS2, LG G2, iPad, iPhone, etc.  The styluses with the fat, rounded, mesh-like pencil eraser sized tips work, but they have the same problem as my finger: they are too fat to see exactly where the tip is touching the screen.  Many styluses come with both ends, and I am left using the fat end every time.

I've searched up and down for a reason but I've not been able to find any sort of explanation really at all.  Can someone break down why the fat, pinky-like stylus tips work but the skinny, pen-like tips don't on (what appears to be) most touchscreens?   Am I simply out of luck, or is there a screen/stylus combination that will work for me?

Capacitive and resistive touchscreen technologies

Today's multi-touch screens are capacitive, unlike the resistive touchscreens from a decade ago. They work a bit like the way you can feel a static charge with the hair on your skin. The screen has a charge inside it, and when your finger comes near it, the capacitance of your finger attracts this charge. The screen can tell all the points where the charge is disturbed in this way, building up a picture of where you're touching it. That's why it can tell different fingers, and the more sensitive screens can tell fingers apart by their shape, and make a guess at how hard you're pressing.

The older resistive touchscreens just had two flexible conductive sheets with a gap in between them. When you apply pressure, it makes the sheets touch together, and the touchscreen hardware can find where that contact point is. Because of how it reads the contact point from the sheets, it can't understand more than one contact point, or a bigger area of contact.

So what?

This has two implications for a stylus. Styli for resistive screens need to be small for a precise touch, and can be any material (because they just need to apply pressure). A stylus for a capacitive touchscreen has to conduct electricity, but be covered with an insulator, to give it the capacitance (like your finger). They're commonly a conductive foam core covered with thin rubber. Usually the part you hold also needs to be conductive, to connect it to the greater capacitance of your body, but there are ways around this.

In addition, the tip needs to be wide enough to generate enough capacitance for the screen to register. In addition to the requirements of the hardware, most touchscreens also have some filtering in software, to avoid getting confused by sensor noise, tiny droplets of water, and other things.

For these two reasons, you can only use a stylus designed for capacitive touchscreens.

Foil hat time

You can make your own by sticking a small ball of aluminium foil to the end of any pen-like object with insulating tape. You just have to make sure your hand is in contact with the foil for it to work. This way, you can experiment with different sizes, to get the narrowest tip that works on your particular device.

Other options

If you still want something more precise, you'll need a phone or tablet that's designed to use a stylus. These phones have extra sensors in addition to the capacitive touchscreen, and they come with a special stylus that works with that sensor. Usually they detect induction fields (like a Wacom drawing tablet), and the stylus has an inductor built into it, but the details are different for different devices. Samsung's Note range of phones and tablets works this way, and Lenovo has a tablet (marketed at digital artists) that has a pressure-sensitive stylus like this as well as "palm rejection" software to avoid reacting to the bottom of your hand when you're drawing.


How to call from console? How to make or receive a call from console?

Expecting something like this, UNIX-style:

make_call +3750291234567 < played_data.wav > recorded_data.wav

wait_for_call < played_data.wav > recorded_data.wav 2> call_info.txt

Preferably this should have no side effects like sounds from the device. The phone is Xperia X10 (for which the call recording is reported to be working).

I want calls to be scriptable like other Linux things I've got used to.

You're not going to be able to achieve this using just userland tools, like what you describe -- at least not while Android is running.

The reason is because the RIL opens the radio device (generally some device node under /dev/*) as a low-level linux service, and while that has an exclusive lock on the device, nothing else can read from or write to the radio.  The RIL then communicates to the Android platform for all radio-related events.

It could be done with some extensive modifications to the underlying Linux kernel (it's open source, so definitely a possibility if you don't mind getting your hands dirty in C), or by replacing the RIL daemon (not as easy, because the rild is not required to be open source, therefore you don't know what the underlying implementation is without reverse engineering).  Doing the latter will break Android's ability to use it properly, unless you somehow come up with a compatibility channel to proxy communication between the new RIL and the existing RIL - and even then, there's a good chance that Android will become confused when it tries to make a call (knowing that the modem should not currently be in use, but getting a response from the radio saying that it is in use).

Failing that, you might also be able to achieve it by replacing the Phone app and using all-native platform APIs.  But I'm kind of thinking that it won't work (at least based on my knowledge of how HTC radios work).  In an HTC device, when you place a call, Android notifies rild, which places the call, and then rild tells the radio that it should route all call audio through the handset speaker and route all sound picked up from the microphone into the phone call.  The Android platform does not handle call audio routing itself.

All of the above requires rooting the device and installing a custom-built ROM at a minimum.


Samsung S4 Screen Problem I dropped my phone face down not to hard on the floor, the battery came out and when I put the battery back in, the screen was showing then turned into certain blocks of the screen showing then only to the top part of the screen showing. I have tried restarting, putting battery out then in. Any suggestions?

My guess is that the underlying hardware that makes the screen run is damaged. In a touchscreen, or all monitors in general, a complex series of wires sends electrical impulses to the individual led diodes (a set of Red, Green, Blue is called a pixel). If one of the main wires became damaged or loosened, it will seriously mess up the screen's viewing output.

Judging by the color difference in your photo, the only part receiving signals from the graphics unit is above a defined line (is that a crack? If so, that is most likely where a breaking event could have occurred).

Since it fell down hard enough to eject the battery, the internal components most likely suffered some damage. If you have a service provider, they might be able to look at your phone in more detail and tell you exactly where the issue is and how (if possible) to fix it.

Best of luck!


What is a canonical battery test that I can use before and after upgrading the OS version? I am about to upgrade from Android K to Android L.
Right after, I will upgrade from Android L to Android M.

In a previous empirical experiment, with a now-demised device, I noticed (or seem to have noticed) that the battery life seriously degraded after upgrading Android.

Even after a good month of daily charging and discharging (from 0% to 100% and back), in the vain hope of properly recalibrating the battery, the lifetime was still down to about 8-10 hours from about 14-16 hours.

This time I would like to be able to prove it.

What is a canonical battery test that I can run (now and after upgrading) to determine whether upgrading deteriorated the battery life? I imagine that viewing a 6-hour YouTube video and noticing how far it goes would do the trick, but it's also very skewed to a single task. Is there an alternative that better represents the daily activities with an Android phone?

Update:

In addition to beeshyams's answer I'd like to point to Firelord's suggestion to use GSam, which does provide an ongoing "Averages Per Complete Charge".

By now you would have long upgraded, but answering this hoping it may help anybody read it.

"What is a canonical battery test that I can run (now and after upgrading) to determine whether upgrading deteriorated the battery life? Battery usage depends on so many parameters. The list is possibly endless but few examples are highlighted below, leading to the conclusion that designing a canonical test is impractical from end user point of view

Device/ carrier specific -CPU (frequency range, governor, number of cores) , GPU( frequency range, Mali blobs), screen (LCD, AMOLED and it's variants, brightness), network (2G,UMTS,3G,4G,LTE etc)
Usage Specific - activating sensors (like GPS, proximity which drain battery faster), social network apps which keep the device on always, type of sites visited and how long (plain text, multimedia), upload/download (also depends on host server traffic etc)

Related to this, is that there seems to be no standard definition that defines average use. See my question How is an "average use" defined in terms of battery life. Answer to that question may help you in understanding how industry tests are carried out.
Even after a good month of daily charging and discharging (from 0% to 100% and back), in the vain hope of properly recalibrating the battery - Battery calibration is a myth, see answer here


Galaxy S7 Causing Emails in Desktop Outlook to Appear Read I added my Outlook 365 business email account to my Galaxy S7 phone when I bought it 2 months ago and I have been plagued by my email being shown as read on my desktop Outlook at work since. I am missing emails because they are marked as read, and they are not. This did not happen before I added the account to my phone. I rarely even open my email on my phone for work, so why is it marking them all as read?

This is happening because your phone is setup to use POP3 and the POP server is marking emails read after downloading them on your Galaxy S7 Android. You can set up Exchange on your phone to have an exact copy of the mailbox on each device or you need to manually mark the emails as unread which is not a very practical thing to do.


Customize number display on dial pad on Android 4 Is it possible to customize how numbers are displayed when dialing a number?
For example:
Instead of grouping them with spaces like 555 123 123, I'd like it to have no grouping: 555123123.

On 2.3 you could do that from the locale, US had spaces and UK did not.
On 4.1 it seems that both US and UK have the same spaces.

Can it be changed?

Thank you.

To the date, there is no functionality to disable this feature. Actually this was implemented to make it easier for the user to recognize and remeber the number easily.

I did some search and found out that other people have the same problem as well.

What I suggest is to move on to a custom dialer app which suit you the best, if this grouping feature really annoys you.


Reading Mifare Classic chips with Samsung Galaxy S4? Searching the web far and wide has me almost out of hope in making Samsung's Galaxy S4 phone read the Mifare CLassic chip through NFC. But does anyone know of any form of work-around, or is this strictly a result of the NFC hardware in this phone?

No, the S4 can't read MIFARE Classic cards. The main problem is that NXP does not license the reader-side of its proprietary MIFARE Classic technology (specifically the use of the (broken) Crypto-1 algorithm) to other chip manufacturers. As a result, the Broadcom NFC controller inside the S4 does not support communication with such cards.

This alone would not be too difficult to circumvent. The Crypto-1 algorithm has been reverse-engineered and published, so it could easily be implemented in software within an Android app. However, the MIFARE Classic protocol does not fully comply to ISO/IEC 14443-3 (NFC-A) in that the authentication command uses a non-standard frame format. As a result, the communication facilities accessible on Android (the closest would be the NfcA tag technology, that requires adherence to ISO/IEC 14443-3 framing) can't be used to communicate with MIFARE Classic tags.


Lenovo A850 Bricked while flashing Stock Rom My phone Lenovo A850 (MT6582) bricked just now. I accidentally pulled out the USB cable when it was flashing stock ROM by using Smart Phone Flash Tool. Now it's not charging and won't turn on, like a dead phone. I can get into MTK Meta Mode by pressing Volume Up & Volume Down then connect the USB, with and without battery. But when I try to flash anything, it gives error 4032. Please help me this is not my phone and I broke it! It does nothing when I press power button.

Is your PC showing preloader devices connected in devices and printer menu
when you put the USB cable in your device without battery (press volume key 3 or 4 time)?
If it is showing, then you can flash your stock ROM again.


How to turn off notifications for individual apps? On my iphone, there is a "notifications" setting section, which basically just allows me to choose which apps has the power to notify me.

I was wondering if there's anything similar that is available on the Samsung Galaxy s2?

Basically, we have a new app called Scramble For Friends. And it keeps notifying us every time someone has finished their turn so that I can play. We play random people so this could be in the middle of the night or in a meeting etc.

It just vibrates but still - it's annoying and we want to turn it off. We also don't want to turn off other notifications like Email, Facebook etc. - we just want to turn off the notifications for Scramble For Friends.

I've been looking around in the Settings but there doesn't seem to be a universal page which deals just with notifications.

Update: It is posible to disable notifications of individual apps on system level in Jelly Bean (4.1).

Under each application info screen there is now a checkbox for "show notifications" (assuming the app sends notifications). Uncheck that and no more notifications from that app.

You can get to the screen by going to Settings | Apps | {application} or, more conveniently, long-pressing the notification itself and then tapping "App Info".

More details in this article.

Notifications are handled on a per-app basis.
The only way to turn them off is inside that particular application's settings.
This menu - unlike on iOS - can he accessed from inside the application. It's usually an option that comes up after pressing your menu button, or if your phone doesn't have one than it's hidden behind the overflow menu ie. The three dots.

In the case of scramble with friends there's a settings icon on the main screen. There's an option to set the polling interval. The default is 5 minutes.


Identifying an unknown Android tablet through adb/shell without relying on build.prop I obtained a cheap unbranded tablet from a friend, without a box or anything and I need to figure out what kind of tablet it is, through software.

What I've established so far is that the tablet is an Alwinner A13, but unfortunately there are a lot of A13s and this one seems to require some non-standard touchscreen drivers.

There are a few more threads about identifying devices, but this case is slightly different, in that I can't trust anything Android tells me about the tablet.
The tablet is currently running the official Novo 7 Legend firmware, which "works" but unfortunately is not the right firmware for the device. I still have full access to the system over adb and with a mouse over OTG, however the device's build.prop is wrong.
Unfortunately build.prop is also what defines the tablet's type/name in the Android "About device" section and all Android log output I've found.

I've checked dmesg as well as the output of adb bugreport, neither gave me what I'm looking for.

tl;dr:
I do not have the original firmware nor do I have the box and the hardware is very generic, so my question is, is there any (software-wise) way of identifying the tablet, that does not rely on build.prop?

I have full (root) adb access and full access to Android.

Update: I have opened up the tablet and checked the board (and lost the power button in the process), on it was a more specific name, but still very generic. I did manage to get some rom working on it thanks to it (albeit with an inverted touchscreen), but I still haven't been able to identify it. I've given up on it for now (I got it for tinkering purposes anyway), if I get new suggestions here I'm still more than happy to try them out however.

Have you tried these:

adb shell getprop ro.product.device
adb shell getprop ro.product.model
adb shell getprop ro.product.name

EDIT: Upon re-reading the question, it seems that my suggestion is not applicable.
I trust that you have a stock recovery? If so, connect it to PC while in recovery mode and do the following over ADB:

adb shell
cat default.prop

If default.prop still does not give you what you want, I'm really sorry but I can't think of any other solution than to look for a stock firmware.


adb restore  does nothing I followed the guidance here to do a FreeOTP backup with adb backup -f <backup path> org.fedorahosted.freeotp. After I wiped my phone and tried to do an `adb restore  I get the message "Now unlock your device and confirm the restore operation." but nothing on my phone happens or prompts, nor does FreeOTP have any keys installed.

I am on Android 8.1 with adb 1.0.32 on Ubuntu 14.04.

I guess the adb from sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb was a bit too out of date. I downloaded the latest version from https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html and extracted just the adb command, which is Android Debug Bridge version 1.0.39 Version 0.0.1-4500957, ran it and my phone prompted for a "full restore" which sounds scary but in the end just did a full restore of the FreeOTP. After it was done I have my keys back, yay!


Android 4.0.4 - Wifi WPA-PSK hex password too long I am currently trying to connect to a Wifi (WPA-PSK TKIP with 64-bit hex password). However my device - LG Optimus L9 with Android 4.0.4 - only allows to type in 63 characters.

It seems that it only support "passphrase" password which is supposed to be 8-63 characters long but not "hex" password..

Did anyone else have the same problem?

My experience: One friend's network uses WPA with a 64character hex-key and I haven't had any problem connecting to it since Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

I also had a look at the wifi config at /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf which holds all the wifi credentials. The one entry from above is configured just as every other with the exception that it has a 64 character hex key. I, of course censored both keys and SSIDs, fyi.

Here's a sample:

network={
        ssid="normal_psk_key_network"
        psk="secretpassphrase"
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        priority=1
}

network={
        ssid="64hexchar_network"
        psk=0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        priority=2
}


CyanogenMod and Privacy This question is a follow up to:
What information does stock Android send to Google by default, and how do I opt-out?
and
Disable Location History in Android

I did a factory reset and flashed Cyanogen Mod 11 on my phone. I love the ROM and am using it without any Google Applications. I didn't even add a Google Account. For apps, I am using a third party app to download apk and installing them manually on my Android smartphone. My questions:

In Location for Cyanogen Mod, it provides three options - only GPS, only Mobile Tower / Wifi, both GPS and Mobile/Wifi. I know that in stock Android ROM, Google location history sends data about my whereabouts to Google. Will this happen in Cyanogen Mod too? Since I did not add any google account or google app, I'm guessing this is unlikely. I want your advice.
If I use Wi-Fi, does Google know about my Wi-fi, its adapter id, blah blah..?
Does Google know about any other info if I use this ROM?

As you may have noticed, I am quite paranoid. But I do not want to give away anything to Google.

PS: Before flashing CM, I used google account and play on same phone on previous ROM. And the device was added to Google Play.

CyanogenMod is not focussing on user privacy, FOSS or google-less ROMs. See the FSFE Wiki for some info on proprietary parts of CyanogenMod. You may want to take a look on OmniROM as they put a focus on privacy and security - without being to paranoid.

You mentioned that you're using your phone without any Google Applications. I assume that there are no Google Applications installed on your phone - if you install CM without their Installer (flashing zip from recovery), you can skip installing the so called GAPPS. If you install CM with the official installer, you won nothing: Google already re-associated your device by comparing the unique wi-fi mac address, it doesn't matter (from perspective of privacy) if you re-add your account on-device or not.

I'll answer your questions above, assuming that you did not have a single google application installed:

Locating with Wi-Fi/Mobile network on Android KitKat is done using Google Play Services. If it's not installed you can tick or untick this locating feature - it won't do anything.
When using Wi-Fi, the first thing Android does after connecting is to contact google by doing a basic http request to http://google.com/generate_204. This is to measure if the wi-fi is using a captive portal. This request does not contain sensitive information, but you may want disable it anyway.
Beside that, no tracking or scanning comes with the source of Android which is used by CyanogenMod.
Yes they do. As mentioned on the FSFE Wiki, CM uses Google Analytics for tracking their usage on every device by default. This behaviour is opt-out, so you can disable it. If you do not trust this option (the underlying code is not completely open sourced), it's possible to remove Google Analytics using freecyngn.


Prevent double notifications for an email My Email app seems to notify me about new email from Gmail. However, I use Gmail app with my Gmail account too. In the end, I always got 2 notifications for 1 email.

How can I make the Email app to not notify me? (I prefer Gmail app)

You cannot uninstall Email as it's a system app.
Either disable Gmail or Email from Settings->Apps->All .

Or root your phone and then uninstall it using apps like System App Remover

If you can't do either of the above two, just somehow try to logout from either Gmail or Email so as to avoid double mails.
Or if you just don't want those notications alone, go to App Info of that app from Settings->Apps->All and untick the Notifications check box.

No other way other than these :)


How can I make my Galaxy Tab 3 authenticate with my Sky Router? I have just tried to connect my Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 (8") to a Sky Netgear Router.

In the black bar at the top the WiFi icon has a question mark in it. On the Settings page, in Wi-Fi, it alternates between:

Wi-Fi networks Connecting...
SKY00000
Authenticating...

and

Wi-Fi networks
SKY00000
Saved, Secured

I wondered if it could be the router but didn't have time to investigate. I've just arrived at another house with the same router type and I'm seeing the same thing. Neither router had been played with. I'm using my phone to submit this via the router, so it's working fine.

The Tab 3 is new and I'm not at all familiar with Android. Is there anything on it I can tweak?

The next day, when I powered up my Tab 3, it just worked.


Larger edit area for SMS writing? The Handcent app has a feature where with a click of a button I can switch to a larger edit area. This allowed me to preview my messages in whole before sending them off and edit them comfortably.

Now I've had to uninstall Handcent due to space issues (old Nexus One, very low memory for apps), and this is the only feature I miss in the stock messaging app. Is there a way I can enable this feature in the stock Messaging, or is there some small app that does this in a natural way without interfering with other functionality?

One way to do this would be rooting the device, to obtain the "Mms.apk", and manually reverse-engineering it (using tools like apktool), and finding the overlay that's showing the text edit area's size (and the step that naturally follows, increasing it :) )


Prevent Google from uploading pictures when connected to wifi? I noticed that pictures I took with my Android smartphone while connected to my home ADSL/wifi router were silently uploaded to Google Photos.

How can I disable this "feature" ?

Thank you.

To add to the answer Alex has posted (which is correct), if you still want to upload a particular photo to Drive after disabling sync, long press the photo- (select it)  and you will see a share option using which you can share to your drive.

This comes in handy when you have globally disabled sync for photos but want to save some photos to drive


Receive incoming calls in Android 6? What is the use of the 'Receive incoming calls' option?

Update

I am using Moto G4 Plus (IN)

This pertains to VOIP calling- quoting from Motorola site

Motorola VoIP and SIP client apps enables customers to make free phone calls to other VoIponMobile users or very cheap phone calls to anyone else in the world from your Motorola mobile phone.
If you have access to a WiFi, 3G or Edge connection, you can save money by using the Internet to connect your call instead of using your mobile minutes. No roaming or out-of-network fees. Make your calls from anywhere in the world to anywhere for just a few pennies a minute. Simple to configure, inexpensive to use

Enabling incoming calls would make you get incoming VOIP calls, provided your carrier permits that ( AFAIK Airtel doesn't)


Helium - Installing backup manually When I try restoring from a helium backup, it says restoring forever and does not complete, therefore I want to restore the backup manually by moving apk to their folders. The zip however only contains a backup.json file and a bunch of com.identifier.name.ab files with PNG for their icons. What is this ab extension? Can I restore manually? I did not encrypt the backup. I have root, if it is required.

Also note that I am using an unofficial build of cyanogenmod. My phone is an SM-G800F kminilte

The file with the .ab extension is what you need for that (AB = Android Backup). You can restore it manually from your PC using adb restore com.identifier.name.ab. Requirement for that is the ADB installed on your computer; details on that can be found via the adb tag-wiki – and if you don't want to install the entire Android SDK, take a special look at Is there a minimal installation of ADB?

Some notes from the comments moved up here:

No, neither twrp nor clockworkmod are restoring adb backups (at least not as of this writing). Both use nandroid for backups, which is a completely different concept using a completely different format.
TitaniumBackup can read both, ADB and Nandroid backups, and extract those parts from them you wish. I don't know if it can do a "full restore" from .ab backup files – but if those were single-app backups (like those created by Helium), I wouldn't be surprised.
Yes, of course adb restore restores the app data from .ab files. That's what it's for :)
caution, advertisement: For a batch backup of all your apps and data, as well as a batch restore, a device documentation, and more, take a look at my Adebar (Android DEvice Backup And Report). Works on Linux and reportedly on Windows with Cygwin.


Phone connected to PC but it only charges I'm using windows 10. Connected my phone (Samsung Note 3) to my PC but it only charges. I've done USB Debugging and even installed the driver on my PC. I doubt windows 10 doesn't recognized my phone because I connected to my windows 7 PC but the same thing happened.

Not all the USB cables offer data transfer. There are same-looking power-only cables, which obviously allow only charging, and don't have data wires at all.

Try with a different USB cable as a start.


How to enable/disable DHCP of eth0 ifconfig eth0 dhcp start or ifconfig eth0 dhcp drop does not seem to work for Android.  Is there a way to enable/disable DHCP for eth0 via shell commands?

try this code in android 5.1

ifconfig eth0 up
dhcpcd eth0

OR (static)

ifconfig eth0 192.168.70.65 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

and now

ndc network create 100
ndc network interface add 100 eth0
ndc network route add 100 eth0 192.168.70.0/24 (gateway)
ndc network route add 100 eth0 0.0.0.0/0 192.168.2.40 192.168.2.50
ndc resolver setnetdns 100 localdomain 192.168.2.40 192.168.2.50 (dns1 dns2)
ndc network default set 100


Phone stopped working, Cant turn it on, Solid red light, weird r/g/b/w stripes yesterday i had a videochat call from messenger. I had this call about 2mins and then i saw i've got 8percents of battery. My phone usually drops from 8% to 2% but this is not the main problem. When i saw i had 8percents, i plug-in the charger to the wall and then plug-in the micro usb cable to the phone.

After connecting, i got red diode but isomething very weird happend to screen. On screen, there was multiple white/r/g/b (Like few on top, few on bottom but i think in the middle it was ok) strips and the aspect ratio of screen was too weird. It was mooved to right bottom corner.

The phone stopped responding so i pressed down power button for 10secs to turn off the phone. However, when i want to turn it on back, the phone was completly dead. I tried charging it from wall like 10 mins, then from computer like 30 mins but nothing worked. I left the phone charging over night about 8hours but still nothing.

//Before trying this i removed sim-card and sd-card//

I tried all variants like power +volume-up +volume-down, power +volume-up, power +volume-down, volume-up +volume-down but nothing worked.
//I tried to hold it down like for 15-30secs, 20secs, 1minute, pushing it while charging but still nothing//

Phone: ZTE NX597J
I bought it 4months ago so i think i must go to repair shop. However, some ideas? :D

//When i connect the phone to computer or wall, i have SOLID red light. It does not blinking//
//I cant remove the battery//
//The buttons like home, back and list of applications running on backround is from android so i cant make any different variations exept for power, volume-up, volume down//

The key combination you want is volume up and power. However, there's a few things to know:

do this while the phone is 100% off. If you're not sure, press and hold the power button. Some phones (like my Galaxy S4) enter a weird state once they are disconnected after getting charged while off.
do this while the phone is NOT plugged in
hold the volume up key first, and while holding it (half a second is enough), don't let go of it, just start pressing and holding the power button while still holding the volume up button. The order is important. Yes, you are holding both buttons together, but volume up needs to be pressed FIRST, otherwise the phone will only do the power button thing.


zte 9560 fairly new when powered on goes to FTM screen I have zte 9560 thats 5 months old. I recently deleted facebook and instagram programs because of downloads that happened 3 times weekly. Now I get FTM screen on start up. After trying suggustions from your site I still am having issues with booting , factory reset. Now the phone is off but there is a small white circle light at bottom that stays on. Any suggestions ? Any chance of getting into phone from laptop ?

Things to know about factory mode: In many devices, especially the mediatek based ones have three types of booting behaviours.

Fastboot(Bootloader)
Normal Boot(Starting Android System)
Recovery Mode(Updating and Debugging)
Factory Mode(Testing the System Hardware)

The automatic booting is Starting Up Android System when phone OS is in good state. Sometimes this partition that might get damaged leading to frequent or infrequent start-up to recovery or basically any other boot automatically. This is just corruption of the Boot Order or Choice.

For booting to recovery problem, this can be fixed by flashing boot.img to recovery partition if one ever wants to use the system without reflashing. This is possible since all these partitions carry bootable images.

Factory mode isn't initiated by an image. It is initiated by a file at /system/bin/factory. This is a binary file. Since there's no other way of booting the system using a binary file, this is the hardest brick in Android. The only binary that can replace this is the reboot binary, but though since the Android is not booted up, you can't replace it or flash it in at device off state.

Though one type of boot that we haven't talked about from above is our only last hope. Fastboot Mode. This is initiated almost immediately from boot. While starting the phone, hold the volume up button. This may take you there straight or take you to a menu of options on the type of boot you need to perform.

You'll be lucky if you had allowed OEM unlock from Development Settings while phone was on and working. Here you can boot a recovery like TWRP from there and delete the factory file at bin making it have option to always boot again.

The key combo to boot to fastboot varies from device to device. So you'll have to search for that specific phone model combo.

Note. Factory Mode is delicate. You have no option other than flashing phone if this was touched from Factory Mode. 'Clear EMMC' is an option that is written as I have written hereon or some chinese characters preceding EMMC. This clears the entire phone Flash including the system, boot, recovery, frp, nvram, logo etc leaving only preloader for loading files to system flash again using Flashing Software.

If you incase touched that at Factory Mode just Reflash. Search on how to flash your specific phone model. Good Luck


HTC One V rooted - can't upgrade from htc release I have an htc one v and there's a system update from htc.
I'm trying to do the update, it needs to restart in order to finish the update.
When it restarts clockworkmod jumps in and the update never finishes.
I was trying to a zip update through clockworkmod but it does not work.
Any ideas ?

Two ways to flash official update from manufacturer on rooted phone:
1) Look for flashable zip with untouched or just rooted official ROM with latest updates included.
2) Revert your ROM and Bootloader to manufacturers default and then install update

You can find stock roms and instructions to revert to stock in XDA Developers Forums


Google Music app update in UK I am UK based and have a Nexus 1 and Nexus S both running stock Android 2.3.4.

On both devices, I have a manual update pending for the Music app from Google Inc., but when I go in to the Market to view this app, I get an AlertDialog telling me that "The requested item could not be found."

I understand that Google Music is only available in the US, but why is the Market telling me that I need to update the app, only to tell me that it is not available when I try to?

It's just an updated version of the Music App (new, fancy UI), supposedly ready for full Google Music Cloud, for when it comes to the UK.

I was unable to view the details in the market like yourself, but I could actually do the update. Nexus S on 2.3.4 too.

Did you by any chance get an update notification for Google Books too?


How can I fix the GPS on my Samsung Galaxy S? As has been well documented, the Galaxy S phones have terrible GPS functionality.  It works for a minority, but it is slow/inaccurate for some and for others it just doesn't work at all.  How can I fix this?

Four ways: Upgrading the software, fixing the hardware, resetting the GPS settings/data, and using "fake" GPS.

Upgrading the Software

Samsung definitely released some bad GPS firmware, which does not help things.  Fortunately, good code is included in all of the recent 2.2 updates.  If you can, upgrade your software to 2.2.  It has many advantages besides just the GPS!

You can also try flashing 2.3 GPS code (see this XDA thread).  Apparently it's the best yet, and should work with any ROM.

Summary: Gingerbread great, Froyo good, Eclair bad.

Note: A minority of users have worse GPS performance after upgrading to Froyo.  If you have the very latest Froyo update and this is true for you, I believe you can fix it by continuing with the other steps below (or the 2.3 GPS code above).  You probably have bad GPS data and settings left over from Eclair, or perhaps it's just that your phone has been "cold started" and the GPS needs to collect some information about the nearby satellites first.

Fixing the Hardware

This might void your warranty, though if done properly it should be undetectable.

A major problem for many users is, yes, a hardware problem -- but not a GPS chip issue as some have claimed.  I was reluctant to accept this myself, but after trying everything else I finally resorted to this fix, and it worked!  The hardware has apparently been fixed in newer device versions, so if you bought your phone after October 2010 I recommend trying the other steps before doing this.  But the good news is that it's easy to do.  There's a detailed guide on XDA; here is the quick version:

Take off the back cover; remove the battery, SIM, and SD card.
Remove the 7 small screws in the back of the device, and carefully pry off the backing plastic.
You'll see 4 gold-ish contacts sticking out, approximately at each corner of the device.  You'll notice that the backing plastic has 4 flat contacts on it, which are supposed to touch the ones on the device.  (See the guide for details).
Slightly bend the contacts on the device upwards (a millimeter or so should be good, don't overdo it) so that they will contact the backing plate, like they were intended to.  You might want to insert something like a small folded piece of paper under the contact, so that it doesn't bend back down.
Put everything back together, and continue with the next section.

Fixing the Hardware (2nd option)

This really voids your warranty, but seems like the best possible technical fix so far.

  Problem is caused by bad gnd conductivity between mainboard and antenna. It is conduced by conductivity rubber. This kind of rubber was used for old nokia 8210 for connect display to mainboard. It was the mayor fault for nokia 8210.

There are 2 different methods which both require soldering skill but are said to significantly improve the GPS signal. Read more, see photos and a step by step guide on XDA.

Reset the GPS Data and Settings

Start up the phone, shut off GPS, and install GPSRestore (alternate non-Market link) and Captivate SGS Tools (don't worry, for our purposes it works for all SGS models).
Open the SGS Tools and, from the Secret Codes menu, go into GPS-Test and settings (LBSTestMode).
Hit Delete GPS Data.
Run GPSRestore.  I suggest running it with GPS off first, letting step 2 fail, then going outside, turning GPS on and running it again.  It may take 5+ minutes while your phone searches for satellites and figures out where it is.  This "cold start" should prep your phone with good data, and future locks should be much quicker.
Once the test is done, you should be good to go!

I recommend only trying the following if your GPS is still slow or doesn't work after trying everything else; in most situations the default server is fine.

Go into SUPL/CP Settings (in LBSTestMode as above) and change Server to supl.google.com (port 7276).
Install GPSTest, go outside, turn on your GPS, and open the app.  Wait for a lock; again, this might take some time.

Using "Fake" GPS

Even the best GPS doesn't lock on instantly.  You can use "assisted GPS", or aGPS, to help get a rough fix quickly while you wait for the more accurate GPS to get a lock; this only works when you have internet access, since it uses your IP address to locate you.  Go into your device's GPS settings (Settings -> Location and security) and make sure Use wireless networks and Use sensor aiding are both checked.  Use GPS satellites should, of course, be checked also.

Note: This might make things worse in situations where the phone relies on the inaccurate aGPS more than the "real" GPS.  Experiment with and without it.

And that's it!  I hope this guide works for you and you enjoy your newly functional GPS.


How does voLTE and Band 12 work for T-Mobile and can Cyanogen/AOSP allow us any control over this? How does voLTE Certification work? My understanding is that only phones on this approved list by T-mobile are supported on Band 12. Band 12 is the new Extended Range LTE band and T-Mobile is investing heavily in. My understanding is that voLTE Certification is something that T-Mobile does to ensure that a phone connected to Band 12 but out of range of other T-Mobile services to fall-back on (ex. 2G, GSM, and 3G HSPA+) can still dial 911.. If the phone lacked this ability, when they went to dial out on Band 12 they'd find they couldn't. Even if I'm wrong, VoLTE seems to have something to do with data and voice integration.

  VoLTE calls already go through faster (twice as fast as other calls), and while on VoLTE, customers can enjoy wicked-fast LTE data while they’re on a call. Customers on the old carriers’ CDMA networks still can’t do that. Today, 27 million T-Mobile customers on 40 models of VoLTE-enabled phones are making over 300 million calls a day— well over half of all calls on T-Mobile’s network.

The voLTE process is expensive for the OEM and almost sounds like a shake-down by T-mobile:

  Speaking off the record to one major smartphone vendor, we have learned that there are very real costs and complexities associated with obtaining that certification, and it must be done on a device-by-device basis.

And, one of the OnePlus developers said this

  In terms of technical specs, supporting VoLTE is actually not so hard, but there's still a long way to go for users can actually use it. Why? Because VoLTE is carrier-specific, we needs to meet the carrier's requirements firstly then our users will be able to actually use it.

As if to say, we're only waiting on testing and certification.. Further, because T-Mobile had to ask Motorola to remove Band 12, I take it that the OEM (client side) has to disable B12 and not the carrier (server side).

Does that mean Cyanogen or other AOSP's can re-enable B12? I would think so, but even small OEM's selling unlocked universal phones like OnePlus have commented that they're having problems with voLTE Certification, so I guess it's not entirely software?

I understand T-Mobile's concern, but I simply don't care. Give me LTE if Band 12 is available and if my phone can't connect, well at least I've got decent data and I can use Google Hangout Dialer.

What happens with a phone that has Band 12 but not voLTE?
Can a rooted phone running AOSP influence this, or give me control over it?

So I'm going to answer as someone who has a non-VoLTE phone in a market that has T-Mobile LTE, but no 2G or 3G coverage.

With an alternate ROM (OR a way of editing the modem settings or keeping an older ROM installed) on your Android device, enabling Band12 will be no issue. It's possible with a bunch of Android devices already to enable bands that are available, but disabled by the OS.

What you'll have happen is exactly as described. You phone will get data service, but you will be unable to send or receive calls. You will get SMS and MMS messages just fine. My phone (Nokia Lumia 830 RM985) doesn't support all of T-Mobile's LTE bands, and HSPA bands. This means that in the market I'm in right now, I can't make or get calls as long as my phone is connected to a t-mobile tower. I can see when a call is trying to come in because my service will drop and my phone will roam, but the process takes longer than t-mobile's system allows and it times out first time.

Same with placing a call. First attempt times out and is registered as a dropped call. Second attempt drops to roaming and the call is placed.