How do I play MP3s from my Dropbox? I have the Dropbox app on my Droid, and it can "download" files to the local storage on the phone, but for some reason, the music player app can't see those files.

How do I make the music playing app see the mp3s in my Dropbox? Is there an alternative way I should think about the problem or sync the files?

In Dropbox, simply add MP3s to favorites and they become available in a stock Google Play Music application (Tested in Android ICS)


Manage files left by uninstalled apps? I just realized that when an app has the "SD card access" it has access to the entire SD card and all the other apps that use the SD card. I would have assumed that each Apps data is "sandboxed" like on an iPhone.

So, once I delete the App that accessed the SD card I noticed that it doesn't always delete the corresponding files it created on the SD card. In one case I installed a Linux Emulator that created 4 gig file and when it came to installing the rest of the Linux it failed. So naturally I uninstalled the application.

Out of curiosity I looked on the SD card found the file in some randomly named directory.

So the big question is, is there a way to manage the deletion of those files as opposed to having to check your entire SD card everytime you uninstall an Application?

PS: My device is Rooted

You might want to try Clean Master from Google Play Store. I had it for quite some time now, when you delete apps it will pop up asking you whether you want to delete residual files as well (if there are any). Also it will scan your SD Card and Phone for any rubbish.


How do I mount an existing Truecrypt container on an AOSP rom like Cyanogenmod? I have an existing Truecrypt container (AES encryption), how do I mount it on my AOSP rom?
I have already downloaded Cryptonite (which contains Truecrypt in command-line form) but I'm not sure what I'm meant to do next?

In order to access TrueCrypt containers/files, you need to use 3rd party apps like EDS or Cryptonite. For the latter, which you already have, follow the instructions in their FAQ to mount with correct permissions:

truecrypt --fs-options="uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=0002" volume.tc /sdcard/tc


Unable to connect phone to normal Wifi networks after using corporate WiFi I use my office network which is a Corporate WiFi set-up secured with 802.1x (and requires me to use my company credentials - Username and Password). But when I'm back home and try to connect my home WiFi router which is protected by WPA/WPA2 PSK security (which requires just a password), I can't get it connected automatically (even if I have the network remembered).

All I can do to fix it currently is;

Restart my home router several times.
Restart my phone for 2-3 times.
Forget all remembered WiFi networks on phone.

and only after above steps it can connect, otherwise I get Authentication Problem as error if I try to connect. I'm on Android 4.2.1 (almost stock android, just some custom icons by vendor) device running on MediaTek chipset (MTK6589T), Micromax Canvas Magnus A117 to be specific.

While this same problem is with my other friends as well who use our company network at office in their phones (which are varied from Samsung, Sony, and even Nexus).

What can I do to avoid this daily hassle when I return home and connect home WiFi?

Disable Google sync (leak wifi passwords). If you have rooted smartphone try wifipass application (check wifi pass) and wifi analyzer (diff wifi connection attributes)


Samsung galaxy S4 Blacked out Screen need to retreive files Anyone know how to get photos/files from a galaxy 4 that has a broken / blacked out screen - Ive tried every method possible ive read online and im getting no-were and ready to scream ...I cant seem to unlock the screen to allow a computer to extract files - Ive pluged the phone into multiple computers it wont read the phone...ive tried the Kies Program...the Samsung recovery system - can I plug the phone into something and see the screen separate from the phone?

Your phone can be turned on and off? Your pc recognize your phone by making any sound?
You don't say what caused your phone screen to break but anyway you can try to do an ADB recovery or an nand backup just google for if and you find many tutorials


Settings app crashes on (re-) enabling work profile I have work profile enabled on my Android Oreo 8.1 device and I disabled (turned off) the work profile from the notification drawer menu. Now, when I tap the button to enable (turn on) work profile again, it asks for my pin and then settings app crashes (Settings has stopped", without enabling the work profile. This keeps happening.

Any idea of this is a bug with Android or something wrong with Xiaomi's build? Are there any workarounds to enable (turn on) work profile again? I tried from the settings menu also, but results in the same crash.

Specs:

Xiaomi Mi A1 with Android version 8.1.0 and security patch 5 June 2018

Kernel version 3.18.71-perf-g4a631fd (gcc version 4.9.x 20150123 (prerelease) (GCC) )
builer@mi-server #1
Wed Jun 20 14:23:03 WIB 2018

Build number OPM1.171019.019.v9.6.3.0.0DHMIFE

Screenshot:

Removing work profiles from settings > accounts and adding again worked for me. Still better than doing factory reset.


Prevent ICS From Mounting USB Storage I have a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx running Android 4.0.4. I'd like to prevent ICS from mounting USB storage every time I plug it into a USB host. I just want it to charge by default. I am very dissatisfied that they took away this option in the upgrade from Gingerbread to ICS.

I am willing to do stuff in the terminal that requires root privilege to prevent this from happening, but I would be happier if there is an app for it. I want my phone to Charge Only when I plug it into a USB host.

If you enable USB Debugging Mode, the phone will connect to your computer and charge as usual, but you will not get any auto-mounting for the phone storage.

Enable USB Debugging in Android 4.0

Click your device home button;
Tap "Settings";
Scroll your way to "Developer options" and tap it;
Check "USB debugging".

Enable USB Debugging in Android 2.3

Click your device home button;
Tap on "Settings";
Tap on "Applications";
Scroll your way to "Development" and tap it;
Check "USB debugging".

This method works for me to charge my phone without mounting the storage.


Suppress "autoplay" when external USB drive connected On some phones, when an external USB drive is connected to the phone, there is sort of an autoplay function where it automatically brings up the "My Files" screen. Is there a way to suppress this?

This occurs on my Note 2 with Android version 4.1.2, but not on my Note 1 with version 4.0.4. Just to be clear, I want the drive to automatically mount in the background as usual, but just not bring up the "My Files" screen. I have an app that expects a USB drive to be plugged in and searches for specific file types and this behavior is annoying because it takes the screen away from my app.

I was hoping to be able to programmatically suppress the default "My Files" system app from starting when a USB storage device is plugged in, but it looks like it is not possible.

However, I did find a workaround. First I installed a new file manager/explorer from the market (I used ES File Explorer). Then I went to Android Settings -> Applications and then selected the My Files app from the list and disabled it. Now it no longer interferes with my own application that I am developing for my USB storage device. Not the ideal solution, but it works for now.


Links from Gmail all open in same Chrome tab I just noticed that when I open a link from the Gmail app (in Chrome), then go back to Gmail and click another link, it replaces the first one in Chrome. I end up with only one tab open. Is there a workaround?

I'm not sure what to search for on crbugs, or whether this would be an Android bug or a Chrome bug.

This is pretty much the same question as this one, but it was answered with "use Opera." I like Chrome and would rather not change browsers over this, and mainly have two questions:

Is this intended behavior?
Is there an open bug against it, and if not does anyone have enough of a hunch about the root cause to point me to the right place to file it?

Q: Is there a workaround?
A: Open a link from the Gmail app (goes into Chrome), open a new tab and leave it empty, then go back to Gmail and click another link, it does not replace the first one in Chrome. You end up with two non-empty tabs open. Is that a satisfactory workaround?


Adoptable Storage corrupted my SD card I'm using LG Leon on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. LG doesn't allow making SD cards internal storage. I have made my SD Card broken because I used adoptable storage.
I had to use a guide that required me to use ADB. So what I did? I opened ADB, wrote: sm list:disks or something similar, and then did type something to format the SD card as internal.
Everything worked for a day or more, and I moved an app (for some reason it didn't automatically save to SD card) and my phone restarted. Then it got into a bootloop, and it wouldn't turn on until I would get my SD card out of the phone. Then my SD card stopped being recognisable (yes, I tried to get it out of the phone and insert it back). Then I pressed "Forget SD card" or something similar. Now my card isn't recognisable on my phone or on my laptop.
Please help me.

Usually a smartphone can't corrupt an SD-card by using it. The only possibility to degrade an SD-card would be by a large number of writes over a long time (I am talking about months or even years).

Are you sure that the SD-card is really broken? May be you simply need to re-partition it.

In case the card is really dead I see two possibilities:

The SD-card you have is a fake, claiming to have more memory than actually available on the flash chips inside. If the SD-card was new and the price was cheap compared to the size than this is the reason for a very high probability. I strongly recommend to test every new SD-card on your PC using a program that allows to identify SD-card fakes like H2Testw
The quality of the SD-card was so poor that something went totally wrong (e.g. overheated) so that the SD-card is now defect.


Music player showing the wrong album art I've just transferred over 800 songs onto my Galaxy S6, all of which have album art. I used peggo.co to download the songs from YouTube/SoundCloud (peggo automatically attaches the album art to the song).

However, all of my songs show the wrong album art, and more so, it's the one same album art from one album for all 800+ songs.

I tried deleting the offending album/songs and cleared the thumbnails using this suggested method, but now all the other songs use the same album art from a different song:

I've tried following the answers to a similar question here, but none of the solutions worked for me.

What should I do?

Edit: I think I know the issue, but I'm not sure how to fix it. All of the songs I downloaded using peggo.co set the Album Title to "Unknown" (or simply nothing), which would explain why all 800+ songs have the same album art. How can I fix this though?

I found the solution to this. As I said in my question, the problem is that all my songs had their Album Title set to "Unknown" or simply not set.

To fix this, you have to change the Album Title to something unique. Here's what I did to fix this (automatically, for all of my songs in a single click):

Download mp3tag.
Drag all of your songs into the program.
In the navigation bar, click Actions > Actions.
Create a new action with the following settings:

Name: Name it anything.
Create a new step.
Action type: Format value
Field: ALBUM
Format string: %artist% - %title%

Select all of your songs in the program.
In the navigation bar, click Actions and then click your newly created action.

That should fix it.


Why does my phone automatically power off when there is still 2% battery? My Moto X Play on Android 6.0 would automatically power off when the battery displays 2% remaining. When I try to turn it back on, I would get a "low battery" symbol, which means my phone didn't exactly run out of battery yet.

Why does this happen?

Additionally, how can this behaviour be overridden? (say in the event of an emergency and I need to use every last bit of the phone's power?)

Prowler answers your first question well: "Why does this happen" -> Prevents data corruption.

To answer your question "How can this behavior be overridden?"

You can try:

setprop status.battery.level 50 from a shell terminal.

Note that bypassing the shutdown is 10x more risky than a battery pull. However, in a true emergency, benefit > risk.

Why it's more risky:

Battery pull = power loss to logic board, only unsaved data or partial writes / data-locks can cause corruption.

Dry-discharging battery = undervolting entire logic board, 3.0 volts instead of 3.7 volts can be like running your car on 8.5 volts instead of 12: Canbus stops responding, voltage leaks into serial connections, capacitors explode, etc. The same can happen inside your phone, except it's that RAM doesn't hold its correct value, processor misinterprets, accidentally writes the wrong NAND cells, etc, more so after hooking the phone w/ trashed battery up to a charger. The voltage difference between live power and undervolt battery can cause the same leakage onto the I2C bus. (Ever use a car charger with aux cord hooked up to the stereo... The alternator feedback is considered a "safe" amount of leakage onto the I2C bus.)


QB_OFFMODE_ALARM unexpected components OTA Update Failure - HTC ONE M8 (tmobile)
Updating from 4.4.2 to 4.4.3

Update gets about 25% during install and then fails. If I switch to recovery I can see the error which states:

"Unexpected Components in QB_OFFMODE_ALARM"

I spoke to HTC support and they had me try wiping cache, manual updating, etc.. all with the same result.

Any ideas?

ALso I have rooted my phone and attempted to load using sideload and other methods with no luck.

You can't apply an OTA update to a rooted phone. You need to download a complete stock ROM and flash it from your PC.


I'm seeing duplicated images and videos on Gallery I'm facing a strange situation on my Nexus 4, with Android version 4.2.2. I've being using it for the past 2 months without any issues whatsoever (other than a "regular" battery performance), but since last week I started seeing some duplicated albums with images on the Gallery. So, some images and videos appear twice, both with the same album name, but on a different "physical" folder, one on the folder /storage/emulated/0/ and the other on /storage/emulated/legacy/. I'm absolutely positive that this issue started only last week and the "duplicated" images existed before this issue ever appeared. I haven't installed any custom ROMs, I'm not rooted and haven't installed any apps in the las week (other than Google Translate, but I find it hard to believe that this is related). If this is a duplicated, please feel free to close it and point me to that discussion. If you need any more details, I'll update my question.

That's not duplicates. If you are the "device owner", /storage/emulated/0/ is your storage area (where your files etc. reside). /storage/emulated/legacy/ is a symbolic link, always pointing to the logged-in user's storage. That is, if you are the device owner, and you are logged in, both locations are identical. If some apps show the contained files as "dupes", they obviously have problems interpreting symlinks.

While for the gallery, this sounds pretty strange (if we are talking about the stock gallery, and not a 3rd party app): the very same Android developers who designed the multi-user capabilities should have been aware of that. Still, this is not the first time I heard about it. I cannot find the other issue currently, but a solution is as follows:

Go to Settings→Apps→Manage Apps, and scroll to the Gallery app. Open its entry, tap "Clear Cache" and "Delete Data". Tap the back key, and repeat the same for the "Media Storage" app.

Don't be afraid about losing data: the Media Scanner will re-collect them at its next run. You can trigger the scan by either...

powering off/on the device (bah!)
going to Settings→Storage and safely remove the SDCard, then mount it again (OK for one-time use :)
using a helper app like e.g. SDrescan or Rescan SD Card! (if you need it more often)

Once the Media Scanner is finished, all your media should re-appear in the Gallery app. Hopefully without the "dupes" :)


Insufficient storage with Link2sd I finally got Link2sd to work. I have Nexus One with 168 MB of internal storage. After some linking, I ended with 41 MB of free space. Now I'm trying to install Swiftkey, which is 6 MB download. AFAIK, it's around 27 MB unpacked. Play Store says insufficient storage when installing.

What should I do? I need it! :)

When playing with Link2Sd note that below each application you have:

APK size
Dex size
Lib size
Application Data size
Cache size
Total

When moving to SD card (APP2SD) only APK file goes to SD card, Dex and Lib remains in you phone memory. If you move those apps with Link2SD all files will be move to the external SD card increasing your phone memory a lot. Application Data size remains always in the phone memory so you may consider deleting this, just hold your finger and choose option to clear application data.
The last resort is converting some applications to a system apps which will move them to the separate partition releasing some memory.


What is this "in app browser" called and how do I disable it I factory reset my Nexus 5x a few days ago and ever since most apps (if not all) are opening all links in this in-app, stripped down, reading mode browser. Before the reset I'd never seen this:

It doesn't have any onward journey or sharing button so I can't open in a real browser (for eg if it is required) so it is supremely useless.

And I don't know what it's called so I can't figure out how to just open links in chrome.

Can anyone help?

It was webview. I used http://www.whatsmybrowser.org/ to check.

Even though webview showed as disabled.

I factory reset a second time and it stopped using that browser

  ¯_(ツ)_/¯


How to downgrade LG L90 D410 from Lollipop 5.0.2 to KitKat 4.4.2? I have LG L90 D410 smartphone. It had KitKat 4.4.2 OS when I purchased it. It was working pretty fine. After a couple of months I upgraded it to Lollipop 5.0.2. But after using this latest Android version, I realized that my phone went too slower. Along with this hanging, my phone started encountering various other issues too. On top of that I didn't like this latest android version too. Then i started searching how we can downgrade from Lollipop to Kitkat but I didn't find any relevant resource for my phone. Though I saw some tutorials regarding LG G2, G3 etc. but main problem was that I couldn't fine any appropriate stock firmware of KitKat 4.4.2 for my phone. I searched a lot and though I downloaded a couple of stock firmwares of Kitkat but when I started downgrading my phone with the help of LG flash tool, the process couldn't completed; even it didn't start at all. Also i saw the language list was empty in the LG flash tool when i selected a different country other than korea. So please tell me first where can i download original official KitKat 4.4.2 for my phone that was pre-installed when i bought this phone and secondly how can I downgrade it back to KitKat? I will be really very thankful to all who would help me to solve this serious problem.

LG Source page has your stock images plus the kernels too. Just scroll down the top section to D410, there are 3 different ones: D410, D410H, & D410HN (pick the proper one for your device).

There are many references to downgrading the D410, but those were inconcise/misleading/incoherent. Only relevant one I found was on XDA for downgrading.

For rooting and tools, I recommend to use this reference.

There were a few variables that would have made this answer too lengthy to post here, so links were used instead.

Please fully read all links before using any of the steps mentioned there within

remember

1. Perform a backup

2. Downgrading android will ERASE/WIPE/DELETE everything

3. YOU assume all responsibility for using any of the steps mentioned in the links

all links have been fixed and verified


How to format /storage/sdcard0 in ext4 I tried to create a symbolic link on the "internal SD card" of my Galaxy SD2. It failed with "permission denied" and I quickly realized this file system is vfat.

How can I reformat /storage/sdcard0 with a modern file system instead, like ext4?

Are there any drawbacks if I do this?

Possible drawbacks
As for the "drawbacks" part, there are different things to consider:

Windows cannot read ext4
Mac/Linux/*nix should have no trouble with it
Using MTP, Windows won't have any trouble either
If your ROM supports ext4, there should be no local problem
You might want to switch to a different ROM one day -- that ROM might not support ext4 (unlikely, but not impossible)

There are several situations to consider, as well:

If you one day get trouble with your card which cannot be solved "locally" (e.g. the card no longer mounts locally, or cannot be mounted via MTP/UMS, or you need to do a recovery of accidentally deleted files), you might need to attach it to your PC using a card reader (ext4 ↔ Windows: Fail!)
If you lend your device to somebody only having Windows, he might encounter problems
If you one day sell your device, you have to keep this in mind, too

Though for the last two situations, the solution might be simply to remove/replace the card, or re-format it (in the last case).
How to do it
Still here? OK, so the drawbacks seem to be negligible. There are multiple ways of how to get your card formatted with any file system:

use a card reader on your Linux-PC or Mac, and the mkfs command with the -t ext4 option (and additional parameters)
use a terminal app to do this locally on your device (see my answer on How can I format a flash drive using terminal emulator? for details)


How can I disable a stock app that has its Disable button greyed out? There is a pesky bloatware app (specificlly VUDU Version 1.0) that came preinstalled on my device.  Whenever I boot my device, it starts up an app process, so every time I boot I have to open up the App Switcher and swipe it away.

I went into the Settings app and tried to Force Stop and then Disable the app, but the Disable button is disabled ("greyed-out") itself.  Some other apps also don't allow me to disable them.  Is there any other way that I can enable the button or disable the app without rooting?  I am running 4.4.2.

On some Android versions you can use adb to disable apps that you would otherwise not be able to deactivate via the UI. The Debloater app linked to above automates and simplifies this process. This answer will explain how to perform the same process manually.

WARNING: Disabling the wrong app or using the wrong commands can leave your device soft-bricked. Please make sure you know what you are doing before proceeding.

Make sure you've got Android debugging set up correctly, then drop into an adb shell:

adb shell

Get a list of all installed packages by using pm

pm list packages -f

Identify the packages you want to disable and make a note of them.
Disable each package individually by running one of the following commands:

if you are on Kitkat: pm block <package_name>, e.g. pm block com.motorola.motocare
if you are on Lollipop: pm hide <package_name>, e.g. pm hide com.motorola.motocare

The app should now be disabled and disappear from your launcher. In case of a background service it will permanently stop running in the background.

To reverse this procedure you can use one of the following commands:

if you are on Kitkat: pm unblock <package_name>, e.g. pm unblock com.motorola.motocare
if you are on Lollipop: pm unhide <package_name>, e.g. pm unhide com.motorola.motocare


Getting Exchange Email Through a Cisco VPN ? Is there a way to get my email from my works exchange server if I need to connect using a Cisco Any Connect VPN client?

I can't find an Any Connect Client for Android and I've tried connecting to the mail server directly but it (Obviously) can't resolve the host because it's behind a VPN.

My colleague has just pointed out that ICS will include Cisco Any Connect functionality...

http://www.talkandroid.com/69015-cisco-anyconnect-vpn-support-to-be-implemented-in-ice-cream-sandwich-enterprise-users-rejoice/

Upon Further investigation there is an Any Connect Client for Android, but you need to have rooted your phone to use it:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.cisco.anyconnect.vpn.android.rooted&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5jaXNjby5hbnljb25uZWN0LnZwbi5hbmRyb2lkLnJvb3RlZCJd


Is slow charging bad for the battery? I know that charging the battery too fast can overheat the battery and shorten battery life. But is charging it slowly, e.g. from a USB 2.0 cable plugged to a laptop, also harmful for the battery? I know there is a 'USB charging mode' designed for this, but I am not so sure if it is bad for the battery.

I have Googled, but most links are forums where people offer their opinions and personal experiences, I want to know whether someone has actually tested this out?

Slow charging is great for a lithium battery. Two things kills lithium batteries

Temperature
Charge level

Charging too fast causes excess heat, that damages lithium batteries
Keeping your battery charge too high also damages lithium batteries

Ideally you want to slowly recharge and keep it between 20% - 80%. Also, many short small charge cycles is better than a lengthy large charge cycle.

Sources: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries


Galaxy S5 stock browser user agent I have a problem with a site not detecting a stock S5 browser as mobile. I don't own a galaxy S5 so I asked the person who found this issue to send me the complete user agent string, this is what I got:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/28.0.1500.94 Safari/537.36

does the S5 browser really not identify itself as running on an android device? Might this be the result of some custom setting (which I'm told never happened)? How else can I identify the S5 browser as being a mobile device?

After some poking around it would appear that in this case the browser is not identifying itself as running on an Android device. I put the useragentstring you supplied into useragentstring.com and in the operating system details field it tells me;

Operating System:
Linux
running on a Intel CPU
running on a 64 bit processor

If I enter the useragentstring for the stock browser on my HTC One I get:

Operating System:
Android
version 4.4.2

and on Chrome mobile browser I also get:

Operating System:
Android
version 4.4.2

I would suggest asking the user of the device to clear data/cache and see if the problem persists. I can't imagine Samsung would have their browser setup like this by default.

EDIT: Also just found here that the useragentstring for the S4 should be something along the lines of;

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.2.2; nl-nl; GT-I9505 Build/JDQ39) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30

which is nothing like what you posted. If anyone on AE with an S5 could post their useragentstring (can get it from here) that would be useful, unless you know anyone else with an S5 where you could check against.

EDIT2: FYI, the useragentstring for my stock browser on my HTC is;

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.4.2; en-gb; HTC_One Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30

and for Chrome;

Mozilla/5.0 (Lunix; U; Android 4.4.2; HTC One Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.141 Mobile Safari/537.36


Is it possible to retrieve android data after multiple factory resets? Lets say I want to retrieve a file that is about one year old. I have been doing one or two factory resets to this day and kept using my phone. Now I want to get that file back, is it possible to get it?

Practically impossible

When you factory-reset your device storage is not wiped but inaccessible (over written with 0's if encrypted).¹ On top of it you have been using your device which means memory is overwritten again by the apps you installed (and their data).

Effectively, your chances of recovering anything is zero unless you want to try extremely sophisticated data recovery means and maybe recover a figment of file, if at all

¹ See  for more details here. Also, as Izzy pointed out in a now deleted comment, it's really "overwritten" only if it was encrypted or if the space was reclaimed by the controller (see Wear-Leveling). So there is a chance such a file could be recovered even after multiple factory-resets. Feasibility is a different thing, especially as one cannot mount internal storage to a PC to use forensics software on it, nor (without root access) generate a disk image for doing so. And agreed, chances are not that good anyway ;)


Icons are very pixelated with some icon packs I'm using Aviate at the moment and was trying to apply a new icon pack. While some packs are fine, most are awfully pixelated on my phone. In the following screenshots, the top screen is my 3.5' phone and the bottom one is my friend's 4.5' phone. I'm using "Blitz icon pack" here, but many other packs do this. "Sense 5 icon pack" for example, works fine on my phone.

Is this a hardware limitation? Is android incapable of anti-aliasing icons when they get resized?

I don't know enough about Aviate to know for sure, but I can guess based on the way icons normally work in Android.

An app's icon has different versions for different screen DPIs, so there's no need to resize nor antialias icons. Note that antialiasing isn't the answer here: it works by blurring icons, so they still look wrong, just in a different way. The stock Android launcher always uses the right icon for the screen's DPI. (Actually, it uses the icon one size up, because it displays the icons larger than in early Android versions when the launcher icon sizes were set.) If the app doesn't come with an icon in the correct size, it uses a smaller icon. That's why, if you have what Android calls an xhdpi screen (240 dpi or above), some apps will have smaller icons: it's because they don't have an xxhdpi icon.

From what you describe, it looks like the icon pack that's giving you trouble doesn't have any icons for your screen resolution. Perhaps the author of the icon pack didn't realise about the different DPIs. Perhaps it's some limitation of the icon pack format, which isn't an Android standard.

When this happens, Aviate is picking the next smaller size and scaling up. There's no reason they couldn't use linear or cubic interpolation to replace the jaggies (yes, that's the technical term) with blurriness. If they're using the standard ImageView component, it's just a question of setting a flag on it when the icon size is wrong. However, that would be slower, and they'd need to be careful to only do that when the icon is missing. It's possible there's some reason within Aviate that they couldn't do that; OTOH, it's possible they've just never tried using icon packs with missing DPIs, or they want to make it obvious to encourage icon authors to do the right thing.


Streaming TV audio to Android device through Wi-Fi I have an LG Smart TV and I want to hear its audio on my smartphone with headphones.
Another possibility is to use two smartphones, one connected to the TV by P2 cable and another receiving the audio from the smartphone.
I want to do this through Wi-Fi. I do not want to buy more devices, so I want to use my smartphone.
Is it possible, like using an app for this?

It's just not possible.
Setting your smartphone aside for a moment, even assuming you have an extraordinarily stable WiFi signal, transmitting audio over WiFi would introduce enough latency to ruin your day.
In some cases, the transmitter side could introduce a delay on the video stream to compensate for the audio delay (forget about gaming or anything like that in this case). Your LG TV might have a "AV Sync Adjustment" option, but even then, this might not be enough.
In any case, your TV will not cast audio by itself and here we come to your "second phone" as transmitter. The phone is unlikely to have a line-level audio input, and even if you still have a phone with a 3.5mm audio jack, that is a microphone input. To make things worse, this input is MONO.
Your

I don't want to buy more devices

rules out any other type of audio input adapter for your transmitter phone. I'd say this is a dead end.


Are there USB to LAN adapter that are compatible with Android 4.0? I'm looking for a USB-to-LAN adapter that is compatible with my Chinese Android 4.0 tablet.
I've 2 dongles - like this - but none of them works.
How can i choose a usb to lan adapter for my Android tablet?
I've to look at Linux Kernel version to search a suitable adapter?

Edit: The model of my tablet is Voyo Q101

According to this XDA-thread an Apple USB->Ethernet adapter works on a similar ICS device. So technically it should work. But it in your case it could be hardware limitation, so you should try it out before buying. Just go to an Apple store and ask kindly ;-)


How to restore previous android id from titanium backup? My line apps doesn't work because it counts on android id.

I want to restore my android id then. However, out of so many back up files in titanium back up, which one contains my old id?

Android ID can be found in the database settings.db of Settings Storage/Providers app. It is located under /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases.

There are multiple ways of restoring Android ID.

Through Titanium Backup

In Titanium Backup (TiBu), go to Menu → Manage Android ID → Restore Android ID from a backup. If one or multiple backups of Settings Storage/Providers app exists then TiBu would list the ID. You can then select the ID and begin restoration of it.

(Click image to enlarge)

However, if no such backup of that app exists, then you would get this dialog:

Using command-line

If you already know which ID has to be restored then you can do this:

Setup adb in PC and execute:

(The lines starting with echo are only for the purpose of explaining what I'm going to do in consecutive command. Avoid executing them.)

You can also edit settings.db using an SQLite database manager such as sqlite3, but why bother this much?

Interestingly, the hostname of your device would be nothing more than android-ANDROID_ID where ANDROID_ID is the Android ID. You can check it using:

adb shell getprop net.hostname

Note: the whole solution is tested on Android 4.2.1 and 6.0.1.


How do I back up Google Authenticator? I'm starting to use Google Authenticator for more and more things now, but I've just realized that if I lose my phone, or if I need to wipe and restore it to install new firmware, I will lose all of my codes.

Is there anyway to back them up please? Or some kind of fallback that means I can restore it to a new device?

Thanks

The following method will only work rooted Android devices.

Linux:

adb pull /data/data/com.google.android.apps.authenticator2/databases/databases /AFolderOnPC

Windows:

adb pull /data/data/com.google.android.apps.authenticator2/databases/databases C:\AFolderOnPC

Note that the folder on the PC has to already exist.

This will copy the authenticator database files with the main keys, from which the One Time Passwords are generated, to the PC. The file can then be restored to the same location, on Android devices, or read with an sqlite database viewer to extract the keys.


Need some clarification on Developer Settings We have a bespoke app that uses a WebView to play some locally stored CSS animations.

I'd like to get full clarification on whether the following Developer options can have any impact on the animations playing in the WebView:

Animation and transition scales
Forced GPU Rendering
Disable Hardware overlays
Do not keep activities
Limiting background processes

EDIT - Can I also get an explanation as to what "Disable Hardware overlays" does exactly? Would checking it help in any scenario?

First of all ,those options are meant for development reasons ,mainly for developers to get different debugging outputs for every situation their app may face.

For the first part of your question :

  Will those options affect the play of animations in a webView ?

I will go throw the options one by one :

Animation and transition scales :

This option is for the system-core animation the ones included in framwork-res.apk and other system framework  or in any android application under res/anim

Those animations are used by the system to change between views or par third party applications to change between activities view or for playing animations so if you change the Animation and transition scales only those animations will be affected ,since your Application uses the Webview to render and play the animations it will not be affected by those sittings.

Forced GPU Rendering :

As you may already now in any computer or phone there is two types of rendering software rendering  and Hardware rendering the first one is when the screen is displayed by the CPU it self ,the second is when the GPU is the one rendering it ,in android the system decides when and where use softrendering or hardrendering if you activate this option the system will always choose the GPU to render the screen ,which may give you a small performance gain because the CPU will remain free for other operations ,the power consumption may increase (corect me if I am wrong) GPU uses more power than the CPU.

Do not keep activities :

This option will kill any activity as soon as it goes to the background means that as soon as you leave an activity it will be destroyed so when you go back to that activity it will start a new one rather than resume the previews session ,this may not affect your application when you are on it but the second you leave it it will be destroyed ,this option may give you a little bit more performance because all other apps on the phone will not run in the background which may free up some resources (note that the background services will not be killed by this options only activities that are no longer displayed will be killed ) .

Limiting background processes

For this one I will quote @Dan Hulme in this answer

  Setting this option forces Android to stop each process as soon as it
  is empty (that is, when no services are started and no activities are
  on screen for that app).

  To be clear: this option won't stop apps that would normally run in
  the background from doing so. Your mail client will still run
  periodically to check mail, if it's configured to do that. Apps that
  use Google Cloud Messaging to receive push messages from Internet
  servers (such as Gmail and Facebook) will still be able to do so. The
  option would be better named "Cached background process limit", since
  it limits apps that would otherwise show up with that label in the
  apps manager.

  Next time each app needs to start, Android has to load the app from
  storage, from scratch. This uses more power and takes longer than
  running it again when the process was in memory. This doesn't just
  mean when you start an activity from that app deliberately; it also
  means the email client has to be loaded after each time it wants to
  check email. Over time this can build up to a huge battery drain.

  Because this is a development option, it can also trigger rare bugs in
  certain apps, and those apps' developers may not be keen to fix them.
  One example is that, on Nexus devices running 4.2.2, when this option
  is on, the in-built Calendar app will keep restarting itself with this
  option set, because stopping the cached background process causes the
  calendar's content provider to be removed, which causes a loop of
  services restarting each other to check for calendar updates. If this
  happens, the loop will run down your battery very quickly.

So as you can read this option will not affect your application all side affect of this option are noted in the previous quote.

For the second part of your question :

  what "Disable Hardware overlays" does exactly?

To answer this I will define what is Hardware Overlays :

In computing, hardware overlay, a type of video overlay, provides a method of rendering an image to a display screen with a dedicated memory buffer inside computer video hardware. The technique aims to improve the display of a fast-moving video image — such as a computer game, a DVD, or the signal from a TV card. Most video cards manufactured since about 1998 and most media players support hardware overlay ,The overlay is a dedicated buffer into which one app can render (typically video), without incurring the significant performance cost of checking for clipping and overlapping rendering by other apps. The framebuffer has hardware support for importing and rendering the buffer contents without going through the GPU or CPU.

Now to get back to your question will it affect your scenario ,if you disable this feature android system will not allow hardware overlays which may cause a reduced performance , in other words Without a hardware overlay every application that is displaying things on the screen will share video memory and will have to constantly check for collision and clipping to render a proper image, this can cost a lot of processing power. With a hardware overlay each application gets its own portion of video memory, getting rid of the need to check for collision and clipping .Basically, using hardware overlays can reduce CPU usage by quite a bit, so I would leave it enabled in your case.

like I said earlier those options are meant for developers to get different debugging outputs for different scenarios their apps may face.

References
 Hardware Overlays Wikipedia / Hardware Overlays on ComputerHope.com


Dialling with favorites With My old phone as soon as I hit my favorites button, the phone would automatically dial the number that I set as a default.  With this phone, when I hit an entry on my favorites list, it brings me to a list of numbers and I have to choose a number.  HOw can I program  the phone to automatically dial a favorite number? I tried setting a number as a default and it doesn't work.

in ICS, if you use the Favorites tab in the People app, then it will behave like you mentioned; however if you use the Favorites tab in the Phone app, then it will directly call the number you set as default number for the contact.


How do I stop getting reminders form a deleted Exchange account? I have an HTC Desire phone which is great apart from the incessant recurring meeting calendar reminders from my former company. I have deleted the Exchange account and these recurring meetings no longer show up in my regular calendar, but the reminders keep coming!

How do I clear out these reminders?

Try clearing your calendar data (Settings -> Applications -> Calendar -> Clear Data).

If that doesn't work then you might have to resort to a factory reset.

(If you have to go this route then there are lots of options for backing up your data before hand to minimize the pain)


Unable to add corporate account with same email address as google account on Lollipop Just upgraded my Nexus 5 to Lollipop and have bumped into a serious issue with account management.

I have my Google account registered to a non-gmail domain, and use Exchange Online to host it. Up to Kit-kat, this presented no particular issue: I would  log in to Google’s services using my Google account and then add a corporate account to handle email.

Lollipop prevents me from doing so however: whenever I try to add the corporate account I get an error message saying the account I’m trying to create is a duplicate (this happens at the very first screen, when the only available field is the account’s email address - which of course is going to be the same).

Has somebody found a way around this? If not, what is the best way to submit a bug report, since the Gmail App is not part of AOSP?

I was able to get around this by putting in an invalid email address on the first step (e.g. myname@mydomain.com.exchange) then clicking the button to set up the account manually. I wanted to set up an Exchange account and was able to enter my proper corporate credentials in the following steps. This seems to have worked.


Need help un-syncing Google Contacts from school gmail So a few mouths ago my iphone gave me an alert that said something like this,
'Want to email a friend? Sync you contacts with your email..'
So I did, not realizing what I was getting myself into...
Now, whenever I go to my (school) laptop and go to google contacts it shows every single one of my contacts. Whenever I tried to delete them, they would delete on my phone also. It's really bothering because I know my school can see things like this and I don't want them to know all the people I talk to.
I'm going to be leaving the school soon, so I don't know if they will still be able to see my contact, or if they will be deleted.
Thanks.

You can uncheck a box in your contact setting.

Open your iPhone or iPad's Settings app.
Tap Accounts & Passwords and then Add Account and then Google.
Enter your email and password.
Tap Next.
Switch "Contacts" off.
At the top, tap Save.

You might have to remove the contacts after you do this on the device you are trying to un-sync but the original contact your created will still be available on other devices. They where uploaded into the cloud and once you turn the cloud service off the contact info will not sync.


How To Edit TwLauncher lnk path/application/label How does one edit TwLauncher home-screen shortcuts (lnk) internal information (NOT JUST ICON) to change application/path/title-text?; Where is the homescreem layout/presentation/shortcut information hiding? Why isn't this information available from the HelpSystem? How can I edit my help system? What evil has hidden this information so effectively? How do I edit shortcuts on ADW .launcher? How do I go about finding/learning how to findout how to edit information on ANY given launcher?

As far as I know the TW launcher stores the informations about the home screens icons and the packages icons in a SQL database file inside its data folder for which the full path can be, as for example for the stock TW launcher on a Galaxy Y phone (GingerBread v.2.3.6), /data/data/com.sec.android.app.twlauncher/databases/launcher.db

To view the content you need a SQL viewer app, to edit the content you need a SQL database editor.

I don't think Evil has any part on hidden so well what you are looking for; I think is just a kind of obscurity by complexity ;)

And for the Help part of your question, I'm sorry but I don't have clues.

Anyway, hope that my answer will be of some help to you.

All the best.

Hal Ex


What are the causes of an android phone bricking? I will try to change a firmware of SAMSUNG Galaxy J600FN with a current firmware of J600FNXXU6BSK2 with a new firmware J600GDXU3ARH5. I am changing the firmware to bypass the FRP because methods like Talk back, Inserting/Removing Sim card and HushSMS won't work.

Questions:

Will this scenario will be suceeding in changing firmware?
What are the common causes of the android phone bricking? (Hard/Soft Brick)

If you are flashing ROM, Common causes could be

Wrong ROM
Battery Failure (Please make sure it is charged fully or upto 70%)
Power Off/ Cancelling process in between.

Please search for the same Model ROM to Upgrade to current version.
Also in Settings, search for Software Update option before trying anything else.


How do I avoid the server-specified security policies for my work e-mail? When I signed into my e-mail for work (we're on Microsoft Exchange) there were a number of server-specified security policies (See below) How do I avoid these?:

I just received a Nexus 7 and signed into my work's exchange server. When I did so I told me that the server was requiring some security settings. I don't really like those. Especially the one (not really mentioned in the image) which disables NFC which I wish to use for Google Wallet.

So my question could be answered by:

A non-rooting method to disable these settings;
A different app which would allow me to still connect to the server but not enforce these security settings;
Anything else which I may be missing.

First off, talk to your Exchange administrators.  See if they deliberately are setting the mobile device security settings so tightly.  I would have a discussion with them to see if they can loosen up the security settings.

If you only want email you could try K-9 from the app store.  It uses IMAP to get the mail from the server so your exchange server will have to have that turned on.


How to edit two Google keep notes at the same time? How can I use multi window or another gesture to edit to Google keep notes at the same time. I'm on Android 7.0 Nougat. I know I can use multi window, although I would appreciate it if someone could kindly let me know how to being the second window up, but I don't know if you can have the same so, such as keep, in both windows, so as to achieve my goal.

Thanks.

I actually don't think this is natively possible on Android. However there is an app that you can use, called "Parallel Windows". Unfortunately it no longer seems to be on the Play Store, but you can download it from APKMirror at this link.

To use it you need to enable its Accessibility service and permit it to draw over apps. What it does is create a swipe edge on the right of the screen. Open Keep first, and then edge and click on the bottom icon. Click on the Keep app to mirror it.

I usually tend to disable the accessibility service to disable after use because the swipe edge will otherwise stay permanently; it's up to you to use it how you want.


managing multiple contact sources as gmail contacts I'm on a google nexus 4 (up to date, non-rooted) and I'm using gmail and google contacts for my contact/messaging needs. Additionally I'm pulling contacts from facebook, linkedIn, xing (German linkedIn clone) and google plus.

Is there an easy way to merge contact info from other networks into the gmail contact when joining/linking contacts from gmail and other networks like facebook and linkedIn?

I wouldn't mind using a third party app to do the footwork (joining, unduping, etc.) but I'd like to keep and update the data in my gmail contact list as I am using this list half of the time on my desktop. I don't mind using another contacts app for viewing/browsing and calling/texting my contacts but I don't want to depend on one forever and I don't want to redo everything again and again everytime I switch my phone and/or contacts app

I know that Smartr and Rapportive (Desktop only) can do a lot of association stuff but in  the end all the data that happens in Smartr stays in Smartr.

Things I'd like to have:

Data

Contact Name
Picture (assigned by me, default g+ with facebook or linkedIn as fallback)
Nickname
basic gmail stuff, multiple numbers, mails, addresses, birthday, other dates, urls
other network profiles as "profile URLs" or sound "other URLs"

Functionality

easy linking/joining and un-duping
data storage in gmail contacts as fas as possible
compatibility with other apps like smartr or rapportive

KADlancer - check out http://www.fullcontact.com. (Full disclosure: I work for them, so I'm a bit biased. But the issues you mentioned are exactly the issues we're trying to solve).

We currently have a web app in private beta that pulls in contacts from various Google Contacts/Gmail sources, as well as Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. It then adds social profile data to each, normalizes & de-dupes them, and syncs them back in real-time.

Within the next month we plan to roll out our public beta, which will support the linking of all of the above sources - meaning you can unify contacts across all your social networks/Google accounts and have all your contacts in one place, automatically up-to-date. Because we offer two-way sync in real-time, changes made in Google Contacts sync to FullContact, and vice-versa - meaning that your data is your data, and stays where you want it (no walled gardens).

Again, I work for them, so you'd probably be right to take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But based on what you posted, it looks like the FullContact Address Book will do almost everything you're looking to do (with the possible exception of Xing, which is currently not supported, but on the roadmap). I'm not aware of any other app out there that does quite what we do, save Smartr - which it sounds like you've already tried.

Good luck!


How to root LAVA IRIS 504q? I am having iris 504q model.My current android version is 4.2.2,but i am unable to update it any further,can any one guide me,how to root lava iris 504 q?

Here are the steps:-

Make sure USB debugging is enabled. Go to Settings > Developer Options > Enable USB Debugging.
Download AND Install MTK Drivers (extract, right-click android_winusb.inf and select install)
Download and extract the MTK6589 Auto Root folder.
Connect your phone to PC visa USB.
Run run.bat from the extracted MTK6589 Auto Root folder.
Press any key and wait while it roots your phone.
After finished, now reboot.
You’re rooted. Verify root with Root Checker, or run any app you know requires root and you should see a root permissions request.

Happy Flashing!!!

Alternate method: Install and run through Framaroot, this will temporarily root your phone.

Link to original post


Android Market cannot be opened and cannot download any applications When I first bought my GT-i5801, I could easily access the Android Market and there was no hassle in downloading any applications I want. But then one time it had a virus or something that doesn't allow the phone to open. Then I had it repaired to a Samsung registered repair shop. Then after it was repaired even a single application cannot be downloaded and that the android market can't even be opened.

So what happened? What can I do with this matter?

The first thing you could try is to clear the Android Market cache and data. This can be done from Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> (All ->) Market -> Clear data. Note that the "All" tab may not be available on your device, depending on your Android version. If it's not there, then disregard that step.


Blocked Android Multimedia system I bought Android Multimedia system for my car:
Model: MGCOL1
Ver: 4.4.2
Ver: MPSS.TR.1.0-01780-M8626AAAAANAZM
Core Ver: 3.4.0 - fengxunyi@fly-server-24core #1
Build: msm8226-userdebug 4.4.2 KVT49L eng.fengxunyi.20150828.144551 test-keys

But is seems that the Android is blocked: no file explorer, no browser (but there is an app with WebView with Google), no Google Play Store and no Developer options for adb (I have tried to click on the Build Number and nothing happened).

How can I unblock it? I want to install some apps but I don't know how.

You can push apk files to this device trough Bluetooth. Pair it with your smartphone and choose except all file types in the car system bluetooth. Of course don't forget to Check Install from Unknown sources in the car system too.


Is there a way to show Office 365 group calendars in the play calendar app? I'm trying to get a calendar overview on my android device which has to include my google calendar (easy), my personal office 365 calendars (done) and the calendars of the exchange groups I am a member off (no chance).

Is there a way (or an app) that will provide a widget for the launcher that shows all the events from all the calendars?

Ok, for now the answer seems to be "No". I had a chat with the support from Microsoft and found some forum post on their sites. The Outlook App cannot show group calendar entries. To make those visible in your personal calendar (resp. create an entry) you have to accept the meeting invite which does not make any sense e.g. for a team holiday calendar.

The new Groups App from Microsoft in turn does not provide a comprehensive calendar view for all the groups you're a member off. Instead you have to check each group in turn. Also the app does not come with a widget.

Stands to say that there is a feature request to provide a groups calendar overview for about a year...


Attempted installing Google Play Store, but ended up installing Android Market! As seen below, anything to do with Google Play is installed in the Android SDK in my Ubuntu.

In light of this SDK Extras set above which has the Licensing Library, it is perfectly legal to have Google Play in emulators created here (correct me if I am wrong). Google Play is a factory default. Yet, when an emulator instance is created (even for that matter, a Nexus with Google API (say 10)) Google Play isn't already there.

So, in an attempt to install Google Play the closest I got is using this guide, as per which, I downloaded gapps-jb-20130307-signed.zip (the ZIP file for Gingerbread 2.3.3) and unzipped it and just executed the adb commands in the script given at the very end.

What I ended up installing was the Android Market! Why?

I browsed a bit on Android Market and then I pushed another file from the zip downloaded. It's named MarketUpdater.apk. That's what updates the Market to Play Store!

Tried starting from scratch and pushed market updater too! So it was Play Store right when it sat in.


Is there an android phone that fits these criteria? I'm not asking for recommendations, just if there is a phone that fits these criteria, and if so, what is it?

Android (preferably 2.2+)
Physical Keyboard
HTC
Verizon

The only HTC that I see on the Verizon site with an Android search is the Droid Incredible, which does not have a physical keyboard.

According the HTC page on Wikipedia only the Dream (A71XX), Espresso (MyTouch 3G Slide), and the Desire Z have physical keyboards. Those are all GSM phones, which won't work on Verizon's network (it being CDMA).

So the answer to your question is: No such phone exists (at this time).


How to stop a video from a web page from continuing to play after I shut down web page? I often play videos that are embedded in a web page.
When I close Google or Chrome, the video keeps playing and I can't find it.
What setting do I need to change so that the video stops when I close the web page?

Go to setting /system. You can turn off Running background app when Google chrome is closed. When web page is closed, it will not play video.
You can reset setting to default.


How to get device name like whyred für Xiaomi Redmi Note 5? For custom ROMs like LineageOS, the more specific device names are used. So e.g. the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is called whyred or Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge goes hero2lte. Having some experience in Android and custom ROMs, I don't know how to find out device names based on the colloquially used device names (Redmi Note 5 ~> whyred).

Neither in specs on e.g. shop sites, nor in the device info. Lets look at the device info  of a Xiamo Redmi Note 5 Pro:

I only see M1803E7SG as model name here, but no match to the device name used for custom ROMs. Especially on Xiamo it's a big mess to get rich of different model or editions. Sometimes a single model is not equal across different regions.

Edit

For M1803E7SG I found this article which says:

  For reference, our review unit is the M1803E7SG. This is also known as
  the Redmi Note 5 AI Dual Camera. It is neither the Redmi 5 Plus, which
  is listed as the Redmi Note 5 on Xiaomi's Mi website, nor is it the
  Redmi Note 5 Pro either. All three devices are powered by a Qualcomm
  Snapdragon 636 SoC, but they feature different camera hardware and
  memory options among other differences.

So is this a flashable device for TWRP/LineageOS? I'm relly confused now and would like to see the device name for this smartphone.

For simplicity, you can either find the device codename from the official Xiaomi forum (which I believe is constantly updated). You can also use a third-party tool Device ID to get your device codename:


Acer Iconia B1-710 connecting to TV using HDMI I've tried connecting my Acer Iconia B1-710 to the tv using a USB/HDMI cable but the tv will not recognise the signal!

What else do I need to do to get the image to appear on the tablet and TV simultaneously

In order to use a USB to HDMI cable the device needs to support Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL), which, unfortunately, the Iconia B1-710 does not.

Some devices have their own proprietary cables for connecting, but, according to this Acer forum thread:

  We do not support connecting the B1-710 tablet to a television via USB. There are no products that I am aware of that would facilitate this connectivity.


Nexus 5 Unroot: Update Possibilities? I somehow one-click rooted my Nexus 5 (without a computer) but want to unroot. If I go to Settings >>,About Device >> Update and install an update if there is one, will it delete root or get stuck on the boot logo because I'm root? I don't want to have issues but I also don't want root. Now I downloaded SuperSu and used the Temp Unroot option which basically just deletes root temporarily unless that option is DE-selected. So basically I don't have root now (I checked) but it's still there, I just want to know

1) Can I update without having problems? I have T-Mobile.

2) Is there an app that can just delete root for good, permanently?

I've found a solution.

Go to SuperSu >> Settings >> "Fully Unroot This Device." Done.


Battery drains very quickly on Samsung Galaxy S5 I have purchased a Samsung Galaxy S5 from the store. I open it and I begin by charging it for the first time, but without turning it on. The battery was 61%, so I waited until 100%. After that, I turned on the phone and proceeded to set it up. The version of Android was 5.0 Lollipop (I don't know how this is possible as I thought I need to update it myself from 4.4.2 to 5.0).

While I was entering in the information for the first time, the battery suddenly fell from 100% to 95% in just 5 to 10 minutes, during the first steps where I had to create a Google account and set up my phone options.

I heard rumors that 5.0 Lollipop drains the battery quickly so I downgraded to 4.4.2 KitKat with the hope that it'll fix the battery problem. I downgraded successfully without error.

I have the same problem—the interesting thing is that I didn't download more than 5 apps. I only have Skype, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber and Instagram. All the other apps are from the phone itself.

Whenever I go to WhatsApp to check messages or chat (or anywhere else), the battery falls 1% after 3 minutes. All of the NFC options, location options and other unnecessary options are turned off. The brightness is also on low. In 15 minutes of use I notice that the battery falls from 80% to 65% or 60%.

I have already done a factory reset twice, whilst I was downgrading to KitKat 4.4.2.

I'm a new user of a Samsung Galaxy S5. Is this normal or abnormal? What is the problem and how can I resolve it?

"....the battery suddenly fell from 100% to 95% in just 5 to 10 minutes"

That's perfectly normal and no cause for concern. Reasons for this are well explained in this XDA post  Your battery gauge is lying to you (and it's not such a bad thing). Summarizing from this post:

  As explained at Battery University, "The time at which the battery stays at [maximum charge] should be as short as possible. Prolonged high voltage promotes corrosion, especially at elevated temperatures."

so

  This is why many new phones will "lose" up to 10% within a few minutes of coming off the charger. The reality is that the battery was only at 100% capacity for a brief moment, after which the battery management system allowed it to slowly dip down to around 90%

so how do OEM's deal with this situation?

  The phone manufacturers essentially have three choices:

  Use older charging styles which actually maintain a full battery, thereby decreasing its eventual life
  Use new charging methods and have an accurate battery gauge
  Use new charging methods and have the inaccurate battery gauge

  Option one has clearly fallen out of favor as it prematurely wears devices. Option two, while being honest, would most likely be met with many complaints. After all, how many people want to see their phone draining down to 90% while it is still plugged in? Option three therefore offers an odd compromise. Maybe phone companies think that users will be less likely to worry about a quick drop off the charger than they will worry about a "defective" charger that doesn't keep their phone at 100% while plugged in.

So, it's normal and have seen it happen in every phone (four of them) I owned in last four years


Is there way to track the location only during a small predefined time window? I'm looking for an way for an Android phone to record (preferably locally on the device) its GPS position (10-20m accuracy) with a pretty high frequency (e.g. every minute or every 30secs) but ONLY during pre-set time windows, e.g. weekdays between 7:30-8:00 and 13:15-13:45. The rest of the time I want it to do nothing and use no resources.

You can use a combination of Macrodroid and GPS logger for Android to automate the logging process.

Step 1: install apps and configure GPS logger

Install GPS logger for Android and Macrodroid.
Open GPS logger. Give the necessary permissions. Tap the menu, then General options. Select Start app on launch.

Step 2: macro to launch the app

Start Macrodroid, click on Add macro.
In the Triggers tab, select Date/time trigger. Set the day(s) and time when it should run. Click ok.
In the Actions tab, in the Applications section, select Launch application, select GPS logger. Select Exclude from recent apps.
In the Actions tab, in the Device actions section, select Press back, give the appropriate permission, go back select Press back.
Save the macro and give it a name. It will look like the image below.

Step 3: macro to stop the app

Still using Macrodroid, click on Add macro.
In the Triggers tab, select Date/time trigger. Set the day(s) and time when the macro should run and stop the app. Click ok.
In the Actions tab, in the Applications section, select Launch application, select GPS logger. Select Exclude from recent apps.
In the Actions tab, in the Macrodroid specific section, select Wait before next action, set it to 2-3 seconds.
In the Actions tab, in the Applications section, select UI interaction. Give the appropriate permission Go back select UI interaction, select Identify in app. Open GPS logger, click the Macrodroid UI notifications on the status bar, then click the Stop logging button of GPS logger.
In the Actions tab, in the Device actions section, select Press back.
In the Actions tab, Applications section, select Kill background process, select GPS logger.
In the Constraints tab, in Device state section, select Application running, give the appropriate permission. Go back to the macro, select Application running, select Alive in background
Save the macro and give it a name. It will look like the image below.

The first macro starts the app  at the selected days and time while the second stops it by pressing the Stop logging button, then kill it from running in the background at the selected days and time. Make sure that in step 5 of the second macro, Stop logging is selected and not Start logging. If when selecting Stop logging, Start logging is instead selected, then select Start logging instead of Start logging.


Android 6.0 shows up contacts from all accounts My Nexus 5 with Android 6.0 shows up all contacts from all my accounts in dialer (including Exchange). I only want to see contacts from my gmail.

I already went to contact application and selected only gmail, but it does not work. I posted this question somewhere on google forum and they said they will fix it in 6.0, but now I cannot find this forum and the issue posted.

Update: Finally found the forum: google developers. I cannot believe this issue is not resolved yet.

In Android 6.0 Marshmallow version there are 2 ways to see only contact list.

1st click and open contact
 And
In this list from heading select, click and open Record
Or
Directly open phone list
Then to view only contacts
Then there is only one way as under to view only all contact lists without Emails lists.
You just simply type name of your contact saved in your phone book list
And
With displaying phone number to be dialed
It will simultaneously display only names without Email list with scrutinized and screening


How can I sync email automatically without removing local messages that have been deleted on the server? Outlook on my computer deletes the server's copy of the message when it syncs, which unfortunately causes the Email app on the Galaxy Nexus to delete its local copy of the message when it syncs.

Is there a way to automatically download new email and receive notifications when it arrives without having it sync the deletions? In other words, once the email is downloaded to the device I want it to stay on the device unless I delete it from the device, but I don't want to turn off sync completely.

A related issue occurs when I've synced all the email in Outlook and the Email app on the phone deletes all the messages -- the Email app crashes when the Combined Inbox view is empty.  Is there any way to fix this?

(Aside: Is there a way to intitiate a send/receive of all email accounts from the Combined view in the stock email app?)

The behavior you described is what I'd expect from an account that uses both IMAP and POP protocols. Your emails are deleted from the server when you open Outlook and sync over POP but when you sync your phone over IMAP it keeps the mails on the server.

You can get the desired behavior by switching your outlook sync protocol to IMAP. This keeps the emails on server and you have to manually delete them. Also, you should check out k-9 mail, it's a better replacement for the stock email app.


Dodgy App ripping me off? I am suspicious about the following:

My data usage tripled last month.
I have found an app which I don't recognize.
I have received multimedia messages from someone who denies sending any.

Is it possible that I could have been sent some sort of virus in a multimedia message which has installed the app (BestDeals), which then uses my data allowance to rip me off?

I have uninstalled other apps, but it doesn't seem to be possible for apps like this. How might I uninstall it?

Most shady apps pull you into setting them as a device administrator. Device admin apps have additional access to your device and cannot be removed unless you remove them from the Device Admin list.

To manage device administrators:
Go to Settings > Security > Device admin apps (or a similar entry) and remove admin access from all the apps. Or at least from apps which you do not recognize.

Once an app is off device admin list, it can be removed off just like any other app.

You can also check for the amount of data consumed by an app by checking the data usage stats. That'll help you better understand the culprit app.


Ringtone is starting late as a result of this it gets cut When we receive a call the ringtone is very slow for the first 3 secs and after that the ringtone plays with full volume. Is that a fault of my phone or everyone is facing the same? The first 3 secs of the ringtone is getting cut as we are hardly able to hear the song.

That's how it is on every device. The ringtone starts with a low volume and increases slowly. Set the ringtone volume very high and choose a ringtone with high pitch. I'm not sure if that'll solve your problem but just give it a try.


How do I find out which number an SMS is from, out of all the numbers associated with the sender? In the messaging application it says who is the sender of each message, but it doesn't say the phone number the message was from. From each thread I can get to the corresponding contact, but some contacts have several numbers and I don't know how to tell which number the message was from.

I can get the message details, but again only the name of the contact is listed, and not the number.

I am running ICS on a Galaxy S2 device.

In my LG optimus one running gingerbread, I can open a message thread and long press on an message. This pops up a list of options and if I press 'view message details' I get details like from, date, time. The value displayed for from is not the contact name rather it is their number.

Alternatively, instead of long press, short press on the sender's name in the message gives an option to call and when I do so and quickly disconnect, I can see the number which is called, which is the number the message came from.


Why did maps not auto update? Yesterday I was using the Google Maps app and every time I tried to change the mode of transportation away from driving it would crash giving the message "unfortunately google maps has stopped working". I tried rebooting and clearing the app cache to no avail. I then noticed in the Play store an update was available for it which I clicked on and installed. The auto update setting was checked so why didn't this happen automatically? Not even a notification was given saying there was an update available (unless I missed it). I could see this being a huge problem if apps randomly stop working and you don't know why and have to go through the Play store manually to apply updates.

It could be that the new update needed an extra permission. If that is the case, your app won't update automatically. It needs yo to accept the new permissions first.


Escalate privileges in ADB shell to fix build.prop permissions So I've done

# mv /storage/emulated/legacy/build.prop /system/build.prop

on my SM-T311 (Android 4.4.2) and now it won't boot.
The only change I've made was adding one line at the end:

net.hostname=Tableta

I've tried using adb shell (forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1927198) to revert the changes, but my PC won't detect the device when connected with USB cable in recovery mode.
Although, when I select apply update from ADB windows detects it and it shows up in adb, but I can't do adb shell. (RESOLVED)

Is there a way to fix my tablet without losing my data, or am I doomed?

Okay, I've made progress. I've plugged the device in when it was boot-looping and windows detected it. Through device manager I've installed USB Driver for Windows, revision 7 and that made me able to use the ADB interface. I've confirmed, that build.prop file permissions and owner group are wrong. Unfortunately it wouldn't let me chmod the file or remount.

I've also tried

>adb root

but it hangs forever with no output so I have to close the console window.

If you have a custom recovery you could boot into you could dirty flash the stock rom of your tablet.


LG - Fastboot doesn't recognize my device I'm trying to get flash a custom recovery on my LG p760, however when I type fastboot devices in the command prompt (while booted into fastboot mode) nothing shows up. adb devices works fine though. I have installed all necessary drivers as well.

I have read that sometimes it doesn't show up but it still works to flash etc. But In my case that's not true. If I try to flash something it just says <waiting for device> all the time and nothing appears on my phone screen.

This is really frustrating because I have searched for a fix everywhere without success.

I had same problem and it was because of USB3 PORT. When I changed usb cable to USB2 port fast boot drivers get installed and the error gone.


Can someone say how can I get to this network management window in my android device My device is vivo 1718 android 8.1. I have found this Network Management window when I didn't turn on mobile data access for one app. That app pops up an alert to change the network access and when I press to change it, I am directed to this window:

network management window (click to enlarge)

But after that I can't find it anywhere in my settings.

As in @dewey's comment that is located inside iManager App 'Network management' section. Here is the path.

iManager -> Data Monitor -> Network Management


Stop a mailbox syncing between 9am and 5pm I have my work emails set up on my LG G3, but when I'm at work I don't want to be getting notifications on it whilst getting them on my laptop as well.

Is there a way to stop a mailbox from syncing for a particular period? E.g., from 9am to 5pm?
I still want my other accounts to sync and notify me though, like my personal/other work email addresses.

Is there an app that can handle this? I've just come from an iPhone 4s (yesterday) so I'm still getting my head around the Android ecosystem.

That sounds like a perfect job for tasker (see the tasker tag-wiki for some background). Example profile in "Pseudo-Code":

Condition: Time, start: 9am, end: 5pm
Task: Sync off
Exit-Task: Sync On

Notes:

"Exit-Task" is optional. If not defined, Tasker restores the state from before the Task started.
"Sync Off" applies to more than just mail (includes e.g. contacts, calendars, etc.). If you want to only pause mail sync, you need a mail app with Tasker support, e.g. K-9 Mail, maybe with some additional plugin. I know that's possible with K-9, and it's more than likely there are some other supported Email Apps. If using such a client, replace the "Sync off" / "Sync on" with the corresponding plugin action.


I can't configure my tablet's usb to ethernet ip setting manually I have lenovo A3300-GV tablet which have usb ethernet support. I use micro usb to ethernet adapter and it work fine with my router. where my internet provided by local cable operator ISP Siti broadband or aliance. IP address, subnet mask, default gatewaw, DNS must set to pc ethernet IPv4 property or in router. But when I directly connect it to my tab via usb ethernet I can' configure manually and internet not working. My device rooted but no application before root or after rooted work. Android verson 4.4.2

To display Ethernet settings in Android parameters you can edit build.prop file and search for "ethernet" word. On my Haier E701 Tablet, I've found the line:

ro.rk.ethernet_enable=false

I've replaced the "false" value by "true" and Ethernet settings are displayed.


Powered USB hub not charging phone. Kernel options? I got a powered USB 2.0 hub (ET-UP900). As power source I am using the phones charger. But if I connect the hub with my phone (SM-C115) it does not charge. If I connect the charger directly it works.

My first thought was the hub does not provide enough power. But if I do the same thing with a tablet (SM-P905), which requires more power, it does work.

Also strange: If the hub is powered it does not work. If the hub is not powered it works just fine.

As I am using a custom build kernel I am looking a dmesg and fiddling with kernel options and driver to find the correct setting.

Maybe someone can give me a hint what might work?

Alternative: Any cable I can plugin in between to charge the phone and use the USB hub? I got a OTG charging cable but it would power the USB hub instead of the phone.

UPDATE
I found something about a special cable with a resistor to get into a special AUDIODOCK mode. I did found this AUDIODOCK in the source code of a related driver I saw in dmesg drivers/misc/max77803-muic.c. Maybe I can change the driver to force this mode all the time or something like this...

UPDATE 2
In drivers/misc/max77803-muic.c I saw the CONFIG_MUIC_MAX77803_SUPPORT_OTG_AUDIO_DOCK option needs to be set and the driver I got here does not support this anyway. I guess I try to use a updated driver. With AUDIO_DOCK support implemented.

Got it running. The max77803 chip in the SM-C115 was also used in the S4 but the driver my kernel had did not support the ET-UP900 device. So I searched for newer kernel driver and found danielpanzella/P900-kernel-source. In this driver they call the device LANHUB. If you have a look at the code there are a number of other devices, too. The driver detects depending on resistor on the signal pin what type of devices is connected.

I searched the repository for LANHUB and merged those code lines into my kernel, build the kernel, installed it with odin and it worked!

The USB hub, it's network card and attached USB devices are working while I get power from the hub charging the phone.

Update

Some steps to reproduce this. I used Vagrant as enviroment to get a clean linux box running. Download NDK and the source code of the kernel and setup a cross compiler see any Kernel Tutorial:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential kernel-package libncurses5-dev bzip2
export CROSS_COMPILE=/home/vagrant/android/ndk/android-ndk-r10b/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.8/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-
export ARCH=arm

Next you need to pick the right config file for your device:

cp arch/arm/configs/whatever .config

Edit the config to add a driver:

make menuconfig

For the ET-UP900 adapter goto in "Device Drivers" > "Network Device Support" > "USB Network Adapters". Select "Multi-purpose USB Networking Framework" and "SMSC LAN95XX base USB 2.0 10/100 ethernet devices"

If charing is not working look at "Device Driver" > "Misc". Enable settings with "SUPPORT_LANHUB" in it.

Now save and exit menuconfig and build the kernel:

make bzImage

Your new kernel will be arch/arm/boot/zImage. Now you need to pack this togther with a ramdisk (Android kernel kitchen) into a boot.img and flash it to the device (Odin).

With the new kernel and the adapter attached bash command netcfg should show you eth0. Run dhcpcd -k eth0 to get an IP.

To see if something is not working have a look at dmesg.


SSH server on Android Emulator Is it possible to start SSH server on Android emulator? What is the app name? I've tried a few apps but neither of them could run on Emulator.

Depending on how you have networking set up for your emulator, you might need to forward your SSH port from the emulator to a port on the host. Your emulator might be set up on a NAT/host-only network, so your SSH client can't actually reach the server.

To test this, try pinging the emulator's IP address from the system with your SSH client.


Better unlocking schemes? On my Galaxy S3 I have only a few options for locking/unlocking:

Either no locking and swiping, or entering a pin every time. Both options are not very attractive. One is too insecure when leaving it somewhere, the other too cumbersome, when I just take it out of my pocket. OK, there are more options, like face recognition and all that, but it never works in the dark.

What I would like to have is a more intelligent scheme: That I do not have to unlock as long as my S3 stays close to me. That a pin is only required, when it is further away from me.

Is something like that available or possible?  Maybe in conjunction with an RFID-chip? Or bluetooth? So I would carry in another pocket that other device.

Maybe you're looking for something like NFCSecure.
You can combine normal lock screen (i.e. swiping) with an underlaying NFCSecure lock screen for better security (only lets you in when scanned the needed NFC tag).
Your smartphone needs NFC capabilities and you need an NFC tag to carry around with you to unlock your phone.
Can not test this as my phone doesn't have NFC capabilities.


Galaxy Nexus ringtones and notifications too quiet I've recently ditched an iPhone in favour of an Android, Galaxy Nexus.  Now I am missing calls and texts all the time because I simply don't hear the ring!  I have maxed all the volume sliders in settings and the volume rocker on the side, and tried the more obnoxious ringtones included stock, but it is still fairly quiet.

I'm not hard of hearing but if I'm on a tram and the phone is in my suit pocket or bag, it's just not loud enough to be heard over the ambiant noise.

Is this a common problem or it might be specific to my phone?  How can I boost the volume of ringtone and text notifications?

You might want to give Volume+ a try (scroll down for download link).


How to uninstall Rooms App? I checked my phone after class and I noticed that a new app was installed. I keep automatic updates off at all times so I have no idea how this application came to be on my phone. It is called rooms and has the android logo as its thumbnail. I have uninstalled the application numerous times and it just automatically installs again each time. I have tried researching the application and I've come up with nothing. When I click on the app, it tells me to insert my device into my Gear VR. So my question has two parts: First, is this a legitimate application that others have heard of? And second, is there a way I can remove it? Thanks.

I found this advice on another chatroom:

Disabling "Facebook app installer" and "Facebook app manager" in app manager made this unwanted garbage stop harassing my precious S7.

it helped me.


How to enable "Disable HW overlays" at startup? Question is simple, is there an easy way to enable developer options on startup from a command line script or 3rd party app? I want to set the flag for 'Disable HW overlays' on startup because it gets turned off every-time I restart the system.
For reference I am on Android 10, with bootloader unlocked, custom recovery, and rooted.

Source-reddit, which references Android documentation

to DISABLE the h/w composer:
adb shell service call SurfaceFlinger 1008 i32 1

to ENABLE the h/w composer:
adb shell service call SurfaceFlinger 1008 i32 0

These need to be run as root and can be in a script or using the Termux Boot app as described in wiki
For some reason, this works the opposite way for OP (command for enable disables and vice-versa ; maybe a case for a separate question)


Why don't I see my custom ringtone under Default Notification Sounds? I just got a Nexus 5X, currently running Android 6.0.1, and managed to get some custom mp3 ringtone files into the Ringtones folder on the phone.

Under Settings > Sound & Notification,  if I choose Phone Ringtone, I can select any of the ones I added.

However, if I select Default notification ringtone, it doesn't list any of the ones I added.

How can I use a custom file as my default notification ringtone?

Just like you put those custom audio files into Ringtones directory for the purpose of using them as Ringtone, you need to put your custom files again but in another directory named Notifications (under /sdcard) to have them listed under Default notification ringtone. That would be sufficient.
Note: reboot the device if the Settings app doesn't show those files after moving in into the relevant directory.
Tested successfully on Nexus 6 running Android 6.0.1.
Edit
Alternatively, you can use a third party file manager app. Quite a lot of popular ones responds to the intent action android.intent.action.RINGTONE_PICKER. When you would tap on Default notification ringtone you would be shown a bottom sheet1 with the option to choose Media Storage or the relevant file manager app. Using your file manager app browse to the location of your custom audio file and select it.
The benefit of the last approach is that you don't have to copy or move the audio file to a particular destination, so you get to save space. Furthermore, once you've selected an audio file using file manager its entry would remain in available tones until you move/delete the file.
1 If you're not shown a bottom sheet then you might be having Media Storage selected as default app to handle that intent or your file manager app doesn't handle that intent. I recommend clearing defaults for Media Storage from Settings app → tap three dots line and select Show system → browse to Media Storage → Open by default → Clear defaults. If that doesn't help, switch to an another file manager app.


Phone wakes when unplugged, how to keep it asleep? I'm trying to charge my phone with an inconsistent power source.  Unfortunately, the phone wakes up whenever power stops... Sometimes (often) using more power than is charged.

Is there a way to stop the trigger to wake when charging ends?  What is the internal name for this trigger?

My workarounds so far share the same fault:  I can't receive calls.  It can't wake if I turn it off, and it doesn't use too much power (usually) in airplanr mode.

It's probably doable, but I very much doubt that you can do this with the default (unmodified) factory firmware. Custom firmwares such as CyanogenMod may allow you to do this. Your mileage may vary and you may even need to modify or recompile these custom firmwares to get what you want.


Connecting Phone to PC...USB socket seems to be dirty It used to work.

I could connect my phone to my PC with a USB cable and then browse the phone, like a mounted USB drive, with Windows explorer.   Moving files back and forth was easy.

Then it stopped working.  I used a wooden toothpick to dig some lint and dirt out of the phone's USB port.  I also hit it with compressed air.

It helped but it is really intermittent...I have to wiggle and jiggle the USB cable to get the drive to mount.  And it's not reliable.   I tried another cable with the same result.

So...what is the best way to clean a phone's USB port?

First, I powered off the phone.

Then, I took some contact cleaner (the kind used to clean old TV tuners and potentiometers) and sprayed it into the female USB port.  I plugged and unplugged the male USB plug several times.  I blew out the port with compressed air and powered the phone back on.

Success!

(thanks for the suggestions and comments)


Use Nook Tablet in the UK I will be visiting the U.S. this month and I was thinking about buying the Nook Tablet from Barnes and Noble whilst over there as I am looking for a Tablet to primarily read books on but also browser the web and watch videos.

Two questions

Will the Tablet work in the UK when I get back? By "work" I mean will I be able to browse the web, watch videos on the device and read books that are already on the device?

Can you put your own books on there? I have a number of books already in mobi format, happy to convert them if necessary.

Thanks

AFAIK the nook tablet doesnt have 3g support. So country specific problems are not applicable. You can use wifi wherever you want.
With the kindle app or another app that supports .mobi it is possible. Otherwise you can use a program like calibre in your PC to convert them to epub.


How to get to your settings without a home screen app? I hadn't used my old HTC Hero for a while, but when I rebooted it I got an error saying:

LauncherPro has expired, please download an updated version.

But wifi was turned off and when I tried to get to the home screen, it kept sending me back into the browser. So how can I get to my settings, so I can turn on wifi to download it?

Or is there another way of updating it without me requiring to go to my settings?

Found this at: http://orlygoingthirty.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-uninstall-expired-launcherpro.html

  I finally found a workable solution:
  download the latest LauncherPro APK
  (or hopefully any other APK). Connect
  your phone to your PC and mount the SD
  card. Copy the new APK to the
  top-level of the SD card and rename it
  to something short (like lp.apk).

  Unmount the phone, then in the phone
  browser (which is the only thing LP
  lets you run), type the following in
  the URL bar:

  file:///sdcard/lp.apk

  (notice the three slashes)

  This will force-launch the Installer
  application on the phone. Now on my
  phone, it was set to disallow
  non-Android Market apps from
  installing; since the APK is not off
  the Android Market, the phone popped
  up an error and offered to let me
  change the application setting. Which
  launches the Settings application.


Bug Report and Power-Bug Report Functions not working on Nexus 7 Android 4.3 I need to gather log info for QA testing.  The settings menu "Bug Report" and the power menu "Bug Report" functions don't work for me on my Nexus 7 running Jellybean 4.3 (don't know if it ever worked because I just found out about the function).  I get a popup saying "this will take a while..." and after that nothing.  Scanning the file system, I don't see anything that looks like a screen capture and no mail is sent out.

(I can't get the magic {power/sound up/sound down} button combo to work either). The only way I can collect app logging info is by tethering the nexus 7 and using ADB.

ANy idea how to get the new bug report mechanism working or why its not working would be appreciated.

I have discovered the solution (at least for my Nexus 7)! Here's what happens:

Tap Take Bug Report
Take bug report "take a while" popup displays - Tap report
After about 30 seconds, the words "bug report captured" appear for about 2 seconds on left side of the top manu bar (the one with Time and Wi-Fi and other icons).
An adroid icon then displays on the left side (where downloads and other status indicators display).
Swiping down on those icons displays an item "Bug report captured"
Tapping on the item brings up a "Complete action using" popup that includes Gmail.
Tapping the Gmail icon allow you to send the bug report text and its associated screen capture to yourself.

Pretty nice, but very easy to miss.


I think that I may have been a victim of a malicious mms I have a Sidekick 4g running Android 2.2.1.
I just received a multimedia message from an acquaintance who I happened to have in my contact list. I clicked on the notification which sent me to something that looked like a twitter login screen and then it went away and went to my home screen. I immediately turned my phone on airplane mode (in case my phone was just turned into a spam machine) and went to my messages to look at the message again, but it was gone which gives me even more fear that my phone is infected with something.
Is there a known vulnerability in android that can infect my phone without any action on my part other than viewing a message? If so, how can I eradicate it?
Edit
I do have unknown sources turned on.  I downloaded a permissions-checker app and have nothing unusual requesting to send mms, but is only beneficial if it is not a 0-day. I checked my t-mobile account and it said that I have only sent one sms this month.
TL;DR
Received mms, think my phone is now infected w/ trojan.

I had the same issue with somebody on my contact list sending me an MMS that ended up auto-extracting spyware on my phone. Long story short he was able to hear all of my calls, see all of my texts, basically was able to remotely control my phone. I would suggest a factory reset of your phone and turning your MMS auto-retrieval options to off (as it is on by default). Then change all of your passwords to your accounts that you've been using on your phone. It's a hassle but when this happened to me, I got a new phone and somehow the same symptoms carried over until I changed all of my passwords. Even now I still feel that my new phone is compromised as sometimes it will get hot for no reason or drain a lot of battery for no reason. However, it's much better than before where I would notice videos and pictures being taken remotely and once I was trying to take a selfie with a friend and my phone literally turned off by itself without a warning. I've added AV software but that didn't seem to help much. At this point use your common sense, and don't install anything from a shady third-party source. Hope this helps.


Does excellent 4G coverage imply excellent 3G coverage? Is the primary benefit of 4G LTE speed, and not signal strength?

I want to sign up on T-Mobile with a Moto E, which is not an LTE enabled phone.  Of course 3G is passe, so 3G coverage isn't clearly indicated on the coverage map.  Do areas with 4G coverage always have 3G coverage, just slower?

Simple answer: No.

3G (also called UMTS) is a different techology than 4G (also called LTE).

Both technologies don't share any common base technology (starting with the frequencies and going over to the encoding technologies). So your carrier has two different nets, one with 3G and another with 4G. If you are lucky being near a 4G base station you have an excellent signal strength for 4G but the next 3G base station could be far away so that you have no signal at all.

It is not uncommon for carriers to have both technologies in one place but there is no provision for this.


Is there a way to access the phone filesystem from computer, wireless? Known solutions:

USB Mass Storage (sadly, mostly deprecated on Android 4, 5, etc.).

MTP, and I know its benefits (a lot) and its weaknesses (browsing on a MTP drive with Windows Explorer has poor integration of usual features: try to right click on a file on a MTP drive, you don't have the usual UI things like Open with etc.)

Samba

FTP server solutions (good solution, but 1) how to use this if I'm on the road, with no Wifi router like at home? then I cannot link computer <---> phone?  2) it seems that such an app doesn't offer access to external sd card)

AirDroid, etc.

But with all these methods, you don't really have access on your computer to the phone's filesystem like if it was a local folder.
Question:
Is there a solution that makes it possible to browse the phone's filesystem as if it was a computer local folder, easily?

According to the mentioned requirements, more powerful tool to use is Sambadroid. SambaDroid is a native port for Android of the popular Samba for Linux. This application allows you to share/manage files on your device easily from any device of your network.
Update: With the Windows Creators Update you may (or not) need to first enable SMB Server/Client functionality.
Pros

No need to use router even a mobile hotpot works fine
You can easily set a share from your android device (e.g sd card)
Ability to set shared folder with read/write permissions

Limitations

Due to limitations in later editions of Windows trying to explicitly map the network drive can result in a "network not found" error. Ignore it and use Windows explorer method.

Requires root (needed for CIFS implementation on android). Alternatively if not root, then its better to create a shared folder on windows then access it from android with a suitable file explorer, you can still perform file operations.

Setup involves setting the desired share from the device. See screenshot:

Note: NO affiliation with the above aplication
Switch on your mobile hotspot and allow your PC to connect to the network.
Once done just type [Win]+[R] in your computer, write \\SAMBADROID
or go to PC >> Network and you will see a new share, see below:

The samba share will look like this:

You can perform various functions like delete, copy etc. See below:

Hope this helps.