open multiple URIs with one click (similar to desktop Firefox "open all in tabs") I want to open a folder of about 20 bookmarks in a web browser with one click. So far I have not found any browser or any addon that will do this, but maybe I am overlooking something obvious.

An alternative option is a very good speeddial-type app that will help me track which which bookmark was opened last so I can manually work through a list of 20+ bookmarks.

The problems I am trying to solve are:

make it convenient to open many bookmarks at once.
if I have to open them one at a time, provide a way for me to keep track of which bookmarks have already been opened in this session so I can manually open the next one as I go through the large list of bookmarks.

I have already tried Firefox sync, Dolphin Connect, XMarks and several other solutions and none of them do what I need.

It's not a perfect solution but it should help you out. Following preformatted text is a very simple script that can open a series of bookmarks which are tagged with a particular keyword. Each bookmark would be opened in the browser selected as default for the bookmark's URL type.

Script

#!/system/bin/sh

list=/data/media/0/bms_list;
keyword="$1";
browser="$2";
mkfifo $list;

# force-stop default browser
[[ "$browser" ]] && am force-stop "$browser";

# get URL of bookmarks associated with the supplied keyword
content query --uri content://org.mozilla.firefox.db.browser/bookmarks --projection url --where "keyword='$keyword'" | busybox sed 's/.*url=//g' > $list &

# Take each URL from the saved output and launch it using the default browser
while read line; do
    am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d "$line" --activity-exclude-from-recents;
    sleep 1;
done < $list
rm $list;

Prerequisites

Here are the hard prerequisites for the script to work:

You must have root access1.
Busybox must be installed and available under PATH variable.
Firefox Browser for Android is required. It is required because Chrome doesn't support tags, the bookmark folders are not visible through Chrome's content provider and it would be painful to me if I begin to parse Chrome's bookmarks file available in its private directory. I didn't test with other browsers so that's another reason why I made Firefox a prerequisite.

It is to be noted that you're not required to use Firefox browser as your daily driver, but only to make and keep bookmarks in it for them to be sorted through particular keywords. Firefox browser doesn't support multiple keywords for bookmakrs, as of v44.0.2.

To add a keyword: Bookmark a link in Firefox, go to Bookmarks tab, long press on your bookmark → Edit → add your keyword under Keyword.

I've not tested with a keyword containing a space so if the script doesn't work with a keyword containing space(s), replace space(s) with _ in your bookmarks and then try the script.
I've only tested this solution with Firefox and Chrome so I can't guarantee that this would work with any browser. However, common sense dictates that if it is a browser for casual browsing, it would have registered for an intent having a URL data type, so the browser should have no problem with my script.

Note: For some reason, Firefox couldn't handle the series of bookmarks after some time and crashed. (It actually crashed every time.) On the other hand, Chrome v45.0.2564.95 didn't crash even for once.

Here's how the script can be executed after saving it under /sdcard with extension .sh:

Running the script

Install a terminal emulator app and execute:

su -c 'sh /sdcard/FILE KEYWORD BROWSER'

Example:

su -c 'sh /sdcard/bms_launch.sh Stack_Exchange com.android.chrome'  # this would launch all the bookmarks tagged with the keyword Stack_Exchange in the default browser com.android.chrome

Things to know:

FILE: file name of the script, e.g.: bms_launch.sh
KEYWORD: the keyword to which all associated bookmarks should be searched for and be launched in default browser
BROWSER: package name of your default browser. To know the package name, follow View app's full package name?

Note: it is not necessary to provide package name of the default browser. I used it because I had to force-stop Chrome as Chrome was causing some complication without a force-stop.

Convenient execution

How you would execute this script in your device is upon you to decide. I can recommend these two methods. Any of them would be enough.

a home screen shortcut made through Terminal Emulator app to a custom command on your home screen.
Tasker, to create an icon on home screen, tapping which would execute the script.
assigning script to a pie using LMT launcher.

1 Root access is needed because I don't know how to generate (and easily parse) a list of bookmarks from some browser dynamically. Even if I can have such a list, I wouldn't be able to go on unless I know that those bookmarks can be sorted using a tag or a keyword. This is why I chose Firefox and root access.

The dependency on a single keyword might cause inconvenience but I've given you a (possibly good) idea. If your preferred browser supports multiple tags/keywords for bookmarks then you should have no problem in tweaking my script per your needs.


Passcode reset without factory resetting phone My girls put a passcode on my phone. If I try and guess 1 more time it will factory reset. Any ideas?

Your best shot is to use the Android Device Manager to force a temporary password. Go ahead and Google it. It should be the first result. This is the Google equivalent of find my iPhone.

Once this is open, sign in using the Google account that's associated with the phone. You should be able to locate the phone, but what you want is the lock function. Set a different password you know with a message. When the phone displays that message, it's safe to unlock the phone using the temporary password you just set. From here you can go into the phone's settings and disable the password.


Removing stock browser on Jelly Bean Possible Duplicate:
  Unistall a system app without root?

Chrome is the default on Jelly Bean OS. When I bought Nexus 7 tablet it came preinstalled with JB, but when my Galaxy Nexus got upped the old stock browser is still present.

How can I get rid of the stock browser on Galaxy Nexus in JB? Is it at all possible?

This does not really remove the app from your device, but "freezes" it (i.e. makes it "hidden", so it no longer shows up in your App Drawer etc.):

From your Homescreen, open the menu and go to Settings → Apps → Browser, and there hit Disable.

If you later decide you want it back: Same path, and Enable it again.


How do I make a Android phone play sounds remotely? I'm doing a Lego EV3 robot for a project. It needs to play sounds (like a soundboard app on a phone, but triggered remotely). Sadly, the speaker on the EV3 brick is too quiet for this. I got the idea to use my old phone connected to a Bluetooth speaker. Sadly, I can't find any apps that already do this and I have no programming experience. Is there another way to remotely trigger playback of a sound file stored on the phone? I'm okay with rooting the phone.

EDIT: I guess I didn't make that clear enough... I want to hold my phone in my hand and with that phone I want to make my other phone play short MP3 files. Without any wired connection. God dammit is English hard...

Have you tried airdroid https://www.airdroid.com/ it's very easy to use!

Or you can try somthing like https://www.logmein.com/ it's a cloud-based remote connectivity service a bit more complicated to setup

I hope my answer was helpful


How to completely remove spam bots from Telegram groups? I'm managing a small Telegram groups. Unfortunately a couple of days ago a user added a bot to the group. I immediately removed/banned that user and the bot. However all other member still see the bot on their Telegram messenger:

which when selected expands to:

I have looked everywhere but for the love of god I can't find any way to remove it entirely from the group. I would appreciate if you could help me with this.

This is because the bot that has been added sent a ReplyKeyboard as its ReplyMarkup. This ReplyMarkup are the button(s) you see at the bottom of the chat. To remove this you might want to add a bot that can send AND remove the Keyboard.

I know that @combot can do this with it's command !nokeyboard. This will send a keyboard to everyone in the chat and instantly remove it.

Hopefully this will help.


4G network compatibility in France I read somewhere (here) that in France, in order for the 4G to work ideally with all carriers, one should have a smartphone with the 4G network spec: "FDD-LTE : Bands : 1/3/7/20/28".

I am considering buying the Moto G5 model XT1685 for my brother who lives in France. According to this site, the 4G network specs of this phone read:

LTE Cat6 700/800/850/900/1800/2100/2600 (Bands 1,3,5,7,8,19,20,28)
TD-LTE 2300/2500/2600 (Bands 38,40,41)

I can't figure out whether it is a problem or not that I am not seeing "FDD" in these specs. In short: will this phone work perfectly fine in France? Thank you!

The only duplex modes of LTE are TDD and FDD (see band list on Wikipedia) - in other words, non-TD-LTE bands are FDD-LTE.

Generally Europe uses band 20 extensively, but you are still advised to consult your particular carrier.


How can I hide soft buttons? I have a tablet with 3 soft buttons (Back, Home, Recent) with Android 7.1.

Is there some way to hide them (and consequently use the full available screen), or at least dim them?

(They are disturbing when watching a video with my favorite old video player, which is not able to hide them.)

Navigation Gestures for Android, featured app on XDA Developers will work for you. Its free for most of the features. It hides the navigation bar completely and enables gestures to operate the phone.

Refer to this page for details: Navigation Gestures on XDA


Does the Bluetooth/Google Now "Initializing" bug exist on Razr Maxx HD? There is a pretty severe, widespread Android Jellybean bug that causes Google Now voice search to not work over bluetooth audio (it gets stuck saying "Initializing").  I've personally dealt with this on a Galaxy S3 and a Galaxy Note 2, both running 4.1.1.

I'm curious whether the Razr Maxx HD has this bug - is there any credible information on which phones are affected by this bug?  Or can anyone vouch from experience whether this is a bug on the Razr Maxx HD as well?

Verified that this bug does indeed exist on the Razr Maxx HD (running 4.1.1)


Prerequisites of Installing New Launcher First of all, consider me noob in this launcher thing, as I have never installed any launcher on my Samsung Galaxy S2. But now, I'm thinking to take a plunge and download one, but have no idea what are the requirements for such things.

Mobile Information

Samsung Galaxy S2
Model No = GT-19100
Android Version = 2.3.3

Mobile is not rooted.

There should be no real "requirements" for launchers - as long as they could be downloaded to your phone they should work.

Maybe one ore more functions could be slower on older devices if the hardware is not really new, but the base functions should just work...


WhatsApp service extended to lifetime and revoked immediately? I just saw the following when I opened Whatsapp:

Within few minutes I get the following message:

Why is this happening?

It sounds like other blogs are talking about it:

WhatsApp is now free and promises to stay ad-free - Yahoo! News
WhatsApp, why you gotta be so rude? - techshout

WhatsApp official blog says that the app is going free:

  So over the next several weeks, we'll remove fees from the different versions of our app and WhatsApp will no longer charge you for our service.


How to share clipboard between Android devices, preferably without need for internet connection Is there a way to share the contents of the clipboard between Android device similar to how it is done with Windows?

Basically I am looking for a similar method as asked here: How do I copy text from my PC to my phone?, but I want to to this with my smartphone (running Android 7.0) and tablet (running Android 4.3).

From the post above (and many others already posted on Android Stackexchange) there are many tools to do that with Android/Windows devices and I use Clipsync for that, nevertheless I was unsuccessful when I tried to setup with Android/Android devices.

Things I have tried

I recently tried to do that with Join but its is not working and I can't login to access the features (also it needs internet).
Also I tried to use Roamit which looking promising but it is not supportes on Android 4.3 devices.
I tried to setup Autoremote with Tasker as described here but I am stuck in setting up the task.
I was hoping to also use to QR code method but couldn't find a working one

I am looking for a method that uses bluetooth/local access to share clipboard contents between android deviceswith no creation of additional files such as .html files.

Thanks to Izzy's trove of curated apps
Paste Easy (that can be downloaded from Aptoide) was suggested. Reason being that this app caters to early versions of KitKat which is OP's requirement. I didn't try the app but OP has confirmed that it meets the bill.

For alternatives, see Multi Device Clipboard
on Izzy's list.


How do I prevent Android from going to sleep? I never want my Android tablet to go to sleep, can I prevent sleep mode?

Depending on you tablet, you may have the option to set the screen timeout to "never" under Settings > Display > Sleep.
If you do not have this option, you can enable Settings > Developer options > Stay awake. This will keep your tablet awake while it is charging. This could be useful if your tablet does not support the "never" screen timeout.
Note: If you don't see Developer options in Settings, it may be made available by going to to Settings > About > Build number. Developer options should appear after tapping the build number several times.
(Rowan) Note: Developer settings isn't always in build number it can be in others such as the kernel version. It's mostly trying to be hidden by the devs in different locations and I know this because I myself have found them in different locations on different devices.


Videos working on my website do not work when viewed from Android browser My website has videos which are in MP4 format and work well when viewed from a Google Chrome browser. But when I try to load my website from the browser of an Android OS, the video doesn't show up. Is there any thing else I need to do in order to make it work? Actually the site is not done by me, so I have no details about how the site is built. I just
wanted to know if anything special needed to be done in order to make videos work in the Android browser.

The Android Browser's capability and Version is responsible for playing the video. There are couple of browsers which don't support the video codecs. You need to see the compatibility matrix and make sure you put correct format of the video on server.

http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html


Messaging app (stock) not using full phone number to send text/sms I am using Android 4.2 Jelly Bean stock Messaging App and the get "message not sent" error whenever I use my contact to send the message.  I noticed that the Messaging App might not be using the full 10 digit number to send the text/sms.  If I manually enter the full number, e.g., 155551234567 then the message is sent successfully.  But if I use the contact then it only shows in the top display that 123-4567 number and then it will fail to send any text/sms.

I am wondering if that is problem and if so how can I set the Messaging App to use the full phone number?  I did not find any setting for this anywhere so far.

Thank you for any help.

I presume you're talking about US numbers? If you haven't tried including a + at the start of numbers saved in your contacts that could be worth doing. +1 555 123 4567 is the international format and may help other apps know where to send your message/call.


How can I access the files in "/data/data" and copy them into memory card without root? Are there any way to access the files in /data/data and copy them into memory card? I do not have root access.

Without root access you have 2 options. Both options (may) allow you to access the files for a particular app, e.g. the folder /data/data/com.app.packagename.

If the application is debuggable you can use the run-as command in adb shell (more info about what adb is and how to install it can be found here)

adb shell
run-as com.your.packagename`
cp /data/data/com.app.packagename/

If the application is not debuggable, you can use Android's backup function.

adb backup -noapk com.app.packagename

You will now be prompted to 'unlock your device and confirm the backup operation'. It's best NOT to provide a password, otherwise it becomes more difficult to read the data. Just click on 'backup my data'. The resulting 'backup.ab' file on your computer contains all the app's data in android backup format. Basically it's a compressed tar file. This page explains how you can use OpenSSL's zlib command to uncompress it.
You can use the  adb restore backup.db command to restore the backup.


Will installing TWRP wipe my device? So I've rooted my Galaxy S10 Exynos using Magisk and now I wish to install Twrp for easier updates flashing.
Will installing TWRP on my magisk rooted device wipe my data?
Thanks

No. TWRP is only a custom recovery that replaces your stock recovery. But be sure to flash the right TWRP for your device.
Searching in this XDA thread
using your model number
would be a good idea (On some devices it is possible that root is lost, and you may need to root again)


Manually upgrade Galaxy Nexus 4.0.4 (yakjuxw) to 4.1 I have a Galaxy Nexus (maguro/yakjuxw) with Android version 4.0.4. I saw the new features in 4.1 so i want to update, but i don't think an OTA will be available anytime soon. So, I'm considering manually updating. AFAIK, I will need to switch to the yakju firmware that gets updates directly from Google.

That being said, I have some questions:

Is the firmware the same as the OS? I always thought firmware is something like BIOS, UEFI, coreboot etc. and OS like Windows, GNU/Linux etc. But i have a feeling the terms are used slightly differently in the Android world. This is because the updates guides I found usually show how to flash firmware.
Will such an upgrade require rooting the phone?
Will this void my warranty?
I know a Google search will yield many guides on how to do this, but I'd appreciate it if an experienced user could provide a link with the guide he/she considers to be the best (most complete, safe etc.)

Firmware, in this case, means the OS, since it's a preinstalled part of the core system.
The method I used does not require root, but it's possible to root at the same time. I didn't.
This depends. In most cases, unlocking the bootloader voids your warranty if the warranty is read and interpreted letter-to-letter. However, you could install an official firmware and relock the bootloader to try to bypass this.

I've upgraded my yakjuxw with this guide's method #2. Everything went perfectly except for a few little tricks.

First of all, if your phone is completely unmodified, you need to unlock your bootloader. This can be done by booting into the bootloader as explained in the post, and running fastboot oem unlock, navigating to "Yes, unlock bootloader" with the volume keys and confirming with the power button.

NOTE: This will clear your phone, so you'll need to copy the necessary files to your phone after this!

After this, reboot once so that the partitions are mounted correctly in CWM later.

Now follow the guide carefully, and you should be able to upgrade (almost) without any problems. My phone got stuck while booting for the first time, so after 15-20mins I rebooted the phone (yanked the battery) but had no adverse effects.

At least my phone got the official 4.1.1 update today, so check for that after your first boot!


Can my Google Docs app be secured? I have sensitive information in my Google Docs.

I enabled two-step verification with my Google account; but just noticed that Google DOCS on my phone doesn't require any type of PIN number or password when I open it.  Is there a way to secure this app?

NOTE:  I also have a PIN number that must be entered after swipe.

All you need is an app locker app. There are many app lockers in Play Store. Just, search. I'd recommend Smart App Protector (I use its pro version which is great). Use it to lock Google Docs app.


Can I use my Google account on two or more phones? Possible Duplicate:
  Multiple Android Devices with a single google account

I want to share some applications and contacts on my girlfriend's Android cellphone, can I do that?  Will I lose my Market applications or can I share them simultaneously with another cellphone?

Yes, you can do it and use all your apps.  You can't currently use the Market with multiple accounts, though, so if your girlfriend already has her account on her phone then you can't use your account for the Market unless you remove hers and add yours as the primary account.


How to view the link's URL before opening it in a web browser? I'd like to see what URL I'm going to visit before opening it in my browser. What setting or app allows me to do that?

If there's no such setting, an app that adds an entry to the following box would also be OK.

PS. Some links trigger this menu. Long URLs are truncated, so this solution is sub-optimal.

EDIT: After using my original solution for a while, I came to the conclusion that it does not satisfy my needs: Using it to see and use the link URL took too much time.
So I developed a new Android app with a single purpose, namely:

Copying the link to the clipboard, and
Display the link target in a toast.

The app is available in Google Play as Copy Link to Clipboard (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.robwu.copylink); below are two screenshots of the app in action.

Original answer below

I figured out that I used the wrong keywords. Searches for "URL preview", "link preview", "view link", etc. didn't yield anything useful. So, I went to look for URL unshortener apps.

The Unshorten It app by LeoCardz (Leonardo Cardoso)

Adds an entry to the contextmenu of each link.
Adds an option to the "Share Link" menu.
Shows up in the URL intent screen.

Furthermore, it is fast, the UI looks great and it doesn't contain any ads or nagging donate requests.

One minor issue: One cannot directly visit the URL without first tapping on the "Unshorten" button. After tapping that button, the URL is resolved (ie. unshortened if needed), and the result is displayed below the blue button. From there, you can share it, or open it in another browser, or just go back to the original app.

(I've evaluated two other apps, Unshorten by Tea and Toys and Short URL Evaluator by Nicolas Smith, but they didn't show up at the URL intent screen, which was a minimal requirement to me)


Transfer Files to Nexus 4 with Terminal I want to transfer files to my Nexus 4 using the Mac Terminal.

I tried to use the adb shell with adb push, but because I'm not root I'm not allowed to push to the sdcard.

Is there any way to mount the device as a regular drive or to use adb push without root access?

You can't push to the sdcard's root, but you can push in any folder found in it, except /sdcard/Android/data.


In Google Photos, when I try to delete a photo or video on SD card it tells me to go to gallery I have 2 Mi note 4g's and both of them have the same problem. I have also given access to all permissions in settings(though there is no permission for SD card). All the photos outside the SD card can be deleted all right.

Your issue is you haven't allow SD card access from the app itself:

Hamburger menu (Three dots) in the upper right.
Settings
SD Card Access

Regards.


Is it possible to use an Android device as a second monitor? Sort of like this iPad app.  Is there any way to extend your desktop onto your phone or tablet?  Not looking for VNC solutions.

iDisplay is now available for Android.

There's a review on androidcommunity.com

US$4.99 in Google Play.


Auto changing lock screen backgrounds from my facebook photos So I just purchased a oneplus one and am switching over from a windows phone. One of the features I like on the windows phone is the ability to auto change my facebook photos as my lock screen background. Basically within the settings, I can choose the facebook app, pick which albums I want, and then my lock screen background gets automatically set to a new photo from those albums every few hours. Anything like this possible on android? I don't remember it being possible when I last used Android.

Thanks

Jakub

Sync your Facebook album to your phone and then use a live wallpaper such as Photo Album. Finally, set the live wallpaper to be your lock screen. Not intuitive, but hey, that's the flexibility of Android! :)


List of default applications for a given android version Is there a list for the stock applications (those who are installed by default with android), and libraries? for example: Atci_service, calendar, com.mediatek are they default applications? Or where there added by someone else?

Thanks.

You might want to check on android.com, which contains the list of apps included with each version:

1.1
1.5 (Cupcake)
1.6 (Donut)
2.0 (Eclair)
2.1 (Eclair)

Unfortunately, they stopped that listing after Eclair (2.1). And of course each "ROM cook" might have added other apps (and bloatware) to the list...


IS it common for mobile data to stop working but normal phone reception to be fine? So I've got a sony xperia z3 compact and it's only a couple of months old.

So far, it's been great but today I noticed that the mobile internet doesn't work. The thing is though my phone reception is fine - I can dial people without getting problems - it's just that when I'm not within a WIFI zone, I have no data.

I've rang up my mobile network provider and they say my data is activated. The phone itself is from overseas but I'm fairly sure, the phone's mobile data has worked before - it's only stopped working recently.

I'm trying to figure out if it's a hardware fault in my phone and I'm hoping it's not because it would be difficult and lengthy to get it replaced. Is it common for a phone's mobile data to stop functioning while the phone's normal phone reception works perfectly fine?

Do these functions use the same components to work?

Not normal , check your phone params to be sure that you did not disable data , you can also dial *#*#4636#*#* to open the diagnostic menu then first item and scroll down to "preferred network" and check what is written.


Hangouts Crashing on Receiving SMS after Lollipop Update I've recently been involved with updating a few Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 phones to Lollipop.  These are OTA updates to phones on the Bell Canada network.  On 3 of them we've run into problems with Hangouts crashing when it receives a text message.  Restarting the phone does not help.

Well, I would say that's just another bug over the Lollipop its has been reported by many users and its the reason why Google Suspended the OTA update of Lollipop over some Asian regions. I would say you need to wait a while for the bug fix to show up !

You can head over to a post of Top Tech News for More information over this one !


how to recover password android with permission denied? I get the following message:

adb: error: failed to copy '/data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf' to '.\wpa_suppl
icant.conf': remote Permission denied

I can not copy nothing from my android to recover my password of mi wifi

You would need root access to access that sensitive file. If you don't have root access, then all efforts with adb would be futile. That file and the directory is owned by user wifi and group wifi, and because adb (user 2000) is neither a member of group wifi, nor that file has read permission for others (users), you're at loss here.


Storage space and memory: mobile phone architecture versus PC architecture On a PC, there are hard disks acting as storage space where the operating system and application files are stored, and there is RAM which is memory which gets used up by the operating system executable code and applications executable code while everything is running.

On my Samsung Galaxy SIII, when I go to Settings -> More -> Storage, there are various sections which talk about storage space and memory as though these were the same thing?

So here come my questions:

Apart from storage space provided by the optional SD card which must be inserted into the back of the phone next to the SIM card, is there a single memory chip acting as both a storage medium for files when the device is turned off as well as random access memory for the running operating system executables and apps in execution? As the following screenshot reports there seem to be 16.00GB on my device used both as a hard disk and as RAM. Is this how this storage medium works, a single chip for both?
Where can I see the amount of space available on my SIM card? According to Wikipedia such space can only be used to store specific kinds of data such as network-specific information, a maximum of 250 contacts (except for newer models) where each contact can only consist of a name and single phone number pair, and SMS messages. SIM card capacities are also limited to 32KB to 128KB or more, but in any case it's a very small amount of space. It could be that because of these limitations the Samsung Galaxy SIII and other modern Android phones do not make use of this space for user data, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you for your replies.

In this respect, there is no difference between regular PC and Android.

The terminologies, however, is slightly confusing.

System memory refers to the storage space that is used by system files, and Device memory refers to all storage space. Device memory does not refer to RAM. Your device's RAM can be seen in Settings -> More -> Application Manager.

  is there a single memory chip acting as both a storage medium for files when the device is turned off as well as random access memory for the running operating system executables and apps in execution?

Sort of. Most Android device uses a System-on-chip (SOC). What is included in a SOC varies depending on the particular chip and device, but a typical SOC may have CPU, RAM, GPU, wireless, and possibly storage manufactured in a single chip. In regular PC, these are usually separate components, SOC is used in mobile devices to save space wasted due to separate component packaging, but internally there is still a delineation between the components.

  Where can I see the amount of space available on my SIM card?

AFAIK, you can't. Android have very limited support for SIM card facility. It uses the SIM card only for Telephony functions and importing existing contacts there into the device's address book.


Is it possible to switch keyboard language layout on HTC Wildfire? I am thinking of buying an HTC Wildfire S. Since I will be buying it in Germany, it will have a German keyboard (e.g. Y and Z are interchanged).

Will there be a way for me to switch the keyboard to English and French and back to German with the click of a button as I do on my Windows PC (ALT-shift)?

The built-in Gingerbread keyboard should support multiple languages, they can be selected from the Settings -> Locale and Text -> Gingerbread keyboard -> Input Languages menu. After this, you'll see the current language on the space bar and can roll through the languages by swiping left or right on the space bar.


Why can the Nexus 7 display so much more content on-screen than the Galaxy Nexus? The Galaxy Nexus is 1280x720, and the Nexus 7 tablet is 1280x800.

I realize that the tablet is physically larger, but it's screen resolution, not display size, that determines screen real-estate.

Why is it that the Nexus 7 appears to be able to show so much more content on-screen?

EDIT - My question isn't "why was it designed this way". My question is more "how is it that it is able to show more on the screen"? PPI doesn't explain this.

Is it just a matter of the scaling?

To understand why Nexus 7 can show more content than the Galaxy Nexus, I'll first explain two concepts: screen density and density-independent-pixel.

But before we go into technical details, it may be worth to clarify the design goals of using density-independent-pixels. The goal is to define a UI that is similar in dimension across devices, regardless of the screen size. So in this case the appearance of the menus is the same in the Galaxy Nexus and the tablet (side by side should look very similar), but, as one has a bigger screen, more content can be shown. The designer selects an appearance that looks good for a certain size (a 160 dpi screen is the base) and this is "simulated" in this case in devices with higher dpi.

Screen Density

Commonly referred to as dpi (dots per inch). Android groups all actual screen densities into four generalized densities: low (120), medium (160), high (240), and extra high (320). A device such as Galaxy Nexus has "extra high" screen density (more specifically, the dpi value is set at 320). The Nexus 7 uses "tvdpi" - i.e. 213 dpi.

Density Independent Pixel

Commonly referred to as dp. This is the virtual pixel unit used when displaying content. The density-independent pixel is equivalent to one physical pixel on a 160 dpi screen. To calculate dp use the following formula:

px = dp * (dpi / 160)

or equivalently:

dp = (px / dpi) * 160

The reason Nexus 7 can show more content than the Galaxy Nexus despite having similar resolutions is this: the dpi of Nexus 7 is lower than Galaxy Nexus.

Galaxy Nexus (320 dpi, 720 pixels wide)

(720 / 320) * 160 = 360 dp

Nexus 7 (213 dpi, 800 pixels wide)

(800 / 213) * 160 = 600 dp

This means that when apps are rendering on the Galaxy Nexus, the width of the screen is actually 360 dp (rendered using 720 pixels). Whereas on the Nexus 7, the width of the screen is 600 dp (rendered using 800 pixels).

Bonus

If your Galaxy Nexus is rooted, you can use an app such as LCD Density Modder and change the DPI of your device to 240. What you'll get is something a lot closer to Nexus 7 in a smaller package. On the left is a screenshot of the device at 240 dpi. You'll notice we can see a lot more content when the DPI is lower.

Nothing to do with PPI

The other answers mention PPI. The amount of content displayed has nothing to do with the PPI of a device. Though commonly, vendors select the DPI that is closest to the PPI of the device. (e.g. Galaxy Nexus has a PPI of 316, but a DPI of 320, where as Nexus 7 has a PPI of 216, but uses a 213 DPI).

Further Reading

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html


TWRP and LineageOS display flipped (180 degree rotation) I installed the latest version of TWRP and LineageOS on my BQ Aquaris U Plus and followed all instructions. Somehow, both TWRP (twrp-3.2.1-0-tenshi) and LineageOS (lineage-14.1-20180127-nightly-tenshi-signed) are flipped upside down.

As far as my search has led me, I have to edit the /system/build.prop and add the line

ro.sf.hwrotation=0

However, I am not able to push the file back to my phone. Nor am I able to edit the file on the device itself.

I am using the following code (Linux Mint):

sudo adb kill-server
sudo adb start-server
sudo adb root
sudo adb devices
sudo adb remount
sudo nano build.prop
sudo adb push build.prop /system

After that, adb does not seem to respond (empty line).

Am I missing something? Is there any possibility to fix this issue?

I know, this was asked a long time ago... but, for future reference:

The problem seems to be the phone's firmware. The original stock ROM is still based on Android M ("Marshmallow"), but the current versions of LineageOS are based on Android N ("Nougat"). Apparently this is a problem, because between Android M and N, some things in the phone's firmware changed, causing the screen to be upside down. Flashing a new LineageOS, however, does not update the phone's firmware.

Update: As @loki mentioned in a comment, using the BQ Firmware Flash Tool is a convenient way to revert to the stock ROM and to update to the newest version. Afterwards, LineageOS can be installed as usual. I first assumed it would only be for Windows, but there is also a version for Ubuntu in the zip file.

My solution was:

Flash back the stock ROM with fastboot. Note: It doesn't work with TWRP; the zip file needs to be extracted. It contains a script which flashes all parts of the phone's software.
Use the stock ROM's updater to update to the newest version. This usually takes 2 update steps (probably because of the switch to Android N).
Start over with flashing TWRP. At this point, the screen orientation should be correct in TWRP.
Flash LineageOS with TWRP.

One final note: My phone needed a full data wipe in order to get rid of the disk encryption. The phone can be encrypted afterwards from within LineageOS, however, the original encryption from the stock ROM could not be decrypted correctly.


Samsung Galaxy Spica won't boot up fully. Just restarts over and over My Samsung galaxy won't turn on properly. Basically it turns on, shows the 'OMG screen' which it does when it crashes, then goes to the Samsung loading bar, but then goes back to the crash screen. It keeps going in a loop forever!
I tried a hard reset, which if I understand correctly is holding down the volume down key and end call key, but this did nothing.
(Sorry I'm not good at describing, hope this is clear!)
Thanks!

Try booting in safe mode. To do this simply press the power button while holding MENU + BACK


CyanogenMod USB tether I can't seem to find the option to enable USB tether in CyanogenMod 7.0.1 . Several pages and forum threads mention a checkbox under Wireless & network setting, but i don't have it.
Is there anything i need to do to get this to show up? Is this not supported anymore? What USB mode should I select? The phone is a Motorola Milestone, computer runs Windows 7 x64.

The Milestone is an unofficial port, and USB tethering is not yet supported. There is a feature request on their issue tracker for this.

The most recent comment on the above mentioned ticket indicates that it's been fixed as of 7.1.0-RC15 and should now be included.


Galaxy Nexus won't charge, will immediately reboot if turned off Ran into a bizarre problem this morning.  My Galaxy Nexus was plugged in, but not charging.  Data transfer over USB seemed to work, but no charging would happen.  Stranger still, if I turned the phone off, it would immediately start booting up.  I couldn't actually get it to be off.

I couldn't find these symptoms on google, so I'm posting here.  I did eventually solve it by pulling out the battery and putting in a different one (the lower capacity one the phone came with).  It seemed to be normal, and continues to be normal after I switched back to the battery which wasn't charging earlier.  Anyone know the actual cause?  Either way, a solution is here for distressed users.

Removing the battery and putting it back in solves the problem, at least temporarily.  A few days later, I found the same problem was happening, and the same solution worked.


Disable "Upcoming Alarm" Notification (without disabling alarm) I'm fairly new to the Android platform so hopefully this is a silly question, but since I've had my Pixel (Pixel 1, Android 8.0.0), it's been giving me notifications for alarms I set in the Clock app two hours prior to their occurrence (disregard actual time in the screenshot). Note that I do not want to delete the alarm, just this notification about it.

 .

I know this isn't a huge issue, but it's just more annoying notification clutter that I don't want. What's weird is, I've apparently found the settings to change this behavior - but the toggle is disabled and I can't modify it.

Is there another way to do this that I'm missing, or a way to enable that toggle?

After spending an hour on the phone with Google tech support (don't know why I didn't think of this earlier) their representative was able to replicate the issue.

At this time there appears to be no way to disable this notification on a stock/unrooted Pixel. I'll update the answer if I get any further information.


How do you check if your phone has IR blaster? I downloaded some apps from the Play Store for controlling my TV using my phone. One of the requirements for it to work is that your phone must have an IR blaster in it. How do I check if my phone has an IR blaster?

You can check if your phone has it on Smartphones with IR blasters (Wikipedia)

Note: the list may not be exhaustive.

  2013

  HTC One
  HTC One Max
  LG G2
  LG G Flex
  LG G Pro Lite
  LG Optimus F6
  LG Optimus G Pro
  LG Optimus L9 II
  Samsung Galaxy Note 3
  Samsung Galaxy S4
  Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini
  Samsung Galaxy Mega
  Sony Xperia Z (Japanese version only)
  Sony Xperia Z1 (Japanese version only)
  Sony Xperia ZL (Discontinued)
  Samsung Galaxy J
  ZTE Nubia Z5S

  2014

  HTC One (M8)
  Huawei Honor 6
  Huawei Honor 6 Plus
  LG G Pro 2
  LG G2 Mini
  LG G3
  LG G3 S (Vigor)
  LG L90
  LG G Vista
  LG Volt
  Samsung ATIV SE
  Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo
  Samsung Galaxy Note 4
  Samsung Galaxy Note Edge
  Samsung Galaxy S5 Active
  Samsung Galaxy S5 Duos
  Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini
  Xiaomi Mi 4
  ZTE Grand Memo II LTE
  ZTE Grand X Max
  ZTE Nubia X6
  ZTE Nubia Z7
  ZTE Nubia Z7 Max

  2015

  HTC One (M9)
  HTC One M9+
  LG G4
  LG G Flex 2
  Oppo Mirror 3
  Samsung Galaxy S6
  Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge
  Samsung Galaxy S6 Active
  Xiaomi RedMi Note 2
  ZTE Grand X Max+
  ZTE Nubia Z9
  Samsung Galaxy A8 Duos


Gmail not automatically syncing Samsung A40 OneUi 1.1
Connected to wifi
After an email arrives to inbox, the phone (screen turned off) will not register this and no notification is given. After waking up it will sometimes sync but not always, after opening Gmail app it will usually sync but not always. Waiting for dozens of minutes and still nothing.

In such case, when I go to Account > (account) > syncing then Gmail syncing is enabled, but "last synced" can be e.g. 20+ minutes old.

Clicking to sync icon manually there or by pulling down in Gmail app it would sync successfully. I've read that the info about new mails is supposed to be pushed to the device so not sure why syncing is necessary actually, but it works like that...
2 Gmail accounts are bound to the device, but both have the same behavior

I tried (when account-related then was done for both accounts)
- Re-enabling syncing of Gmail
- Global auto sync is enabled
- Mobile data background usage is allowed (it's on wifi, but ... just to be sure)
- Wifi works correctly
- Checked battery settings - changed global to optimized mode (which is the most performance-focused and least battery optimization-focused mode available despite the name)
- Gmail is not set to be forced to sleep
- Gmail working in background is not disabled
- Checked memory-related settings, not seeing anything off
- Syncing is enabled within Gmail app itself > account settings.
- Notifications within Gmail app's own settings screen are enabled
- All notification options are enabled for Gmail app in the system screen for notification settings of the app
- No optimization 3rd party app etc. is running there
- Restart didn't help

Any idea how to fix this? Thank you

Had the same issue. I have also checked everything twice and this is how I have finally fixed it. I went in the Settings -> Apps -> gmail -> Storage -> Clear Data, then restarted my phone.


Protecting or Limiting my account's power I have linked a great deal of power to my phone. It is connected to my gmail to such an extent that I am starting to get concerned that if somebody where to steal my phone they could reek havok on my life. Is there a way to limit my phone's account power with Google, and other companies.

Example:

On my phone I can add, modify, and delete accounts. That is fine and dandy but I would be devastated if somebody deleted all my contacts and all my mail. Can I limit the accounts ability to delete stuff?

As far as I know there is no way that you can limit the ability of the phone to edit content.  That said there are many steps you can take to ensure that somebody won't be able to get to the stage where they can delete your content and dealing with it if it happens:

setup a pin number on your sim
setup a lock screen on your phone
install an application like SeekDroid and give it admin access so that you can remote wipe your phone if you lose it
install two factor authentication on all accounts which support it (Google, Dropbox, Facebook certainly do atm.  Others may)
make regular backups of anything you would be lost without, and store those backups in the cloud or in multiple places
don't use the same password more than once.  I use LastPass to ensure that all my passwords are all over 20 random characters.

You should really follow all of these steps - it adds a bit of overhead to some tasks, but I certainly favour the security over the convenience.


Andoid Nexus 5X Microphone sound too low Recently, about 4 weeks ago, the volume on my microphone became too low for listeners. I can hear them perfectly though.

I found somewhere on the internet (I can't remember where) that if I clear the system cache (see below), then the volume returns to normal. Which it did.

It's happened again though. So I've cleared the cache again and again the microphone volume has returned to normal.

Is there a way around this? It looks like its a software fault rather than a hardware fault.

These are the instructions I followed to wipe the cache:

Power off the phone
Hold down power and the volume down button
Use the volme up/down to select "Recovery mode" and press power button
When "No command" is displayed, hold down power and press volume up.
Select wipe cache
Restart

Currently on 7.1.1

Your problem root is the "Noise Cancelling" feature.

These are the possible replies for your question :

Disable Noise cancelling feature [ROOT ONLY].
Put a little piece of tape on your Noise Canceling Microphone.
Use Headset or Bluetooth Microphone.
Wait for an OTA Update (Hopfully it will resolve your issue).


How can I prevent unwanted pre-installed apps from automatically running on Android? Possible Duplicate:
  How can I stop applications and services from running?

As I can't uninstall certain programs that come with a phone (My case HTC Desire (not rooted)) how can I prevent certain apps from launching or trying to sync? And hide them? Or "Auto-Kill" kill them

For example

youtube app
faceboook app
stocks (including the sync feature)
twitter (including the sync feature)

For apps that sync, any app with an ounce of politeness will have any entry on the Accounts & Sync page in Settings where you can disable syncing. This is certainly true of the official Facebook and Twitter apps.


Many apps using sound crash after approx 15 minutes I have a 100% normal Samsung Galaxy A3 2015 (SM-A300FU) with Android 5.0.2. It is non rooted. I notice that every time I use an app using sound (this might be an effect, but not the cause):

WhatsApp phone call
Music Folder Player Full
a webradio app (that plays radio continuously)

the app crashes after ~ 15 minutes. It happens with no dialog box, it returns to desktop screen.

What could cause such a bug? How to solve this?

The issue of applications constantly crashing in Android Lollipop may be attributed to bugs in this Android version or other reasons which are described below:

Audio bug (possibly AudioFocusLost)

This bug is described by a user on this thread: Why are my music player apps crashing frequently since recent Android update.

  This is an inherent flaw in Lollipop where apps crash constantly. You
  notice this with music apps as audio stops. Some apps stop restart
  where they left off, others don’t. With this bug when the app crashes,
  the audio just cuts out, there is no on-screen error message.

In addition, more information about this bug is revealed through an error logging of different audio apps by one user, and it produced this error:

Java.lang.Exception: AudioFocusLost

With some possible reasoning that;

  this exception handling may have been broken across audio apps in
  Android Lollipop, or possibly an overly aggressive process causing
  this exception in other apps

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS6/comments/34ipjr/music_players_pausing_andor_closing_when_playing/

Over-utilisation of system resources (e.g RAM)

It is possible that with many applications running in the background, the system resource tends to become overconsumed by RAM and CPU hungry processes such as social media apps etc.

In this case the inbuilt task manager in Samsung devices tend to kill such processes unless explicitly turned off in Smart Manager settings to conserve power and memory to cores apps (known system apps to me include media scanner and DRM content storage –consume a lot of resources when apps accessing related media are in use).

That is, I why I think it’s a possible cause although certain android versions have more pronounced effects than others, possibly due to poor memory management in a certain Android version.

Android System Webview bug

This component was also held responsible for causing app crashes due to a buggy update. Many apps using the feature (typically those rendering webpages internally) could also crash. Newer versions are based on chromium however. So uninstalling the buggy update could save app crashes.

This is not the whole list of bugs causing application crashes in Lollipop, but there may be more but with respect to the question I found these reasons to be more closely related to the issue in question.

Possible fixes

Before going to any advanced operations, regular cleaning of application cache and closing recent application no longer needed is a good habit to preserve system resources.

Prioritising the affected applications in system mangers (Smart Manager) and preventing be “killed” when RAM is too low.

If this is futile, then more advanced operations are required.

Wiping cache partition

Follow these steps:

Turn off your device
Press and hold the combination of keys (press and hold Volume Down, Volume Up and the Power button)
Hold the buttons until the Recovery menu shows up
Use Volume buttons to navigate to Recovery mode (and select it using the Power button)
In the Recovery mode menu, navigate to Wipe cache partition and select it with the Power button
When this is completed, navigate to Reboot system

Factory reset

If nothing seems to work, maybe your device needs a fresh start.
Factory data reset will wipe everything off, all the apps, settings, etc. Don’t forget to backup your files!
Go to Settings
Tap Backup & Reset
Next, tap Factory data reset
Tap Reset phone

Upgrade Android version

Upgrading the OS version can be an important way to solve bugs as developers often fix bugs in subsequent OS versions. You can do this through Settings ≥>System updates and check for available updates. Alternatively downloading appropriate firmware files from manufacturers' website and flashing via Odin

References

Google Acknowledges WebView-Related App And Device Crashing, Says The New Version Should Fix It
Apps Crashing Like Crazy on Your Android Phone? Could be Latest Android System Webview Update
My apps keep crashing (many different ones)
These few fixes may help you fight those Lollipop bugs
How To Fix Apps Freezing And Crashing On Android


Getting screen dimensions in a shell script To run a game on my Nexus 5 (5.1), I need to change my screen resolution. I'm trying to write a shell script that will detect the current resolution and change it, basically a toggle.

I know that I can actually change the resolution using wm size XXXXxYYYY, but I don't know how I can check the current resolution. I know very, very little about regex, and I tried to figure out how to pull the results from dumpsys display, but I really had no idea what to do.

How can I get the current screen resolution for a shell script that will use if to check it, like a toggle?

you nearly answered your question already. wm size shows you the current resolution.

Saving the output of the screen reoslution into a shell variable: A=$(wm size | busybox cut -c16-)


How do I sync only "My Contacts" from Google on Samsung Galaxy S? Is there any way that I can limit my Galaxy S to only download & sync contacts from the google account that are in "My Contacts"? Right now, it downloads everything, in particular, contacts in the "Other Contacts" group which has people that I've only emailed one time (or responded to). This takes my contact list from <200 up to 500+. On the other side, any way to use the groups that I've included in my google account?

I'm not opposed to using a separate application to manage these. It seems to me that Samsung's contact implementation is just poorly thought out, and I really hope that they make drastic changes to it for the 2.2 update.

Contacts | Menu | Display Options | Choose contacts to display (account)

Make sure only "System Group: My Contacts" is checked. Or whichever groups you actually want to see. (More specifically, make sure "All other contacts" is not checked.)


Port-forwarding on Android 2.3.6 wifi-tether using Port Forwarder app I'm having trouble port-forwarding connections from outside my network when tethering with my phone. I have a bad understanding of routers and networking in general, so please bear with me.

My Android device is the one directly connected to the Internet. To enable access to my computer from the outer world via the Android device, I'm currently using the free app called Port Forwarder and my phone is rooted so I have the authorization I need. The port on which I handle connections on the server is 80. Accessing the Server's IP address (inside the network) with <local_ip.addr.ess.here>:80 I can access it, so that works.

The problem is when I'm trying to access it from outside the network, the app tells me to set the source to 80, and the destination whatever it is (their example is 8080); of course I set it to 80 since that's what the server is listening to. So I try to access the server from outside using <phone.public_ip.adr.ess>:80 but it doesn't work.

As you have noticed, I've got no clue what I'm doing and finding guides has been difficult, even for standard routers. Has anyone successfully used this app and maybe could help me out? I probably left out important info because of ignorance, if so, let me know and I will update the question.

I am not sure which version you're running, here is my advice. The cause you're probably blocked, is due Android's firewall and strong Se-Linux policy.

Since you have a full root access, you can get a shell with ADB, and check that. Type su - and it will get you into root. I am using TerminalEmulator, but you can use native one, if it is shipped with OS.

If I've understood you correctly, your phone acts like router in tethering mode. So this is needed to forward packets:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

See if that helps. Most likely, you'll need to play with iptables, allow port 80,443 on the tethering port.
This is not complete answer, but it is too long to post as a comment.


How to un-hide the read recipient (blue tick) option on WhatsApp? How to un-hide the read recipient (blue tick) option on WhatsApp? I am not able to find the option.

Open WhatsApp and tap three vertical dots icon on the top right.
Now go to Settings > Account > Privacy.
Check Read receipts.


Google Assistant Routine custom commands weird behavior I'm trying to setup Google Assistant Routine for my wake-up alarm. Whenever I create 2 or more custom commands, they tend to change after saving. I'm trying to add 2 commands: continue music and turn do not disturb off (both these commands are correct and work fine with Google Assistant). But whenever I press the save button and check them back, one of them changes to the other one. So I'm only getting either 2 do not disturb off or 2 continue music.

The question is: am I doing something wrong? Maybe I don't understand something about Google Assistant Routines?

My device is Xiaomi Mi A1 with latest Android 9 installed.

I get the same behaviour on Pixel 3 XL. Clearly a bug. A workaround is create a new Google routine containing all the things you want to do, and activate that single routine in the clock app.


Is Android 3.0 Honeycomb only for tablets? It wasn't long time since Android 2.3 Gingerbread was released and so for only a few phones has 2.3. And already a beta version of Android 3.0 Honeycomb is released.

What does this mean, is Android 3.0 only for tablets? If not, I guess that 2.3 will be very shortlived. If 2.3 is for phones and 3.0 is for tablets, that sounds like a fork of Android.

I think the conventional wisdom is that Honeycomb is a fork for Tablets only but this post suggests otherwise.  It says that in an interview with Engadget, Matias Duarte claimed that Honeycomb would be for all form factors.


How does contact management work? I've got a Samsung Galaxy 3 with Android 4.1.2. I changed my SIM card today and was worried I might lose contact so I've backed them up. I've always found the contacts very confusing and obviously I messed up the restore process and I now have hundreds of duplicates, single contacts appearing up to 20 times. To be precise - they are not exactly 20x the same, but say for a person 4 times the phone number as separate contacts, 12 times for two different email addresses, 4 times for Skype etc ...

I've tried to push them all to Gmail and delete/edit them online and then reimport, but it seems that step missed quite a few contacts that have only phone numbers.

I also have to admit that I totally don't understand how all the contacts are separated internally (on SIM, on SD, Google, Samsung; import to/from/merge/push/blabla ... why can't there be a single list of contacts).

I know I am not able to clean the contacts up on the phone - there's simply too many.

So question: what would be the best way out of this chaos?

Thanks heaps

EDIT: ok, kind of did it. Superbackup app, uploaded to Gmail, imported, merged and de-duped by Google, exported tp vcf, deleted old vcf files on phone, figured out where Android wanted the new vcf, reimported ... and looks halfway sane. But there must be an easier way, right?

There is a single list of contacts. But smartphones allow many different contact providers (Google Contacts, Facebook, SIM card, internal phone contacts, Skype, ...). But they are all shown within the same app in a single list. A symbol tells you where the contact came from.

I recommend to use Google Contacts as main contacts provider. Don't save contacts on the SIM card and the internal phone memory. Google contacts are automatically synced with your phone and the cloud. You can comfortably edit the contacts @ google.com/contacts. Every edit is instantly propagated to your phone. And if you change your device you simply add your Google account and all your contacts will appear there, too. No more SIM card contact importing/exporting.

In order to solve the problem of duplicate contacts from different contact providers Android provides a 'join contacts' feature, which merges the information from different providers into one single contact.


What do the different device/code names mean? Most devices seem to have multiple "names" depending on the context, e.g. marketing, updates or rooting. For example:

Huawei P8 lite (actually, not specific enough since there are at least two variants)
ALE-L21 (or ALE-L04)
hi6210sft (ro.product.name from build.prop)
BalongV8R1SFT (ro.product.board)

What are the definitions of all these "names"?

Huawei P8 Lite: This is the basic model; design, UI and features are usually assigned to the model name.
ALE-L21/ALE-L04: This is the specific model; depending on carrier, location etc. This is often used for determining different revisions of one model and specifies the firmware that needs to run on the device.
hi6210sft: This is the internal product name used for identification (e.g. in apps) and update configuration.
BalongV8R1SFT: This is the Mainboard model. It defines which chips (CPU, GPU, RAM, antennas etc.) are build in your device. This may or may not differ from different models, revisions of your model etc. and are usually important for updates, firmwares, custom ROMs etc.


Do "unlocked" phones come pre-unlocked or just the ability to be unlocked? When you buy an unlocked (carrier-free) device, do the phones usually come unlocked already, or just with the ability to be unlocked easily? e.g. would the fastboot unlocked status be locked when it arrived? I believe this is referring to the bootloader lock and not the sim/carrier lock if those are different.

They aren't related at all
Unlocked phones refer to phones that aren't bound to any carrier.
It looks like you are mixing this up with bootloader-lock, whose tag wiki says

Some bootloaders are locked by the manufactures to prevent the phones from booting unofficial firmware images.

(Read the wiki and linked questions for more information)
These two are totally independent and as a security measure practically all mobile devices are shipped with boot loader locked while they may be carrier locked /carrier unlocked. For instance, in India we don't have the concept of carrier locking (barring a negligible few cases) and therefore all phones are carrier unlocked, while they are boot loader locked. How easy or difficult is it to unlock boot loader depends on the measures taken by the OEM and again has nothing to with carrier lock/unlock (carriers often make it more complicated)


Add New Ringtones, Notifications and Alarm tones on Nexus One I have music (MP3 files) on my SD card and am trying to set them as ringtones, notification tones and alarm tones on my Nexus One.

My phone only lets me select the stock ringtones, notifications or alarms. I tried to transfer  and copy the music files to the ringtones and notification folder on my phone but it fails every time.  I think those folders are write protected or something.

Can anyone help? I have searched at all possible solutions online.  Some solutions suggest copying the files using my PC to my phone's ringtones/notification tones folder, but I can't even see these folders on Windows Explorer.  It's like they are invisible.

Can anyone help?

There are special directories you can use to store your custom "noises". The "starting point" (root-of-noises-dir) may be different between devices (so this is rather a generic answer, as I do not own all of them) -- pick one and check if it works, if not, pick the next:

/sdcard/media/audio
/sdcard/media
/sdcard

In there, put the directories for the specific events:

┌───────────────┬───────────────────────┐
| directory     | description           |
├───────────────┼───────────────────────┤
| alarms        | for your alarm clock  |
| notifications | for... notifications? |
| ringtones     | for incoming calls    |
| ui            | keyboard click etc.   |
└───────────────┴───────────────────────┘

Then place your sound files into the appropriate directories. Done. Now you should be able to pick them in your configuration(s).


How to tell what's restarting my phone? I have Cyanogenmod 11 on a Samsung s3 and sometimes the phone restarts itself. It doesn't do so "stably" enough for me to notice what causes it, but there should be logs of what happened right before restarting (and what caused it).

Where can I find it?

Found this info from other forums, hope it helps.  Possibly a bad app design, water damage or a bad battery.

"Restarts are kernel panics. It happens regularly and at random in Android 2.x but is hardly seen in versions 4.x and is caused by many things. One is a full dalvik cache and other times 3G can cause it via a corrupted PRL list update that crashes the modem and takes the kernel with it. (Turning off 3g or if running a custom ROM like CyanogenMod turning force 2G networks on and see if this cures it). I haven't had random restarts on 4.x but deal with them at least twice a week in Gingerbread. I always blamed it on Gingerbread having poor task management built in while 4.x patched it. On one device the 3G auto-PRL GSM mode caused it, while using EDGE and no auto-PRL fixed it but at the expense of speed."
  From: http://www.helpbuildweb.com/post-2072506-My-Android-phone-get-automaticaly-restart..-whats-the-problem-and-how-to-fix-it

Also this seem to be good http://vinner.hubpages.com/hub/Android-phone-is-restarting-How-to-solve


Screen does not ligh up on incoming call Xperia Z5 Dual with Android 7.1.1

Sometimes when the device is receiving a phone call (Messenger and Whatsapp work fine), the screen does not light up and I am unable to pick up the call.

Does anyone know what the problem might be?

Try re-calibrating your proximity sensor.
You can also try wiping the top of screen, around the sensor location. Any coating can sometimes interfere with the normal operation of the sensor.


Native Exchange Email app does not synchronize folders properly Recently I created/removed some folders on Outlook desktop app.

When I synchronized my corporate account by manually refreshing under the folders screen, it didn't bring the new folders, nor removed the removed ones.

Is this a known bug?

I have a Motorola Milestone, and I remember in the past, at least the folder addition worked.

I know you were going for the "onboard" solution for Exchange e-mail, but at my workplace a bunch of folks use Touchdown:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/exchange-by-touchdown-key/com.nitrodesk.touchdownpro

Only problem is that is is $19.99. It works well with ActiveSync policies and doesn't force you to encrypt your whole device if your SysAdmin has required as such.


How to uninstall android lost app I have installed android lost app from www.androidlost.com in my Samsung Tab 2 GT-P3100. How can I uninstall it?The app is not visible in the list of apps.

To control the breadth of activities this app declares for itself, it probably has set itself up as a Device Administrator, to control the ability to run many aspects of your device automatically. It probably hides itself from uninstall while Device Administrator rights are active. I would start by searching Settings>Security>Device Administrators, and deselect the Android Lost App. Once deselected here, check the Task List to see if it has stopped running. Force Close if necessary. It may then appear on the Settings>Application manager list to allow for uninstall. If not, attempt a reboot, and check the Task List again. If necessary, Force Close the app again and attempt an uninstall. Understanding of these types of apps and their unmittigated control is why downloading from Unknown Sources is intentionally complicated.


Galaxy Tab A's Bluetooth draining battery when Bluetooth isn't on My Samsung Galaxy Tab A just upgraded to Android 7.1. My battery life decreased dramatically after the update. What used to give me days of battery life now only lasts me hours. I checked my battery stats, and this is what I found:

Bluetooth was using most of my battery, but Bluetooth isn't even enabled! What is causing this immense drain of battery from a feature that hasn't been enabled?

You can also turn off those 2 flags in GPS settings.


What to do with 'duplicate' apps? (ie. HTC version and 'vanilla' version) I was going through my app list today when I saw:

Facebook
Facebook for HTC Sense

similarly, there are other "duplicate" apps like Peep & Twitter, Mail & Gmail, Calendar (red) & Calendar (blue).
At the moment, with an un-rooted phone I believe I can only remove the non-HTC versions. However if I root my phone, I should be able to remove the HTC versions if I want.
I was wondering though, what would happen if I remove the HTC versions of the apps? Will it mean HTC-integrated apps like friend stream will stop working?
Thanks in advance :)

You are running sense that comes with these "extra" "sense like experience" apps.

You are right, you cannot remove them by normal means. If you go to manage applications and select each htc app (Peep, facebook for htc sense) you will not be given the option to uninstall them or delete them.

If you do root your phone, you will be able to uninstall them via either adb or flashing some zips. You won't be able to just uninstall them the normal way once rooted.

Removing peep can possibly disrupt some htc widgets but you can still access twitter via the twitter app or other apps such as plume, tweetdeck etc.
Same thing for facebook/facebook for htc sense.

Friend stream is another htc app that integrates other social apps. Users report different compatibility issues between Friend stream and versions of the social apps. It does allow login with any version of facebook/twitter/flickr.


Sd and internal the same? Ok so I have a Tesla TTL7 tablet with android version 4.4 and the thing is my current apps take like 1.37 GB and I have 5 GB of space remaining but I still cannot download apps. And as I mentioned in the title it says that my internal and sd memory are the same thing(sd adds space to internal).

Storage on SD-card and internal storage are quite different.

  You can save files directly on the device's internal storage. By
  default, files saved to the internal storage are private to your
  application and other applications cannot access them (nor can the
  user). When the user uninstalls your application, these files are
  removed.

  Every Android-compatible device supports a shared "external storage"
  that you can use to save files. This can be a removable storage media
  (such as an SD card) or an internal (non-removable) storage. Files
  saved to the external storage are world-readable and can be modified
  by the user when they enable USB mass storage to transfer files on a
  computer.

  Caution: External storage can become unavailable if the user mounts
  the external storage on a computer or removes the media, and there's
  no security enforced upon files you save to the external storage. All
  applications can read and write files placed on the external storage
  and the user can remove them.

This explanaton is given on the Android-Developer-Site


How do you open an EVO 3D to access the battery or SD card? How do I open an EVO 3D? I have one right here and I tried googling it, but I dont have the manual and it isn't intuitive. I would like to view the microSD card and switch it out at will.

On the bottom, near the primary mic, is a slot to "pry off" the battery cover. Be careful, of course!


How can I manage "desktop" icons I want to remove all the icons on the desktop, (and also in the bottom bar) and place new ones via ADB.
My script already removes all the apps, but icons/shortcuts remanin there!

Is there any command to do this? Or maybe a xml file or something that I can edit?

Note: I have root access.

The default launcher in my stock Android 4.2.1 and CM12 contains those home screen shortcuts in a table named favorites inside launcher.db. If that's your case then all you have to do is flush the content from that table, restart the launcher and the stuff would be gone for good.

A general query would be:

adb shell su -c 'sqlite3 /data/data/<YOURLAUNCHER>/databases/<.DB_FILE> "DELETE from <TABLE>"'

(Download sqlite3 if it's not present in the system.)

For my stock launcher in Android 4.2.1, the query would be:

adb shell su -c 'sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.launcher/databases/launcher.db "DELETE from favorites"'

However, you first have to analyze which .db file, and which table in particular, actually holds the relevant stuff.

For that you can use SQLite Editor or aSQLite Manager to locate the relevant database and table. Or, you may adb pull all the launcher's database files and open them in an sqlite program on PC like DB Browser for SQLite  to find the correct table.
For a command-line way, you can use this command to list all the tables in a supplied database:

adb shell su -c 'sqlite3 /data/data/<YOURLAUNCHER>/databases/<A_DB_FILE>  ".tables"'

In order to create shortcuts you first need to know their structure in the table. Use .schema then SELECT * <PARAMS> to see the content. You can take help (in making a query) from this resource.

However, I would recommend choosing GUI over CLI to see the information about shortcuts. Also, always take backup before tweaking such stuff.

Once you're done flushing the table's content, do:

adb shell su -c 'am force-stop <PKG_NAME>'

E.g.:

 adb shell su -c 'am force-stop com.android.launcher'

or

adb shell su -c 'am force-stop com/cyanogendmod.trebuchet'


Email aliases in Gmail app My university gives me an email that looks like

ab123456@domain

Fortunately, I am allowed to make an alternate name for my email, like

first.last@domain

All of the email is still sent through ab123456. In fact, when I set up the SMTP settings, I have to use this address. On my desktop client, I can send emails that say that they were sent from first.last. Is there a way of doing this in the new Gmail app?

I am using the new Gmail app (which absorbed the Email app) in Android 5.0.

Proper aliases, where you can pick either address as the sender, isn't possible in Gmail. However, in your case I understand you never want to use ab123456@domain; you always want to use first.last@domain.

In that case, when adding a new account, use first.last@domain as your email address and choose manual setup. Enter your password when prompted and then, in the incoming server settings, change your username to ab123456@domain. Enter all other settings and do the same for the outgoing server.

Now you have email setup for your account that will always use first.last@domain when sending email. It will of course read email sent to either.


Do OTA updates expire? I recently re-activated an old phone with my carrier. (To give you an idea how old, it is running Android 2.3.3, whereas the latest available for this phone is 2.3.4) It doesn't have the latest OTA update, but when I try to check for new updates ("Settings":"About Phone":"System Updates") I get the message

"Checking for available update. Please wait..."

and a spinner which just spins and spins.  It never progresses past this point.  If I back out and try to check again it usually doesn't even get to the spinner, sometimes I have to tap it many times before the spinner will even come up - some taps appear to do nothing and some appear to flash the "Checking..." for a split second.

The phone has been rooted, but as far as I know that shouldn't affect an OTA update (although I understand the update will remove the rooting).  Is it possible that OTA updates are discontinued after a while?  This update is 2-3 years old.  Is there anything else I can do to troubleshoot what the problem is?

(I realize I could try wiping the device, in case there is something on the device that is preventing the update, but my concern is that if OTAs do expire then I would be stuck with an even older version on the device.)

Update: It looks like the BlurUpdater_VZW.apk (and odex) were missing.  However, the only copy I found appears to be from the 4.5.629 update and not the 4.5.608 that is on the phone, and it exhibits the same behavior.  If I run the 4.5.629 version on a device with 4.5.629, I get a message that no updates are available, so maybe this means that if I can find a 4.5.608 version of the BlurUpdater files, that will work?

Here is how I solved the problem. It turns out that the BlurUpdater files are specific to the version you are running, and I didn't have the correct version.  It was a bit of work to locate the correct version.

First, I downloaded the SBF file for 4.5.608.  I then used the sbf_flash utility using the -x option to extract the images in the SBF.  I then used the file -sL XX.img command to determine that the larger images were ext3 formatted filesystems.  Then I used mount -t ext3 -o loop XX.img tmp/ to mount each filesystem until I found the one containing the BlurUpdater_VZW.apk and BlurUpdater_VZW.odex file.  Then I installed both of these files in /system/app (as root).  After restarting my device and running the check for updates I was informed that an update was available, which I was then able to start installing.


How can I reset MIUI 11 features? I turned off MIUI optimization and some features were lost and I can't retrieve them after I turn it on again.

You need to enable Developer options on your MI device.
To unblock the developer options,

Go to Settings >About, find the MIUI version and tap 7 times continuously.
You could see a message “You have enabled developer option” once you have successfully done that.
To access developer options, Goto Settings > Additional settings > Developer options.
Now scroll down till the end to see the option to toggle MIUI Optimization. You’ll need to restart the device once you enable the option.

Even though it is just a toggle which we enable, it causes the way which the system behaves, in turn changes the way many apps behave.

Source


How can I prevent services from running in the background? Possible Duplicate:
  How can I stop applications and services from running?

Is there a way to prevent the service apps (or any other apps) from automatically running in the background?

You'll need to decide on a case by case basis. Generally, apps which run in the background need to do so to function, so if you don't want that, then uninstall it. If it's optional, they'll usually include a preference to disable it within the app.

You can kill any background service from Settings -> Applications -> Services, but that only kills them once, it doesn't prevent them from starting the next time you boot up your phone. It is a useful way to see what's running in the background, though.

Finally, a lot of apps that seem to run in the background actually don't. I have an app that provides background notifications about certain events when they happen, but it does it by scheduling recurring system alarms, where the phone will start my app up to perform the task and then the app will close. So it's open for brief periods of time only, which is much less of a battery drain.  Make sure you check the background service list I mentioned above to see whether something is really on in the background.


unlocked device vs. unlocked bootloader I've always thought that if a device is unlocked it means that it works
with different carriers. If the device bootloader is unlocked, then does
this mean the device will automatically work with different carriers?
That is do unlocked device and unlocked bootloader mean the same
thing?

All I know is that an unlocked bootloader is easier to root as commands
can be sent to the device using the fastboot protocol used to boot it
so it is not necessary to take advantage of an exploit on the device
in order to root it.

I want to know if unlocked device and unlocked bootloader are synonymous.

Thanks.

No, they're completely unrelated things. As you say, an unlocked device means it's not locked to a particular carrier: you can insert a different SIM card to change to a different carrier, and it will work. A locked device will not connect to another carrier if you change the SIM card.

The bootloader is the first thing that runs when you turn the phone on: it's responsible for loading the core Android code, so that Android can load itself and run. A locked bootloader uses digital signatures to verify the Android code it's loading, which means it will only boot a ROM (firmware image) that's signed by the device manufacturer. In contrast, an unlocked bootloader will load any ROM. Unlocking a locked bootloader will wipe all user data (but not the ROM) from the device. This is a security mechanism, so you can't get at the data on a phone by installing your own ROM on it.


Google timeline telling me I was somewhere that I wasn't It was a slow day so I just started flicking through my timeline on Google maps to see where I have been ever since I created my Google account. I only have the account on my phone but sometimes sign in on my laptop, these are the only two devices that use my account and I am the only one to have ever accessed my account.

However, when looking at my map I realized that Google said I had been somewhere that I honestly have never been before. It's more than 145 miles away from where I live and I've never been anywhere near this place in all my life. On top of that it also said that I took 16 hours to cross the street in the industrial estate that it placed me in.

I looked in my diary and I'm 100% confident that I wouldn't have left the street where I lived that day. What I don't understand is how this happened?

At the thread Google Maps Location History is showing an incorrect location

Here on Android Enthusiasts, there is an extensive discussion about exactly this problem.

If you’re only looking for a way to edit your timeline, there are some very elaborate instructions at the link View or edit your timeline


How can I tell CWM to perform a full backup instead of an incremental backup? A recent update to CWM touted the ability to perform incremental backups instead of full ones.  Having performed those for a while, I find that I have quite a few old backups that I don't know if I can remove, since newer backups may depend on them.

Last time I was in this situation I deleted all of the backups and made one full clean backup.  That, however, carries the risk of some failure before the new backup is complete.  Is there any way to tell CWM to perform a full backup, so that I can safely remove all of the old ones?

Technically, CWM 6 isn't doing incremental or full backups. What it is doing is storing "blobs" that are shared between backups if the data hasn't changed between the two. When you run a new backup, it reuses what it can. If you delete a backup set, you don't actually delete the data, and the next time you run a backup, CWM deletes any blobs no longer in use.


"Hidden" messages in Motorola messaging? Phone info:

Motorola

Model: Moto E, 2nd generation

LTE: 4G LTE

Operating system: Android, version 5.1

Let me know if any more info would be helpful.

Issue:

My phone's Messaging app (the one that comes with the phone) seems to be "hiding" text conversations sometimes. It'll show how many unread messages I have, (see attached image, the circled number), but I don't see any conversations with unread messages shown. I know there are some conversations missing, I just need a way to un-hide them. As far as I have found, the only way to un-hide these conversations is to search for the conversation by contact, but this only works if you know which contact's conversation was hidden. Any thoughts on how to un-do  this, or what is making the messages hidden?

My research:

I've looked on Android support sites, done Google searches of 'Motorola hiding messages', and all sorts of related searches. Unfortunately I have had trouble finding anything besides suggestions on how to hide messages.

Partial answer (OP may update with findings later)

From my experience of Moto X Play messenger app - the count corresponds to unread messages.
OP is unable to identify unread messages. Proposed solution:

Use SMS backup & restore to take the backup in xml format and open it on PC (browser, notepad or any other program) and compare with messages on phone to identify "hidden" messages. OP has been able to identify two so far
and  in the process of identifying other two.
Find out what is special about those SMS originators. Guessing, they could be contacts saved on SIM, or social media contacts or Google groups /Hangouts or contacts marked spam, blocked/ unknown contacts for calls, carrier messages or....
Once the nature of contacts is identified, take steps to treat them as other contacts whose messages are not hidden.


Backing up/save files on android with a broken screen My phone's screen is broken and is useless, but it has important files on it. Is there a way to back the files up or get the phone back?

You can only back data up yourself, if the phone is functioning (apart from the screen obviously). Make sure it shows some kind of life signal when you plug it in/turn it on/press the volume keys/etc. It could be something like the charging LED lighting up or vibration. If you have the SIM card in there, you could also call it and check that way. If none of these work, then the only solution is to take it to a data recovery center (it can cost a couple hundred dollars, so make sure those photos are irreplacable).
So, first of all, a broken screen could mean a couple of things:
1.: The digitizer (touch screen glass) is broken
This is the easiest problem to solve. If you have an OTG cable (a cable with a micro USB end and a female USB on the other), you can connect a mouse to the phone and use that to back everything up. It's very rare nowadays for a phone (especially phablets) to not support this feature.

You could also just buy a new screen and either apply it yourself or take it to a repair shop if you want to keep the phone.
2.: The LCD (the display) doesn't work
If you see a black screen or random lines on the screen, when you turn it on, then the LCD is broken. This has a bunch of different types too.
If you're lucky and the phone goes into file transfer mode, when plugged into a computer, then you can just take the files off, so make sure to try this first.
a.: Water damage
If you dropped your phone in water and it got damaged, then either a chip got fried or something got corroded. It's usually impossible to tell which one it is, so the phone has to be disassembled and cleaned. It's not really worth it to buy a screen at this point, LCD don't really mind water that much. However, If you're "lucky" and only the backlight is faulty (or the connectors got corroded), then you can just take a strong flashlight, hold it up against the screen (possibly somewhere with a white/light area of pixels). Make sure to try this out, in my experience, even some repair shops forget to check it. I've had it on a friend's phone recently and it looked like this:

(That's the vodaphone logo btw)
If it's not the backlight, then probably some video output chip got damaged. Backing up data in this case is very hard. You could try using one of the tools designed for this but it's a gamble whether they work and even if they do, they might require you to turn on USB debugging (which is hard without seeing anything). I also don't like to install random programs on my computer.
In some cases, removing the corrosion from the device can also solve some problems. If you want to keep the warranty, take it to a repair shop and let them clean it. If you don't care however, iFixit has some really nice guides to disassemble almost any phone. Make sure to remove every board from the device, then take an unused tootbrush and some Isopropyl alcohol and give it a good scrub. Clean the adapters and the ends of the cables too. You're essentially looking for some blueish-greenish goo:

If you don't want to void warranty and you can't take it to a repair shop either, then you could theoretically put it in a tub of alcohol, but I haven't tried it and it certainly won't have the same effect.
After this, assemble the phone again without missing anything out and test it. Hopefully it works. If not, check the general advices part.
b.: Blunt damage
If you dropped your phone on concrete and the screen won't turn on again, it's either because the LCD got damaged or a cable got loose (the latter is very unlikely, I've only had it happen once and only with a vibration motor). If it turns on, but you see lines one the screen (see image below), then the LCD is broken.

(This is an iphone, but you get the point)
In any case, it's usually worth it to get a new screen if it's still in production. Make sure to not touch the glass too much, the small glass shards don't mix well with your finger.
c.: General advices
If nothing above worked for you, there's a small chance going through a software based solution will work too.
If you have USB debugging enabled, install adb, pull up the command line of your choice, connect the phone to the computer through USB (pray to your choice of deity) and type "adb devices" without the quotes. If your phone show up in the list, you can continue. Type "adb pull mnt/sdcard/DCIM/Camera/" without quotes. This will pull the images from your phone. You can also do "adb pull mnt/sdcard/" if you want every file on there, because you have some sick scores in temple run you want to keep.


CWM Backup / Contact Recovery So I just rooted using mobile odin lite and the Entropy512 kernel that has CWM recovery. Then I performed a CWM backup. Stupidly, I forgot to backup anything except for my camera data before doing this.

Long story short, I lost several of my most recently added contacts when I flashed a new Jelly Bean ROM and stuff.

Now I thought to myself: no problem, I'll restore using my CWM backup, save said contacts (or sync them with my google account at this point), and then next time I flash a new ROM I can just copy em over.

However, when I restored using CWM like nothing on my phone works anymore. I can't view my contacts or anything to sync them. Anyone have experience with this or know of a way I can extract my contacts from the backup I made?

I'm relatively new to Android so I'm not sure what information I should provide but heres a try:

AT&T SG SII (i777)
Steps:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1311081&highlight=how+to+root+without+incrementing+flash+counter
Backup using CWM
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1574718 (Flash ROM
    zip and GApps zip)
Attempt to restore using CWM

Thanks for your help, and let me know if there's other information that could help.

This is really awkward to fix, I know because I've been in your exact situation. It depends a lot on just how different the contact storage on your old ROM was from how it is now. Obviously your contacts are there somewhere in that CWM backup, the problem is just how to get them out.

I don't have a very specific answer on how to solve this (just asking for the contact info again will probably solve your problem faster), but here are some pointers: The file system is most likely yaffs2, so you need to read this file system somehow. One of the first things I found on Google was Yaffey - Utility for reading, editing and writing YAFFS2 images - you could probably use this to access your backup image and from there extract your contact data. Depending on your current and old format, this might be easy or hard.

What do we learn from this? Extracting contacts is an absolute pain from system images created in CWM. Use Titanium Backup and/or always make sure your contacts sync against the cloud.

Local contacts are the devils work.


Why is Android File Transfer necessary? Apparently newer versions of Android require the use of Android File Transfer. I have an older machine that doesn't require this, and just mounts as a USB mass storage device. I can't see a technical reason why Android File Transfer is now required when it used not to be.

What changed in order to make this necessary? Why is it necessary?

Newer Android devices don't support USB mass storage because it has a big shortcoming: the phone and the PC can't access the storage at the same time that way. This is because USB mass storage is a low-level protocol giving the PC low-level access to the whole filesystem. This causes knock-on problems when you connect your phone to the PC:-

Apps on the external storage can't run while it is mounted on the PC.
Music and other files on the external storage aren't accessible to apps, so even apps that aren't on the external storage might stop working or become useless.
When the external storage is unmounted from the PC, Android has to rescan it from scratch (see media-scanner) because it can't tell what has changed.
There's no way for the phone to let the PC access the internal storage this way: Android can't unmount the internal storage, because all apps need access to it, even the system apps.
This also means there has to be a separate partition and filesystem for the external storage, which the phone can cope with losing access to. Newer Android devices often just have one big partition, and the "external storage" is simply a directory there. It's more convenient that way because you don't have free space split between partitions, but you can't use USB mass storage on only a directory.
Android can't enforce any filesystem security. The PC has complete access to the exported storage, below the filesystem level. This lets it access any file, and read the raw device data to recover deleted files. This might be considered an undesirable security hole.
As eldarerathis points out, the external storage has to use the FAT32 filesystem to work this way. This isn't a shortcoming when it's a real SD card, but when it's really non-removable storage, it would be more useful to use a better filesystem.

(Where I say "SD card" here, that means whatever storage your Android device calls "external", even if it's not actually removable.)

In contrast, MTP is higher-level, and allows Android to arbitrate and to share access, just like when sharing directories or filesystems over a network. It even opens the possibility of letting the PC access the internal storage this way, but there are other restrictions around that unrelated to MTP.

As eldarerathis explains, you need special software to access MTP devices from a Mac, because Mac OS doesn't have the appropriate software built-in, like Windows and some Linux distributions do.


Is there a music player that can play music from the Google Music Store as well as Amazon MP3? It's getting really annoying that the music I "buy" in the different music stores on Android (Google Play and Amazon MP3 specifically) aren't visible to other music players even when I make them available offline.

Are there any players out there that know to dig into these areas and make this music playable? It's really obnoxious to not have all my music in one place and have certain tracks tied to players I don't especially like.

The only solution I've come up with is to abandon getting new music when I'm out and about and download the tracks on a PC the old fashioned way and then add them to my music folder on my phone by hand. Surely there's something better that I haven't thought of yet.

Have you tried CloudAround yet?  It's a music app that lets you listen to everything on your device as well as sync/stream from a few cloud storage providers.  This includes offline music you saved from Amazon MP3.  The app scans your device for all music files and gives you a handy list of everything available.  Once you login with the various cloud services, your music stored will show up too.


Blocked History not working after Marshmallow upgrade in Lenovo K3 note I recently upgraded my Android system in 'Lenovo K3 Note' to Marshmallow.
Now, I can't see Blocked History in the Contacts.
I could see the notification that some calls are blocked, but I can't see the Block History page.
Whenever I try to access this page, it redirects to the previous page.
Could you please help me fix this issue?

Any leads would be helpful.

I was able  to resolve this issue.

I followed these two links and now I can see the blocked history without having to lose the Call logs, blocked list etc :

Lenovo K3 Note: Blocked History not opening after Android 6.0 update
How to Backup and Restore Call Logs on your Android Phone

Summarizing the steps below from the above links:

Take back up of  contacts and call logs:

Used app SMS Backup & Restore to create a backup of my call logs and message logs. (Got to know about the steps from my second link)
Created Contacts backup (Using Export option in Contacts app)
Created Blocked Contacts backup (using Export black-n-white list option in Contacts (Call / Messages Blocking section)

Go to Settings → Apps → All apps →Contact Manager → Storage → Clear Data and Clear Cache.

After this, I was able to see the Blocked History.
Though, I didn't need to import back my Call logs/ Contacts, but yes, I had to import Blocked Contacts. But, that's it and now I'm good.. :)

Hope this helps others who face this issue.. :)


Google Play Services required permissions Why does Google Play Services require so many permissions.  Access to my phone, contacts, text messages, camera, microphone,  and even body sensors cannot be turned off without constant push notices saying they must be turned on for it to work properly. I didn't know my phone had "body sensors". It is the only app in my phone with such a request. I find all these demands for access to every  aspect of my phone way too invasive into my personal information. No possible permission is excluded. Do I have to keep this app running or can I disable it?

Google Play Services is kind of a "service provider" for other apps on your device. A look into our google-play-services tag-wiki will give you some details and explain some of the permissions this app requires. For example it requires access to your location as it offers location services to other apps.

If you'd disable this, several of your apps will probably no longer function the way they did before. Some apps won't care. But especially other Google Apps will complain (Gmail and Google Maps definitely will). As the Settings app is not affected, you can try that out (if the effect is too strong, you can always revert your change).

On the other had, you could also try revoking some permissions from the Google Play Services app, if your Android lets you (it's a system app, so depending on your device and Android version you might not be able to do that).


Hacker's keyboard v1.38.2 doesn't show any suggestions other than "Android" I downloaded and installed Hacker's keyboard v1.37 some months ago. It was functioning as expected and the experience was great. Then, I upgraded it to v1.38.2 and set the settings to the same for what I had for the old version.

The problem with he new version is that it doesn't show any suggestions. The only suggestion that I see when typing is "Android" and nothing else.

What do I need to do in order to fix it?

It seems that the dev has decided to seperate the keyboard and the completion dictionary. Download and install the completion dictionary by searching pub:"Klaus Weidner" in the Google play store and then, the suggestions will appear.
Quote from the Hacker's keyboard app description:

Completion dictionaries are provided by plug-in packages, see the "other applications by this developer" section for the currently available list. The keyboard also supports use of dictionaries (but not keyboard layouts) provided by AnySoftKeyboard language packs.

Quote from the English completion dictionary description:

In the future, the English dictionary will no longer be included in the Hacker's Keyboard package. Use this external dictionary to provide English completion suggestions.
An English completion dictionary for use with Hacker's Keyboard. Needed for future versions, release 1.29 still has  it built in but I plan to unbundle it to save space.