Backup WhatsApp from NANDROID Hi guys: refering to this:
Restore Whatsapp

Get the same issue.

I just reset all my phone after an OTA bricked.

I made an nandroid backup, but, i dunno how to acces - on my phone - the "data/data/com.whatsapp" file to read owner and group.
I think for the nandroid its going to be ok.

Cheers

install WhatsApp, then boot in TWRP and look from adb shell

show the folder attributes with the ls command

ls -dln /data/data/com.whatsapp

example output:

mint@debian ~ $ adb shell
/ # ls -dln /data/data/com.whatsapp
drwx------   13 10104    10104         4096 Jan 15 04:15 /data/data/com.whatsapp

next, restore the backup (or part of it)

download open-gapps-pico.zip for your platform (ARM) to PC
extract the tar binary (tar-arm for ARM) and push it to phone (in TWRP)

adb push C:\adb\tar-arm /tmp/

open adb shell and make the binary executable (TWRP)

chmod 0750 /tmp/tar-arm

example output:

mint@debian ~/Downloads $ adb push tar-arm /tmp/
387 KB/s (427448 bytes in 1.075s)
mint@debian ~/Downloads $ adb shell
/ # chmod 0750 /tmp/tar-arm

in TWRP look for the location where your (internal/external) sdcard is mounted

df

example output:

/ # df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs                  1010636        44   1010592   0% /dev
tmpfs                  1010636        28   1010608   0% /tmp
/dev/block/mmcblk0p19   253920      2380    246300   1% /cache
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 11608792   9847780   1728244  85% /data
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 11608792   9847780   1728244  85% /sdcard
/dev/block/mmcblk1p1  31150720  22588512   8562208  73% /external_sd

find the backup folder with the ls and cd commands

example output for cd change directory:

/ # cd /external_sd
/external_sd # cd TWRP
/external_sd/TWRP # cd BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG

example output for ls list files and folders:

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG # ls
2019-03-20--03-44-24_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-04-16--08-03-32_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-04-21--07-15-28_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V22_20181228
2019-06-18--20-30-44_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-06-23--05-37-30_CUBOT_KING_KONG_7081C_V16_20180517
2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180

enter the latest backup folder (you can also use * as wildcard)

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG # cd 2019-06-26*

list ls the backup file names inside. the interesting is the data.ext4.win* backup

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # ls
boot.emmc.win          data.ext4.win002       recovery.emmc.win.md5
boot.emmc.win.md5      data.ext4.win002.md5   recovery.log
data.ext4.win000       data.ext4.win003       system.ext4.win
data.ext4.win000.md5   data.ext4.win003.md5   system.ext4.win.md5
data.ext4.win001       data.info              system.info
data.ext4.win001.md5   recovery.emmc.win

Before unpacking, find the required file name(s) which contains your whatsapp files. use the tar-arm binary with parameters -t (test) and look into each file -f data.ext4.win*, while the error output is filtered out with 2> /dev/null and the the file list is filtered for folder name /data/data/com.whatsapp with the grep command

/tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win000 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp

example output: (no result for data.ext4.win000 data.ext4.win001 data.ext4.win002)

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win000 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win001 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win002 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm -tf data.ext4.win003 2> /dev/null | grep /data/data/com.whatsapp
/data/data/com.whatsapp/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/code_cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/lib
/data/data/com.whatsapp/app_minidumps/
^C

now you can extract the folder /data/data/com.whatsapp (as last argument) from the file(s) -f data.ext4.win003 with the tar-arm binary with -x and additional parameters --selinux --xattrs -p for file attributes, while -P will keep the leading / which will restore everything to /data and -v make the whole thing more visible for you. handle each data.ext4.win* file for its own:

/tmp/tar-arm --selinux --xattrs -vxpPf data.ext4.win003 /data/data/com.whatsapp

example output:

/external_sd/TWRP/BACKUPS/CUBOT_KING_KONG/2019-06-26--08-30-17_du_s3ve3g-userdebug_712_NZH54D_engroot20180 # /tmp/tar-arm --selinux --xattrs -vxpPf data.ext4.win003 /data/data/com.whatsapp
/data/data/com.whatsapp/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/code_cache/
/data/data/com.whatsapp/lib
/data/data/com.whatsapp/app_minidumps/
^C

finally, change the owner and group

/ # chown -Rh 10104.10104 /data/data/com.whatsapp


Is there a way to speed up the delay when pressing the home button? My guess is that the reason there's a delay when pressing the home button is due to the fact that it could be re-purposed into launching "Google Now" or "S Voice" by pressing it twice. So it has to wait for a second before it sends a signal "this is a single press" to the OS. I don't believe it's caused by phone waking up from sleep because it happens every time and it's consistent.

If my guess is correct and I'm not using "Google Now" or "S Voice", it would be great to remove this delay. How do I do that? Is that even possible?

In my opinion, it is annoying. The moment I press the home button I'm expecting an instant response by showing up the home screen as immediately as possible.

EDIT:

I already disabled all the apps that could possibly make use of double pressing the home button like "S Voice". Now when I open an app to foreground, pressing the home twice doesn't take me to home screen but instead nothing happens. That means there's no longer any function that is currently bound to double pressing the home button. If I press the home button once, it still takes a delay before it takes me back to the home screen.

An important navigation mechanism in Android is called a long press. You perform a long press by pressing and holding down a physical key or touch (capacitive) button. If the long press is successful, the phone will provide some physical feedback such as vibration, and the long press action will take place.

You can use a long press to open menus that are specific to the active item - think of it like opening a context menu on a PC. For example, performing a long press on a song in the Music player application in Android 2.2 will open a menu that allows you to add or remove it from a playlist. To perform a long press that opens a context menu, press and hold the select key or the trackball.

Yes you can increase/ decrease  the time duration of the home button under the settings>Accessibility scroll down to Mobility.

Select your desired time gap from the three  -Long/short/medium


Import my Personal Profile contact from a vCard Is there a way or an app to restore my own personal contact (the one available in Contacts selecting the Personal Profile command) from a VCard (*.vcf)?

All contacts can be exported to the SD card (so also the personal one), but importing back the personal vcard put it in standard contact and not in the personal one...

If your intention is to have your "personal card" available as a kind of "business card" to easily share with your partners, there might be a much better idea than exporting it as vCard: Export it as QR-Code. So you only need to display that QR-Code on your device, and your partner can use a QR reader to "snap" it. It would then be detected as a "business card" (actually, the QR Code will represent a vCard -- AFAIK even in vCard format), and so your partner can directly import it into his/her contacts.

How to do that? An app I started using a while ago is QR Droid. It comes with some pretty practical widgets offering shortcuts, and has several add-ons on the playstore for sharing your current GPS position as QR Code, and more... OK, back to topic:

QR Droid "business cards", history, selection to create a code (source: Google Play; click images to enlarge)

As the screenshots show, this app is able to create "business card QR-Codes". You can even edit them (e.g. embed an image into the code to make it nicer looking). To show it to your partner for scanning, you can easily pick it from the history (second screenshot). And as a side-effect, it can do much more -- not only create, but also read QR Codes.

PS: As the contact will be exported as vCard, you can also share it with your other devices this way. It might not be imported to your "personal contact" on the other devices, though...


Text displayed as hieroglyphs on website On my mobile browsers, the text just shows up as hieroglyphs in this site. The menu items also do not show up as well.

Does any one have ideas where this comes from?

Screenshots (click to enlarge):

This is due to a lack of font support on the device.

On my Nexus 7 I see this:


How to pipe output of dd to a computer via adb shell? I've accidentally wiped my phone and lost all my photos. I'm going to try to run photorec on an image of my phone.

What I'd like to do is somehow something along these lines:

adb shell
dd if=/data of=/file/on/my/computer/not/on/phone

Is there any way to do this? I'm using a linux PC.

I saw this related question (Create a dd image of a Android 4.4.4 for forensics?) but it writes to the same device - my device is a nexus 6 so I don't have an sd card to write to (and doing so would likely over write the data I'm trying to recover)

This functionality has not been implemented in ADB yet.  However, there are workarounds that some users have come up with.  Check out this thread on XDA Developers for more information on how you can work around this limitation.


Pause download on Google Play Store I'm a Nexus 4 user. I tried to download Injustice from Google Play Store last night and it got cancelled a couple of times due to poor speed of my connection. Is there a way to pause the download so that I could later complete the download?

There is no direct switch to do so. As @r4d1um says, you may deactivate your data, and once you want to resume, restart your data and the store will start download from where you had left off.


How to Recover Data From Dead Screen Phone In an accident I got my Samsung Galaxy S3 broken. Mobile is turn on but screen is not working. I want some very important data from internal storage. Is there anyway to recover that data?

If Developer Settings are enabled and the device is rooted, you can plug the device into your computer via USB and use androidscreencast to control the device and upload the files to an online storage service such as Google Drive before downloading the files on your computer.


detect when application using permissions ~ Android I list all permissions of the new installed application on rooted Android device. But I want to detect when an application uses these permission. For example, I installed an app and it uses READ_CALENDAR permission. It is not always read my calendar data. I want to detect the time it reads my calendar data. Is it possible?

That should be possible. How to realize it, depends on the Android version used: For Android 4.0 and earlier, the IMHO best solution is installing LBE Privacy Guard, which you can configure to issue a popup whenever a given permission was requested (so you can decide whether to permit or deny access). However, do not attempt installing this on Android 4.1+, or you'll end up in a boot-loop; the XDA Developers have "localized versions" of LBE Security Master available instead (a version I find bloated, as it tries to cover to much things).

Apart from these two, I know of no other app informing you of an access at the time it's made (which does not mean there aren't any). Other tools might however log access so you can either see the log entry afterwards, or at least know whether an app has used that permission at all (e.g. XPrivacy). I'm not sure how PDroid handles this, as I've never used it.


Android-System causes my smartphone to lag The Process Àndroid-System causes my Smartphone to lag very often since it uses much CPU and drains my battery.
Restart does not work.
There is no other process using as much CPU.

MediaServer seems not to be the problem.

Phone: LG G2 "LG-D802"

Android 4.4.2

Kernel 3.4.0

How can I fix this problem?

What you're seeing is probably not Android System itself, but rather MediaServer, which in case you download a corrupted file might cause problems.

I would recommend trying to delete whatever you downloaded in the past few days, and in case that doesn't work, perform a factory reset.


When is an "in app purchase" not an in app purchase? The Play Store policy on in app transaction fees reads like this:

  For applications and all in-app products that you choose to sell on Google Play, the transaction fee is equivalent to 30% of the price. You receive 70% of the payment and the remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees.
  (Reference: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622)

I get that this applies to things like premium currency, extra levels, even e-magazine subscriptions.  However, there are some cases where I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that that a particular app couldn't possibly be paying 30% on purchased items.  To name just one example of this, eBay.  I doubt they pay 30% of the price of an item when they themselves collect maybe 20% of the sale price, but correct me if I am wrong.

Is there a rule, hopefully officially written down, which explains when a purchase made through an app is not subject to the 30% fee?

I think that you have mis-interpreted

  For applications and all in-app products that you choose to sell on
  Google Play

to mean all purchases made through apps distributed via Google Play rather than purchases made using the Google Play Store. When you use the Ebay app they don't take payment via Google Play and therefore do not need to pay Google 30%.

Having said that... as mentioned by Dan Hulme the Google Play terms prohibit using other payment mechanisms for purchases that are are entirely within the app (i.e. excluding magazine subscriptions, other kinds of downloadable content, and purchases of physical goods)

  App purchases:

  Developers charging for apps and downloads from Google Play must do so by using Google Play's payment system.

  In-app purchases:

  Developers offering virtual goods or currencies within a game downloaded from Google Play must use Google Play's in-app billing
  service as the method of payment.
  Developers offering additional content, services or functionality within another category of app downloaded from Google Play must use
  Google Play's in-app billing service as the method of payment, except:

  where payment is primarily for physical goods or services (e.g., buying movie tickets, or buying a publication where the price also
  includes a hard copy subscription); or
  where payment is for digital content or goods that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g., buying songs that can be played on
  other music players).


HTC Magic with OpenEclair: Factory reset doesn't work! today I got an old HTC Magic phone with OpenEclair (Android 2.1-update) installed on it. Unfortunately there is still the Gmail account of another person linked with it, which I'd like to remove. However, for doing so, you need to do a "factory reset" on the phone. So did I, the phone rebooted, but the data (apps, settings and the account) was still there. Nothing had been removed!

Anyone has an idea what could be the problem and how to fix that?

Thx a lot!

You didn't do a factory reset then, but probably a soft reset. To perform a factory reset from the Home screen press Menu > Settings > SD card & phone storage > Factory data reset > Reset phone > Erase everything. That should take you back to square one. Reply back with a comment if not.

Update:
Boot into the bootloader: Completely power off the deivce. Then hold down the Back button and press the Power/End Call button to restart your phone. Keep the back button held down till the bootloader menu appears. From here do you have an option to wipe, reset, or factory reset (or something along those lines)? If so try it.


Galaxy 5: GPS always stops working after phone has been in standby My new Samsung Galaxy 5 (also named Galaxy i5500, and running  (android 2.1) has some GPS issue.

The GPS works fine (i.e. it can find satellites when I use the app GPS Test.) directly after powering up my phone. However, as soon as the phone has been in standby, the GPS no longer can find any satellites. After restarting the device, the GPS is working again until the next standby.

The device has been upgraded to the latest firmware using Samsung Kies, and following Samsung's support advice I have already performed a factory reset.

Is there something that can be done to fix this (apart from waiting for Samsung Support's follow-up)?

Edit: I think this androidforums post describes the problem and solution (still have to test it) quite well.

I haven't tried this myself but the following supposedly helps in getting a faster lock for Samsung's Galaxy range of Android devices.

Make sure GPS satellite and Wireless networks has been activated.

Press *#*#1472365#*#*. This will bring up GPS settings.
Settings -> Parameter Settings -> Address -> Server Type: 1x MPC
Settings -> Parameter Settings -> Position mode: option3
Settings -> Fix Request Settings -> Session Operation: Standalone
Settings -> Fix Request Settings -> Server Option: Local
gpsOne XTRA -> Xtra Enable: Enable

Then try with Google Maps.

If you want to go back to the default setting:

Settings -> Parameter Settings -> Address -> Server Type: UMTS SLP
Settings -> Parameter Settings -> Position mode: option2
Settings -> Fix Request Settings -> Session Operation: MS-based
Settings -> Fix Request Settings -> Server Option: Default

See if that helps. Other users have also reported issues with the Galaxy range of not receiving SMS messages immediately after returning out of Airplane Mode. Seems a touch buggy...


How to block ads in Android applications? Are there ways that attempt to block ads in applications? It seems that it should be theoretically possible, by blocking web requests to certain sites, for example.

The most popular method is replacing the built-in hosts files with one that forces DNS queries to well-known ad servers to result in 127.0.0.1 (localhost).  This effectively blocks most common ads, and most of the Google Ads in applications.

The downside is that applications can tell that ads are being blocked, and can either refuse to run or otherwise degrade their usefulness while the ad blocking is in effect.

Also, root access is required to replace the hosts file.

Beyond that, I haven't seen anything that can selectively block web requests for arbitrary apps.  For some programs that only use internet access for ads, you could use a firewall app to prevent them from accessing the internet or -- if your ROM supports it (like the latest CyanogenMod) -- revoke the internet access permission from the app.

Again, root access is generally required to set up a system-wide app-level firewall or replace your ROM.


Apps & Galaxy 6's rate of battery life decline Is the Android Galaxy 6's rate of battery usage more steeply affected by each additional application added to the phone, compared with the amount that an additional app would increase the battery usage rate on other types of phones, like the iPhone or the Windows phone?
     I ask because I just upgraded to an Android Galaxy 6 after years with one of the oldest Windows phones, and despite the many inconveniences I happily bid farewell along with the Windows phone, the battery life on the Galaxy,  with no extraneous(by that I mean other than basic call, text, and voice-mail functions) apps other than yahoo email syncing, is TERRIBLE compared with that of the Windows phone with several more "extraneous": apps, even at that phones oldest.
   Hopefully some of you can speak empirically to this..?

Having more apps installed to your device storage will not at all affect your battery life, unless perhaps your storage is nearly full and the OS / storage controller needs to spend extra time finding free blocks.

Running more apps will certainly affect your battery life.  Many apps will use services, or register broadcast receivers that get events and run a task, etc. thus using CPU time and battery.  However, this is absolutely not different from other mobile OSes.


Is there a quick-fix for the Galaxy Nexus when it signals "charging" without beeing connected via USB? My Galaxy Nexus goes into charging mode but when it isn't plugged in. The battery symbol then indicates a charging and when in suspend mode, the display turns on which drains battery rapidly. I am still able to actually charge the phone by attaching an usb cable.

The problem is largely discussed in http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1427539 with different suggested solutions:

send device to Samsung for repair
use a custom ROM
fully drain the battery and charge it over night
replace USB port
clean USB port

I guess it is an hardware problem. But before sending the device to Samsung (and beeing without phone for a while) I would rather like trying to clean the port or other "quick" solutions. Has anybody instructions to do so?

If you are familiar with such things, iFixit has a teardown report for the Galaxy Nexus, it's fairly easy to disassemble it to reach the micro USB port after step 7 and inspect it.

I use isopropyl alcohol and q-tips for cleaning normally.

I'd however not suggest you try it if you have no experience with such stuff.


Are Tmobile using bogus DoD IP addresses (bogons)? I recently started picking up some weird entries in my firewall log:

kernel: arplookup 26.XXX.XXX.XXX failed: host is not on local network

There are at least at dozen entries, all to different IP's within DISANET26.

I couldn't help but be curious as to what was going on so I fired up Wireshark and began capturing packets to try and find out where it was coming from.

Turns out it's my brand new HTC sensation with all but a handful of apps installed (standard google apps + other apps I've used in the past) - I don't even have it rooted yet.

Wireshark shows a Broadcast ARP packet coming from the sensation's mac address, but logs it as coming from the DoD IP in question. The target is the gateway (pfsense router).

I've found a similar discussion over at the tmobile forums with no official tmobile response: http://forums.t-mobile.com/t5/Help-General-Discussion/Hiport-connects-to-DoD/td-p/205863

I doubt I'll find someone at tmobile who will have a clue what I'm talking about but whether the DoD is involved or not there's no denying that the phone is trying to send these packets to them.

I won't sleep well until I know why.

Some large ISPs/cell providers have been known to be assigning reserved IP addresses (i.e. IP address that does not belong to the private addresses) to devices in their network. Many organizations (government and universities) that participated in the early days of the Internet owned very large blocks of IP address that aren't being used, and their IP addresses are suspect to this sort of misuse.

The reason they did this is usually because they run out of supply for private IP addresses. This workaround is violating all kinds of standards, but it is generally safe as long as nobody in their network need to access a server using those reserved IP addresses, and since these IP addresses are unused by their owner anyway, nobody really cared to do anything about it.

btw, my superintendant told me to told you to not worry about the men in black suits in front of your residence, they're gardeners.


"no command" after OTA update of a Wiko Rainbow 4G My son has a Wiko Rainbow 4G (a French company) which underwent an OTA update. It runs by default Kitkat 4.4. The phone was not rooted not modified in any way.

After the OTA the phone rebooted but is now stuck in a "no command" ("pas de commande" in French) state - the image is of the green Android character laying on the ground with its "front panel" open and an exclamation mark.

I tried to reinstall the stock ROM but the phone is not recognized by the update program (despite having correct drivers installed it turns out I was wrong, see my answer below).

I have access to recovery mode and could attempt to flash a ROM but the flashable version (a zip) is not available. I tried to do a factory restet from the recovery mode - it worked but the problem is the same.

Is there something else I should try?

It turned out that the drivers which were installed on my Windows machine were not good enough for flashing. They were OK for normal connection when the phone was working.

I found the correct drivers on the GSM USB DRIVER site. I installed the VCOM version by going into Device Manager, clicking on the computer (upper-most entry) and selecting Action -> Add legacy software.

The installation failed. So that it goes though the PC needs to be restarted in a mode which allows for non-signed drivers. This is explained in a good video, the steps are to reboot your PC by shift clicking the reboot entry, then Troubleshoot, Advanced options, Startup settings, Disable signed drivers enforcement. After the automatic reboot the installation above will succeed, and then the flashing does so as well.

All credit goes to Android MTK for the tutorials and GSM USB DRIVER for the drivers.


Do the apps that require a full internet access override android network settings? You all know that some apps require "full internet access', and other permissions. Some use it for ads, some use it for other reasons, etc. So, can these apps access the internet when my wifi network and mobile network are disabled? I'm afraid of extra charges from my operator for extra MB. I mean those apps still show ads even if any network connection is disabled - how is it possible? In other words - how can I be sure if an app doesn't use any traffic while wifi and mobile networks are turned off?

Well, if you had your 3G off, then they can't access that, I suggest if you didn't override it, use APNdroid from the market to do so and it also features a good widget.
Anyways, applications can't override your WiFi settings, if it's off, then they can't turn it on, but if you left your 3G on without any overriding application, like APNdroid, then they might use that, and this will ruin your data-plan.

I suggest you use 3G watchdog and APNdroid, both are available in the Market, to ride and monitor your data-plan, and for WiFi you got the power widget or any other mean to turn it on and off.

Keep in mind, keep your WiFi and 3G off all the time until YOU decide you want to be connected. And if you enabled 3G, turn automatic sync before turning your 3G on, sync lives over MBs if you got more than two accounts to be synced as I do.


Voice command when switching pages on home screen On the main home screen when I slide between the different pages, a voice says "page 1 of 2" "page 2 of 2" etc. This also happens when my phone is on silent mode and out of driving mode. How can I get rid of it, or at least make it silent while my phone is on the silent mode?
Very much appreciated!

A bit late I know, but I've just been having a similar problem with a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini.

This is how I got rid of it. I tried other ways, but found that if I turned the phone on and off again, the speech would come alive again. This was the only way I could kill it off for good.

Go to Settings -> Accessibility -> Text to Speech and there will be a list of current text to speech providers (I had 2, Google and Samsung)

Go to Application Manager -> All
Find Google Text to Speech and disable it
If there is no disable button, you will have to click Uninstall All Updates first, then go back, and the button should now read Disable

You'll want to do the above step for each Text to Speech option you had in your list. I had 2, so I did it again for Samsung TTS.

Now if you go back to Settings -> Accessibility -> Text to Speech there should be nothing left in the list and your home screen will finally be silent. Hooray!

I also have driving mode and TalkBack disabled. I already had them turned off, but they didn't help.

Hope this helps.


Searching for Android apps Searching an app on the Play Store for new apps results in a failure most of the time. By failure I mean we don't find the desired app although the name matches exactly. Popular examples are Temple Run (1st week after release) and Instagram (right now too). Searching on Google for terms like "Instagram for android" results in an immediate hit. Is this is a problem only in India or is it everywhere? And why is the Play Store search so backward compared to Google Search which has better success over a bigger search pool?
edit1
To clear up things, I was able to download the apps from http://play.google.com onto my phone.

The general opinion everywhere is that the Web marketplace is much better with search results than the marketplace app (it is really puzzling as to why is such the case). And no, the problem is not India specific, it is faced everywhere. The same opinion holds for other stores as well, including Apple's AppStore. The good news is, there are a few companies trying to make it better, namely Chomp and Tapjoy:

Chomp has been pretty successful and has been solving a truly-existing problem, which is evident since Verizon now includes Chomp in its tethered phones.

For more info, see xconomy.com news article discussing the search issues in the mobile market places and apps like Chomp and Tapjoy.


Insufficient storage updating Android app Every time my Nexus S attempts to update Chrome, It displays an error stating "Insufficient storage available". According to "Manage apps" I have 412MB of internal storage available, which should be more than enough.

Searching Google turns up plenty of people with the same issue, but no definitive answer.

How do I get Chrome to update?

The app's data size had crept up to over 100MB. Still shouldn't be a problem in my opinion, but apparently that was enough to prevent updating.

I cleared the application data "Manage apps" -> "Chrome" -> "Clear data", then was able to update Chrome successfully from Google Play.


android system update in custom rom I am using a custom rooted android device (not used by anyone else) which comes with android 4.1.2 custom rom.

Suddenly I received an auto update notification and everything was erased... it was a total mess...

Where does my device get the link to download the update from?
How do I disable the auto update?

Even if those things are totally differ from one device to another, I would be very glad to receive a few leads...

thank you.

If your device is a popular device then chances are you will be having updates at least once a month.

You can use GooManager app to update your Custom rom GooManager APP link.

  GooManager automatically checks your custom rom and search for
  updates.

  This app is a front-end for the Android file hosting site, Goo.im. It
  allows for downloads of ROMs, Google Apps packages, kernels, apps, and
  any other file available via the website. Update notifcations are
  available for ROMs and Google Apps packages. Please note that
  notifications are not via GCM (push messages) but run at start-up, and
  every 2-24 hours (configurable in-app).


Are alternative, mostly Asian, Android Markets safe and fair? I'm getting mailing from various alternative Android markets, mostly from Asian regions (last one from Ndoo Networks), offering hosting of my free Android app.

Although broader reach for my app would be certainly better, I still have some questions:

Are these Markets safe?
They are getting access to some my credentials, they can distribute something on behalf of my name, like virus, or spam, etc.
Would it be fair for Google to host apps there?
I mean Amazon is ok, that's fair competition, but I'm afraid these "noname" alternative markets are somehow using unfair benefit of the work of other

Does anyone have any good or bad experience with these markets?

Are these Markets safe? They are getting access to some my
  credentials, they can distribute something on behalf of my name, like
  virus, or spam, etc.

If they ask for permission to distribute your apps, then they're probably the least to worry about; you can always verify that your apk is being distributed unmodified by verifying the apk's signature with your public key. You can also publish your public key (but keep your private key private) so that people downloading from these alternative markets can verify for themselves that the apk came from you unmodified.

  Would it be fair for Google to host apps there? I mean Amazon is ok,
  that's fair competition, but I'm afraid these "noname" alternative
  markets are somehow using unfair benefit of the work of other

It would be just as fair as Amazon; in fact, it would generally be considered unfair monopoly if Google started hunting down these alternative markets. In any case, the Play Market does not provide paid apps in China (and many other countries), so it does not hurt their revenue stream.


Display media from HTC One on a computer display The title says it all. I am wondering if I can display slideshows among other things on a computer display.

I know that it has to be a DLNA compatible device, which I believe most of computer displays are not, and I also know there's this companion HTC Media Link HD device (which is a wi-fi dongle kind of thing).

I have a Mac OS X 10.8.2 Macbook Air, and an old Linux laptop, and some time to kill on a cold November weekend, so what I am asking really is whether there is a way to turn my Macbook or Linux laptop into a DLNA compatible device so that I could play slideshows on 24" display without investing any extra money.

You don't necessarily need DLNA for that, nor HDMI. WiFi and the right app might do as well. Take a look at e.g. Remote Gallery 3D, you cannot only have a slide show on your PC, but even manage your photos remotely. The app runs a web server on your device, which then can be accessed via any web browser (i.e. completely OS independent). Only requirement is Flash capability. For a presentation, also have a look at Youtube.
This way you can even take your photo gallery with you when visiting friends or family: no installation on the PC required. So as long as WiFi is available, you're fine. The app is free, so it comes without investing any extra money, as requested ;)

Alternatively, you could setup a DLNA server on your Android device (BubbleUPnP would be a good choice for that). Nex, you would need a client to access it from your Mac (take a look at this Wikipedia list to pick one). Start the server on your Android device, then start the client on the Mac. The Client should automatically find and list your Android device, and let you browse your media. What features are offered (just pick single entries, make a slideshow, have background music played along) depends on the client chosen.

A third variant would be investigating in Airplay. As that's Apple's own stuff, your Mac should surely support it. There are a bunch or apps supporting Airplay you could chose from; not having a Mac, I cannot be of assistance in this area.

Fazit by ILIV:

BUbbleUPnP is a very nice software. I'm having a lot of fun trying out various combinations. One thing I learned this morning is that I can use VLC to browse and play all content on my phone: video, music and pictures. Video playback intermittently stucks for a split second, very rarely, but it does. That is unfortunate, but I'm wondering if it is a VLC or BubbleUPnP issue, or maybe it's just that two don't get along well.


Unfortunately, contacts has stopped Galaxy note 1 stock firmware I'm running stock android version - 4.0.4 with baseband N7000DDLR1.
Received a minor update today in India(14.5MB) which said a performance update.

Everything worked fine after the update. However, my contacts and phone applications have stopped working. When I tried opening any of these apps I get "Unfortunately, contacts has stopped".

I have cleared the cache/data of contacts, contacts storage, phone. I even did a factory reset twice; removed the memory card and tried the same. Problem persists.

PS. I have never rooted / installed custom firmware.
Kindly help.

This is a firmware issue, and needs to be addressed by the manufacturer.

If you have done a factory reset, then you should contact the manufacturer and tell them that after the latest upgrade, the contact and phone app no longer work.

They should release a new upgrade to fix this issue.


How to identify the hardware of my phone? I have a china phone and it has a quadcore processor. Now how do i figure out what chipset,processor it has and which roms is it compatible with????

There's a bunch of system info apps available on the markets. Apart from those monitoring resource usage are also some showing you details on the hardware components, such as Hardware Info and System Info Droid:

Hardware Info and System Info Droid (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)

These two should tell you everything you need – except for "which roms is it compatible with". That's always hard to tell if you don't know the exact name (and sometimes even if you do).


Any way to Stream Youtube Sound off of Nexus 7 to Yamaha Amp over Airplay? I have the following 3 devices:

a Nexus 7
an iPhone 4s
a Yamaha RX-473, which supports airplay

All are hooked up over my wifi. I've setup Airplay with the amp and the iPhone, allowing me to watch videos on my iPhone and hear the sound out of the Yamaha amplifier, but I'd love to use the Nexus 7's larger screen to watch youtube videos.

Is there any way to wirelessly stream youtube audio from my Nexus 7 to my Yamaha receiver, in the same way that I can using my iPhone?

I purchased the AirSync application, but it appears as though that only works for music and video I have on my Nexus 7, not streamed youtube apps, so its not exactly what I'm looking for.

You could try and exploit your receiver's support for the DLNA / UPnP protocols, by installing a DLNA / UPnP control point app, such as BubbleUPnP.


How do I get Android-x86 (32-bit or 64-bit) non-UEFI to boot in VirtualBox? EDIT: I'm getting similar results in both 32-bit and 64-bit.

Summary

I am installing Android-x86 version 7.1 32-bit or 64-bit in VirtualBox.

If I install it using UEFI (64-bit only), it works, but I cannot resize the screen, a problem to which I have been unable to find an answer.

Therefore, I need to install it without UEFI, so that I can resize the screen.

Problem

The Android installation runs smoothly. But, no matter what I have tried, once installed, the non-UEFI Android system won't boot.

If I use a GPT hard disk, I get this error message when booting the newly-installed Android, whether 32-bit or 64-bit:

FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted.

If I use an MBR hard disk, I get this error message when booting the newly-installed Android 64-bit:

  Trusted GRUB now booting command list

  Progress:
Error 15: File not found

tGRUB: ******************************************
tGRUB: * An error occured which might result in *
tGRUB: * an unverifiable or insecure system     *
tGRUB: * state. !!! BOOTING WILL BE STOPPED !!! *
tGRUB: ******************************************

And the 32-bit starts with 100% CPU and goes nowhere (very fast!).

More information

Host

Linux Ubuntu version 16.04 64-bit
VirtualBox version 5.1.28

Guest

Type Linux, Version "Linux 2.6 / 3.x / 4.x" (32-bit or 64-bit as appropriate)
System Base Memory 2,048 Mb
System EFI turned off
Storage

Controller: IDE for the optical drive to hold the Android-86 ISO
Controller: SATA for a 40 Gb hard disk

Question

How can I get Android-x86 to boot on a non-UEFI system on VirtualBox, please?

When you try to install Android x86 on pc HDD, try to provide a boot partition through Create/modify partition and make it bootable. Followed by that create a new partition as Linux. write both the partition and after that install the android x86 on the linux partition (formatting as ext4).

It will work, after allocating a bootable partition. I tried and it worked.


How to “adb connect” to Samsung Galaxy Tab (P3100)? I am trying to connect to my tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab P3100) through network.

 > adb connect 10.0.0.2
 unable to connect to 10.0.0.2:5555

 > adb connect 10.0.0.2:5555
 unable to connect to 10.0.0.2:5555:5555

 > adb connect 10.0.0.2:5038
 unable to connect to 10.0.0.2:5038:5038

Ping works successfully. I also checked "USB debugging" option in "Developers options" on tablet.

Connection throught USB ("adb usb") works fine.

Is there any suggestions?

you have to tell adb to use tcpip

adb tcpip 5555
adb connect 10.0.0.2

then to go back to usb mode

adb usb


Downgrade nVidia Shield to Android 4.4 KitKat I mistakenly installed 5.0 Lollipop on my nVidia Shield tablet, and I regret it. Is there a way to revert back to KitKat? I've tried finding a way, but no luck so far.

One way would be to flash a factory image to your tablet, which would restore it to the state it was when you first bought it.

Depending on your model (wifi, or wifi + lte), you can find official factory images to for the SHIELD tablet on this nvidia website:

https://developer.nvidia.com/develop4shield

Following the relevant links, you will get to a website from where you can download the factory image. The bundle should also contain instructions. Hope this helps.


How to turn off talkback feature on Galaxy S2 ICS 4.03 I have turned on Talkback to see if it worked on My Galaxy S2.That also disabled my touch screen scrolling .Now I cannot turn off talkback because I cannot scroll through the setting menu. What should I do?

In this post, it says to: double tap and scroll with two fingers.
Let us know if it works.


Where to store (personal) files? What is the best place in the Android (4.4 or similar) file system to save some
documents (.pdf, personal docs, other files, music, ...)? In other words, is
there a specific folder where one can create a home directory and put in files
without having to fear that it is wiped out by (updates of) Android?

Note that this is not guranteed to be the case with every update, and may vary from device to device. However, in every case I'm familiar with, this has held true.

OTA/Automatic updates (and many but not all ROMs installed with a custom Recovery) will generally ignore anything inside the /sdcard/ directory. I keep everything in there and whenever I switch ROMs or update, that directory stays safe as long as whatever I'm installing doesn't require a factory reset.

Devices with no physical SD Card slot such as Nexus, and Kindle Fires have treated that sort of as the default /home/user/ directory. Downloads from Chrome go to /sdcard/Download/ by default. Music gets downloaded to /sdcard/Music/ etc...

Devices with a physical SD Card slot seem to use that as the mount point for an inserted card. You can use it if you have a card inserted - otherwise, it's not available.

Some devices will be different. As Izzy noted, the external SD card can have a different default mountpoint such as /sdcard/external_sd/ or something with /extSD/. It could realistically be any point that the manufacturer or ROM builder decides on.

Having said that, it's always a good idea to keep your data backed up. I haven't had any emergencies, and my data in the directory has never been wiped when I wasn't expecting it, but it's always best to be safe.


How do I silence a call with my Samsung Fascinate? I want to be able to silence the ringer/vibration of a call without hitting the "ignore" button.

The reason is that if someone gets sent to voice mail after one or two rings they will likely know that you chose to ignore the call, however if you just let it ring until it gets to voice mail there's no way to tell if the person ignored you or truly missed the call.  I'm not in the business of ignoring calls but there are times I do so and I don't want the person to know that I didn't want to talk to them.

I never use a ringtone, but when my phone is sitting on the desk the vibration is LOUD!  Every other phone I've ever had allowed me to silence the vibration by hitting the down volume button.  This doesn't work on my Fascinate.  Another oddity is that I get two different screens when people call: 1. a slider option to answer or ignore with an option at the bottom to "ignore with text" 2. or three buttons: Answer, Ignore or Silence (but this one is always grayed out).  There doesn't seem to be any order to which screen I'll be presented.

Any ideas how I can start silencing calls?

I've got a rooted Samsung Fascinate running Froyo on the SuperClean 2.9 ROM with VZW.

You can silence the call without rejecting it by pressing and/or holding the physical volume down button.

Note that some phones accept a single momentary press, whilst others require you to hold the button for a moment or two.  It seems Samsungs tend to fall into the latter group.


How can I stream all audio from my Mac to my Android phone? I'm sick of switching my headphone jack from my Mac to phone and vice versa. Is there any way to stream all audio playing on my Mac to my Android phone, so I can hear any audio from either my Mac or my phone through the same pair of headphones, at the same time?

Airfoil is available cross platform:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rogueamoeba.AirfoilSpeakers


How Do I root Motorola x Force? I've just bought a shiny new Motorola X Force and I would like to be able to root it.

Is there an app that I can use?

https://www.motorola.co.uk/products/moto-x-force

Any help  would be much appreceated

Good that you got the X Force instead of Droid Turbo 2 (Verizon's variant), that means your device is eligible for unlocking the bootloader and thus rooting relatively easily.

Unlock bootloader following here - all data including internal storage will be wiped, so be sure to back up.
Flash TWRP recovery here.
Flash a suitable SuperSU package in TWRP. Use "systemless" if you want to keep the system intact so you theoretically would be able to take OTA updates, or use "system mode" if you want root to persist across factory resets.
Optionally, flash CyanogenMod 12.1 here in case you're bored with Moto's UI and want it replaced altogether. You lose stuffs like Moto Assist though.


What information does stock Android send to Google by default, and how do I opt-out? I'm about to buy my first Android phone. My understanding is that, in order to download apps and get updates from Google Play, I need to be permanently signed into a Google account that's linked to my name via credit card information.

I find Google's privacy policy too ambiguous to understand what data is logged from Android users. I don't want to share more information than the device needs to operate.

Here are some steps I plan to take already:

Turn off Google Now
Don't use Gmail
Use a non-stock browser
Use DuckDuckGo for search

My questions:

What other information does Android send to Google by default?
What actions should I take to minimise data collection from Google and other apps? (I'll be using stock Android 4.2 on a Nexus 4.)
Is Android still a good choice if I don't plan to use Google's services?

Android is FACC
Android might be many things, but certainly not "privacy first". At least not if you want to use Google Playstore as a ressource for your apps. While at creation (initialization) of your google-account on your Android device, you are asked "Do you want to store your data with Google?", this only means "Backups of your apps and their data, as far as they support it". Soon you will discover that your contacts and calendars are automatically synced with Google servers, without asking you, unless you explicitly opted out of that.
So if there are any firsts, it's FACC: Android comes Free of charge, is Ad supported, Cloud based, and highly Customizable. Nobody will argue the first and last items are very appreciable, while "the cloud" is fine with most, and the ads are mostly "accepted" (as long as they are not too agressive, like e.g. Airpush).
So what data do Google services collect?
Nick checked some sources (namely, Google's privacy policy), and reported in a below comment:

Google says it logs your "phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls" in their privacy policy. It also logs your IP address.
But it doesn't say if this info is logged for Android users specifically, or if it's only collected from other services such as Google Voice. And it doesn't say whether it logs data even if you're logged out of Android services.

Sometimes what's missing speaks as well (sometimes even louder than the facts mentioned). So starting with the "worst-case scenario", we won't be too much shocked later on. Having created a Google account or not: as soon as a network connection is available, data can be uploaded to any servers. System apps can access identifying data such as imei or IMSI, your phone number, or even your locally stored contacts and calendars (yepp, paranoia-mode enabled again), and with an available network, they could transfer all data they have available anywhere. (Careful: I did not say they do so, just they could).

We may collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.

(Source: Google Collection, see below)
Never forget: While Android itself is Open Source, many apps are not. But also keep in mind: this is not just the case with Android, but with any other system as well.
If you want to read some more on Google's privacy:

New Google Privacy Policy: Explained (01/2012)
Google’s in the Privacy Hot Seat Again (03/2012)
Google Collection: What is collected? An excerpt of the privacy policy (06/2012)
The Truth About Android Security (10/2012)

There's one really scary part:

We may collect and store information (including personal information) locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.

(emphasis mine; source: Google Collection, see above)
First steps for privacy
At the very first you could check in advance how the device you want to buy comes configured. In most cases, there will be a lot of bloatware pre-installed, which contributes to the "data share". While you cannot really be forced to use those apps, it sometimes is not really possible to get rid of them without rooting. So the less bloatware there is, the better.
rooting is not always an option, as in most countries this will void your warranty. Otherwise you could decide for a more privacy-friendly custom-rom. So when you've got your new device, you will have to carefully check all options whether they might be intrusive to your privacy:

say "No" to above mentioned "Backup to Google" question. Otherwise, next to the list of apps you've installed from Google Play (which Google knows anyway), and data from several apps, also sensitive information like e.g. your WiFi passwords find their way into the cloud.
before you enter any contact or calendar data, make sure to have the sync disabled for them (see Settings→Accounts & Sync). You can still export your contact list easily direct from within the contacts app -- but if you are going to import anything again after e.g. a factory-reset or on a new device, make sure to check the sync options before that (that was how Google got my data, when I forgot that one time).
if you enable Google's location service, this will also send "anonymized" data about places you've been. I placed "anonymized" in quotation marks, as a study recently showed that de-anonymization can be easily achieved. So you might want to turn that off as well.

Android without Google?
Wouldn't it be more consequent then to use Android without Google? This question has been discussed more than once. And yes, it is certainly possible (and before you say it's a "contradiction in terms", I could split hairs and argue that Android is not developed "by Google", but by the AOSP, the Android Open Source Project). You will have to sacrifice some things (as e.g. a big part of the apps on Google Play are hard to find outside Google Play, for example). But if that's a price you are willing to pay to protect your privacy at max, here are some readings for you:

Can an Android phone run without Google?
Guide: How To Use Your Android Phone Without Google
"Android without Google" discussion @ XDA-Developers
XDA developers are also working on a pendant to Google Apps. The project is called NOGAPPS.

Privacy with Android and Google?
Okay, the above approach might be a bit too exaggerated for the most (but hey, only because we are paranoid, that doesn't mean nobody's after us, right?). So what's the way in the middle? I mean, aside the "first steps" mentioned above?
There are many things. In First steps for privacy I already described how to prepare a fresh, unbloated Android that comes with the Google Apps. Now let's look what to care for next:
Pre-installed apps
There might come some pre-installed apps not belonging to the Android core system. And not "really needed" for the privacy-concerned. Stuff like Google+ or Facebook. Starting with Android 4.0, we can simply go to Settings→Apps→Manage Apps, and disable those we don't want to use. This also might give a boost to performance and improve battery-life, as it rids us of several "background services" those apps were running. At startup. Even if we never started them.
Installing new apps
Don't click on everything fancy (well, need to remember that for a later part: ads in apps). Of course look around what sounds useful or interesting to you. But make sure to read through the comments (at least scan through them) for possible obstacles. Ignore those one-word comments like "great" and "shit", and also those just declaring "download problems" and the like. They do not speak about the app. But check if there were any privacy concerns in the past, or any other trouble for that sake.
Then make sure to check the permissions the app requests. Do they make sense (in the context of what the app is supposed to do)? Critical combinations for privacy are e.g. access to personal data (contacts, calendars, etc) with internet. Or simply internet -- as they could send anything. How hard you argue depends on the grade of paranoia you cultivate :)
Privacy helpers
Sometimes it's not avoidable to risk some permissions: of course a web browser needs internet access, as does a SMS app need access to your messages. So how to control or restrict them?
There are several helpers around (see e.g. this list at lisisoft, will take you a while to scan through it :). You can hide sensitive information using...

password stores
locked galleries
crypt containers (see e.g. Droid Crypt)

All these things do not even require your device to be rooted. But really forbidding apps to access things (or control their access) won't work without root. Examples have already be named in bassmadrigal's answer:

LBE Privacy Guard controls access to your data (call-logs, contacts, etc.), to critical functions (initiate calls, access location data, etc.) plus firewall your device (control which apps might access the net via WiFi, mobile data). Careful when you're running JellyBean or higher: the playstore version of this app is known to cause boot-loops there. Rather check XDA-developers, they have a fixed version.
PDroid comes in several variants: PDroid Privacy Protection being the original one, followed up by PDroid Manager and OpenPDroid. Other than LBE, these cannot be installed as an app, but need additional preparations -- as they are deeply integrated into the system. This not only adds another layer of protection -- but OpenPDroid is even OpenSource, which adds another layer of trust as well.

See also how to fake my personal information.
Want some shocking details?
Visit your Google Dashboard, log in with your Google account. Here you can find out whom you contacted most frequently, and what other data Google collected from you.
What happens with all your data when you die, or for any other reason become inactive?
Ooops? Yes, also something one should keep in mind in this context: Plan your digital afterlife. The linked article introduces the new Inactive Account Manager:

You can tell us what to do with your Gmail messages and data from several other Google services if your account becomes inactive for any reason.
For example, you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Or you can select trusted contacts to receive data [...]

(Read more in the linked article)
Protect your device
Now you've taken care no data is leaving your device, even locked data away in "data vaults", and secured the "back-doors" -- you should not leave the front-door wide open. Go to Settings→Security and set up a screen lock. Multiple choices here:

the good-old PIN code. Not really secure. At least not, if you use King Roland's PIN for Druidia's planet shield (or president Screw's for his briefcase; in case you do not know Spaceballs, the PIN was "12345" for both). Also not your birthdate or something like that.
a pattern-lock. More secure, as a relation to data retrievable by social-engineering is quite unlikely.
a password can be highly secure, if you use all characters available: letters (upper and lower case), numbers, special chars. And make it long. E.g. Ti1$spnc3h! -- how to remember that? Check: "This is a $uper secure password nobody can 3asily hack!"

Anti-theft protection
Also a lot of solutions on the playstore. Highly praised solutions include Cerberus anti theft, avast! Mobile Security, and more. If your device gets lost, with a good anti-theft protection you can

check its position
sound an alarm
remotely back-up (retrieve) stored data, before you...
remote-wipe the entire device including its sensitive data

and optimally, the anti-theft app automatically informs you in case the thief changes the SIM. It hides itself (stealth mode) and, with root available, can even protect itself against a factory-reset by integrating into the /system partition. So the only chance a thief has is to immediately switch-off the device, put it into a Faraday cage, and flash a new ROM while it's still in there...
Anti-virus
...you can left out, if you've followed above steps. Yes, there certainly is malware around. But with all the protection levels taken, and careful selection of sources as well as the apps themselves, risk is absolutely minimal. I never had malware on any of my devices, though I've tested a lot of apps over the past years. After all, Anti-virus (or rather anti-malware, as yet there was no virus sighted for Android) might give a false sense of security ("What shall happen? I've got that Anti-virus."), as they cannot really detect everything (no heuristics, e.g.), but rather check against a database of known malware mainly.
Backup
Last but not least: Having turned off all Google services (or at least restricted them to a minimum), you will need an alternative backup. To be honest: even if you've decided to answer "Yes" to the above question of "Do you want to backup your data with Google?", you will need a good backup -- as that "Google backup" might be many things, but for sure not complete (apps must explicitly support it by implementing its API, which is done by few apps).
For this, if your device is rooted, I strongly recommend a little investion: do yourself (and your device) some good, and buy Titanium Backup PRO. You won't regret it. TiBu is a very powerful tool to backup and restore apps including their data, restore parts of nandroid backups (see: nandroid tag wiki and backup tag wiki for details), freeze/unfreeze apps, detach apps from the playstore, and much more. Scheduled backups included. Stored to your sdcard or, if you really want to, to the cloud.
Not being rooted, but having a device with Android 4.0 or higher? Take a look at Carbon - App Sync and Backup, so you can at least backup all your apps and their data, plus some of the system data. Scheduled backups are planned here as well.
Additionally, you might want to take a look at Full Backup of non-rooted devices for more details on this topic.
Conclusion
As I wrote, there usually isn't a simple answer. You can use "Android without Google", cut down all network connections, and so on -- but at latest when you also take out your SIM, it's no longer a smartphone. Android is designed to be network enabled, from its very beginning.
You could say "who cares", and let it all go -- and complain when it's too late.
Usually you have to find a way in the middle, deciding how much of your privacy you are willing to sacrifice for how much comfort/convenience. I just listed possibilities, showed what is to be found where, and what solutions exist to protect your privacy the one way or the other. Hopefully, my elaborations will help you making your decisions.


Plugging phone into laptop charges laptop instead of phone When I plug my father's Xiaomi 5X into my MacBook Pro, it shows up as a charger on the MacBook and I don't get the usual USB options on the phone. Tried it on two Macs with same result. Also tried my Pixel 2 with the same cable and that worked as expected.

Is there some setting in either the phone or laptop that I can change to make it recognise the phone for what it is?

This is called PD charging. There should be a setting in connection dialog. Also there should be the same options in Developer Settings


Force Sony Music app to refresh album art from MP3 files I have a Sony M4 Aqua, running Android version 5.0.

I copied some MP3 files from my computer to the SD card in the phone. Then, some weeks later, on my computer, I updated the album art in the ID3 tag of some of the MP3s, reconnected the phone and overwrote the MP3 files on the SD card. However, the Music app on the phone (which came preinstalled and I believe is a Sony app) is still showing the old album art. Presumably the app has its own database of album art, which needs to be refreshed from the MP3 files' ID3 tags. How can I force it to do this?

I had the same problem. I solved it by playing a track from the album that showed the 'old' art, went into update music info and deleted the album art. All of a sudden it displayed the 'new' art. This seems to clean up the image cache for that album. Whether this clears the whole cache, I am not sure, but now all albums show updated art.


htc one s android update - how? I have a new HTC One S, which is now running 4.0.4. Although I understood that HTC released the update to 4.1, when I check for updates (Settings -> About -> Software updates -> Check Now) it returns "There are no updates available for your phone".

Do the guys in HTC push the update in chunks of devices? Can I advance myself in the queue? Can I ask for the update?

Software updates are released by the mobile network of the device as well as the device manufacturer.

It normally goes like this:

Google release a new Android version.
Manufacturers take this new Android version and modify it to work on their devices.
Manufacturers test the version, and push it out to unlocked devices first via desktop software update and then via OTA update if available.
Mobile networks/Carriers then take the Android version modified by the Manufacturer and modify it themselves to add carrier specific apps/features.
Carriers pass it onto the manufacturer to release to the public [OR] carriers release it to the public via their custom OTA app.

As such, it can take some time to get the update, however I would advise you check using the desktop program if there is one.


Can I delete cloudagent folder? I have my dropbox files in the /storage/emulated/0/cloudagent folder. Can I delete this directory from my phone? Will it affect my files in my dropbox?
Thank you!

The cloudagent folder is used to sync imaged FROM your dropbox cloud account to your phone, so they are available in the image gallery.

If you are already syncing your phone to dropbox, then you will have 2 copies of each image on your phone - probably not what you meant.

You can delete the folder, but it will return later. You first need to disable cloud syncing - it is in settings -> cloud -> images (or something similar). Then you can delete the folder.


Reconnecting Emulator to Eclipse My main problem with developing in Android is that the emulator seems to continually get disconnected from eclipse. This always happens the 2-3 time I try to upload my .apk from eclipse without rebooting the emulator. Eclipse indicates this with an empty DDMS ->Device section and logcat stays blank - sometimes I'm not sure if the new code made it on the device.

The only fix I have for this is to shut down eclipse, and restart it. With the restarting of Eclipse, on top of the emulator boot time, I can't get any momentum going in my development.

Is there a way to reconnect the emulator to eclipse without having to restart Eclipse or even the Emulator?

you can use "emulator" from console. That way it will stay on regardless of eclipse state.
 starting emulator

also, try using adb devices to find out is your emulator really running


How to boot on android if on windows 10? I got a myphone my51 tablet, it has a dual boot feature for android and windows 10.

I was able to boot easily from android to windows, but could not get back to android. Is there any command I can do to reboot the tablet to boot on android instead of windows?

use this application, it is needed to switch between the different OS's


Samsung Duos Mac address keeps changing I have a Samsung Duos GT-I9082 (Android 4.2.2).

Every time the screen turns off or is locked, the WiFi gets turned off. Then on the MAC address changes so I cannot connect to the WiFi due to MAC filtering.

Could you please help me figure this out? Thanks.

The smartphone's wifi turned out to be spoofed.


Why won't my Samsung Galaxy Ace let me update my apps? Why won't my Samsung Galaxy Ace let me install updates? It lets me download, but then when it gets to installing it says:

  could not be installed on USB or SD card

It might be possible that you have a previous version with support for 'move to SD card' installed on your SD card but the update removed that support.

Thus it fails because replacing the app on the SD card is not allowed any more.

Try to move the culprit to the phone storage in advance and retry.


Can the Samsung search key be remapped without rooting? I'd like to be able to change my search quick-key from Google, probably to DuckDuckGo, as it has some great shortcuts, and has a short, readable privacy policy. However some cursory research suggests that to do this, one has to have a rooted phone. Can this be done without rooting?

I am running a Samsung Galaxy Europa with Android 2.2, though I'd expect the answer will apply to any Android device. I should think I'll be rooting my device anyway, but it would be good to give non-rooted phone owners a choice of search facility, if it is possible!

The official DuckDuckGo app has its own search widget that can replace Android's built-in Google search widget. Have you tried that?


How format nexus 4 before flashing new ROM I have a Google Nexus 4 (mako) and I had installed cyanogen mode which accidentally showed a loop error message like "... has unfortunately closed" telling that several google apps and wizards had been closed.

What I tried to DO:

Now I want to re-install cyanogen. Because cyanogen is outdated I decided to flash the latest lineage ROM. My recovery (CWM version 6) is still unlocked, so I decided to do the fallowing:

Turn off the device
Go into boot loader mode by pressing Volume down and power and selecting to start recovery mode.
Wipe Data / Factory Reset
Enter side load mode and install lineage:
adb sideload lineage-*.zip
Reboot.

After that lineage os booted and showed the same errors than my old cyanogen ROM. There are even error messages regarding some google apps, although they are not installed.

Possible solution:

It seems that the wipe data / factory reset did not delete the whole cyanogen mod. It seems just to delete user data. I think I need to format the whole device. Last time this maybe was done while unlocking the boot loader.

Question:

How to format Nexus 4 before flashing a new ROM.

CWM is long dead, let it stay that way.

You are advised to use the latest TWRP recovery, which has an interactive graphic interface, has a more powerful and thorough wipe function, and has an inbuilt file explorer so that you could just look inside /system to see if the wipe indeed worked (don't forget to mount /system before looking in, though).

After installing TWRP, select Advanced wipe: /data, /cache and /system. Actually it shouldn't be necessary to wipe /system, since newer Android ROMs overwrite the whole /system partition, but since you claim you need a full wipe, this will do.


Are there USB settings in CyanogenMod 10? If so, where? When I shut off USB Debugging in the developer settings I get a USB Mass Storage prompt upon connecting the device to my computer.  However, for the life of me I can't find a place to shut off this prompt (i.e., turn it into a notification rather than have the window pop up) or change to MTP mode (I'm assuming I no longer get Kies mode — I have a Vibrant).  Does this exist?

If you go to Settings -> Storage, then hit the menu button, you'll find an item called USB computer connection.

Here you can set USB settings.


Is there an Android media payer that allows you to speed up an mp3? Is there a media player for android that can play an mp3 10% faster or slower if the user wants to?

Rockbox has a very early port to Android that allows speeding up an MP3 once the Timestrech option is enabled.  The port is very functional, but the UI and integration with Android still leave much to be desired.  Jon Corbet of LWN did a good summary article a few weeks ago.  The most important piece of advice before using it:

  Imagine that your screen is a 3x3 grid, where the middle is used as the selector,
  left-right-up-down are used as cursor keys. The other directions have special
  functions in some screens, e.g. in Now Playing screen with the upper left you can
  access some playback mode settings.

Having previously enjoyed Rockbox on a several previous Sansa players, I personally excuse the UI shortcomings and use it when playing long stretches of podcasts.  I like that set the playback speed (independant of the pitch) from 50% of the original speed to (at least) 200%.  In increments of a tenth of a percent.  Depending on the subject and the speed with which people speak, I will listen to a podcasts at 175%, 166%, 150%, 133%, or 125%.


How to move Whatsapp chat history from iPhone 4 to Nexus 4? Just upgraded my iPhone 4 to Nexus 4, and could not find on Google a reasonable answer to this question. Is there any good app that does this? Or, what should be the process?

I made the switch from iPhone 5S to Nexus 6 three days ago. I transferred WhatsApp conversations including attachments from my old iPhone to new Nexus 6 with the help of BackupTrans, the desktop utility mentioned in this article. Here are the steps to transfer WhatsApp messages from iPhone to Android with this software:

Launch the program on your Windows PC or Mac and then connect both your Android device and iPhone to your computer via USB cable.
Click 'Back up my data' when a message pops out on your Android phone’s screen. Now the software will read WhatsApp messages from your Android and iPhone and show them on its main interface.
Finally go to the top tool and click "Transfer Messages from iPhone to Android" button.

Note: You will need enable USB debugging before connecting your Android phone to this program and also make sure you have iTunes 11 or above installed on your computer.

It's a paid program but I couldn't find any other software or app that can migrate WhatsApp chat history from iPhone to Android. There are some apps on Play Store but none of them worked for me.


Wi-Fi antenna seems to work when the device is off When I was looking at battery statistics I've found something strange: the bar showing wether a component is running or not indicates that wifi were active when I took off my phone. Is this a bug?
I have a Google Nexus 5 with standard Android 5 on it.

Here the screenshot of statistics :

As Microsoft) used to say:

  That's not a bug, that's a feature.

Check for following: Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Menu -> Advanced:

Scanning always available
Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep


Best Practise for deploying a 'clone' image across 200 android tablets (Samsung GT-P7510) My objective is to be able to create a master 'image' of an android tablet, and then duplicate that image across about 200 identical tablets to streamline the administration of a university's pool of loan tablets (e.g. to roll out updated/new apps, to 'clean' them when they are returned, etc.)

What would be the best way to do that?

(I've seen a number of posts around the subject, using nandroid backup, adb, zen toolkit, and so forth, but all rather old and nothing definitive)

Currently the tablets are Samsung Galaxy 10.1 (GT-P7510) running
stock Android 4.0.4 - but it'd be nice to have a procedure that ought
to work if these are replaced by some other tablets.
The tablets aren't currently rooted, but could be if that made things
much easier.  It'd have to be a real advantage, though, as that might
compromise the warranties on future new stocks of tablets.
These tablets don't have external SD storage, but it'd be great to
have a process that would re-initialise ALL aspects of a tablet, even
if it did have external (or ancillary internal) SD storage.
I'd ideally like to create/document a procedure that someone in basic
first-line tech support could follow.
If it could avoid having to buy 200 paid app licenses, then that'd be
great too :)

I'd appreciate any pointers you folks could give on how best to do this:  I would imagine with android tablets becoming much more popular over the past year, that there must be corporations, education establishments and the like doing this...

That is exactly what happens with the nandroid backup. You root, then do all installation of applications pre-stage, then remove the bloatware, remove all email accounts, then take nandroid backup. This becomes your gold ROM so to speak. It is stored in another partition of the master tablet. You need to move it to a removable SD or USB.

All rest of the 199 tablets will be rooted with TWRP/ClockworkMod, and then nandroid restored from the master image on the USB.

It is fugly, but until Acronis or Symantec come out with a tool, I am not sure how else do it. Clearly hardware companies have something that clones the disk.


Why can't I change my password in system settings? Nexus 6p Resurrection Remix Pie After entering the wrong password too many times in VPN settings, I can't enter my password in settings. Whenever I do, I get sent back to the previous page. I can't even change my password!

Don't worry I factory reset and it started working again!


Are Xoom files automatically transferred to a newly added microSD card? I just slipped a 32G microSD card into my Xoom tablet. I had used the SD card in my Android smartphone before replacing that card with a larger capacity card. Are files that were heretofore stored on the Xoom automatically moved to the SD card?

I may have neglected to remove all files from the sd card before installing it... so I should be able to delete all files showing up in the /sdcard (sdcard) directory? I note I also have a folder named /mnt/external1 (sdcard) directory. Any idea what is what here?

The files on the SD card are most likely there from the previous handset.  Android won't automatically move any files when it detects a new sd card.


What's this icon that looks like 3 vertical waves in the status bar of my Droid X? There's this vertical river-looking icon thing in my status bar? Nothing's claiming it in the notification window.

Crude recreation:

The third table in this page mentions "Vibrate":
https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/48504/~/droid-x---phone-status-%26-notifications

Even though the first table clearly depicts a different icon for the vibration mode, although with the same zigzag pattern.

The pattern is also the same as the icon I have for vibration mode on my SGS:

Cheers!


Remove Google App from non-rooted phone Is it possible to Uninstall Google App without root permissions ?

It consumes more internal memory and drains battery.

I already gone through a thread to disable it but uninstalling may free-up some space and saves battery.

It's not just about Google apps. You can't remove any system app without root privileges. The reason is very simple. You need higher privileges (system; root) to write the system partition which contains those system apps and you don't have it. system partition is mounted in read-only mode by-default.

Unless that partition is already mounted in read-write mode, a system app uninstaller would first have to remount the partition in read-write mode and then would begin the procedure of removing the app. To remount, they require root permissions while you're asking something impossible here.

Thinking about adb wouldn't help here because it doesn't have the privilege to remount that partition too.

As for freeing some disk space, know that disabling those Google apps and clearing their data from Settings → Apps → All apps should be enough because even if you somehow end up achieving the impossible, you won't be able to see any difference since the insufficient-memory issue is associated with data partition, not with system.
See Where in the file system are applications installed?

As for any concern about the battery, you may be able to save some juice using Greenify.


How can I read the chat logs from WhatsApp messenger on my Windows machine? How can I copy over the whatsApp chat messages to a text editor? Are there any specific files I need to copy? I don't care for the media files, I just need the transcript of chat.

I am using the Motorola G phone.

I have noticed the files are stored using some encryption on the phone. I am able to copy the files from the phones internal memory to my Windows 7 computer.
The files look something like this msgstore-2014-01-08.1.db.crypt

Opening the file in a text editor gives out a bunch of unprintable characters. Since this is encrypted data, I expected that to happen. So how can I decrypt this text file on my windows computer?

Iï#®ÿùuÆÍ\ ¥Ÿ-5r
ƒX«¿œ‰ùjÏ½Ä!Ði°‘Ú¹^¬

The simplest method is to use the EMAIL CONVERSATION option from within a conversation.

Tap the overflow menu (3 dots), the MORE > EMAIL CONVERSATION.

That brings up a popup allowing you to either attach media files or send the chat without the media files.

There's also Whatsapp Toolbox which has similar functionality but requires ROOT access.


how to transfer files to new external sdcard I have an old 64 GB sdcard and a new 128 GB sdcard, how do I copy over all files from my old card to my new in a way that makes android treat the new card just as the old card.

I tried simply copy-pasting over my DCIM folder, then I put the new sdcard in and rebooted my phone, on startup the phone recreated the /Android folder and all apps had rights to their new folders.

Ways I tried to move the files:

1)

dd old card to disk
dd to new card

after this the card works but is seen as having 64 GB instead of 128 GB
space

use gparted to resize partition

this makes android see the card as having used 64 GB space but with no files or folders

2)

dd old card to disk to disk
dd to new card
use fdisk resize partition

this makes android see the card as having only empty folders, but still used 64 GB space

3)

create 128 GB partition

this I have tried with both FAT32 and exFAT

mount via mtp

Update: I have also tried to copy paste all the files and folders directly to the sdcard from the old card via the cp comand on linux (that was the very first thing I tried... I only tried all the other things because this did not work)

rsync all files and folders to the sdcard

this seems to make android see all the folders and files, but now my apps can't write to their own folders
eg
the problem in all of the above cases is that android eigher a) does not see the file, simply sees the card as a file with 64 GB used space but it cannot see any of the folders, or it does copy it over but the apps does not have 'access' to their own directories eg Android/data/com.bambuna.podcastaddict/files/podcast/ is where my podcasts are, but the app podcastaddict does not have write premissions for the folder.

so in short... how do I copy over all my files from the old sdcard to the new one... or do I have to factory reset my phone and redownload all my apps such that all the folders and appropriate premissions are created by android... which seems to be my only option

additional information

my phone is a unrooted z5 compact

it runs android 5.1

I have access to a Linux and windows computer, but would prefer Linux solutions.
I don't care what file system is on my external SD card.
I am familiar with the command line and would prefer solution listing a few commands I need to copy-paste

As Firelord suggested, rebooting the phone makes android "display" the DCIM folder, so this one can be copied over, however it still seems that the /Android/data/com.company.app/ folders have to be created by the apps themselves, otherwise they cannot write to them, but you can subsequently copy files into these folders

Factory reset and restore from backup did this for me... it is an ugly solution... but at least it works.

I erroneously assumed that file permissions werehidden somewhere on the SD card and therefore tried to find the 'correct way' to copy, but it seems that the folder permission is saved on the internal card, or they are tied to the application in some non-trival way.

I restarted my phone again, and then some of my apps lost permissions to write to their SD card folders?!?!, ie podcastaddict which had downloaded 300 podcasts overnight could not write to sdcard1/Android/data/com.bambuna.podcastaddict/files/podcasts

By deleting and reinstalling podcastadditc it regenerated its folder and it has been working since.

I got a real 128 gb card, here I simply copy pasted over my DCIM folder, then I put the new sdcard in and rebooted my phone, on startup the phone recreated the /Android folder and all apps had rights to their new folders.

so my method:

backup and delete all aps that use the SD card
format the sd card
take a photo to generate the DCIM folder
insert SD card in your compuer
delete the /Android folder (it will be regenerated when you insert the card in your phone)
move relevant files to the DCIM folder
insert sdcard in phone
restart phone
reinstall aps from backup
do something that makes them regenerate their folders (ie down load a file, take a picture ect)
restart the phone
for all aps that cannot write to their own folder, delete he app and delete their /Android/data/com.company.app_name folder then go to 8


My songs I put on my Micro SD Card does not appear on Samsung Galaxy S5! Here's what happened. Recently i bought myself a 128 gb Micro SD card. I added all of my music, which takes up 30 gb of the SD Card. When I open up music player i don't see all of the songs i put, only about a handful of them. I only see like 2 GB of the music. Please Help!

Use a file explorer (e.g ES file explorer ) and view the contents of your SD card and select and copy your music to the file path  on your internal storage at:

storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.google.android.music

Then close and restart Google Play Music and go into the menu and select Refresh. Then your music should show up.

Note: The file path may be slightly different depending on the phone but you'll be looking for the subfolder com.google.android.music


Weather app that displays "feels like" temperature? I have a HTC Evo and while I like the stock weather app, it doesn't show the "feels like" temperature. I know the Weather Channel app has this but it was completely unusable with null errors for me (refer to the marketplace reviews for more on this), and the free Weatherbug app I also tried didn't have "feels like" temps. Does anybody know of any other apps that have this feature?

Accuweather has two apps that give you "RealFeel" - Accuweather and Accuweather Quick.


Can I convert Samsung Omnia WinMobile to Android OS phone Possible Duplicate:
  Can I install Android on my non-Android device?

I have Samsung Omnia I900 one of first line Omnia devices on WinMobile 6 OS,
Since phone is now near end of its life, Ill like to try BOOT Android on it.
Is that possible, Does exists any tutorial for that.
I once fund one site which was on way to boot android on Omnia, but they in that time did not have all drivers for Omnia.

The answer appears to be a yes. But we need more information about your phone. Exact model number, carrier, CDMA or GSM, etc. The more specific you can be about the phone you have the better.

Typically the process for getting Android on a WinMo phone is this, unlock with a custom bootloader, install a newer radio (not always required, depends), install a custom ROM, and then install Android using your preferred method. You mileage will vary as the process for installing a custom ROM differs for each phone manufacturer.

There are 2 main methods. 1 install HBOOT and run Android from the SD card and memory. This is preferred by me and many others because it doesn't disrupt the actual phone itself, rather it runs on top of your WinMo phone. This means you can keep your WinMo phone in tact and can easily go back to it any time.

2 flash Android ROM over WinMo and go full Android. This method is more risky because you are flashing a completely different OS over whatever WinMo ROM you had installed. So there is no easy way to go back to WinMo. You would have to flash a WinMo ROM and start over to go back to it. This method is a more permanent Android running on a WinMo phone solution.

I would recommend the 1st method first. Then go from there. But personally I never flashed Android on a WinMo phone. The other method was way too convenient for me.

I have some links below that should help, but your version of your phone is going to be key. DO NOT start downloading files and running them until you understand that your phone version is supported by the tools you are using.

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=103190&highlight=install+custom+rom

http://www.modaco.com/content/i9x0-omnia-http-omnia-modaco-com/289028/project-andromnia-android-on-omnia/

http://andromnia.net/

It looks likes the i900 and i910 are well supported, so if you have one of those you should be good to go.


What is the difference between Remix OS and Phoenix OS? Both Remix OS and Phoenix OS are free Chinese Android desktop distributions for x86_64 PC-s based on Android-x86. But how do they differ, excluding different themes?

This is a community wiki, you can extend it.

According to Phoenix Studio forum (translation) and other sources:

both are based on Android 5.1 Lollipop,
both support Legacy BIOS and UEFI boot methods, but sometimes Phoenix OS Legacy mode does not boot, unlike UEFI,
Remix OS lacks adjustable windows and some of them can only be maximized or minimized,
Remix OS requires USB 3.0, Phoenix OS only USB 2.0,
Phoenix OS boots faster,
Phoenix OS fluency and functionality are better than the Remix OS,
Phoenix OS 1.0 is 370MB, Remix OS 2.0 is 689 MB, both zipped.

Remix OS 2.0 Launcher:

Phoenix OS 1.0 Launcher:

Images source: Softpedia

Video comparison: http://youtu.be/E6BNcXRyOr4


Unfortunately, Process has stopped Ok so guys I'm getting kinda irritated by this problem. It is telling me Unfortunately, <process> has stopped. Meaning, when I go to launcher, it says Unfortunately, Launcher has stopped; to Google, Unfortunately, Google has stopped; and so on. How in the world do I fix this?  I can't go on the launcher or settings or anything.

I wiped cache but no luck. What should I do? Maybe Restore User Data?

Factory reset will resolve this issue! To get to that option though you have to be in recovery mode. To boot to recovery mode press the power button and volume up button simultaneously! And then you will get this screen:

Then just reset to factory version and it should work!


Google Podcast App and Expired Episodes With the "Google Podcasts" app, I have been downloading episodes of several podcasts that I listen to, but am months behind and the podcasts only leave a month's worth up.

I thought that downloading them to my phone would keep them around even after they expired from the Podcast's stream, but apparently it doesn't, because the old, unlistened to, downloaded ones are not there.

What the heck?  How do I keep old episodes until I am ready to listen to them?

This may be a feature to ensure continued payment, many Pay-Per-View services will block viewing after a certain period, DMR or Digital Media Rights licensing is applied to the files, these are only licensed for a certain period of time and usually as soon as the license has expired, you'll need to download a new licensed file.

Sometimes DMR is not the case, sometimes this is a programming limit set by the developers.

Usually the correct way to update the XML List View, would be to increment an array by each addition and display the total items in the array.

However, some developers take in to consideration -  the time it takes to select each item for removal..

If you saved 500 items, the list would take hours to navigate and also take forever to clean up/remove items,  it is easier to limit the list length than to have search functions alongside multi-select items.

Some ROOT Access applications will let you stream your system audio into an mp3 file, this would let you Back them Up.


Android Emoji Glitch I recently swtiched from my iphone 7 to a Samsung galaxy s10. However, for some reason when I send emojis, the recipient receives two question marks. I've exchanged my phone, but the problem remains. How can I fix this?

If the recipient don't use a device that support the specific emoji this happens. Example: All the emoji on Android Oreo(8.0) aren't on Android Lollipop(5.0) and as last thing not every emoji on iOS is supported on Android or viceversa (If you are sure that their device support the emoji i don't know then...)


How do I get the new "Music" section of the market to show up? It appears Google has updated the market application. Including documentation in the new Google Music application for a link to /music in the market. The link does nothing on my phone except take me to the home screen of the market though. I'm super excited for this new feature and would like to use it now. Is there a way to force the market to update or anything? I'm using stock 2.2 Froyo on T-Mobile Defy (rooted)

I just did this, and it works.  Go into Settings > Applications > Manage applications > All > Market  then clear data, and cache.  I had to reboot the phone after.  But once it reboots, go into the Market, and the music section should be there.


Android to Android Bluetooth Tether My android does a pretty good job doing a bluetooth tether for my PC (in which PC shares my Android's internet), but I was wondering how to get another Android device to connect/tether to it (my first android device)?

You can do this easily by pairing the devices and enabling data on the first device. Steps are listed below.

Enable bluetooth on both the devices. (Obvious!)

Then, pair them up by clicking “Search for devices” on one of the devices and clicking on the name of other device. You’ll be asked to verify a PIN number. It doesn’t matter what the PIN number is, as long as it’s the same PIN number on both devices.

Go to Settings, choose More then choose Tethering & Portable Hotspot. In there, you have tick Bluetooth tethering. If you don’t, the tether will not work!

On the second device, go to Settings, then click on the word Bluetooth (not the toggle – the word). Finally, click on the name of your second device you paired earlier. To get it all working, choose Internet Access.

Now you should be able to use the data connection of your first device.


Enable navigation bar on CM10/10.1 on Samsung Galaxy S (1) After my phone got wet, all my lower buttons (Home, Back, Options) on my Galaxy S (the first one) are broken and do not work anymore. I already did a factory wipe and re-flashed CM10, but nothing changed, so I think it is a hardware problem.

However, recent Android does have this navigation bar on Tablets and newer Phones with those buttons. Is there some way I could enable this bar permanently on my Galaxy S? I can still go into the settings menu, and I have SSH access to the phone. It would also be possible to flash to CM10.1 if that is required.

Any help greatly appreciated, as I don't want to buy a new phone!

You can set a NavBar on your device by just adding a single line to your build.prop file.

qmenu.hw.maikeys=0

also you can disable you current h/w buttons by

give a # symbol before

key 172 HOME
 key 158 BACK
 key 139 MENU

in file /system/usr/keylayout/Generic.kl

ES file Exporer will automatically make a backup for those files. You can use that .bak files if you want to revert.

you can edit build.prop file using ES file manager app

OR

You can try flashing zip specified here


Is there a way to add Kindle Fire as a device on the Android Market Possible Duplicate:
  How can I download an APK file from the Android Market?

I want to download APKs from the Android Market and sideload them to my Kindle Fire. I'm able to run APKs using ES File Explorer but not able to download them :(

The title of your question and it's body are really not very related to one another, but I think the title is actually something that's worth covering since I haven't really seen it come up here before (in a general sense).

Per the title of your question: You can't register a device on the Market from the web interface alone. Devices appear once the Market application has been configured on the device itself, at which point you can install applications via the web interface or from the device directly. The Market's website basically uses C2DM ("push") to install the app to the device over the air, it does not download the .apk to your computer.

So, per the body of your question: You cannot download .apk files from the Market website to sideload them - even with a registered device - so ES File Explorer is not going to help you with that. This has also been previously asked here: How can I download an APK file from the Play Store?

Your Kindle Fire will appear in your account (it most certainly does on mine, anyway) if you install the Market on it and log into your account from the device. There is a question regarding how to do this already: How can I get the Android Market installed on my Kindle Fire? Note that you must be rooted to do this.


Galaxy S Advance Android update I've heard there are some Android alternatives. Like miui or Cyagenmod or Mozilla OS. I have Galaxy S Advance (GT-I9070) and i've heard Samsung is not going to provide any updates for my device. So, i got a few questions i should ensure before i done something stupid:

if i install something from the mentioned above, shall i lose my guarantee/licenses?
if i decide to install the software, should i perform some rooting of the device or something?
if i do decide to install the software, what's the best one which shall not slow down my device (as i noted android 2.3.6 to be slow)
could i use ICS update and shall it slow down my device or not?

Miui en Cyagenmod are so called ROM's. ROM's are like modified versions of the original Android OS. They are built for various reasons, one of them being to add more features to your phone that aren't available in the stock OS (you could see those as your updates). Just Google about it because there is tons of information available about the particular subject.

The other questions are already answered but about the warranty. Most ROM's require your device to be rooted. I guess that rooting will void your warranty but then again, there's always something as UN-rooting.


How to restore/edit build.prop after rebooting (and phone stuck in reboot loop)? I was trying to setup a custom host name for my device(a rooted xperia z) following this guide but without paying too much attention, especially to the comments.

I'm guessing I had a typo in the edited build.prop file because after I rebooted the phone was stuck in a boot loop: I would see the sony logo but instead of the usual xperia logo and colourful boot animation the phone would restart.

I can turn off the phone and I think I've managed to get it in a different state by pressing the volume up key multiple times after powering up because I could see a blue led always on. Before that in between boots I would see a red led blink twice.

Unfortunately the phone reboots to fast to become visible to adb. What are my options on restoring/editing the build.prop file ? Can I somehow see the phone's filesystem on a computer without booting the phone into android ?
Also I don't mind loosing all the data as long as I can use the phone again.

Thanks

After a lot of reading and trying various things I've managed to get control over my phone again.

This guide sounds good, but it didn't work for me as I've encountered an error because of my specific device. This might work with others though.

What worked was this guide(which has problems rendering images sometimes).
I've tried first to unlock the bootloader(BLU button in Flashtool) and used the these instructions to obtain the unlock code based on the IMEI.
After that I've downloaded a stock FTF image (from goo.im), placed in the firmware folder of Flashtool. Then I could flash the FTF to the phone. Also, because I was using Windows 8, had to reboot into trouble shoot more to change an option to allow non signed drivers.

Hope this helps others with similar issues.