Can't reinstall nothing to /system I tried to update my Xiaomi Mi A2 to Android Pie since yesterday the Beta was Released. At first, I tried to install the official provided one, but after facing some errors, I installed the Treble version of the Android Pie Pixel Experience ROM.

It was working perfectly, but after installing Pixelify with Magisk, my WiFi stopped working, and I got the error MAC 02:00:00:00:00.

After trying some things with terminal apps and root, I opted for reinstalling the modem image, which I thought that could solve the problem, but instead, the phone didn't turn on, it kept on the Android One screen. So after waiting for some hours, I decided to format the phone and lose all of my data.

I formatted the system partition with fastboot erase system_a and fastboot erase system_b, but when trying to reinstall the PixelExperienceP ROM, I receive this error again and again:

fastboot flash system_a PixelExperienceP-arm64-ab.img
Sending sparse 'system_a' 1/5 (524284 KB)          FAILED (Error reading sparse file)
Finished. Total time: 24.591s

After that, I am not allowed to send any command to the phone until I restart de bootloader.

I have tried to install different ROMs, the stock one, other Android versions, but I get the same error on all of them.

Please, any ideas on how to solve my problem? I am really worried about having broken it. Thanks in advance.

I just solved it simply by trying and trying, changing cable, USB port, restarting computer...


need help finding lost cell phone I'm trying to help my father locate his lost android cell phone.  He doesn't know the gmail account info it is connected to, so we cannot locate it that way.  (was set up for him, not his own doing)  Without a gmail account address/username or the 'recovery' info to find that out, is there a way I can help him locate his cell phone???

The reality is no... not unless you had some other tracking software like Where's My Droid or similar installed prior to it going missing/stolen.

Law enforcement generally will not do anything, in order for them to track the device with the carrier requires a court order, and a sub-$1000 device is rarely significant enough to warrant what they have to  get it done, and it is rarely effective anyway.

The best you can do is contact the carrier and report it stolen, which will blacklist the IMEI/MEID and it cannot be activated on most carriers, rendering it worthless.

Unfortunately, this happens a lot, there isn't really any way to recovery the phone unless you just lucky and call it and someone answers and is willing to return it.

It should also be mentioned that if you are somehow able to locate it, if it was truly stolen you should NOT attempt to recover it yourself... the potential of something bad happening is high, contact law enforcement if you are sure you know where the device is located.


Unable to change radio channels through headset My headset for fm radio cannot be used for channel change.
It switches off and on instead. I'm not able to change the channels using headset given by them.

Did you update to Android Jelly Bean OS? Samsung Jelly Bean OS doesn't support this feature. Source.


Save images via Chrome for Android I can save images from other sites on chrome browser but cannot do it on Facebook. Does it contains any JavaScript which block saving images?

How to save them ?

Try this way.
Go to the photo > Click "View Full size" > Then click and hold on the photo, where you'll get an pop-up asking to Save image,Open in new tab...etc


Android-x86 stuck at black screen and a static underscore _ I have a very similar problem to e.g. here.

I installed Android-x86 on a partition on my Acer Aspire Switch 10E next to Windows.

I added Grub as trusted boot option in the UEFI and let Secure Boot enabled.

Using this I can completely boot and reboot into e.g. Android x86 version 8.1-R2

But the problem is: in this version my Realtek RTL8723BS is not supported -> No WiFi/Bluetooth!

So I worked my way back to older versions (I need at least Android 6.0). Using CM 14.1-R2 and Androidx86 7.1-R2 I have a strange behavior:

Right after the installation if I select "Run Android" everything works fine, it boots normal, WiFi/Bluetooth everything fine!

But I am not able in any way getting it to run again after a reboot. It is forever stuck on a black screen with only displaying a fix (not blinking)

_

I already searched for two days and tried a lot of parameters and settings in the Grub entry like nomodeset, xforcevesa etc ... nothing worked so far.

I also tried both 32bit and 64bit versions (the device is 64bit) but it made no difference.

I don't understand what I am doing wrong or why it boots all fine the first time if not going for the reboot but directly to the Run Android option. So I guess it can not be due to unsupported hardware since the system basically works ... I just can not boot into it anymore after shutting down / reboot.

Does anyone have a solution for that?

Note: I am not speaking about a Virtual Machine here!

I found disabling 3D acceleration and setting the graphic controller to VBoxVGA solves the issue.


What can you do with Samsung Kies for Android phones? I only recently managed to connect my Galaxy S with Kies via USB. And I've upgraded it to Froyo 2.2. What can you do in Samsung Kies other than upgrading your firmware. I've seen the interface and there doesn't seem to be a lot of interesting that you can do with it

As you noted, you can upgrade the device software.  You can also back your contacts, text messages up, and you can sync photos or videos/movies both ways.

You can view movies from your phone on your pc directly, that goes both ways; watch from cell on pc and from pc on cell. I believe you also can download apps from kites onto your cell but that doesn't work anymore because of google's market policies.  Apparently, you also can make your cell work as a modem, but I didn't try that so...

Anyways, as edelcom and mru said before me it still needs some work to live up to what it should do and to keep up with handset itself.

Lastly, in samsung defense, kies isn't just for androids, it's their software for the whole cellphones lines, and many users are happy with it, obviously not us, android handsets' owners.


How can I stop applications and services from running? When my phone starts up there are several application/services running in the background that I would rather not.  And when I press the Home button while using an app, that app usually goes into the background without exiting.  How can I stop these apps from running?

First Things First
You may have some misconceptions about how Android works and what's really happening when a service is running or an app is in the background.  See also: Do I really need to install a task manager?
Most apps (e.g., ones you launch manually) have their current Activity put into the background when you switch to another app or the homescreen. Activities consume some memory, so that you can go back to the app and pick up where you left off.  Activities are usually not able to run computations in the background, so no CPU or battery is used for them.  If battery life or CPU performance is your concern, you don't need to worry about these apps!  You don't need to worry about memory, either; Android will automatically kill the app and free the memory if the system is running low.
If the app in background is running a service, that may be a different story.  Well-designed services spend most of their time sleeping, waking up for the occasional check (new social media notifications, for example).  However, poorly designed services may run more often or perform syncing operations that you don't want, affecting battery life and your data usage.  If you've got a rogue service you may want to try one of the solutions below.
Solutions
If you're sure you want to make this app stop at all costs, you can try these methods.
Uninstall
When an app does something you don't like, whether running in the background on startup or something else, your first option is to uninstall it.  Problem solved!  You can remove system apps if you have root, most easily with Titanium Backup, but be careful to remove only carrier bloatware and not critical system apps.
However, if you want to be able to use that app then this is not an option: keep reading.
Ping the Developer
Some of the greatest daemons that come with Android are services that run in background for no reason or when a simple interval check with Android's AlarmManager would be sufficient. We need to kill them all with fire, and not by ignoring them. Everything that does not involve a fix by the developer is just a hack that will result in other negative side effects.  If you contact the developer with your problem, they can fix the app and you can go on using it normally.  That's a win for everyone involved.
Manually Killing Apps
First, note that many apps will close completely if you Back out of them rather than using the Home button.
If you are running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean, you can go into Settings, hit Applications, and manually shut down the app by tabbing over to the running apps. Alternatively you can hit the Recent Applications button and swipe them off the screen to close them.  In older versions of Android there may be a built-in Task Manager added by the manufacturer to accomplish the same thing, or you can download a task manager app to do so.  For services, look at Settings -> Applications -> Services.
WARNING: Do not use automatic task killers!  Automatic task killers run in the background (exactly what you don't want) and kill apps whenever they start.  Most of the time this makes things worse, because apps often consume more resources when they're starting up compared to when they're sitting idle.  Services that run automatically and are restarted by the system will be killed over and over, wasting your battery.  Similarly, apps that receive system events known as Intents (such as network coverage and connectivity changes) will be killed every time they start up to receive an event.  Nothing good can come of it.
A possible exception is automatic tasks that execute only when you, the user, perform a specific action.  In essence, they're just making manual task management easier for you.  An app like Tasker or Llama can be used to end activities when you switch apps, for example, ensuring they don't stay around in the background.  Instructions for Llama:

Create a new Event. Add the condition called Active App, and choose the status App stopped or in background. Choose the app you want to focus on. Next, add an Action. Select Kill Application (root privileges), then select your app again.
Now, whenever you leave the app, Llama will kill it.

Editing Autostarts and Intents
As mentioned above, some applications may start when they receive Intents (system events).  By using an app like Permissions Denied you can alter which permissions apps can request, which in turn limits which events they can receive.  Or you can use an app like Autostarts (paid app) to edit specifically which Intents will be sent to which apps.  For both solutions, you'll need root access.
Other options:

Autorun Manager
Gemini App Manager

(Autostarts source code is also available here: https://github.com/miracle2k/android-autostarts)
WARNING: This can cause apps to stop working or inhibit wanted functionality.  Proceed with caution, especially with critical system apps.
Freezing Apps
You can use an app like Titanium Backup or App Quarantine to complete freeze apps so that they can't run at all.  If you want to use them you have to un-freeze them first.
WARNING: Do not do this with critical system apps!  Your device may fail to boot.
Put Apps into Hibernation
Greenify (require Android 4.0+ and ROOT privilege) use a different approach called "Hibernation", from traditional "Freezing".
You can safely hibernate any non-system app you do not want it to run stealthily (via persistent services, broadcast receivers, alarms and so on), effectively equivalent to "freezing", while still keep all its entrances (launcher icon, sharing target, etc) and fully functional when you explictly run it, without the need to un-freeze it first.
WARNING: Do not hibernatize alarm clock apps, instant messaging apps, and other apps whose basic functionality relies on background mechanism (timer, system events, "push", etc) to work.
The Bottom Line
Android is designed to take care of app management for you.  In all but the most extreme cases you shouldn't need to worry about it.  When there is a problem, we advise you to go for the simplest solution — uninstalling.  All other solutions are hacks around what Android is designed to do.  Maybe one day Android will have official support for managing services but, until then, be careful.


DroidWall (firewall app) alternative for non-rooted phones Are there any applications that can restrict specific applications from accessing data/internet for non-rooted ICS phones? DroidWall - Android Firewall provides this functionality but it requires Root access.

Mobiwol is an Android firewall application that does not require root. They somehow use the VPN interface for firewalling (without actually connecting you to a VPN server).

  We've used technology available to us from within the VPN packaging
  module offered by Android to be able to gain visibility to your
  applications' network activities

I tried it and it works fine for ICS.

Should be compatible with any device running Android 3.2 or later


Can not change outgoing email server I recently upgraded to android 6 on my Galaxy S6, now I noticed that I cannot send emails from one of my email accounts. It's an imap server, and I need to use another subdomain than the incoming uses for outgoing emails. They are the same now, hence the error, but any changes I attempt are completely and silently ignored.

It seems to accept my changes, but when I go back into the settings again, the same old wrong server settings for outgoing emails glares me right in the face like I've done nothing.

What kind of black magic is this?

I could not resolve this, so I removed the email account and added it again with the correct credentials. Then it worked.


Can I force move to sd card applications that don't want to be moved there? disclaimer: of course I can move apps which allow that, using "manage applications" menu.

There are apps, some stock ones and some downloaded, that for some reason don't have the "movable to sdcard" flag set. Is there a way to move them anyway without preventing them from working (as long as the sdcard is on, of course).

Yes there might be a good reason for them to be in the internal memory, I'd like to try moving them anyway if possible.

Phone is a Nexus One with stock android 2.3.6 unrooted — I guess I'd either have to root it or to install cyanogen or whatever?

Yes, you can move any apps that don't normally allow it, including system apps, if you have root. Note that most apps that doesn't allow moving usually do not allow it for a good reason, so if you force move you may get crashes and other stability issues. You need an app2sd application that uses root, like this: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.droidsail.dsapp2sd


Unable to use Network: "Not Registered On Network" I am using Samsung Galaxy Chat B5330 (officially upgraded from 4.0.4 to 4.1.2). It used to work fine, but since a few days I am not able to call or send sms or use any network related services. It gives me error : "Not Registered On Network". I tried applying manual network settings. At first it gives a pop up : "Registered on Network". But as soon as I try to make a call, the same error : "Not Registered On Network".

I thought that factory reset would have been the solution to my problem, but unexpectedly , this too did not work for me. Please help.

You need to check your SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) and if necessary get a new one from your service provider - If it is corrupted then you would not be allowed to sign on to the network. A factory Reset only wipes the device itself, not the SIM.


How to transfer (and then watch) video files from PC to my Android phone (mi4)? I have an Android Xiaomi mi4 and I'd like to know if I can copy video files to it from my PC. Is there any straightforward way to do so ?

You should be able to do it quite easily if you have installed the correct drivers on your computer. If you want to do it wireless, AirDroid (http://web.airdroid.com/) can be a solution.


Using (real) Android device as Webcam for BlueStacks? I'm using BlueStacks emulator on my desktop. Is there a way to use my android device as a webcam for BlueStacks? A details approach would be appreciated.

Bluestacks does not have support for any video or audio input.


Sniffing USB traffic between an Android app and a connected device Is there any way to sniff USB traffic between an Android app and a connected device, like a drone controller?

On a regular non-rooted device this is impossible.

On a rooted device it might be possible (but I would not know how). The common Linux solutions for capturing USB traffic require a special kernel module. If your kernel has no module support this would require to build a custom kernel with the USB sniffing kernel module included).

In both cases you still have the possibility to perform a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack on the USB connection, e.g. by placing a special device in between that allows you to access the USB traffic on "cable level":

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3087484/say-hello-to-badusb-20-usb-man-in-the-middle-attack-proof-of-concept.html
Or You could use a "Facedancer" board + software


Does an adblocker defeat the tracking part of the ad module, or just the display of ads? Related, but different than, these two questions, I'd like to know if the usual ad blockers on Android do anything to prevent user tracking from ad modules.  Those questions are several years old by now and things have changed substantially.

If I use Ad Block Plus (with no whitelist), AdAway, uBlock Origin within Firefox, or other popular ad blockers, do these do anything for the ad modules in the OS/APK from sending private data to the ad networks and/or app developer?

Presumably, a HOSTS based blocker would prevent at least some data exfiltration like this, but I'm not up to speed how the other blockers work.

If it matters, I'm currently using OctOS L, based on 5.1.

Tangentelly, on a desktop browser, there are tracking prevention tools like Disconnect, Ghostery, Privacy badger, and various cookie management mechanisms that I use in conjunction with an ad blocker.

tl:dr;

Tracking can be done by an app without showing ads. By merely blocking ads you are not preventing tracking
Hosts based ad blocking is better than browser ad blocking, since it does not reveal PII (Also see Izzy's comments) Browser based adblockers can track as shown, so it is a privacy risk
To  prevent tracking , ad blocking needs to be in conjunction with other methods of plugging Privacy breach or PII breach. The only tool available is Xposed module XprivacyLua for Android 6.0 to 8.1. It is a successor of Xprivacy module that runs on earlier Android versions

  I'd like to know if the usual ad blockers on Android do anything to prevent user tracking from ad modules

What is user tracking ? This needs to put in context first.  It can be anything that fingerprints an user  for instance (Also, see this article from Izzy's blog

Network Information

WiFi you are connected to (SSID)
Country network identifier, telecom operator you are connected to,

Device Information

Device information – Build Properties

Device build user,  build type, build time, build  tags, build serial, build radio, build manufacturer, build ID
Advertising Client ID
Google Services Framework (GSF) ID
In case of web browsing more information – see Browser leaks and Webkay
Analytics (Fabric/Crashlytics, Facebook app events, Firebase Analytics, Google Analytic, Mixpanel, Segment)

This list is illustrative and not exhaustive . For instance, SIM information, IMEI information, Sensors on the device etc may also be used. For more details on other  privacy elements see XprivacyLua Github

Now, coming to specifics in your question . As you rightly surmised Hosts file based ad blockers just do that, block access to listed domains and are more effective than browser based adblockers as you can see from iBug’s answer and Izzy’s comments

So if your primary aim is to block ads is the way to go compared to browser based plugins, which may leak PII information (It does leak in the case of Ad Block Plus, haven't tested others)

But the question to be asked is  Am I stopping being tracked? for which the answer is emphatic NO , unless you use tools in addition to prevent privacy breach and this is where XprivacyLua comes in

  If I use Ad Block Plus (with no whitelist), AdAway, uBlock Origin within Firefox, or other popular ad blockers, do these do anything for the ad modules in the OS/APK from sending private data to the ad networks and/or app developer?

NO, in the case of Adblock plus

I am not discussing the relative merits partly because I haven’t used them all and partly because it is secondary to the thrust of my answer. However, I installed Ad Block Plus and restricted exposure of  elements that facilitate fingerprinting, as an example

Screenshot below shows the actual values and the values exposed to the outside world to prevent breach. For instance the first shows the operator information as 40445 (no secret here) and what is revealed is 00101 and the last shows while I am using a Xiaomi device , make is not revealed ( I have chosen specific portions of log (needs Pro version) which anyway don't reveal too much). So Adblock plus is revealing all your build properties!

(Click to enlarge)

In addition it is also revealing your Android ID, advertising ID, GSF ID as you can see from the notification

(Click to enlarge)

So, you set out to block ads and while doing that revealed information that can be used to fingerprint you :-(

To sum up you need a wholistic approach to guard your privacy and the best available for that is XprivacyLua

Please note that while this module is very powerful, it has certain limitations like restricting access only if the app uses Java Code and not native code or restricting tracking on browsing if Webview is used and not a browser like Chrome. That said, it’s the best weapon in the arsenal to protect privacy. In addition to the hooks (restrictions) provided by the developer others have contributed custom hooks and being open source you can write / modify your own hook. To top it, the developer is ever available and responsive on the XDA threads


How can I automatically change volume/GPS/wifi/etc settings based on time and location? I put Jelly Bean on my Verizon Samsung Galaxy SIII using http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/cyanogenmod-10-m2.

I like the "Profiles" feature, with which I can set ringtone volume, GPS on/off, wifi on/off, etc for different scenarios (work, home, traveling, etc).

However, I'd prefer that my phone just "know" when and how to change profiles.  E.g. at certain times of day on certain days of the week, it should be Profile 1.  If I'm at location X, it should switch to Profile 2.

I figure this should be possible since it has a clock and geolocation abilities.  I just haven't figured out how.

You need to install Tasker and then install Profile 4 Tasker which will allow you to manipulate your CM profiles via tasker.


How do I access my Google Assistant notes from my computer? I made a bunch of hands free voice notes while I was driving and now I need to process them from my computer, which has my to do list on it (which I cannot access from my phone).  However, I cannot seem to figure out how to do this.  When I ask Google Assistant where my notes are, it shows me a long list and says they are stored in Google Keep.  However, I do not see them in Keep.

As a workaround, I tried copying my notes on my phone, but it would not let me select more than one at a time.

When you first make a note, Google Assistant normally asks you if you want them saved in Keep or Gmail...

If you selected Gmail, open https://mail.google.com on your PC and look for the Notes section on the left column.

If you selected Keep, go to https://keep.google.com and they should be there.


Does leaving a lithium-ion battery uncharged for 3-6 months at a time hurt battery life? Does leaving a lithium-ion battery uncharged for 3-6 months at a time hurt battery life?

I have seen plenty of questions and articles about the dangers of leaving your cellphone in the charger, but I can't find anything about leaving your devices uncharged.

Yes, leaving a lithium ion battery fully discharged for long periods can destroy the cell's ability to hold a charge. If you are going to be storing batteries for a long time, leave them about half charged.


Cannot Connect to PC. No USB Connection Notification Bar on Device (Samsung Galaxy Tab S) I updated my Firmware to 4.4.2 using Samsung Kies, and had just notice it recently that I cant connect my tab to PC again. Usually, the there will be a notification bar on the device (like to choose MTP or USB) but right now, I cant even find it, no clue either.

I tried to scan my device using adb.exe but it return empty information. Different case when I plug my nexus 5.

Does anyone have an idea why this is happen? Suppose this caused by firmware update, how to fix it? Is it possible to downgrade it without connecting it to PC? I tried to factory reset it several times, but it will return to 4.4.2 again.

Please help. Any comment will be appreciated.

Device: Samsung Galaxy Tab S

This solution is for those who will face the same problem:
To fix same problem on my S4 mini I've tried:

Numerous PCs and USB cables
USB debugging (& Stay awake & Unknown sources) checked and unchecked
Unmounted & remounted SD card
Asking the PC to look for new hardware
Removed and re-installed PC drivers
Dial *#7284# or *#0808# and set MTP+ADB USB Setting

Nothing help me.

However, thanks to Google, I have the solution , as follows:

Remove phone from PC and remove battery to shut off phone.
Plug USB cable into PC.
Plug USB cable (other end) into phone.
The PC install new hardware appropriate drivers for a few minutes (phone without battery)
Unplug USB cable from phone
Put battery back in and turn on phone
As the phone boots, hold down Volume up and down. Phone boots into safe mode.
Plug USB cable into phone.
I saw notification about USB MTP-connecting on the phone. PC have found my phone!
After the reboot in normal mode problem was fixed


"Google Now" swipe from Home button is not working in Marshmallow After updating to Marshmallow I was playing around with settings. I don't know what I changed, but now when I swipe from the bottom, "Google Now" is not coming.

I used to assign that with Greenify to lock the screen. How to get it back?

There are actually 2 issues here:

No swipe from Home button gesture
Cannot change the action from Google Now to other apps (e.g Tasker, or Greenify)

The first issue is caused to accomodate a new feature called Now on Tap. Now, instead of swiping the Home button, you just need to hold it to access Google Now screen (or "Now on Tap", if enabled). AFAIK, this behaviour cannot be changed natively (enabling/disabling "Now on Tap" doesn't affect this).

The second issue is caused by the addition of explicit setting for assist app (before Marshmallow, you need to clear defaults the app that you assign to before). The setting can be accessed from Settings - Apps - Advanced (cog wheel icon) - Default Apps - Assist & voice input - Assist app. By default, it is "Google App" (i.e. Google Now), and you can change to any apps that support this feature (i.e. Tasker, for my case).


Make Google Play Books store ebooks to external storage I have little internal storage of my Android device; How can I make Google Play Books store the ebooks to external storage?

I use Sony Xperia M (4.3 JB version).

You must root your device and move the application to an external storage because the application stores the E-books in com.google.android. file. Unfortunately your application won't work if you move that folder without rooting.


Definitive Guide to Customs Roms? For those people who are interested in flashing custom roms after rooting their android device:

Does a website exist that provides a definitive, quick & up to date guide to the numerous and varied custom roms that are available for the android platform (obviously not the whole kaboosh, but something that gave a flavour). Generally I hear about CyanogenMod, MIUI & occasionally AOKP (if i'm not mistaken).

Fair enough if you have the time in the day to watch various youtube channels and do searches on the countless android orientated websites, i'm sure most people don't.

(I have seen similar questions asked here, generally people have named a few or just said see XDA)

There is no such site that lists all the available ROM's for all the devices - if there was, it would be huge.

The best way to find a custom ROM, as well as ways to flash & guides, is to check the more popular forums - such as XDA-Developers or the Android Forums.


Search Contacts with all Voice Search Commands? Is there any way to integrate voice search's navigate to/directions to/map of commands with your contact list? If I want to go to Bob Jones's house, I don't want to go to Bob Jones Co.

Have you tried navigate to bob jones home?

You can use the label on the address when using the voice command. The above command is different than navigate to bob jones work.

Update: One thing to remember: Your contacts need to be accessible to the Google Servers. In other words, you need to be syncing to your Google account. The actual voice-to-text work is done on Google's servers, not on your phone. (Try using voice search while in Airline mode.) See this Google Support thread.

And, of course, your Contacts need to be in your "Searchable items". (I get there by hitting the search button, then the blue 'g' to the left, then the settings icon.)


Transfer ownership of in app purchases to new email address? I made some in-app purchases a year ago with email address foo@foo.com.

I have since changed my email address to new@new.com. Is there any way that I can transfer my purchases from my old email address to my new email address in the Google Play app?

No there is no official way to transfer purchases from one account to another. You could contact the Google Services to maybe figure out a way if you had a good reason which you could explain.

There is a Reddit thread regarding this topic if that is any help.


Removing redirect link malware I have Xiaomi Mi3 and it's not rooted. Every time I open a web page, both on mobile data and WiFi, and even with different browsers, I get redirected to other pages with ads and pages like this:

http://mobiles.digital/IT/Sweepstake/LP/index.php?voluumdata=vid..00000004-4837-403c-8000-000000000000__vpid..ca8d4800-fd5d-11e4-88ba-7eef5f3eb726__caid..5422e033-3dc6-4996-b128-7bf07d491d19__rt..R__lid..19777e53-9ce2-45a2-8073-ce9466d65506__oid1..7756b6f2-77b0-4db4-8d79-0faa4854c67f__oid2..b504e00f-54b7-4fd2-99de-09a0e4919980__var1..425682__rd..www%5C.%5Cyouradexchange%5C.%5Ccom&SiteID=425682

I have tried:

Many antivirus (including AVG premium app which was free this weekend on Amazon app shop)
Factory reset: inside settings on my phone
Hard reset: deleted cache and installed app.
AdBlocker plus.

But nothing worked.

Here's the installed apps on my phone: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2cFQ2PnOtfNT0NsMnZJY1NiT1U&usp=sharing

I'd like to get more information to help. Could you show the MIUI version of your phone? See it in Settings -> About Phone -> MIUI version. If you can use adb in your PC? I think It will be helpful if you can show the output of PC command "adb shell pm list packages" and the output of "adb shell ls -l /system/app /system/priv-app"

By the way, if a factory reset can not resolve the problem you can try a full ota update which will reformat the system partition. To do full ota update: Click the Updater app, and then click the menu button in the right top, then click the "Download update" item. !Remember to backup your files!


AdSupported Angry Birds versions keep crashing on Android 2.2.1 Tablet PC After RTFM, I decided to ask the question here.

Device is a generic android tablet device (http://www.reeder.com.tr/reedpad.asp),

idenfied as: "sec_smdkv210"
here is the build fingerprint:
"sec_smdkv210/smdkv210/smdkv210:2.2.1/FRF91/eng.root.20110224.011402:eng/release"
Android Version: 2.2.1

Problem occurs after I launch Angry Birds Rio, and try to play the first level, at the very beginning, it just quits from the game.

System Log:

http://pastebin.com/aBmfvXtF

Game is an adsupported version 1.0.0 downloaded from market.

No ad blocker installed, no add-ons. Device is rooted by z4root, but before or after rooting, behaviour is same. Also, same crash behaviour is observed with Angry Birds Seasons, but slighly different, it crashes if you  try to pause and reload the level during the game, resulting a similiar crash log which I didn't bother to paste here once again.

Same string appears in the crash log before the crash:

JNI WARNING: received null jstring (Check_GetStringUTFChars)

W/dalvikvm(25888): JNI WARNING: received null jstring (Check_GetStringUTFChars)
I/dalvikvm(25888): "GLThread 9" prio=5 tid=8 NATIVE
I/dalvikvm(25888):   | group="main" sCount=0 dsCount=0 s=N obj=0x46f97d70 self=0x225c10
I/dalvikvm(25888):   | sysTid=25895 nice=0 sched=0/0 cgrp=default handle=2251432
I/dalvikvm(25888):   | schedstat=( 7639180271 5104522289 130271 )
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.WebViewWrapper.urlLoadedCallback(Native Method)
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.WebViewWrapper.access$500(WebViewWrapper.java:42)
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.WebViewWrapper$8.run(WebViewWrapper.java:216)
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.MyRenderer.handleEvents(MyRenderer.java:118)
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.MyRenderer.onDrawFrame(MyRenderer.java:77)
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.GLSurfaceView$GLThread.guardedRun(GLSurfaceView.java:1346)
I/dalvikvm(25888):   at com.rovio.ka3d.GLSurfaceView$GLThread.run(GLSurfaceView.java:1121)

Trying to move from SD card to device did not help.
Trying to change the device locale from Turkish to English did not help.
Trying to update the device from manufacturer's site, did not help (it did not updated the android version, only manufacturer's build number changed)
Trying to root the device, did not help.

Anybody could suggest what could be going on here?

Best Regards,
q.m.

It looks like it's basically a null pointer error when Angry birds tries to create a surface, which probably means that your device is simply incapable of doing the video rendering needed.  I don't believe Angry Birds Rio has a Light version, unlike the regular game, so you're probably out of luck unless they release a version for less-capable devices.
From http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds---frequently-asked-questions-faq:

Q: I have a problem with the Angry Birds. What should I do?
A: Check Rovio’s web-pages and browse this FAQ section for a solution. If you cannot find solutions for your problem or questions, please contact Rovio’s customer support by email and provide as much information about your problem as possible: phone/device model and/or version, phone/device operating system version, Angry Bird game’s name and its version, a detailed problem description.


"Android is Updating" on every boot On every bootup I get the "Android is updating" (Optimizing apps) screen.
I've tried a few methods. I deleted all custom odex files in /data/app dictionary and deleted the dalvik cache but it's still there on every boot up. How can I get rid of it?

Cache partition wont write correctly - might be damaged.

Rooted? TWRP?

latest twrp's have fsck (disk check)

Else wise, I have no idea what ur runnin.


Can i restore more than one msgstore.db.crypt7 file in whatsapp? Recently changed my old phone to new one (Samsung to MotoX). During this old to new phone conversion phase (for one month) I didnt use Whatsapp at all.
Before totally stopped using whatsapp on my old phone, I Had taken whatsapp database backup from my old phone.
But when I got my new phone, in a hurry I totally forgot about whatsapp backup (which i had taken from old phone) and installed whatsapp on my new phone.
As per process it's got created new msgstore.db.crypt7 (just for that one month, during I didnt use whatsaap at all) file in database folder of whatsapp on my new phone.
Then I recollected about old whatsapp backup file (from old phone), so i uninstalled whatsapp on my new phone, again took a backup of newly created msgstore.db.crypt7 (from new phone), rename it as msgstorenew.db.crypt7 and kept in the same database folder of new phone.
To get all the older whatsapp message, i have kept old backup file msgstore.db.crypt7 (from old phone) in database folder of new phone and reinstalled whatsapp again on new phone.
I successfully able to restore all my old whatsapp messages.
But now along with the old whatsapp messages, I want to restore newly created whatsapp backup file (for one month) as well which i renamed it as msgstorenew.db.crypt7 (in the same database folder), so that i can have all the messages (old+new). But i am not able to find any option for the same.

Kindly help.

Thanks.

As you can read in the wahtsapp faq,

  Current chat history will be lost upon restoration.

Anyway, you could follow these steps.
For every older conversation:

1)Use the "email conversation" function:

  To export a copy of the history of an individual chat or group, you
  can use the Email Chat History feature:

  Tap and hold on the conversation or group. Select Email conversation
  Choose whether to Attach Media or not. An email will be composed with
  your chat history attached as a .txt document.

  If you choose to attach media, the most recent media sent will be
  added as attachments.

2) Send the composed email to yourself.

After you did that for every older chat, restore the newer ones using your backup.
This way:

You will be able to read your newer messages on whatsapp normally.
You will be able to read your older messages opening the attached .txt file in the emails that were composed


What special phone numbers can be used to display (hidden) info on Android phones? Possible Duplicate:
  Do you know other Android keypad commands ?

In another post someone mentioned the special phone number #*#4636#*# to list CPU specific information.

I would like to ask you to list such special phone numbers in this post.

Mind you, I am not looking for a list on a web page (I'm sure that such a list is available somewhere).

I am looking for special numbers you actually used yourself, so you can vouch for the fact that they actually work.

Please mention your phone, because I can imagine some of them are phone specific, no ?

I'm running 2.1 Eclair on a Samsung Spica.

Well... the universal *#06# will display your IMEI - always a good idea to store this in a safe offline place in case your device is misplaced / stolen.

*#*#7780#*#*

will take you a screen where you can Factory Reset your device - you need to press an additional button to confirm or BACK to exit.

  *#*#7594#*#*

will show you Shutdown App configuration - you can choose to have the device power off directly instead of showing the menu for Airplane Mode / Power Off etc. when you long-press the power button. There's also an option for keeping the LCD on during the duration of a call - also useful to some people!

  *#*#197328640#*#*

shows a SERVICE MENU where different diagnostics can be carried out.

  *#*#526#*#* OR *#*#528#*#*

takes you to a WLAN test screen where you can check Transmit (TX) and Receive (RX) capabilities - press MENU for options.

  *#*#0*#*#*

LCD test

  *#*#0842#*#*

Vibration test

Naturally, some of these may be specific to certain device models only.


Moto g 3 root failure mashmallow i tried to root my moto g3 with king root and after some time it rebooted and got hanged on bootloader and said
AP fastboot flash mode(secure)
hab check failed for boot
failed to verify hab image boot
failed to validate boot image
ERROR:failed to pass validation ,backup to fastboot
Fastboot reason :fallthrough from charger boot mode

TLDR answer: You will need to reflash your phone back to stock or flash TWRP and install a custom ROM image, links and instructions below on how to return to stock and properly root... If you want to ROM your device, a little reading in XDA's Moto G 2015 section will get you there.

Long answer:

Kingroot, and most all Chinese/3rd party root tools, will brick the Moto G 2015, regardless of whether they say will work or not. Rooting a stock Moto G is almost as simple as rooting a Nexus device and it can be done with little effort, it should always be done manually.

To repair your phone, first make sure you have ADB & fastboot properly working, with connectivity to your device, then download the factory image from this XDA thread, DO NOT obtain the firmware from anywhere but this thread or Lenovo/Moto itself (who has not publicly released these images). Use the image that matches your device model and is the same or newer release, do not attempt to downgrade on a phone that has had an attempted Kingroot exploit applied, it may hard brick. Extract the files to a directory that can be easily accessed with fastboot.

Return to Stock

Detailed instructions and help flashing the image are available in this XDA thread, but here is the quick and dirty of it.

Factory reset in stock recovery... this is absolutely MANDATORY or else bootloop will occur and you will need to start all over again.
Reboot into Bootloader (fastboot) mode
Flash the files with fastboot - Do commands manually, one at a time - checking that each one returns an [OKAY] response. NOTE: Do not simply copy and paste these commands! - system.img_sparsechunks may differ in number and name. Always check contents of folder you're working with. You must flash all of the sparsechunk files you have. Also, some steps may take considerable time, especially erase commands, so be patient.

fastboot oem fb_mode_set
fastboot flash partition gpt.bin
fastboot flash bootloader bootloader.img
fastboot flash logo logo.bin
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.0
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.1
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.2
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.3
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.4
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.5
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.6 (If included in your image file)
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.7 (If included in your image file)
fastboot flash system system.img_sparsechunk.8 (If included in your image file)
fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin
fastboot erase modemst1
fastboot erase modemst2
fastboot flash fsg fsg.mbn
fastboot erase cache
fastboot erase userdata
fastboot erase customize
fastboot erase clogo
fastboot oem fb_mode_clear
fastboot reboot

4) The phone should now reboot and be operational in 5-15 minutes. Remember with ART the initial boot can take what seems like forever, be patient.

Properly Root

To properly root, obtain the latest TWRP for the Moto G 2015 and the latest SuperSU ßeta and place it in the device's storage (internal or SD card).

Boot or flash the TWRP image, I prefer to boot it the first time and do a complete backup and move it off device, then flash TWRP from the bootloader with fastboot flash recovery *twrp.img* replacing twrp.img with the current TWRP image filename you downloaded from above. Now reboot into the bootloader and start Recovery, TWRP should load after the Bootloader Unlock warning screen.

The Moto G 2015 needs to rooted with systemless root, which SuperSU does not auto-detect in this device, so we need to force it in TWRP prior to flashing by entering the TWRP terminal and entering echo SYSTEMLESS=true>>/data/.supersu.

After you have done this, you can just use TWRP to flash (Install) the SuperSU ZIP file you downloaded/copied to the phone from the link above and reboot.

You should now be fully functional and rooted on the stock ROM.


I am trying to recover a failed posting, just disappeared on Andriod On my Galaxy Edge 6, I shared a post from Twitter to LinkedIn. The post stopped at 98% and when I checked the phone again it wasn't posted and it had just vanished. How do I recover the post?

If you go chrome at the top push the red dot and go to Hester.And you can clear up to a weeks worth of data .Just hit clear data and its gone.Form the history of the phone


Wifi won't connect when SSID has space character? When trying to connect to a WPA2 network from an HTC Hero running 2.1, I can't connect if the hidden SSID has a space in the name.

Has anyone else encountered this problem?  Is it known to be an Android issue?

Yes and yes.  http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8035

I haven't seen any resolution to this except changing the router's SSID if you have access to it.


What does zRAM mean? I heard about a feature called zRAM in the new Android ROMs.

Does anybody have detailed information about it?

According to post over the XDA thread:

In order to explain more precisely ZRAM first need other terms are more clearly defined:
Swap can be compared with the swap file on Windows. If the memory (RAM) to complete the PC the data that are being used not actively outsource (eg:background applications) so as to re-evacuate RAM free. To this data is written to a hard disk. If required, this data is then read back from there easily. Even the fastest SSD is slower than the RAM. On Android, there is no swap!

In ZRAM unnecessary storage resources are compressed and then moved to a reserved area in the fixed RAM (ZRAM). So a kind of swap in memory. This Ram is more free because the data then only about 1/4 of the former storage requirements have. However, the CPU has to work in more because they compress the data has (or unpack again when they are needed). The advantage clearly lies in the speed. Since the swap partition in RAM is much faster than this is a swap partition on a hard drive.

In itself a great thing. But Android does not have a swap partition, and therefore brings Android ZRAM under no performance gain as would be the case with a normal PC.

In normal PC would look like this:
Swap = swap file (on disk) -> Slow
ZRAM (swap in RAM) -> Faster than swap
RAM -> Quick

With Android, there is no swap partition, and therefore brings ZRAM also no performance boost.
The only thing that brings ZRAM is "more" RAM. Compressed by the "enlarged" so to speak of the available memory. That's on devices with little RAM (<256MB) also pretty useful. The S2 has 1GB but the rich, and more than. There must not be artificially pushed up to 1.5 GB. After you activate the ZRAM also has 2 disadvantages. The encoding and decoding using CPU time, which in turn has higher power consumption.

Roughly one can say (For devices with more than 512MB RAM):
Without ZRAM: + CPU Performance | + Battery | RAM
With ZRAM: CPU Performance |-Battery | + RAM

For devices with too little RAM so it makes perfect sense. But who shoots the S2 already be fully complete RAM and then still need more?

I hope it helps to understand zRam!!!!


How to open PDF from Notification bar and fix "Cannot open file" error? I have searched and searched for a solution to this problem, please help.  I am using a Samsung Galaxy S4 with Android 4.2.2 along with the Chrome browser.

Steps to replicate:

Navigate to: http://www.buzzbuzzbingo.com/Holidays/Halloween_Images/
Click "Download and Print" to start download of PDF file.
Notice notification that says "Starting downloading..."
Open notification bar and see that the download has completed.
Click the downloaded PDF file and receive "Cannot open file" error message and the notification bar closes.

Long clicking the downloaded PDF does not offer options for choosing which app to open the file.  I have installed Adobe Reader and using that to navigate to the downloaded file will open the file just fine.  Same with Polaris Office.  I would like to be able to open the PDF from the notification bar.  Alternatively if I could view the PDF directly in Chrome, that would be acceptable.

It's a combination of a PDF and a browser issue.  Some PDFs work fine while others do not across different browsers.

Downloading the PDF you mentioned, here are the results using different browsers:

Chrome: Cannot open PDF from notification
Boat Browser: Cannot open PDF from notification
Dolphin: Can open PDF from notification

Downloading a different PDF from another site, here are the results using different browsers:

Chrome: Can open PDF from notification
Boat Browser: Can open PDF from notification
Dolphin: Can open PDF from notification

UPDATE 2013-10-11: According to Scott's findings, this is a PDF issue. The Content-Type header of the problematic PDF is application/x-download, while the working PDF is application/pdf.

If you control the server which is serving these PDFs, you can switch the Content-Type header to allow it to open in all browsers.  PHP example:

In PHP this was previously broken when sending:

 header('Content-Type: application/x-download');

Switch this to this header to work:

 header('Content-Type: application/pdf');


How to prevent deletion of /data/data/ while Uninstalling Apps (ROOTED DEVICE) When I push a command adb uninstall com.pckg the /data/data/com.pckg is deleted, but I want to preserve the folder w/o using adb uninstall -k com.pckg as I need to install another app with same package name & different signature which conflicts with -k cmd.

I tried mv /data/data/com.package /data/data/com.package1 but com.package1 got deleted after adb uninstall command.

I don't want to copy the folder to a new location because it takes a lot of time.

if you are already rooted why dont you use titanium backup
Steps :

Install Titanium Backup ★ root
Launch it and grant root permissions
locate to the app and backup it
now close titanium backup and uninstall app
install the 2nd apk(the one with different signature)
launch titanium backup and restore the existing backup but restore DATA ONLY not whole app


Samsung galaxy tab 3 lite connection to pc problem I tried to install a custom ROM on my tab 3 lite, but it got disconnected half way through. it now says "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in kies to continue".
So I downloaded kies and connected my tablet, but every time kies says "connecting..." there is a connection error and the tablet disconnects from the pc.
any help?

You need to know the model number and serial number. If you do not know them, look at the bottom on the back of the device, and it should list the model and serial number.

Disconnect your tablet from your computer, then open up Kies. Under the "Tools" menu at the top of the Kies window, click on "Firmware upgrade and initialisation". (Yes, on my Kies it is spelled like that at least...) Anyway, type in the model number on the window that comes up, then click OK. On the next screen, type in your devices serial number, then click OK. Once you do that and everything is verified, it will download the firmware/Operating System onto your computer. Once it is done downloading, another window will come up saying that it is ready for the upgrade. Follow the instructions listed on that window, and when you are ready, click "Start upgrade". The instructions listed on that windows will tell you how to get your device into a special recovery mode, and it is different for every device, so I can't help you there... but when you get to that window, just follow the instructions listed there and you will be fine.

I hope this works for you! If not, just comment again!


Does turning WiFi on and off use more power than it being constantly on for a set amount of time? So, often battery saving apps switch off WiFi when not connected to "save battery" (obviously). However, my question is this: if I was only out of the house for a couple of minutes, out of range of the WiFi, would turning it on and off be beneficial? In fluorescent light tubing, for example, leaving the light on is often more energy efficient than turning it off, only to turn it on again when returning a minute later. So, does the same apply to WiFi, or is WiFi being on less power consuming than turning it on and off? This might seem a stupid question, but – of course – I do what I can to save my battery life and in asking this question I am trying to better my battery saving techniques; there is nothing worse than your phone dying when waiting on a reply from someone. Is there any way to statistically prove either side or is it too "obvious" for analysis to be required?

Note: My phone is an LG Nexus 5 running Android 4.4.4.

EDIT: I believe the WiFi chip that the Nexus 5 uses is the "BCM4339 Wi-Fi Chip" manufactured by Broadcom, if this is of any help. Also, I am not looking for suggestions of other ways to extend my battery life, just an answer to my specific question. I have considered buying a power bank and other such products, but I'd preferably not have to carry these around, and simply have my phone's battery last an entire day.

Thank you for any contribution.

As you already pointed out in your question, it's a matter of intervals. Of course, turning it off-and-on like a cars indicator light is more power consuming than simply leaving it on – and turning it off for 12 hours does really save juice. The matter is to find the right "interval".

Not quite up-to-date anymore, but still sufficient for the "raw estimate": About two years ago I've posted a table with some consumption data, using two devices as reference. Let's average the values a little and assume they've changed "for the better", so we can say:

WiFi in standby uses about 10 mW
WiFi downloading uses about 800 mW
WiFi uploading uses about 400 mW

WiFi searching for a nearby AP to connect to, including the entire process, must be somewhere in between (no values in my table or their sources), but I'd assume at least 200..400 mW here – as like with cell signal, it needs to fully power up to scan the area for available SSIDs. Let's further assume the connect process takes about 5..10s, just to have some numbers to juggle with:

5s × 200 ms = 1.000 units (minimum power-up consumption)
10s × 400 ms = 4.000 units (maximum power-up consumption)
10s × 10 ms = 100 units (maximum standby consumption)

By those numbers (being just raw estimates, not scientific calculations!), results would be:

100..400 seconds are the minimum "disconnected time" for your described "toggle" to not consume more juice than staying in standby. Toggling would thus make sense only for breaks of about 10 minutes and up.

For a similar calculation, you might be interested in 2G versus 3G: Does it really save battery? :)

To avoid misunderstandings:

As Dan correctly pointed out in the comments, I've omitted a lot of details here. I was aware of that: the above is nothing but an idealized number-juggling, which should show that even at best circumstances permanent toggling is no good idea. Calculating "exact numbers" which are at the same time "absolute" is impossible, as too many factors play a role here:

noone expects WiFi idling at 10 mW with the connection lost. It will certainly "power up" on a search for available networks.

Plus the points Dan mentioned:

many apps that perform network operations in the background use a broadcast receiver to run when the network connection comes up. If you're actually connecting to a network each time you turn the Wi-Fi on, all these apps will run, drawing more power. On each "toggle on and connect", that is – while they wouldn't do so at all otherwise, or at least at very lower intervals
if the Wi-Fi was on all the time, the same apps might run more or fewer times to update or sync data. This very much depends on the apps installed/used
if you're waking the device up and/or turning the screen on just to turn on Wi-Fi and check for messages, that'll use more power than the Wi-Fi itself.

So please read my conclusion as "it makes no sense for time-frames smaller than 10 min". The longer the interval, the more likely it makes sense – and the shorter, the less.


android device as Digital Media Renderer (the DMR of DLNA)? So I have this cheap MK802 android devince connected to my old TV, I want MK802 to be as a digital TV box, which could receive pushed media content from DLNA sources.

Are there any good DMR app for android? I tried:

com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp
com.waxrain.airplayer

Both can browse remote DMS contents and play them, BubbleUPNP can control my Windows Media Player, but they can NOT receive push pictures, videos, etc.

What's wrong with my home network?
Are there any better alternative DMR apps for android?
What can I do to diagnose the problem?

Thank you all.

If you can do at least some UPnP operations, there is nothing wrong with your network.

Capability of browsing DMS (aka UPnP pull) does not imply a capability of receiving commanded content from DMS/DMC (aka UPnP push). DMR has a separate set of optional functions for pushing, which may or may not be implemented.

The simplest way of diagnosing is to start DeviceSpy from Intel UPnP Developer Tools (Windows application). That will give you all devices in local network, which do publish some UPnP interfaces. The one you are looking for is AVTransport (UPnP namespace intentionally omitted). No AVTransport means no push. You should see at least a core function SetAVTransportURI there. Don't be surprised if some DMR software does not show up at all. Capability of browsing DMS and playing content from it does not require publishing any UPnP interfaces. DMC does not publish any interfaces itself either, it just knows how to operate other UPnP interfaces.

About the lack of push-capable DMR implementations for Android: push means that the software must be capable of sitting there with an open port and just waiting for commands from any DMC. My wild theory is that this somehow doesn't align with what Android applications can or should do. The fact is that i have BubbleUPnP and UPnPPlay myself on my Android and i confirm that neither implement push. You can try the rest of Wiki list and let me know the result :)


Location consent annoyance I use the Power Control widget shipped with Android to quickly turn GPS on and off. Since update 4.4.1 or 4.4.2, which features WiFi-based location detection, it's been pestering me for this location consent thing:

Screenshot (click image for larger variant)

I hit "Disagree" every single time, but it just pops right back up the next time I activate the GPS. This is extremely annoying and I'm worried I'll accidentally hit "Agree" one of these times.

How can I permanently disagree with this?

If your device is rooted and you're using the XPosed framework, the Deny Location Consent might be what you're looking for:

  Disable the annoying "Improve location accuracy?" dialog and always disagree.


Unlocking Bootloader of HTC One X on Windows 8.1 / Linux Ubuntu How to unlock the bootloader of HTC One X on Windows 8.1? Since I want to install MIUI Rom.

When I install the latest version of "HTC Sync Manager", It shows me that the Windows 8.1 is not competible with this software. Therefore, the command fastboot oem get_identifier_token does not work because of the incompatible HTC Driver.

I am wondering whether I can unlock my HTC One X on my Linux Ubuntu? If yes, how to do it? Do I need to install HTC Driver on Linux Ubuntu?

Thank you for your attention.

Linux is absolutely the best way to do this sort of things. This is a thread on xda about how to set the development environment on Linux Ubuntu in particular http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2302780

Follow these steps and you'll have fastboot command set up to do the unlocking process. Plus you won't need any driver to let the system recognize the device.


How do I remove a Google Account from my phone? My gal pal used my Galaxy S5 to sign into her Gmail.  She Added "another account' to my g-mail but could not find a way to sign out when done. Now, all of her mail and calendar stuff is showing up on my phone!  Help me stop this!

Here's a way how.

Go into the GMail App
Select the menu button(top left of the screen next to "Inbox"
Click the down arrow next to your email
Select manage accounts.
It will take you to another menu, select "Google"
Find her account, click on it, and in the top right corner of the screen there should be 3 dots you can push to bring down a menu, and select remove account.


rooting Samsung captivate with the new gingerbread release I just got a message from my cell provider that the official Gingerbread release is out for the Samsung Captivate. I recently rooted my phone so I could install non market apps. Will I have to un root to upgrade, and after I have is there a tool that will let me re root? All the Google searches I did brought up old results.

To install non market apps, u dont need to root your phone . :\
I dont think u need to unroot your device for updating it through samsung kies.
But after updating to Gingerbread, your device is automatically unrooted.


How to remove duplicate phone numbers within one Android contact Under many of the contacts on my phone I have pages full of the same phone number and/or email address.  Is there an automated method to remove them?

Please note, I'm not talking about duplicate contact records.  I'm talking about one contact record having multiple phone number entries with the same number filling multiple pages.   I could press the "-" button dozens of times to remove them, but this issue is happening on many of my contacts.

Googling this issue only returns results regarding "duplicate contacts" with suggestions of merging.  I'm not looking to merge contacts.  I'm looking to remove duplicate numbers that are listed under a single named contact.

When I went to Gmail's website to look up the contact for the person in the image I attached, Gmail only lists their email address (once) with no phone number.  I'm not sure where the other numbers are coming from or if there is a way to organize the contacts outside of my phone.  I'm interested in hearing options you may suggest.  I'm a developer and not afraid of an export/cleanup/import scenario if that is viable.

I have a Galaxy S7 with Android 7.0.

It is highly recommended to use the ''Google Contacts App'' on your browser instead of the third party apps.

You can find the Google Contacts within your Gmail account as well. Else, you can just search Google contacts.

The feature allows to remove the duplicate entries of the contacts in your Google Contacts. Also, it prompts you to merge the contacts with the same name.


Updater process ended with ERROR: 1 [TWRP] I was using Pixel experience 10.0 on Redmi 5A (Riva) and I decided to clean install Pixel experience 11.0 today. But I'm getting the following error on TWRP.
Installing zip file '/sdcard/Pixel Experience Riva 11.0.zip'
Checking for Digest file...
assert failed: riva.verify_trustzone("TZ.BF.4.0.5-157266") == "1"
Updater process ended with ERROR: 1
Error installing zip file '/sdcard/Pixel Experience Riva 11.0.zip'
Updating partition details...
...done

Note that:

I formatted the device with TWRP and wiped System, Dalvik, Data, Cache partitions.
I was using Pixel Experience before and my Bootloader is unlocked.
Previous version of the ROM (Pixel experience 10.0) is installing successfully.
My TWRP version is 3.4.0-0, and latest version of TWRP (3.5.0_9-0) doesn't support on the device.

I fixed this by installing this zip. Then I installed the ROM.
Official guide link
Thanks @alecxs


Recover contacts and images from stolen phone My samsung note 3 was stolen yesterday, the phone is off. how can I get my pictures from the internal memory of the phone and contact numbers? I was registered with google account

if you had synced the device with your google account then you can find your contacts at google contacts and photos at google photos.


Securely wiping a phone with a broken screen I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 with a broken screen. The screen does not respond to any touch and does not display anything at all, it is black at all times. CyanogenMod 11 is installed on the device.

I need to securely wipe the device, but I've been having a very difficult time doing so, as CyanogenMod doesn't allow ADB to connect without user input, which in this case is impossible. I've done a factory reset on the phone, but didn't wipe the user data on the internal storage (not an external SD card, rather the "internal SD card" which is hosted on the main phone ROM).

How can I securely wipe the phone and delete all data left on the internal storage? I'd like to zero-out the filesystem, but still have a semi-working phone that will at least boot into Android for occasional tinkering over adb.

If you did a factory reset, you should be able to connect it to the computer and it should allow you to delete files from the internal storage. MTP is limiting though in the fact that you can't use a secure erase program (one that overwrites the file multiple times with random data). This will be quite difficult to do with a broken screen.

The other option is to use Odin to restore it to stock. Odin overwrites all the partitions including the full /data partition which will wipe the internal storage. Just follow any of the guides on how to return to stock or unbrick the device, like this one for the international S3. If you have one of the LTE or carrier versions you will need an appropriate guide for that version. You can do everything blind in Odin, just follow the directions carefully.


memory card is not show in recovery mode can you please suggest me. memory card is not showing in recovery mode how to solve this problem because i want to install android lollipop in my Samsung ace duos 6802.

In recovery, go to mounts and make sure ext_sdcard or similar is check-marked.

Also try disabling/enabling MTP Mode (if you are on twrp) in mounts if it still doesn't mount along with above step. Cant say how is that related, but this did the trick once for me.


What is the safest way to root a 5.1.1 so I can use the SD drive? There is no more "Move to SD" option in Apps Info like there was in 4.4 so now I am grasping at alternatives as my new Android is getting filled up while I have a fully empty 32GB SD drive just sitting there mounted and unused.

Q:  What is the safest way to move these apps out to the drive?

Download the universal android root apk it is not available on google play store so you have to download it on your own after downloading it you are ready to go to root your device


Android "Tethered" update mechanism Based on Android CDD document, a device must support an update mechanism to system software. It may be one of following kinds:

Over-the-air (OTA): by Settings > About Phone > System Updates to install new version when it is available.
"Tethered" update: update over USB from a host PC
"Offline" updates via a reboot and update from a file on removable storage

I could understand clearly the 1st and 3rd mechanism but I'm confused about the 2nd. As my searching, "tethering" is used to connect the Android mobile to a host PC through USB cable then the PC could use mobile as a modern to access internet.

So I don't understand why that "tethering" is seen as an update mechanism?

Anyone has experience about this kind please help me to clear about it.

In this case, tethering means connecting the phone to the computer and using an application on the PC to update the firmware of the device. An example of this is updating with Samsung Kies or Odin.


Nexus 4 verification failed error on Update Android 4.4 KitKat I successfully downloaded Android 4.4 KitKat (see screen shot):

And after downloading do not appear "restart/install" button, appear "Verification failed" error  (see screen shot):

(click the images for larger variants)

If I click "Check now" button it begin redownload update Android 4.4 kitkat again.

Does anybody know where the problem is, and how it could be solved?

You can use the Nexus Factory Images to upgrade your phone to Android 4.4 (now 4.4.2). To do this have a look at this question.


Unable to delete file on sdcard Can anyone tell me what the file and folders are in the picture below? I can't do anything or delete these files and folders. They are coming into my external sd-card. If I format the sdcard they are removed. If I take this sdcard out of my phone and put it into my PC I'm still unable to do anything with the files and folder.

These are corrupted directory entries, stored in the File Allocation Table if the card was formatted for an FAT family filesystem.  Reformatting gives you a new clean File Allocation Table, and therefore the spurious entries disappear.

Thanks to Wikipedia for providing this background:

  The name of the file system originates from the file system's prominent usage of an index table, the File Allocation Table (FAT), statically allocated at the time of formatting. The table contains entries for each cluster, a contiguous area of disk storage. Each entry contains either the number of the next cluster in the file, or else a marker indicating end of file, unused disk space, or special reserved areas of the disk. The root directory of the disk contains the number of the first cluster of each file in that directory; the operating system can then traverse the FAT table, looking up the cluster number of each successive part of the disk file as a cluster chain until the end of the file is reached. In much the same way, sub-directories are implemented as special files containing the directory entries of their respective files.


how can I customize Andriod interface? What are my options to customize the android interface? I have android lollipop.  For example, visually, I find having all the apps in one screen confusing. I have like 5 functions that I should expect to do regularly, and the rest is just cluttering the place up. that is not to say I want to remove the other apps, I just don’t want to have to look at them, while I’m trying to do something else.

It might be worth noting That I am coming from the Linux environment, where everything is highly customizable, and I am expecting android to also be highly customizable. perhaps that is flawed thinking.

There is a desktop on my tablet, that has 5 icons, an apps shortlist, google play, the link to all apps, the camera, and a mail function. Can I change what apps those are?

Even in your pre-installed launcher you can remove apps from desktop (they will not be uninstalled from your tablet), sort them on your desktop any way you wish and add so many app icons to your desktop(s) how much place you have. Make a long tap on an icon and then you can move it or delete from desktop. Make a long tap on an icon in app drawer and then you can add it to your desktop.


Is your Galaxy S7 running slow after 11/2018 T-Mobile update? Several days after receiving this update my phone became sluggish to do anything. Simple things like: swiping to answer calls is taking 2-4 seconds, lighting up a screen when the call is incoming is taking also several seconds. The battery life suffers as well - I am losing about 30% of battery every day compared to how it was before. When I look at what is consuming the battery, Android system is the biggest consumer, about 10-20% each day.

Also, the phone started complaining about running out of space even though I had 32Gb SD card that was empty. Going to storage setting shows that out of 32Gb of internal storage I have only about 1-2Gb free and that's after cleaning all of personal data. Most of the consumption is in the system memory. There is no way of seeing what goes into System memory consumption as the stock tools don't show it's contents.

Does anyone else have this problem? Any ideas how to resolve it?

Here is what I just tried to do and it seems to have worked for now. Be careful when doing this as this may lead to the loss of data.

Installed the app "X-plore". Thanks to the developers of this app - a really great tool! The feature to serve the phone's files over HTTP to the desktop PC is a brilliant idea.

It shows most of the system memory contents. I noticed that directory /sdcard/log was bloated: it had way too many files. Seemed like crash dump files that were zipped into ~6Mb packages. There were hundreds of them and they had dates in the names matching the time when the slowness started.

Deleting those files has freed up ~10Gb of space. The phone is running much better.


Can't take screenshots on a rooted device I can't take screenshots on my rooted Android 4.0.3 tablet. It's a Genesis GT-1230 running some modified ROM, and apparently the power + volume down combination is disabled.

The screen is 10.1", 1024 x 600 pixels.

I have GoLauncher installed on it, and its screenshot feature produces a result like this:

(resolution 600 x 988, not resized or edited in any way)

However, if I deny root permissions for GoLauncher, the screenshot result goes like this:

(resolution 249 x 410, not resized or edited in any way)

I installed this screenshot app, it requires root, I give root permission, and it displays an error message, something along the lines of "error on fb0".

Why are you doing it that way? Not surprised that the app that was downloaded failed to work!

Android 4.0.4 has native screenshot facility in place - hold down Power button and press the volume down key simultaneously.

A screenshot will be captured and stored on /sdcard/Screenshots


MTP oddities on Windows 10 I had always used USB Mass Storage to transfer files from/to devices to my PC (currently Windows 10) but my new phone (LG X Power with Android 6) no longer supports it so I'm left with MTP, which appears to be significantly slower (but I don't know who to blame). Data transfer rate is acceptable but:

Creating an empty folder on the phone from Windows explorer can take up to a minute.
I can't move files within the phone (copy never ends, no matter file size).

This happened with whatever MTP drivers Windows 10 bundle. I downloaded the drivers provided by LG but nothing improved.

I asked LG and their reply was that «USB drivers do not support Windows 10» and I need to find a computer running «Windows XP SP3 ~ Windows 8.1».

My questions:

Is it true that current Windows version does not have first class drivers for MTP?
Is there some way to address those two issues I suffer?

MTP does not support simultaneous read/write, nor edit.  This has nothing to do with Windows 10.  (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol#History)

If you want to move files within the device, you will need to either (1) do so from within the device or (b) first copy the files to your PC, then copy them back to the new location on the phone.

The goal of MTP is to prevent data integrity issues by abstracting away the underlying filesystem and preventing simultaneous access; for this reason, it is strictly less powerful than USB Mass Storage.


How can I root my Pandigital Novel 7" Tablet? I have a Pandigital 7" that is updated as far as the firmware updates go. However, I do not have access the Android Market and I do not have root access.

I am trying to install a SQL reader that I found on SlideMe.org and it says to update my ROM, but I have the most up-to-date firmware from the Pandigital Website.

I also found a link for a firmware update Android Open Source Kit here: http://www.pandigital.net/?PageID=335

Does anybody know if this open source kit will give me root access?

Slatedroid and its Wiki is IMO the best resource for the Pandigital Novel. The Novel does not do any signing checks of its firmware and it's running Android 2.0 so it's rather easy to root.

EDIT: I have learned that the bootloader is encrypted; my previous sentence about "not checking signatures" may be incorrect. (It may only be that the bootloader cannot be replaced.)

Latest community-modified firmware as of this writing

Flashable a-la-carte enhancements (including root)

I notice you posted over there too, so this is really for anyone else that has a PDN 7" and wants this information.

As of note, the White and Black versions are different; the White is regarded as better.


control charging for Samsung Galaxy S3 that is in charger 24/7 I have Samsung Galaxy S3 in the charger 24/7, so it's not good for battery. How can I set charging so that the phone spends battery to say 30% before charging it to full?

If your device is not rooted, it's not possible

If it's rooted, it's possible but you have to get your hands dirty, since ways below target to cut off battery charging at upper limit and not while discharging to a lower limit , as you want

[APP][ROOT][4.4+]Battery Charge Limit v1.0.1  available free at XDA works for your device as can be seen from linked user post. You can download the app from here. Fortunately, this is open source so you can tinker with it
Have a look at this for trying other ways of achieving your goal Automatically limit (stop) battery charging at a given percentage . Here again, the actions of discontinue charging can be configured to lower limit


Unpacking 'Non-Standard' Boot.img Problems for 64 Bit Device This is in relation to this XDA thread and my thread on xda. This is a cross post from XDA, trying my luck on here. I also asked this question on Stackoverflow, but am covering all my  bases and trying my luck here as well.

Device specs, just in case someone asks

Device Specifications:

Current Android Version: Android Lollipop 5.1.1
Chipset: Marvell Armada PXA1908 (Note: Due to this being a rarely used chip, the CF-Auto root won't work)
Custom Recovery Status: TWRP 3.0.2-0 (Not working with lollipop)
Root Status (This is technically why I am here):  Android KitKat 4.4.4 (Root), Android Lollipop 5.1.1 (NO ROOT Yet)
ARMv8 64-bit

Now let's get into my steps up to the point and then my problem.

Note: In the kernel readme it states to use the toolchain 4.8 but when I use it, it complains of not being able to find gcc. Also in the read me it states "get Toolchain download and install arm-eabi-4.8 toolchain for ARM EABI.(64bit)" and when reading up on it, it says to use aarch64 for ARM 64 Bit devices.

Device Source Code can be found at Here

cd ~/android
export CROSS_COMPILE=~/android/ndk/toolchains/aarch64-linux-android-4.9/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/aarch64-linux-android-
cd ~/android/kernel
make ARCH=arm64 pxa1908_xcover3lte_eur_defconfig
make ARCH=arm64

This outputs: Image, Image.gz, .dts and .dtb files.

Where's the kernel readme (I believe this hasn't been update since kitkat) says the output will be,
    - Kernel : Kernel/arch/arm/boot/zImage
    - module : Kernel/drivers//.ko
Note: when trying to compile with the 32- bit ARM toolchain it fails,  as the config is found in arm64, wheres other configs are found in arm.

So know I have a kernel (Image or Image.gz), and some .dts and .dtb files. Now to unpack boot.img, this is where problems occur. When trying to use tools like abootimg or the various different versions of unmkbootimg, they complain about non-standard boot.img.

or

While also try saving it as a zImage when its meant to be a Image.gz, or they extract it without throwing any errors, but when looking at the extracted files with a hex editor, it is all 00 throughout the files, therefore a useless file.

So therefor I tried manually unpacking with a hex editor and managed to get the kernel. Left is my Compiled and Right is the hex version.

Notice the difference in size, is this because the kernel in boot.img is stripped of its debugging items while mine isn't? If so I should look up on how to fix that.

But I am having troubles trying to extract the ramdisk via hex.
So is anyone able to Teach/Help me extract the boot.img properly (with tools like unmkbootimg or with a hex editor)

I have attached necessary files if you want to have a look at them yourself.
Files: Samsung xCover3 Files

Any help is appreciated.

After Numerous trial and error, I finally managed to output ramdisk.gz.cpio, this was from starting at the correct ramdisk hex .gz area, search 00 00 00 00 1F 8B, narrows it down to 2 sections, kernel (Image.gz) and ramdisk.gz.cpio. So for the ramdisk I started from 1F 8B and went all the way to the end of the document ( I was before stoping to early, therefor corrupting it).


How to have dead keys working with an USB keyboard? I've connected to my phone a desktop USB keyboard using an OTG connector. Everything works fine, unfortunately I  can't produce accented letters like áéíãê.

When I type an accent, like `'^, another symbol prints. I expected the behavior of a dead key, followed with the accented letter.

The keyboard has a Brazilian ABNT layout. I tested it with Google Gboard and Samsung standard keyboard. Tested with languages English international and Brazilian Portuguese.

I wanted to avoid non-free software and found AnySoftKeyboard available thru F-Droid is able to handle dead keys too. Works well!


instant upload of camera pictures into Google picasaweb without Google+ app? Is there any option to have instant upload of camera pictures into Google picasaweb without the Google+ app? I have an HTC Chacha 2.3.5 which runs short of memory (even when moving apps to SD), and I can't be bothered of having Google+ installed, but would like to keep the instant upload of camera pictures into Picasa. Right now the Camera app (HTC Version 2.6.2119262927.162876) in the phone can only do instant upload into Flickr or Facebook, but I would rather prefer have them in Picasa. Any ideas?

There is an app for that.

PhotoSync (Sync to Picasa) automatically syncs local folder to Picasaweb, so you can select your camera folder. It's free and not so huge as G+ app. You can set your local folder and Picasa folder and sync them on eg. hourly basis.


data packet automatically activated on gingerbread 2.3.6 I just upgraded my samsung galaxy SL to gingerbread 2.3.6
After that, everytime my data packet is automatically activated all the time.
I switch off my mobile network data and lock my phone, and then switch it on again/unlock, the network data are automatically enabled.
I ve noticed, that when i un-tick/deactivate "use packet data", lock my phone with power/lock button and then unlock it, this option is ticked again (= data are enabled).

Please advise.

Install CatLog to check what's happening at the time of unlocking. Without logs, its hard to tell how to fix it.

Factory reset is the last option (not applicable if your firmware is broken).

If factory reset is unable to fix it or you don't want to do factory reset, install third-party apps which could turn off data by renaming APN. I'd recommend Widgetsoid for it. After installing it, add Data Toggle widget on homescreen & choose APN Renaming as data toggle method from its settings. The bug can't by-pass it, for sure.


Change Kindle Fire Lock Screen Is it possible to change the Kindle Fire's lock screen from displaying ads to a user chosen file or one of the random presets that come pre-installed?

If so, how would one go about this?

AFAIK there's an "ad-free fee" you could pay to Amazon 15 bucks. Apart from that, available solutions require you to root your device:

Kindle FIre HD 2013 - Remove Ads from Lockscreen

  root your Kindle Fire HD 2013
  Download and install ES File Explorer from amazon AppStore (its free)
  Start ES File Explorer and enable Root Explorer
  Browse to /data/securedStorageLocation/dtcp/
  Mark the adunits folder
  Go to "more" and "settings"
  Remove the permissions from "rwx --- ---" to "--- --- ---"
  (Optional) Remove all folders in the adunits folder

Disable Kindle Fire HD Lockscreen Ads - YouTube
More via a simple Google search ;)


Nook Color with CyanogenMod7 is not visible via ADB over USB I recently bought a Nook Color. My intentions from day 1 was to install CyanogenMod7 on the device to get a full Android experience. That process worked just fine, and the device is now running CM7. I am running CM7 installed directly on the device, not from an sdcard.

I access my devices a lot via command line using adb, but with the nook color, I am unable to get adb to see the device.

I have Windows 7 64-bit, I used the USB drivers, and "fix script" from here and USB Debugging is enabled. If I mount the device to windows I am able to access the sdcard on the device. But no matter what I do, I cannot get adb to see the device.

I finally tracked down a fix after some file searching...

The "adb over usb" fix creates a file in %USERPROFILE%\.Android\adb_usb.ini with the "vendor id" of 0x2080 in it.

I have a .android folder in my root of my sdk directory c:\android-sdk\.android\, and in there is also the adb_usb.ini. I added the 0x2080 to that file, then restarted adb and I can now see the device via USB->adb.


Which version of Gapps to install for Lineage? I am going to install Lineage and I need to decide which version of open Gapps to use.

I use lots of Google apps (Google Play Store, Gmail, Calendar, Photos, Music, Google search, Translate, Keep etc.). But, I am fine with installing them one by one, from Google Play store. So, I prefer a minimalist version so that, I don't need to keep anything that I don't use. Therefore, my first thought was Pico Gapps. But, this version does not include offline speech recognition files. Can these be installed later from the google store? Or, if I want to be able to use the "ok google" voice command, do I need to install Nano Gapps?

Also, are there any other obstacles I am not aware of? I want to be able to install anything else from the play store (and not to be forced to flash anything later).

You can download Gapps package for your lineage from this website source opengapps.org.
Site contains several fields such as :
1.Platforms:

ARM64 - For 64-bit devices
ARM64 means the devices that are running 64 bit operating system/processor.

ARM - For 32-bit Devices

ARM means the device that are running 32 bit operating system/processor.

x86
for Intel Smartphones like Zenphone .

x86_64
This is a very uncommon, these are used in some android emulators.
You can check this hereAntutu

2.Android versions:

9.0 Pie

8.1, 8.0 Oreo

7.1, 7.0 Nougat

6.0 Marshmallow

5.1, 5.0 Lollipop (Opengapps supported up to Lollipop in 2019)

4.4 KitKat.(Opengapps supported up to KitKat in 2018)

3.Variant:

Aroma: Graphical installer of the super package while in recovery menu, it allows user to select which applications to install.

Super: Includes all Google Apps that were ever shipped on a Google device.

Stock: Recommended package that contains all Google Apps that come standard on latest Nexus/Pixel phone.

Full : Very similar to Stock version.

Mini : Smaller set of popular Google Apps with extra functionality.

Micro: Limited set of Google Apps with Gmail, Calendar Google Now with extra functionality.

Nano : Minimal installation with extra functionality.

Pico : Minimum with Google Play functionality.
(Each package varies with file sizes and included Google Apps)

Your /system folder capacity decides which version is suited for you.
You can check your capacity using this app Disk Info. Then select your Gapps variant, and install it. And, I would recommend Aroma so that you can decide which apps to be installed during installation at recovery.(N.B:Aroma had issues with some recovery versions, but, it worked on TWRP 3.0.2 on my redmi 1s).
Note: Please mention which is your device. I have tried pico version in my Redmi 1S, because of lesser system capacity(Pico version includes apps like Google Play and Google Play Services). There after, I installed Google app as user app(from play store) and can run 'OK Google' voice command.


Why do my photos on LG G6 seem overly compressed? I've just come back from a nice hiking trip where I took lots of photos that looked good on the LG G6 screen.

But looking at them closely, there is very little detail - they've been heavily smoothed.

Here are those rocks in the midground:

I have the image quality settings at 4:3 (13MP) and this particular image is 4.4MB (original here).

Is this normal? Is there anything I can do about it?

(I'm using Google Photos, but the screenshots and original image above come from exporting directly out of Gallery, to email.)

Yes, it's normal. LG camera software does it.

You can fix it with Google Camera ported to LG G6. It may lack some functions compared to LG camera app.


How can I use an Android phone as a media player? Is it possible for me to have a central Android phone connected to my old stereo that will let me cast media from any iOS or Android device on my house? If so how?

This is entirely possible via mDNS/uPNP/DLNA. You don't even have to use a phone for that. Cheaper variants exist, such as dedicated android-based microcomputers with size of a bigger USB stick.

All you need to do is to install an app that will act as a media player with DLNA support. There are plenty of these available, one such app can be DroidUPnP or Yaacc, both available via F-Droid. You can then setup the app as a player and control it from a remote controller software, such as ControlDLNA, also available from F-Droid.

Setup is automatic, you just need to fire up a few servers as media sources. These can be computers, xboxes, other phones and pretty much anything that has a DLNA logo on it.


Reverse Tether Android Tablet without Rooting What are some ways I can use an Android Tablet's USB cable to leech off a PC's wired internet connection?  I have a PC with fast and unlimited internet and I want to connect an Android Tablet to it without using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

Additionally, I do not want to "root" the Android Tablet.

You certainly don't need to root it. Unless you're a farmer.

On your PC go to start >control panel.

Go to Networking and settings Center, and then clicking Manage network connections. Right-click the connection that you want to share, and then click Properties. There should be a share option.


How to trace a drive-by download? I was using the default Android browser and I noticed a drive-by download.

The file is sexplay-r8.apk MD5 (sexplay-r8.apk) = 61ec2c6dab14c53ca323ee0dbcad112e

It looks very much like a malware to me:

What should I do now ? How can I find what triggered the download of this file ?

I'm interested in triggering the download again, but I can't find a way to consult the history of the browser. Android isn't very forensics friendly.

To access the browser history, tap the "tabs" menu. (Looks like the tabs of a file folder and is next to the overflow menu, which itself looks like three vertical dots.)

Once you can see your open tabs plus the blank one to add a new one, tap the overflow menu.

You should see four options

New incognito tab
History
Saved pages
Settings

(I think you know what to do.)

This is on a Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.1.1.


How do I close all tabs in Chrome for Android? I'm using Chrome 32 on an Android tablet (not phone) and just can't figure out how to close all open tabs in one go.

Click on Tabs icon in upper right corner
Go to options
Click on close all tabs


How to set everything to silent except the alarm clock [7.1.1 Nougat] Does anybody  know how to set everything to silent except the alarm clock? In priority only, and alarms only mode, both calendar reminders and alarm clock notifications make the phone vibrate. If I set it to full silent both are silenced.

Currently I'm using the business calendar app

I'd like to configure the calendar to only notificate in priority mode and not in alarms only mode.

(The problem I'm having is full day calendar appointments make my phone vibrate at midnight.)

You can try to achieve this by automation. I prefer MacroDroid being easy to learn and free

I don't have Nougat , so can't test it. I also recall  reading that dnd mode is behaviour is different compared to Marshmallow ( and don't remember how), so this may need further tweaking based on your revert

The way I understood your need and accordingly configured macro is

You are in Priority mode ( not alarm only )
Your calendar app sends a notification which needs to be seen by not heard ( select your  calendar app in Trigger, in the macro I chose default calendar app)


Developer option "Do not keep activites" gets stuck I'm rocking a Samsung Galaxy S6, 5.1.1, build number LMY47X.*

When turning on the "Do not keep activities" developer option, the toggle turns green.  It is toggled back off as soon as I navigate away from the developer options screen, and my testing shows that it is indeed off.

A workaround was to toggle it on, then lock the phone.  After unlocking it, the toggle stays on and activities are not kept.  The opposite problem is then present: it won't turn off.  The workaround above does not seem to work in this case (I wonder if it was a fluke).

Some googling brings up a few instances of people with S6's and Note 5's with a similar problem, and a few conspiracy theories around samsung intentionally leaving it locked on, but nothing concrete about how to solve this.

Is this a bug, a dirty Samsung battery-saver hack job, or am I alone in experiencing this?

Mystery solved!

Clicking the toggle does nothing.  Clicking the text itself works, though.  It looks like Samsung's devs have a click listener on the list item, but not the toggle switch itself.


Spotify automatic "offline mode" when no Wifi connection Is it possible to automatically switch my Android Spotify app to "offline mode" when not connected to Wifi?

I've just had 1.5GB of data downloaded via Mobile data connection which has over maxed out my limit!

I'm not sure why this has happened (I can only assume it's re-downloaded some playlists?), but I would like to prevent this from happening again.

No need to do that, if your device runs at least Android 4.0:

From your homescreen, go to Settings → Data Usage
tick the checkbox to enable data limit
in the graph, move the bars to some level suiting you (can be imaginary high, to not toggle your mobile data off altogether when reached)
scroll down until you find the Spotify app, tap its entry to open details
scroll to the end of that screen, tick the checkbox to "limit background data"

Done. Now, unless Spotify is running in foreground, it should no longer automatically use mobile data.

This setting has no effect to WiFi, so it would perfectly fit your needs: while on WiFi, Spotify feels no restriction. As soon as you switch to mobile data, the app is no longer allowed to automatically transfer anything in background – but should still permit actions you trigger when the app is in foreground.


Does moving an app to external (SD) storage also make it write application data and cache to external storage? I have very little internal storage installed on my Nexus One. Almost every app I am installing fires a system low on internal storage notification. I moved all applications to external storage but it seems like the application is still using internal storage for application data and cache. Is it possible (on a non-rooted or rooted phone) to make an application run completely from external storage?

It does not make the app use external storage. The built-in move to sd functionality only moves the application package file itself to the external storage.

If you want the app to not use the internal storage you'll need to root (and possibly install a custom rom.)
Depending on your rom you'll have several options to do what you want but virtually all of them require you to partition your sdcard in a special way (usually the custom recovery can handle this.)


Is it possible to play DVDs (or other "optical" media) from file images on Android? Is it possible to open DVDs (possibly with all their multimedia features) from a file image on Android ?

(e.g. Nexus Player)

P.S.: Is other optical media handled similar to DVDs from file images, in general?

VLC can
According to the documentation, VLC can play DVD ISO files and display the relevant menus.
Other players might also be able to play the files if you first unarchive the ISO (using ES File Explorer for instance).


Widget to immediately phone a specific contact? I have a widget that places an icon of a specific contact on my home screen.
Whenever I touch it, the phone immediately dials that person.

Problem is - I already forgot what the widget is called (I'd like to install it on a new phone). Can you help me identify it?

I'm not sure if this is HTC specific, but this is what I need to do to get a "direct dial" icon on my HTC desire.

Long press on where you want to add the icon
Hit 'Shortcut'
Hit 'Direct Dial'
Select the contact you want to use (if the contact has more than one number, you'll need to pick which one)

There should now be an icon that will have that contact's photo and a small phone symbol on the bottom right. If you hit the icon, you'll immediately dial the contact.