How can I safely test custom ROMs on an obscure device?

To answer your question installing a new custom rom will erase the phone and yes their is a custom rom available and working here is the link Downloaded this rom http://forum.flymeos.com/thread-6638-1-1.html to root of sd card.I installed and works great any question on installing just ask


You need to look for hebfix or RTL fix.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find a direct download link.  Hope this is enough to get you started.

A good place to look would be http://iandroid.co.il or http://www.xda-developers.com/.

If you find a good link to download from, you can update my answer :)


Is there a list that explains the risks involved with each granted application permission type?

General information
You might want to take a look at What do the permissions that applications require mean? -- our "community wiki" which hopefully becomes such a ressource one day. Next to that, you might want to take a look at App Permissions Explained – What Do They Really Mean?, a blog article at AndroidPIT giving at least some short explanations.
TechPP's article Use Permissions to Secure Your Private Data from Android Apps goes a little deeper into details (recommended reading!). Another nice overview is provided by BinaryDroids.
Edit: I've tried to sum up information from all kind of sources I could find, so the probably most comprehensive collection can be found at Android.IzzySoft.DE: Permissions. Don't be afraid of the ".DE": it serves its content in English as well. (Disclosure: I'm the owner, creator, and maintainer of that site.)
A last direct recommendation is How App Permissions Work & Why You Should Care -- and for more, please visit our good old aunt Google :)

Edit: I could not resist to add more valuable hints, as this is a very sensitive topic. So I will continue updating my answer:

Android permissions explained, security tips, and avoiding malware, a very thorough article on more than just permissions (seemingly similar article here)
What Can a Zero-Permissions Android App Do?
Android OS: Malicious apps can steal permissions (including a chapter on How permissions work)
The ins and outs of scary Android App Permissions (a general introduction into permissions and the "abouts")
Not directly an answer, but an interesting ressource on our sister-site: Studies on Android users' attitude to security. Names a lot of further sources, studies, etc., including "permissions"
How to find those permission-grabbing add-ons in Android reveals another interesting fact I was not aware of, as obvious as it might look once you know it: advertising networks get the same Android-permissions as the installed app they’re associated with. Ouch! A paradise for profilers... and, There are more permission-grabbing add-ons...
Smartphone apps: Is your privacy protected?
Use Permissions to Secure Your Private Data from Android Apps (while already from 7/2010, it still has good explanations on permissions existing back then -- and still there today)

Advertizement inside apps
Also keep in mind that many permissions some app requests might not be required by the app itself -- but rather by some ad module that app uses. So according to TechRepublic14, MobFox and AdMob, two of the biggest ad networks, require the following permissions: INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE, ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, and READ_PHONE_STATE (so they can know who you are [READ_PHONE_STATE: phone number, IMEI/IMSI], where about you are [ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION], what networks you are connected to [ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE], and whom you are communicating with [again READ_PHONE_STATE, while in call, for the "remote number"]). Does this look a bit too paranoid? That doesn't mean nobody's after you, see Deep Dive Into Ad Network Behavior on Android.
Which means: if you don't feel well with some combinations, you might simply check if the app on your wishlist also has a paid version -- which might do without those permissions, as it does not carry the "ad module". Speaking of this: Addons Detector will help you figure out which of your apps carry such a module piggyback. In this context, also consider: as trustworthy as the app developer might be, (s)he might not be aware of and has no influence on what those "ad modules" do with your data. Remember: advertising networks get the same Android-permissions as the installed app they’re associated with.13
On this topic, also read:

Android apps and advertising: A bit too cozy
Android ad networks found accessing users’ private data
Free Android apps often secretly make calls, use the camera
How to Curb Aggressive Mobile Ad Networks (interesting to read for users, recommended reading for developers!)
Android Adware abusing permissions, Collecting more than they need
Reports Show Aggressive Mobile Apps Want Many Permissions They Don't Need
Mobile Ad Networks Accused Of Invasive Apps (with a "real life example" -- or rather "live example"?)
Top Mobile Ad Networks: Check out the networks on what permissions they want, how developers rate them, and more

Was this shocking news for you? Did I infect you with some "paranoia" -- and now you fell "left alone" with your bad feelings? I won't leave you without some recommendations. First, you might want to know which potential "data thieves" you already invited to your device, unaware of those risks. It's usually no bad intention of the developer (you know: "No money, no honey" -- the devs have to make a living as well). So having identified some "bad guys", you might want to confront the dev and give him the option to switch to a different, less "dangerous" ad provider (after all, the dev might have been unaware of the risks involved as well). If he's unwilling, you can still decide whether to kick the offender from your device. Or to "go pro", if there's a pay version available which comes without an ad module inside -- and honor the dev's work while safe-guarding your data, which I'd say is a typical win-win situation.
So: What options do you have? I will give a few examples below.

Addons Detector knows a lot of those modules. High rated (4.7 stars at more than 3,000 ratings), it not only detects ad modules, but also analytics, development, and licensing modules
Lookout Ad Network Detector -- nomen est omen -- concentrates on the ad modules. Its additional value is the ability to tell you exactly what data is being collected, and by whom. Comparable rating (4.4 at > 3,000 ratings)
TrustGo Ad Detector offers comparable features, and also gives you details on the ad networks' behaviour and backgrounds. Currently 4.5 at ~ 2,000 ratings.

"Root users" might also have heard of several ad-blocking apps (e.g. Adaway, Adblock Plus -- the latter not even requiring root), some of them able to not only "block by host/IP", but directly de-activating the ad modules. Well, those are no longer available on the playstore, as Google has banned them. But you certainly will find them in other places on the web. Make sure to select a trustworthy source, if you plan to make use of those. I recommend F-Droid, which has its own "market app" with the same name, so you get updates as well. All apps there are open source and thus free of charge. And no, obviously no "hacked pro versions for free", all fully legal and lawful :)


Cannot install unsigned APK file on my phone

Android does not allow installing unsigned applications.
You will need to sign you APK (with a debug or release key). Don't use Android tools->Export unsigned application package, but rather the regular command to export an Android APK.

The different options available to sign you app are well described here:
http://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/app-signing.html


Auto changing lock screen backgrounds from my facebook photos

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


I use the Power Control Widget. Allows you to toggle Data, wifi and various other settings from your home screen.


What's the name of the protocol that android devices use in debug mode?

Have you tried using adb from the Android SDK to connect to the device? I believe it's the same protocol also used when the OS is running and connected via USB.


I hate to say this, my LG Stylo got a corrupted file and I had to factory reset. Its a pain but you'll have to write everything down and put it all back in.


Encrypted and factory reset - Do I need to decrypt device?

It is in the default factory reset state ( like a new device ). You can't decrypt the device even if you wish to as the encryption password (generated from a combination of user lock screen PIN and encryption algorithm ) is lost

From Android's Factory Reset Does Not Wipe Your Data: Here's The Solution

  Encrypting does not completely delete the files, but the factory reset process gets rid of the encryption key. As a result, the device has no way it can decrypt the files and, therefore, makes data recovery extremely difficult.


If there is an official update to Android 2.3 (check the post on Gingerbread updates) then you'll get a notice on your phone (eventually). Just follow the instructions.

If there's not an official update and you don't want to wait for one, you'll need to root your phone and install a Custom ROM.


Does a broken screen affect the resolution of an android device?

I'm a big fan of Vysor, especially for texting with my keyboard. Have you tried messing around in the resolution settings? Click the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your Vysor screenshot to see this menu:

There could also be some strange stuff going on with your device. You need to enable USB Debugging from the Developer Options on your Android, which might be tricky if your phone screen is completely broken and unusable. Here's a HowToGeek link on getting it enabled.

Finally, Windows users need to download some special drivers to get it to work. Download link: http://download.clockworkmod.com/test/UniversalAdbDriverSetup.msi

All of this info comes from the Vysor page on the Play Store, and some quick Googling.

If you've tried all of this without any luck, we'll need more info about how broken your screen is to help further.

EDIT: I don't have enough reputation to comment below, but I can respond here. How exactly is your screen broken? Is it merely cracked, or is it totally unusable?


Android lock screen audio controls (8.1.0)

Apparently, after changing some of these settings, they do not take effect unless you reboot your phone. Days after turning off a bunch of stuff and still having the audio controls on my phone lock screen, I must have rebooted and now the audio controls on the lock screen are gone. The frustrating thing is that I turned a bunch of things back on when turning them off did nothing. And even though I turned all notifications to the lock screen back on, I am getting zero notifications for any app. I have to get into my phone to see notifications.

But at least it quit pocket skipping chapters forwards and backwards in my Audible books and pausing it due to the stupid audio controls on the lock screen.

Still thinking my next phone may be a newer Galaxy that at least has a built in menu option to do this.


[How] can I prevent this notification from constantly appearing?

If you long-press that notification you would be given the option to turn off the notifications for that app. Since it is Android Oreo, you may even get the option just to turn off that particular category of notification from Weather app. In Android 9, 10 and 11, you can also change a notification's priority status to "Other" and enable "Minimize" so that they at least become less infuriating and smaller in size, if cannot be hid completely.

If that doesn't work out for you, than I suggest you try MacroDroid. You can detect that notification and clear it automatically and immediately.
Setup MacroDroid and setup permission for "Notification access" and "Modify system settings" in it. Setup a macro with the following details:
Trigger: Device Events → Notification → Notification Received → Select your application:

Text Content: select Contains
Text to enter for match: enter the text from your notification. In your case, it can either be "Weather is running" or "Tap for more information or to stop the app".
uncheck Ignore ongoing notifications
uncheck Prevent multiple triggers

Action: Notification → Clear Notifications → Select your application → fill the details mentioned above verbatim for the notification received.
Constraint: none
The next time the notification would show up, the trigger would automatically fire up the action which would immediately clear the notification.

How can I really keep the Weather app from running in the background?

You can delete the app for your user account (the default user). Know that the only way to reinstall that app again as a system app is to factory reset. Note that removing a system app can cause boot issues, so proceed with caution and backups taken beforehand. However, I suggest you try disabling it first.
Disable the app from your Settings app. This should be enough to prevent the app from executing anything. If you can't disable it or it is not having the desired effect, setup adb and execute:

adb shell pm disable-user PACKAGE_NAME  # disables the app for the current user
adb shell pm enable PACKAGE_NAME        # enables the app for the user, if you must need it again, regardless of how the app was disabled.

This is akin to what you'd have done using Settings app. However, if you're still adamant on uninstalling that app, run:
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 PACKAGE_NAME

Replace PACAKAGE_NAME with the package name of the troublesome app. To  get help in finding it, see my answer here.


Is there any way to enable the ringer ONLY for a particular caller/group of callers?

Have you tried WhoIsIt?

  Setup different ringtones and vibration patterns for SMS, MMS, Google Talk, Google Voice, and K-9 for each contact


Samsung Galaxy s3 mini Wifi Connected but not working

First off try turning airplane mode off and on. That will often fix things. If that doesn't help, restart the phone. If that doesn't help, try hard-reset.com/samsung-galaxy-s3-mini-hard-reset.html but make sure to backup the phone data first.


Not sure how well this works but if you have root you could try this F-Droid app.


Cannot install any APK file due to "Out of Space" misleading error (plenty of space)

What are the permissions on the directories where the software will be installed (and the directories leading up to the installation directory)?

Do the application(s) you are using to install the APK's have the install software right denied?  With LineageOS, this is handled by Privacy Guard.  I use X-plore: try installing it (from Play Store) and see if you can install with it.  With LineageOS, you would be prompted to allow X-plore to install software.  (It may request root privilege too.)  Perhaps you inadvertently denied the privilege earlier to your other programs (though you mention trying with adb)?

My suggestion is to backup and try reformatting the sdcard (or better yet use a new one) with the default filesystem using the built-in system utility.  On my phone, this is handled by System Preferences -> Storage (I believe).  Don't make any further changes, and try to install the APK's.


Probably the best way to test it is to write data to all of it and see if one of the following occurs:

The write fails
The data/files don't show when you look for them
The data cannot be read
The data is corrupt

You can't flag sectors as bad as far as I'm aware, though, due to the FAT filesystem of SD cards.


What do the 2 triangles beside the WiFi icon mean?

I guess you think on up/down arrows next to the WiFi signal indicator. They are called network activity arrows/indicators.
Those arrows are showing when there is network activity. Arrow pointing up means you are uploading data (doesn't necessarily mean that you are uploading a file but rather that there is network activity, when you search something on Google you need to send data first - request to be able to receive) and an arrow pointing down means that phone is receiving data via the internet. They can appear separately or both at the same time.
They also appear next to cellular signal strength if cellular data is active. Sometimes arrows are inside of WiFi/cellular icon, it really depends on the device manufacturer.


Find out model code for Samsun Galaxy 7 edge?

see the long list of model codes for your device here.  (Since you didn't mention your country)
OEM says for S7, it is under the battery, so that's likely where you could find, but as mentioned by you , it's not removable

  Reboot the phone into the Download Mode (a.k.a Odin Mode) to see the Model.

( From the developer of Phone info Samsung mentioned in earlier question )


Use KeyEvent to do the job.

adb shell input keyevent 85

85 corresponds to KEYCODE_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE. More keycodes can be found  here or here.

Alternatively, if the activity featuring Play/Pause options is in foreground then you can do:

adb shell input touchscreen tap <X> <Y>

where <X> and <Y> are the coordinates of the tap that you would perform for Play/Pause using your fingers. See my answer here to know how to obtain them (step 1 and 2 under Instructions for Tasker and Xposed Additions).

Or, you can opt to completely kill the app using:

adb shell am force-stop <PKG_NAME>

Edit

Kitkat and above has the command media whose usage goes as,

adb shell media dispatch KEY

KEY can be play, pause, play-pause, mute, headsethook, stop, next, previous, rewind, record, fast-forword. (Source)


How can i see and/or delete the clipboard contents

You can install Clipboard Actions. It allows to view, delete or even edit the content(s) of the clipboard. Whenever you copy a text, it will be inserted in the Notification bar where you can navigate and choose, view or delete a copied text.

Taping on the Notification bar opens the app, allowing to view all the items copied. You can even edit them.

The app can also copy images and videos, search on Google for the text copied, etc.


Providing what worked for me, in case someone else has the same problem:

A helpful suggestion over at xda-developers.com by developer bilgerryan indicated I should Odin a full stock ROM, in order to replace whatever corrupted data was causing the problem.  Long story short, in the process of looking for progressively "fuller" stock ROMs after several failures, I ran across this thread, which provided a tar which "contains the NON-HLOS.bin modem.bin sbl2.mbn tz.mbn aboot.mbn rpm.mbn sbl3.mbn".

Flashing that tar fixed the problem completely, and since it doesn't touch the system or data partitions, it didn't require backing up or restoring anything.  (Although you should always back up your data before flashing anything, just to be safe.)  After that, I re-updated the NON-HLOS.bin and modem.bin to the further updated versions I had installed when sound wasn't working, and it continued to work.  So the problem was in one of: tz.mbn aboot.mbn rpm.mbn sbl2.mbn sbl3.mbn

Huzzah for having a working phone again.


How does my android phone load lower quality versions of pictures on the web?

It could be your provider. In the netherlands, t-mobile has an option (or at least had, I don't remember seeing it lately) to scale-down images in their proxy. As all your requests can go trough their "image" proxy at a click of a button (probably something to do with your APN, most likely server side even?)...

So it might not even have anything to do with Android..

It might be, but I don't remember if it was in my case, the Web 'n' Walk Accelerator

There's some google hits on that, though most of them semi-old. On this link some tips on how to fix it with that webnwalk stuff, probably not what you are looking for, but also some hints on how to send an "always reload" message to the proxy. Maybe that helps. Otherwise you might need to google some on tmobile and proxy/accelerator.


Incorrect Button Mapping when using Wireless Xbox 360 Controller

It seems as if the LG G3 doesn't support the wireless controller. Upon plugging in a wired controller, it worked perfectly


Using a phone as a game console- HDMI out and USB in simultaneously

Well if the already build adapter doesn't work you can make your own folowing this steps (if you are not able to do all the soldering ask a professional nearby like a phone repair shop) :

Background : Samsung made the new 11pin MHL technology on the galaxy note 2 and the S3 (those are the first devices to have it any top shelf phone out after that day have that technology ) ,samsung made it specially to sell it's own Smart Dock station where you can transform your S3 to a desktop ,the smart dock was (may still) sold to companies only for 100$ , the member @its.mahmud on XDA succeeded to make a clone of that device after reading the source code of the samsung galaxy S3 see reference .

Now How to build a DIY smart dock :

pre-required :

A Micro USB 5 To 11 Pin HDMI HDTV MHL Adapter Converter For Galaxy S3 S III i9300 search for it or get it from ebay
A 40.2 k ohm resistor (they are sold by lot by you can buy a piece from any repair shop)
A USB 2.0 A female to Micro USB B female adapter cable FF (by from near by electronics shop or from ebay (if you already have a female USB port somewhere else you can use that instead)
A samsung galaxy s3 under JB stock rom.

Lets start breaking stuff and making new stuff :

Cut the A Micro USB 5 To 11 Pin open and get the mother-ship this is what it looks like this on the 5pin side:

As you can see in on the ship where it's written R1 and there is a rectangle around the resistor ,yo need to take off that resistor ,do so.
Replace the removed resistor by the 40.2 K ohm resistor.
Cut the A USB 2.0 A female to Micro USB B female adapter open to remove the female USB port (if you already have a female USB port somewhere else you can use that instead).
Now solder new 4 wires  and shortcut the sense and ground with the 40.2 K ohm resistor as shown is the picture below.

Optionally you can cover the wires with duck-tap or any plastic material of your choice.
You can plug a USB Hub to the female USB port you just made to plug multiple USB devices (mouse and keyboard) or two controllers (android natively detect and use one controller only you need a third party app to manage multiple controllers.
Now you have a USB or multiple USB ports and An 11 Pin HDMI HDTV MHL to plug on your TV.

Reference :

Multimedia Dock(I/F: Micro USB 11pin)
DIY Smart Dock tread on XDA
Proof

Disclaimer :

None Of the component (devices and micro electronics ) used in this unswer are sold by me the links included are here to make it easy to find you can buy them from where ever you want.


None of the trusted keyboards support this feature.
Start afresh after clearing data and cache of the app - Settings >> Apps >> G Board.
Then use incognito mode on keyboard if it supports. Microsoft SwiftKey has incognito mode. IDK about GBoard.


How can you restore the default icons after installing a home replacement like Open Home 6

AFAIK, OpenHome icons are specific to OpenHome. If you switched to another home scren app, the icons would revert to the default icons. If you want to keep OpenHome but not their icons, you would need to replace the icons through OpenHome.


How can you set a default calendar to use for new events on a LG Android 2.2.1 phone?

As no one is answering this question, I presume it is not possible.

So I looked for another solution and found the Business Calender Free edition. This program not only displays a very nice monthly calender, but , most important, let you choose which colour you want to use for each agenda you want to display.

Very impressive indeed.

Just thought I'd let you know ...


There is no way to increase the number of characters you can send via SMS. SMS (Short Message Service) is a fixed standard that is currently defined as a way of sending messages up to 1120 bits in length. This means 160 7-bit characters or 140 8-bit characters or 70 16-bit characters. More here http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Service


Mac Fails to recognize my Android phone through USB

Finally it turns out to be a cable issue - but very weird! On Windows both USB 3.0 and 2.0 Cables are supported. On Mac, however, only USB 2.0 cables are supported. Initially I was using a 3.0 cable and thus by confirming that everything runs smoothly on PC, I directly denied the possibility of cable issues. I wish my sorrowful experience could help prevent some valueless efforts.


How do I find out how long a Samsung Android device will be security supported?

Unfortunately, like most Android phone manufacturers, Samsung does not give any guarantees about future security updates.

They do, however, have a web page telling you which models are currently scheduled for monthly or quarterly security updates:

Samsung Mobile Security - Android Security Updates

Judging from the current (2017-10) content of the list, it appears that the duration and timeliness of security updates depends on the price of the phone: The 2015 flagship model S6 still gets monthly updates, whereas cheaper models, even those released in 2017, only receive quarterly updates.


Is there a way to revert an android version update without flashing a ROM?

There's no sort of "rollback" feature on Android. Due to device space limitations the old OS image is not kept around.

So to downgrade you'd have to flash. It's not necessarily the case that you'll lose your data when doing this, but it depends what the ROM's updater script does and whether the ROM will work with the data left by the previous version (you might need to manually factory reset, which is generally recommended before flashing). As Andrew noted in the comments, unlocking your bootloader will wipe the device so if you need to do that to flash then you're out of luck. As such it is always recommended that you do a backup before flashing.


Phone not appearing in Android Device Manager

Well, I don't seem to have an answer why this was happening, but I got some advice about how to finally fix it.

From Ryan Lestage on Google+:

Clear data for the following apps:

Play Store
Download Manager
Google Services Framework

Restart your phone.
Fire up the Play Store app.
Wait for the device to show again on the web Play Store. It will appear under Settings > Devices. It may take a half-hour to several hours to appear.

When your phone has shown up in the Play Store with the date registered as today's date, proceed with the next steps, but not before.

Open Google Settings from your device's apps menu.
Touch Android Device Manager.
Uncheck Allow remote factory reset.
Go to your device's main Settings menu, then touch Apps > All > Google Play services.
Touch Clear Data. Note that this action doesn't remove personal data.
Go back to Google Settings and select Allow remote factory reset.
Restart your device.

I would like to know exactly which of these steps was the magic sauce, but I'm content that it worked at all. I suppose that Play Store connection makes some sense, because while my phone was listed there, it showed a "Last Used" date back in March or somesuch.

I really hope that the setting sticks this time, and that I won't be forced to repeat this process every couple of months just to protect my device. (If so, I'll go back to some of my other options, like Carbonite and/or Lookout.)


I had the exact same issue with my Note II.  The best solution I've found is the app Quick Keyboard Switch, which gives you a notification bar icon you can tap after pulling down to bring up a dialog box to switch KBs.  You can switch back the Samsung kb, and from there hit the handwriting input button to get back to pen input.


Both the default Android messaging app and the HTC Sense app are buggy, as far as I've heard.  Until they get their act together, I recommend trying another SMS app and seeing if it's any better.  Handcent SMS would be a good choice.


Will upgrade to Android 4.3 with Samsung Knox make my s3 impossible to root?

Depending on what version of S3 you have (there are 13 just looking at the wikipedia article), there could be different safeguards in place to prevent tamporing
Having KNOX installed is one thing, upgrading to 4.3 is another as some of the updates that Samsung has put in prevent certain types of expolots to get the bootloader unlocked and ability to boot a unapproved rom
A coworker of mine upgraded his phone to 4.3 and serious issues with KNOX not letting him boot. He had to downgrade all the way back to 4.1 and then upgrade back up to get a working phone. Needless to say, all of his data is lost.
If you are planning on rooting, do it now, upgrade to a rooted Rom with TouchWiz (like Carbon), or go full 1337 and get a CynogenMod rom and run Kit Kat
Rooting your phone kills the warranty, but there are ways to revert back to stock. Depending on the insurance you have on the phone, they'll take in a broken rooted phone. However, if some phone component breaks, and you have no way to get it back stock, you are sort of SOL.
There is a huge market for used phones, and if you have yours rooted, you give a bit of added value to the phone. Swappa is probably the best place to go out and sell your phone.

TL;DR: Root now, install a rom you like, get KitKat if need be, sell on swappa.

Source: Rootin' since 2009. Owner of multiple Samsung phones.


Z axis nexus 4 incorrect. Software or hardware?

Look at my values. Mine reports slightly lower numbers (9.2).
I believe LGE Accelerometer Sensor field shows raw data from the sensor. It's normal that it's not super accurate. More importantly look at Gravity and Linear Acceleration fields in both mine and your screenshot. These fields show expected values. This means software compensates for sensor inaccuracy well.


There are a number of ways to upgrade your android device.  If your carrier has provided you with an update, you can go under Settings>About Phone>Software Updates.  This will see if there is an update available.  You can then choose to download the update and it will upgrade your device.  I have not heard anything about updates from carriers wiping data.

Method 2 is the unofficial but also beneficial method.  If you are rooted and have an unlocked bootloader you can download stock android 4.3 (or custom ROMs also running on 4.3) and 'flash' the software to your device.  You will need to back up your data before doing this as most ROM developers recommend doing a factory reset when installing.  You can use a number of apps to back up data, but my personal favorite is Titanium Backup.  If you choose to 'flash' a custom ROM, make sure you make a nandroid backup from your recovery before flashing!*


I found an answer to my own question that is a really easy fix.  Turns out, iptables is not at all needed.  There is an easy to use app on the play store that solved my problem: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.bherbst.net&hl=en


How can I get Reverse USB Tethering to work on my KitKat device? I've already got it running on my Jellybean device

After some trial and error seem to have managed to get it working, turns out it is a DNS issue. If anyone else has this issue then it turns out that you need some extra commands in order to get KitKat to work.

I added these on to the end of my script posted above and I can now ping google and get pings returned:

adb shell su -c 'ndc resolver setifdns rndis0 "" 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.1'
adb shell su -c 'ndc resolver setdefaultif rndis0'

Substitute 192.168.1.1 with the IP address of your router, it uses this address for DNS.

Now I'm going to try google DNS (8.8.8.8) and see if it still works, and also see if I can get it to play nice with my Jellybean device being hooked up to the same linux box.


Is it possible to get notifications for specific email senders?

You could try the solutions mentioned in this answer. Otherwise we're need more details on what kind of email and phone setup you have.


"You can't delete contacts from read-only accounts."

Have you tried going into the Apps list (the All tab) and clearing data for Contacts and Contacts Storage?

Once that's done you can resync your phone with Google to get all of your original contacts back.


You can delete your whatsapp account through the following steps.

Open WhatsApp.
Press the [Menu Button] => Settings => Account => [Delete My Account].
Enter your phone number in the full international format and tap [Delete My Account].

Please keep in mind that deleting your account is an irreversible process, we cannot undo a deletion if you complete the process by accident.

Goto whatsapp FAQ for more infomation


What is this strange screen I'm stuck into; no response to any touch [LineageOS, HCT M8]

This is a screen corresponding to the HTC Dot View Case - normally you should be seeing this screen through the case's lid when it's closed, so it will provide clock, notification, etc. at a glance. This screen appearing in normal use likely means that your device's Hall (magnetic) sensor, responsible for detecting cover lid status, is malfunctioning.

You should still be able to forcefully reboot - try holding both POWER and VOL_UP simultaneously under adequate lighting (to trigger the ambient light sensor, so it won't think the button combination was mispressed and prevent the reboot). If successful the phone should vibrate then reboot.

If a reboot doesn't remedy the problem, boot into a custom recovery (assuming you're using TWRP). From there mount /system and use the built-in file manager to find and remove an app named FlipFlap inside /system/app or /system/priv-app. That specific app is responsible for displaying the screen you see.

If that still doesn't solve the problem, you either need a LOS build that disables the Hall sensor entirely, or have the device repaired.


How to disable the charge indicator on the GS7 lock screen

The culprit is a feature of the GO Launcher.  It has the appearance if being a default function of the phone's OS.  The screen has one option in the menu:  turn off fast charging.  That will disable that screen, but it won't disable the Samsung GS(x)'s fast charging.  You can enable or disable the GS7's fast charging in the Settings menu of the device (not the Go program)

Turning that switch on the screen disabled the extra step (having to slide) before you get to your actual unlock screen where you put in your code.

This screen will manifest itself on any Android phone or tablet running the Go Launcher menu app.


Is there a sound picker app with file browser and audio previews?

On Samsung Galaxy S II (and possibly other similar phones) the stock Music Player app can do this. Just open the MP3 in any file manager, choose to play it with the stock Music Player, hit menu and select Use as... and Ringtone.

Another option is to use doubleTwist Player to show the music by artist/album and long-press the song you want, then select Use as ringtone. This way you don't have to select from one long list, but the downside is you can't use your file manager to browse, you're stuck with artist/album grouping.

Also, you could check out Ringtone Maker, you can browse files in menu -> Browse.... This also has the ability to play, chop and edit volume/fade.


Samsung Galaxy S3 Battery dies extremely fast

Stop running unnecessary applications in the background. For example: Bluetooth should be off when not in use and it can be turned on per usage like for example get a call then turn it on or make sure if turned on always plugged in to a charger.

Make sure you get titanium back up; you don't need pro. Go inside play store and download it. Run it and then save them to your ad card make sure it's the sd card.

Then remove any duplicate apps you don't need in your applications menu -- make sure you don't remove system files, just 3rd party apps from any Internet site or the Google playstore. Erase them and make sure you don't run them in background when Android starts or while running because Google play store app doesn't really need to be started with the phone powering on, it is a per usage application.

Make sure any app that you're not on constantly is not running. Shut them off with the task manager, you can also get an application to automate this for you with one click and schedules.  (I'll have to get back to you soon on the exact app)


As I don't use MMS, I had to check first: Looks like MMS have a APN configuration separate from your (normal) internet APN. Here are some useful ressources:

How to set up Internet and MMS APN on Android for any operator A youtube video
How to: O2 UK APN Settings for Android iPhone iPad just as an example showing you need both APNs (Internet + MMS) -- if O2 UK is your provider, all the better :)
Support: APN settings for data and picture messaging (MMS): Android T-Mobile

Quoting from the t-mobile link:

  When you receive errors trying to send picture messages (MMS) or access data or the internet, confirm your Android phone is set up correctly. This is usually a problem with device settings.

Which seems to confirm my initial suspicion :)

So if you let us know your provider, plus your current APN configuration, maybe we can give more detailled help. On the other hand, the easiest was would be asking your carrier for the correct APN data directly (or visit his website, where they are probably held available -- as my examples from O2 and t-mobile show). A Google-Search (for " mms apn") could also prove useful.


No.

If you have a custom recovery that supports adb / root, you can boot into it and use adb to remount /system as read-write and push the missing file over.  But otherwise you don't have access to most of the phone.


OPO stuck in "Erasing..." while unlocking bootloader

Just reboot the device; at this point there's no harm that can be done since the data was being wiped anyways.


Apps are crashing endlessly even after a factory reset, preventing me from doing anything

It seems like your firmware are broken, you can try to reflash the firmware, or Install a custom rom. Have also a look in xda in your phone thread maybe this problem has anyone before you.


Android Revolution HD on GT-N8010 wifi won't turn on

Since ARHD is a stock-based ROM, it's possible you'll need to be on the latest stock ROM before flashing it, so as to make sure the baseband, etc. are up-to-date.

In case your carrier doesn't offer a 4.4.2 update, find them on SamMobile and download one for your generic region, or another carrier in the region, so as to get the right set of language (not all languages are available in all firmwares). Making sure the model number matches is the only other thing you need to do. Back up your data, then flash the update with Odin. After booting up the new stock OS, flash the recovery and then ARHD once again.


Can I use LOS on Samsung S4 Mini GT-I9195I?

serranoveltexx (GT-i9195i, 4G single-SIM, SD410; the "ve" stands for "value edition") is not a part of the official LOS build roster, and likely won't be due to the lower popularity.

There are unofficial builds available at XDA-Developers: 14.1, 15.0. Note that you need the packages for your specific variant (marks "ve").


Try any of these:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=smsr.com.acc
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.topaz.psy.androidapp.SecondStatus
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gridred.digitalclock.custom.lite&hl=en

This one claims to show the time including seconds in the Status Bar
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsynapse.bottime&hl=en

Be advised that displaying seconds will consume more battery.


Problem solved! Managed to, after a bit of fiddling, I removed the bugged files (found them in /vendor/overlay)  and it is a-ok!


As you have the contacts in form of .vcf file(s), you can use the Contacts app's native import functionality:

Start the contacts app
Tap the "3-dot-menu" (top-right of the screen)
From the drop-down menu that opens, chose "import/export"¹
On the next page, chose "Import from SD card"²
A file browser should open and let you chose the file to import. Pick your .vcf file
Now your contacts should be imported. If you have multiple files, repeat above steps.

Visualisation of the process (click image for larger variant)

¹ if there is no "import/export" directly in that menu, check the sub-menus – e.g. Manage contacts or Settings
² might be phrased slightly different, like "import from internal storage"


It's impossible to add any custom shortcuts to Power button menu. Looks like you have installed some custom ROM. If that is the case, you could also try to find the ROM which has this feature embedded. Here's the list of custom ROMs for you phone:

XDA-Developers: all samsung galaxy mini custom roms!

The ROMs that are based on CyanogenMod (CM) have nice feature called Notification Power Widget, it can be customized and Mobile Data switch could be added:

If you don't want to change the ROM, you still have some options:

As mentioned in another comment to your question, you could use Power Widget, also Android Market contains lots of widgets specially for Data switching.
Also you can simply automate the actions you want to do with earlier mentioned Tasker or Llama, which is free alternative to the Tasker. With this apps you could set Mobile Data to be turned on or off depending on events like your location, or, screen on/off, etc.


If you've wiped everything you have probably wiped the system partition meaning there is nothing to boot up to. Try following the steps here to install a factory image which will wipe your device and completely re-install everything.

If this doesn't work then it is likely that there is a hardware issue, which due to you having the screen replaced is unlikely to be covered under warranty (nor will Google/LG take responsibility for it)


Importing contacts from SIM card results in only mobile numbers, and no home numbers

Contacts on SIM-Card are very limited -- so they e.g. can only store one phone number. Your phones / Google contacts, however, use a much enriched format, where you can store additional information like multiple phone numbers and even pictures.

Naturally, both formats are not 100 compatible. When exporting your contacts to SIM, information must be cut down to fit that format. That was when you lost your additional information. So no way to get that back -- it was gone the moment you overwrote your data doing that import.

The only chance left is using "forensics methods" -- in the hope the "deleted" data has not yet fully been overwritten. However, that would require root access to the device: You need to locate the contacts database (it's most likely named contact2.db, and will probably be located below /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/ -- the location might be different with some devices (e.g. Motorola uses a different provider for this). You could copy the databases from this directory to your PC, and investigate deleted entries with a HEX editor -- but that's no easy job for someone not used to it...

I know it's too late now for that -- but it might help you next time: To backup/restore your contacts, the contacts app offers an export to VCard format (.vcf) which it of course also can read back. This way all information is kept.


I have had this issue before when I rooted my galaxy ace it was extremely random and I fixed it by flashing an old stock rom and then using Kies to upgrade to the latest.

If this doesn't work it would suggest that your digitizer has gone, or is in the process of going. If you have time remaining on your warranty, and have returned it to stock, you should be able to return it for repair to samsung.


LG Motion Keep Rebooting (Boot Loop) After Installing Beat Audio Installation

You could try booting into Safe Mode (according to this article you should be able to do so by holding down the Vol - key while switching on the device with the Power button).

In safe mode, all user-installed apps are "disabled", so they won't be started automatically. Once in safe mode, remove the troublesome app (uninstall it via Settings → Applications → Manage Applications). Then simply reboot to leave safe mode -- your device should now boot up fine.


System default camera app not showing up

Open Google search and type "open camera"  then it will open


samsung galaxy s2 continually flashes and will not turn on

As far as I can tell this is what you need to do. NOTE: This information comes from my research and not my experience and while this may make your phone usable you may lose your data. I suggest removing your microSD card as it is most likely where your pictures and video are:

Download ODIN from here
Register at Sammobile here
Download your firmware here
Open ODIN
Put your Firmware.tar file in the PDA box and tick PDA (DO NOT TICK OR UNTICK ANYTHING ELSE)
Attach your phone to your computer using your USB cable and click Start. Don't do anything else until it is done.


How does Nougat encryption work technically?

This  doesn't address how encryption is done in Nougat but addresses your concern

  Because the OS can now be started up without pin/pass, so maybe this could bring some advantages to an attacker?

The boot process is actually strengthened by strictly enforcing verified boot

As explained in Google is making it harder to root Android 7.0 Nougat,

  Google wants to make its OS safer and to do that it has come up with features like verified boot to make sure that everything is working as it should be, and that no one — not even the intended user — can do something to change that and expose themselves to unnecessary risks.

What happens if your device fails the test on booting?

  If your device fails the tests   — Google gives a corrupt boot image and verified partition as examples — it may not boot at all. But if it does boot, it will do so in a “limited capacity” and only with your consent.

Downsides of this

Difficulty in rooting, which would be overcome in time by developers or if OEMs don't implement this feature in their devices
Data corruption

  Google says that by using verified boot the impact of data corruption increases, and therefore reliability is reduced. However, there is an error correction feature that will help recover from data loss, which should also minimize the chances of it impacting users. Google notes that there is an overhead of 0.8 percent with regards to space but no performance toll, unless, of course, there is data corruption detected.

(Emphasis supplied)

See for details on Strictly Enforced Verified Boot with Error Correction

tl:dr; : Theoretically, this ensures that your OS system is intact on booting by not booting or booting with reduced functionality if the system is corrupted / modified by malware or attackers - which increases your protection.


How to play music file on external SD card with deep path

I think (!) the answer lies in the length of the path to the file(s).
I'm experiencing similar issues, and I solved it for one file by simply shortening the filename.


Google Assistant opens music settings instead of spotify

I don't exactly have a proper solution to this, but I had the same exact problem. And it was fixed by restarting my phone (Pixel). So that might be worth a try.


Short answer:
No.
Explanation:
This action would involve multiple steps:

re-mount /system read-write
write the hosts file to /system/etc/hosts
re-mount /system read-only

Each of the step requires root permissions, as the file belongs to system:system and usually is read-only to other "users".


Android password requested after fastboot

what happened with me is not a full solution, just a partial:
I connect the device to a keyboard via a USB & then we can switch using the arrows to move to android booting.
Too bad we will have to connect it to this keyboard each time we restard the android device.
But at least you can can now save your stuff, before loosing the device.


Difference between system files charging_enabled vs battery_charging_enabled

I had mailed this to developer requesting to answer here , instead he answered on mail to me. Quoting verbatim

You are right. Different control files behave differently. battery_charging_enabled tries to maintain the charge. It takes required power from charger, and it didn't charge/discharge battery. This behaviour is ideal, and if it works, then you should be using it.
charging_enabled completely cuts off power supply from cable. This case we need the threshold limit to start charging again
I have a OnePlus 3, I have both files, but the former doesn't work. I have no choice but to use the latter.


Permission denied for “dd” of Android phone's file system connected over mtpfs in Ubunutu 14.0.4

Short answer: a complete copy of your phone over dd can't be done.

Explanation: Normally when you access a file, your file system driver will parse the folder hierarchy, translate it to an inode, locate the sector on which the file is stored, the metadata is parsed and the file is read. MTP does things differently: your computer sends a request to the device to get file X, your device will parse the directory structure, parse the metadata, locate the sector/cell on the storage device, read the file and then send the data back over MTP.

dd will make a copy of the blocks that are on the storage device itself. Therefore you can copy files and entire partitions because they are blocks of data on the disk. Directories are stored on the disk but they aren't real regions of disk space, they're more like references so files can indicate "I'm part of this folder". Therefore you cannot do a block copy of a directory. Because you cannot do a block copy of a directory, copying the entire storage device of your Android phone over MTP is not possible.

But there is hope: if your device software allows it, you might be able to mount your device as a USB storage device. This will directly attach the storage partition to your computer, allowing you to make a backup using a command like dd if=/dev/sdb of=~/backup_file.

Alternatively, because you have root you could enable Developer Mode on your Android device and then execute the following command after installing the ADB tools (sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb):

adb shell su -c "dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0" > ~/full_phone_backup.image

This will make a copy of everything on the storage device. It will run for quite some time. I never reached more than 20MB/s over ADB, so it would take 64000/20=3200 seconds at max speed to copy a 64GiB device. After the copy has finished you can run your file recovery software over full_phone_backup.image to get any files back from the system.


Gmail App is not differentiating Read and UnRead Emails in Vivo Android Mobile

As mentioned by Robert and Andrew in comments, this issue was due to System Font, which was a custom one and not a default one. Once I changed to Default Font, I could able to see gmail is showing as normal fonts.


Ugh...I have been researching this problem too my friends. I have the galaxy tab 7.0 and it has that stupid market instead of play store. While reading, i noticed this happens quite a bit. From what i have seen a hard reset doesn't always do the trick, good luck, sorry i couldnt be more help. I am interested in this solution myself.


Simplest way to transfer files from PC to Android device (wireless)

Airdroid can perform file transfers and it runs on 2.2 and above.

All features:

SMS: send and receive individual or group messages.
Apps: Import and export .apk files.
Files: Manage files on Android and transferring files between Android and computer.
Photos: View and manage photos on Android and transferring photos between Android and computer.
Music & Videos: Play and manage music & videos on Android and transferring them between Android and computer.
Ringtones: Set music as ringtone and export any ringtone.
Contacts: View and edit all the contacts.
Screenshot: View the real time screen of Android devices, take static screenshots. (root required)
Camera: See through the lens of both front and back camera, also supports flashlight.
URL: Push url to Android and open automatically open it with Android browser.
Clipboard: Share clipboard content between Android and computer.


An OTG adapter should be included with the Galaxy S9. If you insert the male connector into your device's USB port, and a flash drive into the adapter's female connector, the drive should be automatically mounted. You may not get any clear indication that this happened, however if you check storage settings, it should be there. It should also be visible and browsable in whatever filemanager you're using.

Don't forget to unmount the drive before physically disconnecting it. This is done in storage settings. Unmounting makes sure all cached transactions are flushed. Technically this should be done every time, but it's especially important if you've written anything to the drive. If you don't do this, you may lose data, as it's only written to cache, and never flushed to the drive.


Create a persistant notification out of a non-persistant one

I figured out a way to make this happen by turning on notification reminders in accessibility settings!


why do I have to move my apps manually to the SD card to free up space?

I can only speculate, as this is something that can really only be answered by an Android engineer, but off the top of my head I can think of a few reasons they might have decided on this:

It's less confusing for end users, since I certainly wouldn't expect apps to magically show up on my SD card after I install them (especially for users coming from versions of Android prior to 2.2, when this feature didn't exist yet).
It allows the user to manage their storage however they see fit, which can be relevant in some cases since you can't access SD apps when your external storage is unmounted. Maybe I don't want some apps on my SD card because I always want to access them, but Android has no way of inferring this, really. Otherwise you might unexpectedly be unable to use an app you wanted because you didn't know it was on the external storage.
Many apps can't be installed to the SD card, so how do you handle a situation where you want to install an app that must be on internal storage but it won't fit? Do you arbitrarily bump another app onto the SD card instead? What if that's not what the user wants (like above)? It could get a little sticky.
Some apps, confusingly, allow you to move them to your external storage despite the fact that it breaks certain features. Pandora, notably, could be moved to external storage even though it breaks the widget (I don't know if it still allows this). How do you handle that situation? Do you forcibly move it anyway, possibly breaking the user's widget?


Did I broke touchscreen or touchscreen and LCD?

Modern touchscreens consist of two parts:

The digitizer: This is transparent and detects the touch events.
The LCD: This is the screen and its kinda silver.

The digitizer and LCD are glued and are difficult to separate cleanly. It appears that you've removed a chunk of the LCD as well. The LCD and the digitizer are also sold as a single unit, glued together, so that they are easier to assemble.


Preserving a whatsapp account from an inactive/foriegn SIM on a new device

Just take a backup of the WhatsApp conversations in old phone and copy the entire folder /sdcard/WhatsApp/ and send (copy) it exactly to the same location in your new phone..

Now open WhatsApp from new phone and Enter the desired number (It may or may not require verification)
After verification is over, it'll prompt you asking for restoring chat backups..
Just restore them.

The latest version of WhatsApp supports backing up of data to Google Drive.
So, if you can update to a latest version, better sync it and try the same.


Android mount external sdcard obb to internal SD card succeed

(If you're finding how to move obb to external sdcard and mount it back to internal, here's the right place!)
Finally I found the solution of this question by myself!
The app can't access the obb by itself, it requires media_rw to access it.
Found by lsof:

sdcard 340 media_rw 15 ??? ??? ??? ???
/data/media/obb/com.game/com.game.obb
sdcard 340 media_rw 17 ??? ??? ??? ???
/data/media/obb/com.game/com.game.obb
com.game 26335 u0_a266 36 ??? ??? ??? ???
/storage/emulated/0/Android/obb/com.game/com.game.obb
com.game 26335 u0_a266 37 ??? ??? ??? ???
/storage/emulated/0/Android/obb/com.game/com.game.obb

So I have to mount the external sdcard folder to two places and each has to have its right owner:

owner    folder
u0_a266  /storage/emulated/legacy/Android/obb/com.game
media_rw /data/media/obb/com.game

But if I mount /storage/sdcard1/Android/obb/com.game to those two places, it will become:

owner    folder
u0_a266  /storage/emulated/legacy/Android/obb/com.game
u0_a266  /data/media/obb/com.game

Then I found if I do:

mount -o bind /storage/sdcard1/Android/obb/com.game /storage/emulated/legacy/Android/obb/com.game
mount -o bind /mnt/media_rw/sdcard1/Android/obb/com.game /data/media/obb/com.game

I found this works fine, because the mount command's source and destination is their original owner.
The app can run very well!


How to restore GBWA backup on new phone to GBWA app

if you do the following it must work:

go to gbwhatsapp on your old phone choose GB Settings
--> other MODS
-->6.7 Backup data (i do for secority reasons also the following, go to gbwhatsapp--> settings--> chats-- make backup)
then transfer the    whole GBWHatsapp map to sdcard, and take it out of your old phone.
install GBWhatsapp on your new phone and DONT OPEN IT YET
now put in your sdcard with the backup of GBWHatsapp in your new phone
--> copy GBWhatsapp map to internal memory
--> then open GBwhastapp and choose for restore


View running processes and CPU usage in Android 7 (Nougat)?

You can use adb shell /system/bin/dumpsys cpuinfo.
This should also work with Oreo.


When mine does this I am able to double-tap on the input field and the keyboard re-opens.  (To clarify: regular tapping does nothing for me...I could tap it all day long and it just stays closed.  It's the act of doing a solid, clean double-tap which seems to instantly being it back.)

I have no idea why this happens, but maybe this will help you too.


How to install ROMs without ClockWorkMod in Huawei U8800

After trying a lot of different Recovery images finally one of them worked. CWM 5.0.2.7 flashed successfully. People with the same problem can download the working recovery image file from this link


Is there anyway to watch wmv and or divx videos on android?

The only one I'm aware of is yxflash, and I wasn't too impressed by it - the video was quite choppy. I am looking forward to the upcoming Android version of CorePlayer, though, because I was able to play smooth DivX videos with its predecessor TCPMP on my Tungsten T5 with a fraction of the power my Nexus One had.

edit: I just saw that there's a new media player out for Android called RockPlayer that will play DivX and WMV. I haven't had a chance to test it though.


How to inspect HTTPS traffic of a third-party app on Android 9+

As tipped by @beeshyams, HttpCanary is perfect for this.
You need a rooted device, of course.
HttpCanary takes care of all of the difficult steps (certificate generation and installation) transparently.
It shows a list of requests (filterable by app), and details of each request and response.
The best feature is this overlay showing request while I am using other apps (bottom right):

Even though the Google Play page says "HttpCanary core codes are opened in Github", https://github.com/MegatronKing/HttpCanary does not contain most of the source code, so I believe it is not open source.


Basically, as screen lock secures your data as long as the data chip stays in the phone(as long as debugging is disabled [or enabled with no trusted credentials] and the phone isn't rooted), whereas encrypting it secures it no matter what.

Old answer:
It is possible to access some data via usb, however other data isn't accessible, plug your tablet into the computer and wee what comes up under internal storage, that is accessible (EDIT: none of it if the screen is locked). Of course given enough time a hacker in possession of your tablet could access all the data (as long as it isn't encrypted) (EDIT: for example as you suggested by removing the internal storage and reading it with a different device).
If your tablet is encrypted none of the data can be accessed without your passcode (if the tablet is switched off).
If usb debugging is enabled or you are rooted it is even easier to access the data.


How to quickly lock screen to landscape?

Rotation Locker says that it supports this:

  Lock your screen's rotation in Landscape, Portrait or Auto. When you launch the app, you're faced with these three options.

For doing this quickly, it does also include a widget to lock whatever your current orientation is:

  A widget is provided so you can lock into whatever your current orientation is. (Useful for reverse landscape for example).


How to enable Google Play on the Gionee M3S Android phone?

Here's what I had to do to get it working (after several failed attempts):

On the M3s, I searched for "google play services apk mirror", and went to this URL: http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-play-services/
Selected the most recent version (in my case 8.7.03)
Chose the 8.7.03 (2645110-246) (arm64+arm / Android 5.0+ / 320dpi) version. The important thing here is the -246 at the end, which targets the M3s hardware.
Downloaded and installed the APK. Allowed untrusted app to run.
Followed application prompts to setup the app, then ran Google Play.

Now Google Play works and can download apps, etc.


What information does Chrome/Android send to Google to discover my "WiFi based" location?

Looking at the source code of Chromium, the data structure holding the Wi-Fi data doesn't seem to have any more data that you mentioned, so I find it unlikely that they actually send other Wi-Fi related data somehow in secret to their servers from Chrome. (Only age is added to the request afterwards as I can see.)

And it wouldn't make much sense anyway. Your device's Wi-Fi MAC address or ID or anything that is Wi-Fi related is completely irrelevant for the geolocation system. It doesn't matter who wants to know his own position, what address he uses etc. The results only depend on the data provided in the API. The MAC address of the Wi-Fi network provides the approximate position of the network itself and the other data like the signal strength make a distance estimation possible.

The device's GPS location could come handy for the system though. I guess that Chrome doesn't send it only because most of the devices running Chrome don't really have a GPS chip thus they don't know the GPS location. But Android devices simply have to send this data. As stated above the network's address is what provides the position information in the queries. For that Google needs to map a more or less exact location to the address and they need to collect that information somehow. Some years ago there was a scandal that the Street View cards didn't take just pictures, but also collected Wi-Fi data. They were forced to stop doing that so now the only logical way for them to collect it is to rely on the trillions of Android devices in the wild.


Firmware Update for Samsung S LCD I 9003 stops at "preparing firmware update"

I'm having the exact same problem and just received the following message from Samsung:

The Kies software does not detect the handsets, there are several
causes for this and a process of checks will discover the cause and
show the solution:

Check the system specification is correct for
the KIES software.
Check the correct and up to date version of the
software is being used.
Check that handset is set on the correct mode which is SAMSUNG Kies.
Be sure that the handset show connected ‘not connecting’ on home screen.
Try to test a different USB port and restart PC.
Check in device manager that the driver has been installed and update if required
If handset has device manager (download one from market place for android 2.1 or higher)
ensure that all tasks have been ended and handset is in the idle mode
before connecting ‘download the task killer, it is an application used
to close all the applications (not just minimizing them)’
Completely remove current version of the Kies software and re-install
the latest version from the website.
Test with different PC.

It's quite a number of possibilities being mentioned.


You need to install appropriate usb drivers for the PC to detect your device.

It may be that  your PC is missing the required USB drivers or they have become corrupted, thus unable to recognise the device

If running Windows install the Samsung USB driver (includes MTP drivers as well).

Once installed reboot your PC and reconnect your Android device, it should be recognised.

Alternatively for Linux the guide for installing the drivers is found here: How to setup ADB/USB drivers for Ubuntu

Since you didn't mention your OS I have to assume Windows or Linux (sorry couldn't find MacOS instructions)


If the phone is new and in the box, then it has probably never been turned on. You can tell because the first time you turn it on (after fully charging the battery), it will go through the initial setup process, inviting you to enter or create a Google account, and showing some pop-up tips about adding shortcuts to the home screen.

If it's second-hand, then the shop or the previous owner should have factory-reset it already, but you can tell in the same way. If you turn it on and get the initial setup process right away, then you're already starting from a fresh state. If you just get the home screen, with no setup screen inviting you to enter or create a Google account, then you need to factory-reset from the device settings.


Transfer downloaded google play music from phone to computer?

On rooted android, you can find Google Play Music library in

/data/data/com.google.android.music/files

There is no other way to extract music library from android. You can probably use friend's computer to do that.


Which CyanogenMod version should I use on my Transformer Prime?

TF201 isn't supported on CM11, so your choices are to go with official nightlies (which are not stable) of CM10.1 from here or unofficial CM11 from here. Neither of these are stable or officially supported releases.

The Google apps version you should use depends on the CM version you choose to flash. If you're using CM11, use the 20140105 GApps. If you're using CM10.1, use the 20130812 GApps.


How do I drag apps from one home page to another?

What you can do is remove the icon, open application manager and drag the icon to the screen you want it at.

You can also leave the icon on the first screen and then remove it after creating a shortcut on the other screen since apps usually don't care how many shortcuts you have.


Not able to select entire image for wallpaper

If i remember correctly, you can drag the frame to the full size of the image, so that the whole picture will be selected as background.


First I would jump into the developer options and play around with rendering settings in there. This is going to pertain to the GPU probably a lot more than the CPU.

You can also enable some helpful rendering overlays to get visual feedback regarding touch areas, rendered areas, and gpu utilization.

Unfortunately I can't say that one particular item or another will fix it so you will have to play around with them until you see some improvement. Things to try:

High performance mode
Force GPU rendering

The next step would be to try to overclock the GPU's which is going to vary by device.

I would suspect that a mobile friendly site would have much less of an issue rendering all the scrolling than a full desktop site. Another option would be to zoom in more and see if that alleviates some of the lag.

Yet another option would be to try out some custom roms on each of the devices that boast smoother performance. The trade off you're looking for is more performance which is usually at the cost of more battery drain. Efficiency is a great thing but I would always prefer stable smooth performance first and then efficiency.

Do you see any difference if you start scrolling from a still screen vs continuous up and down scrolling? (ie not letting the gpu stop rendering) If so, bumping up the minimum clock at least temporarily may improve this area. The performance governor is your best bet for now.

For the M8, I would recommend ViperOne. I run it on my M7 and its very smooth. You can overclock the GPU with built in software. The only thing I see some lag on is when there are a ton of complex button/slider items that need to be loaded which happens to only be on a few pages within the ViperTweaks sub-app.


Can a screen-locked Android phone be rooted?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: not usually, but there some exceptions.

In general, to root the phone, you first have to unlock the bootloader. This wipes the internal storage, keeping your data safe. (It doesn't usually wipe the SD card, but you have to assume an attacker will just remove the SD card if he wants to read it). You'd almost think it was designed this way!

You can easily get past a screen lock using ADB, but you've already specified that that's disabled. Even if USB debugging is enabled on the phone, newer Android versions have a "confirm the debugging key" prompt when you use ADB from a new PC, which requires the attacker to unlock the screen anyway.

Some phones have low-level security vulnerabilities that aren't part of Android. For example, you used to be able to root any exynos4 device (such as the Samsung Galaxy S3) by running an app that abused the camera interface to exploit the way the camera driver works. (This flaw has now been fixed in OTA updates.) In this particular case, you'd need to install a special app of your choice onto the phone and run it to exploit the vulnerability. It's likely that any future errors like this will also need the attacker to run a special app, so can't be used on a locked phone with USB disabled, but it's conceivable that some flaw might be added that could be exploited from the lock screen (perhaps using MTP or USB-OTG).

The last exception is, of course, if the bootloader is already unlocked. In this case, the attacker can flash anything he likes to the system. He wouldn't even need to root the phone: he could simply disable the lock screen and reboot the phone to get to the home screen. Some users think that bootloader locking is just to make things harder for users, but it's an important part of Android's security mechanism.


What are the components of the flash image?

Well, this is a wide question, but I"ll try to give an answer.

The preloader on Mediatek SoCs is a piece of software that intermediates between the operation system and the actual system bootloader.

It offers additional features like the ability to boot from either the eMMC or NAND Flash; it offers  the ability to read/write various parts of the memory (flash) via USB (that what we call flashing). Also, it is essential because it decide what a boot mode a device may perform.

So it is not recommended to flash the preloader simply because flashing a wrong preloader (even if the flash file is correct, preloader code may differ) may result to a permanent brick also known as a hard-brick, the device becomes a paperweight: no booting, no charging, no USB flashing and in some case not being detected by a computer.

Additional infos on Mediatek partitions can be found here

Hope this answers your question.


How can I reset the default app for opening email attachments?

You need to clear the "Launch by default" setting for StumbleUpon.

Open up your phone settings, then go to Applications.

Look for the StumbleUpon app, and click on it. Here is where you can do things such as uninstall/disable the app, clear the data, etc.

One of the options is to Clear defaults. This is the option you need to run. It will restore the app-selection menu for any actions where you set StumbleUpon to be the default handler.


Unable to unlock boot-loader and root Micromax Canvas A1 AQ4501

Hello GNS

How many time did you try to root your device ? You may need to try it more than ones, just like my old galaxy tablet.

And if that is not successfull, try using different one click root application.
Here are the list of some of this applications

Vroot Software (ADB drivers needed)
Kingo Root For Windows (ADB Drivers Needed)
SRS Root (ADB Drivers Needed )
Framaroot (APK)
KingRoot (APK and PC)
Unlock Root Software
Root Master (APK)
Z4Root (APK)
Universal Androot (APK)

Or you may visit This site for more information.


I was just browsing around for this issue and found this,

    I had exacly the same trouble with Google Play and I have managed to revert it
    back to original working version of Android Market. In Options (Android system
    settings) go for Applications. Choose Google Play. Clean cached data. Remove this
    application. After these steps Google Play dissappeared from my droid and I could
    put back Android Market icon onto my desktop and I can use it for installing new
    programs.

Link to source : Link to forum


I get an application error 919 when updating Chrome. How to proceed?

Using a cache cleaner, I freed up some cache, netting me a little over 130 MB free space in the app storage.

I then updated, and it worked. Freeing the cache again after the update, I only had 100 MB left. I also saw that the cache for the Play Store was about 28 MB, so apparently that's the size of the download for the Chrome update.

Using a disk analyzer, I found out that Chrome (after the update) uses over 100 MB for the apk (103.5 MB).

What I think happened, is that it downloaded about 28 MB, then unpacked that to 103 MB, then replaced the existing apk with that. So I needed 28 MB + 103 MB = 131 MB to do the update.

To be honest, I think that's quite a lot. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the next one.
Also, as noted in my other question, Chrome uses quite a lot of data as well. It was at 25 MB when I asked that question, it's now a whopping 28 MB. I have no idea what's in there and no clue how to clean that other than deleting it all, which probably isn't a good idea.


Why doesn't Chrome recognize mobile Blogger templates on the Nexus 7?

Without seeing a concrete example, I can't really tell, but it is likely it's because of the way mobile detection works is usually by screen resolution/size. Nexus 7 may have a screen large enough that the it is being detected as a normal desktop/laptop.

With certain designs, a separate tablet layout may be unnecessary if the site are usable with both mouse and touch input.


How do i fix optimus zone/dynamic storage?

I would look into apps such as App2sd in the play store. I think they create a symlink in internal storage that is linked to the actual app data on the sdcard.

I used this on my old phone. It worked pretty well.


Install a firewall and restrict internet access to your desired app.
You can grant access to mobile data or WiFi or block completely from accessing data.
There is an inbuilt app in Lenovo handsets called security, which does this job pretty well.

Lenovo security firewall (click image for larger variant)


I found the solution. I can send text input to my Android Wear device this way:

adb shell
input text <your_text>

Hope it will help someone else!

More info here: http://blog.rungeek.com/post/42456936947/sending-keyboard-input-via-adb-to-your-android


Voicemail forwarding numbers - Tmo prepaid plan

At the suggestion of a forum member elsewhere, I called TMobile and asked them about their new "uncarrier" plan.  It is a non-contract, postpaid plan with the exact same pricing and services as my current TMo prepaid plan, but I regain the ability to forward voicemails among other things.   You have to submit to a credit check for a possible deposit (max is only one month's plan ie $50).

So going to the "uncarrier" plan was the solution for me.  Hope this helps.


Not able to Track and search stolen android phone

If your GPS on phone is off you will not locate it via ADM.
Yes, phone can be located with IMEI but you can't do that, police can. So go to police and report stolen device and bring box of the phone for the IMEI and proof that is your device, but keep in mind that police doesn't really bother with stolen phones.


How do you test the disk integrity of your Android tablet's file system?

Tools like fsck would only check the file system. However, internal memory uses NAND-Flash, which should handle bad blocks itself with internal "bad block tables".

For file system checks, you would find a corresponding article on XDA: "[HOW TO] Check your filesystem (a la 'fsck')". Fortunately, there's also an article on the NAND-Flash level: "Is there a tool for checking the nand memory for bad blocks?".

As this is a very special thing (and most likely not interesting for too many of our readers), I permit myself to not elaborating the details, and just linking the relevant sources ;)


How do I stop others from remotely controlling my phone

It's a really broad question but this could solve any remote control issues.

(try this method first):

Force power off your phone (hold down the power button until the screen does black)
Turn off your Wi-Fi, and remove any SIM cards.
Power on the phone.
Look in the Downloaded folder for any suspicious software (such as com.google.daemon or "Service of Google Play") and remove it (if there is only an "Uninstall updates" button, then it is real system software).
Power it off, turn on your Wi-Fi, insert your SIM card(s), and tun it back on.

(only try if #1 didn't work):

Turn your phone off, and put it in recovery mode (can't say exactly how without your phone model). Navigate to wipe data/factory reset > Yes - erase all data (WARNING: you will lose all data on the phone).
Turn it back on. It should be fixed unless the R.A.T (stands for Remote Administration Tool or Remote Access Trojan) is a system app.


Can't activate nor deactivate any administrator permissions outside of safe mode

If you are using an app such as Facebook Messenger, CF.lumen, Lux or Twilight that draws over the screen, you'll need to stop them doing so in order to interact with secure settings pages such as the device administrator activation/deactivation pages.

For example, in Facebook Messenger, you would either close all chat heads or go to the Facebook Messenger settings and deselect 'Chat Heads', or in CF.lumen you would disable the overlay by pressing 'Disable' in the persistent notification.


Tasker app creation: is it possible to let user select the apps for launch app context

One way to do this would be to create a scene with a small menu of apps, set to open the app when the user taps it's icon.

One issue: Errors might arise if you have Tasker try to open an app that the user does not have installed. One way around this would be to use the shell command 'pm list packages' and (somehow) resolve the name of the chosen app to the package name, or the reverse and use this to populate the displayed list.


Installing TWRP using Odin will erase data or not?

It will not wipe data unless you explicitly choose to erase NAND (after which your phone would end up bricked).
Odin only flashes images into the device - it doesn't read data out. You're on the right track about using TWRP to reclaim data, just be sure to install one made for your device.


How can you tell if you've been a victim of the recent sms bug?

From this post, it seems that only very specific conditions seem to trigger this bug. Also, AFAIK, this only seems to affect the default Messaging app, using a replacement like Handcent seems to be the way to go. More info on the bug here.

  Specifically, there is something about
  certain email-to-SMS messages that
  corrupts Android's SQLite database,
  causing unpredictable results
  thereafter. The most commonly cited
  offender is alerts sent by Bank of
  America, though SMS alerts sent by
  LinkedIn and T-Mobile are also cited.
  It's possible that any SMS where the
  sender is an email address will do the
  trick, or it's possible there's
  something else these specific senders'
  messages have in common.

  To be clear: if you've never received
  one of these corrupting messages, you
  will never be able to reproduce the
  bug. That's why it's only affecting a
  small group of Android users.

  If you have fallen prey to the issue,
  you should be able to fix it by
  performing a hard reset (wiping all
  data) and then blocking the offending
  sender(s) from sending you texts in
  the future.


How much RAM should I allow an app to use, and how much should I always leave free?

If you've read around, then you'll already have read that the idea of "free RAM" is a bit of a nonsense for Android. PC operating systems take an app out of RAM as soon as you quit it, which leaves empty space that the PC probably has to spend power on filling again afterwards - probably with the same app next time you run it. Android tries to avoid this waste by leaving apps in memory after you stop using them or after they finish running, so that they're ready to run again next time. If it needs more RAM for an app, only then does it get rid of these cached processes.

Android will first get rid of cached processes, based on how soon it thinks it's going to need them again. If it still needs more RAM for the foreground activity, it'll get rid of background services (which sync your email etc. but aren't directly visible). If it still needs more RAM, it'll get rid of activities that are directly accessible but aren't currently visible, such as the launcher, the activity you'll go back to when you press back (maybe even in the same app as the activity that's running), or the greyed-out activity that's partly visible behind a dialog. This way, even if you have no free RAM, Android can free up quite a lot of RAM for the foreground activity: all the RAM on the device, except that needed by Android itself.

I suggest to work out the best setting using trial and error. Without more knowledge of the app, I can't predict the effect of having the setting too low: perhaps the AI will make worse moves, or take longer to decide. If the setting is too high, you'll notice that when you leave the chess game you have to wait for the previous app to launch: this is particularly noticeable when it's the launcher, and you get a spinning progress indicator instead of the list of apps.

If this were one of my apps, I'd consider this a bug. It's bad form to give the user a setting with no way to know what value to set. The app has more information about how much RAM the device has and can make available than you do: it should decide itself.


Unable to Connect My HTC Desire SV to My laptop: Unknown Device

Install the HTC drivers for your phone. You can usually find them on your phone providers website, for example Galaxy S3 from Verizon can be found here


Insufficient space message when downloading applications

um....free up space? "insufficient space" means that the memory on your device is running out; to download an app (which actually does take up memory!) you need to uninstall some other apps, or delete some pictures/video from the memory.

Alternatively, you might want to look into getting an SD card for external memory, and either put apps, videos, or both on the card, which would help prevent this from being an issue in the future.


Wifi and cellular data keep turning off by itself.

I had the same problem.  Android Samsung S5.  Wifi kept turning itself off. Very annoying.  I had the smart network switch on or off...didn't matter.  I discovered that I had the ATT Smart WiFi app enabled.  I turned that off and it solved the problem.


Swipe from the side to activate a widget overlay?

I am the developer of Bubble Cloud Widgets. I tried, and it is fully compatible with Smart Task Launcher, but you have to invoke the special "Widget Measure Mode", since STL doesn't report the widget size correctly.

Here, I shot a video for you:

https://youtu.be/UYsoU-xwqkI

This is my blog entry on this subject:

https://plus.google.com/111815032990260235809/posts/1WXHmh3V9bX


In camera apps, is "zoom" a digital zoom, or an optical zoom?

More often than not, Digital. Consider:

How in the world would the motor for moving a lens fit in a phone case? For that matter, where would the find the room to have variable focal length?
Would the manufacturers really put such a battery-drainer in the unit? How much more expensive would it be, too?
Should somebody actually come up with a phone with optical zoom, it would be a big deal and a huge marketing gimmick. ("The only phone camera with optical zoom!") I haven't seen any. Have you?

That's not to say that someday someone won't make hasn't made such a phone. There sure aren't any right now. Unless they make a big deal about the camera zoom, you can assume it's digital.


How can I save and protect sexy pictures sent by my girlfriend?

You should try Audio Manager from Anuj Tenani. You can also save videos, images and audio which were send via any application from the gallery.
It's also available on iTunes.

--About the app --

The app is cleverly disguised as "Audio Manager" in the App Drawer.
Disguises itself as a Audio Manager app which can be used to turn the volumes up and down. but if you Long press on the Audio Manager title the actual Hide It Pro app will launch, which is basically your secret vault of pics/videos/messages/apps etc.

-- Features in Detail --

1.) App disguised behind a fully functional Audio Manager

2.) Categorize media into folders of your choice

3.) Batch(Multi-Select) support for hiding and unhiding pictures

4.) Delete/Share/Unhide/Move pictures between albums

5.) Sort files by date/size/name and sort folders by count/name

6.) Gallery features Pinch to Zoom , Double tap to zoom , One finger hold and move zoom

7.) Slideshow with Fade, Zoom, Swipe effects

8.) Send/Share pictures

9.) Special optimization for low end phones.

10.) Video player features play/pause/forward/rewind/next video/prev video support

11.) Disappears from recent apps list

12.) Two lock screen options viz Pin and Password

13.) Escape pin/password for times when you get caught

14.) Built in encryption tool(with military standard 256-bit AES encryption) to secure your most important files

15.) Plugins for features like Private Messaging / Calls , Private Browsing , Locking Apps.
etc.


Let my friend check my locations while I am taking a stranger's car?

As there's no on-board feature covering your needs, I'd recommend taking a look at Glympse. With this app you can decide when to start or stop sharing your location, you could even set a timeout. Only you would need to have the app installed, and those you've shared your location to can watch it on any web-enabled device:

Glympse is a fast, free, and simple way to share your location safely using GPS tracking in real time with friends and family!
No sign up required! Only those you share with can view your Glympse from any web-enabled device.

For alternatives, please take a look at my Location Sharing list.
Any solution will depend on your phone having internet access: it can't work with GPS alone. GPS is only a way for your phone to find out where it is: it doesn't itself allow anyone else to know your location. If you go outside of data coverage, your location will stop updating.


How to sync two devices as paranoidly as possible?

Connect both devices to a PC and simply copy all files from the first device to the second one and vice versa. So all files are in sync on both devices.

If you like to do that automatically then look up some sync app/program that will do it for you.


When phone is off and I plug it in to outlet the phone turns on instead of charging

What sticks out to me is that your battery status says "Not charging" Instead of discharging. I feel like your phone may recognize that the charger is plugged in, but may have some error in the battery/phone itself. I feel like your phone may just be translating the charger power directly into the phone itself, and is not able to charge the battery. If this is the case, it IS a hardware issue. Sorry that there isn't much you can do.


If a paid app stops working, can I get my money back?

Help section of Google Play Store (accessible from Google Play Store menu button on left > help and feedback> search for returns and refunds> Apps and games refunds) relevant to your question, says (emphasis mine)

  After 2 hours or more,Contact the developer
  If Google Play's 2-hour return period has passed, the developer is responsible for deciding if you are eligible for a refund. Contact the app developer directly and ask for a refund. You can find an app developer's contact information listed on an app or game's detail page on Google Play. For instructions, go to help with an Android app or game.

(Edit: 11 Mar 20 - just saw that it is 48 hours not 2 hours to claim the refund. I don't know when it changed)

So, it's obvious that the refund request approval rests with app developer and if the developer doesn't respond, it further says

  Optional: Contact Google
  If the developer hasn't helped, Google may be able to. Contact our support team for help solving your problem.

Reading between the lines, there is no obligation for developer to refund. Further, no where does a developer give a "life-time" guarantee, for that matter no software can guarantee that. It is simply not possible to do that for obvious reasons.

To sum it up, I don't think you are within your rights to assume and ask for a refund as in your case

Edit: In response to your edit, the answer still is the same, but the developer may be more inclined (guessing) to work on an update and release that to fix the problem occurring in three months, since other users would also be affected and would adversely impact his rating on Play Store, which they are quite sensitive to. Mailing him in this case may be the best option, with app /system logs and crash logs if any


Rooted phone but cannot change hosts file

So I finally was able to come back to this issue.
I was unable to mount the adb with write permissions either because i was not su or it would deny me to change the host files...

I tried to write the text on the hosts file but it was a file with hundreds of lines... even seemed that android was not able to store it in the "copy/paste"

So in the end I used Solid explorer 2 from play store.

I wrote a hosts file... then i navigate to the /system/etc/
and I rename hosts to "hosts.old" and my "hosts.txt" to "hosts"

until now it seems to be working fine

I'm not considering this an answer because I was unable to write on hosts and someone can come up with a better solution


Try plugging in the device with no battery and then put the battery back in while it is running !

Also try plugging in the charger to load the battery bar and then hold all buttons aside from power,
 it might cause a forced reset and restart into the system like a normal restart !

If none of the above works..
try adb Use ADB and run the command

adb reboot

If you can't pick up a device with

adb devices

Then you'll need to hope they included a V-COM boot before boot.img

To access V-COM You'll need the driver for your device and a flashing program like
SP Flash Tool

• To check for V-COM compatibility you'll need to Open Device Manager as the Administrator on your PC,
• Pull out the battery if removable "if not removable read below" and plug in the device
• LOOK CAREFULLY FOR UNKNOWN DEVICE OR  V-COM DEVICE
• IF YOU HEAR THE COMPUTER GO BEEP AT ALL, IT'S REGISTERED A V-COM DEVICE

IF YOU DON'T HAVE A REMOVABLE BATTERY
If you don't have a removable battery, then v-com will only connect for a few seconds and then disconnect when the screen comes on !


How remove blank white screen after unlocking

I have had your same problem these days, my mom's phone (your same model) was full with pop ups ad. This kind of problem are caused by spyware/malware apps. I did a hard reset, but nothing.

I looked in the preinstalled apps (Settings -> Apps -> ALL) for something strange. I found two Download Manager apps. I disinstalled the one without the icon. This resolved all my issues. Hope can help you because for me was really annoying.


Looking through the android source code recently (I'm new to android building and am still getting used to what makes android tick), I came across a file somewhere that had all sorts of calibration statistics and figures.

All of the figures are set by the vendor of the device itself. From how many mAhs the battery holds, to what values different device features affect the battery (like WiFi scanning, screen brightness etc).

I would assume that it is these figures (from the vendor), that the kernel uses to help itself calculate battery level.

Also, batteries come with little chips in them these days, to provide overcharge protection etc. The chip quite possibly reports on it's health status to the device. But that is merely just a personal assumption based on the fact that I don't use a stock battery (I use a zero lemon in my i9300 which triples my life between charges), and my phone knows the difference (it doesn't drop the same percentage in a given time compared to stock).

I hope this helps!!


You can use Font Installer. This app requires ROOT.


Better folders, which support drag & drop: is that even possible?

The only interactions presently supported by app widgets on the home screen are simple click events.  So the answer to your question is no, drag & drop isn't available with widgets.  The reason the native folders can do this is because they are just part of the launcher activity so can be programmed to do more complex things than the widgets can


Kindle Not showing up and backup not converting in Droid Explorer. Titanium Backup also not working

ADB wasn't given proper root permission, so it wasn't seeing the device's file structure. As for the backup, I made a copy of the abex file in to my adb folder (probably irrelevant where), then tried converting it again and it worked. With the .ab file however, Droid Explorer crashes when trying to run the restore, but it ran fine with running the command manually. adb restore .ab.


Which driver is in charge of headset buttons on my tablet?

OK guys, I'm a bit surprised that I didn't get any answer, but I guess that's because it was more of a stackoverflow question...

Anyway, I continued my research and I found the answer myself, in particular thanks to this PDF which describes in detail "The Android Input Architecture".

The PDF provides all the details, but basically each driver registers input_devices with the Linux Kernel and a device file is created for each event under /dev/input/eventXX. Then there is an Android mechanism to route those events to the applications, but that is not the concern here.

One can use the command getevent to get more information on these events (see also Android documentation):

getevent -li provides a list of the registered input devices with the possible events for each device
getevent -lp prints a new line for each event received (the -l flag displays the events types and names in plain text rather than number)

So for example in the case of my Lenovo tablet, we find that:

add device 6: /dev/input/event1
  bus:      0019
  vendor    0000
  product   0000
  version   0000
  name:     "ACCDET"
  location: ""
  id:       ""
  version:  1.0.1
  events:
    KEY (0001): KEY_VOLUMEDOWN        KEY_VOLUMEUP          KEY_HANGEUL
  KEY_NEXTSONG
                KEY_PLAYPAUSE         KEY_PREVIOUSSONG      KEY_STOPCD
  KEY_SEND
  input props:
    <none>

NOTE: This is only an extract from the complete output, limited to the headset buttons detection.

Thus, the headset buttons handling seems to be done by some "ACCDET" component. Now, I still haven't figured out the "formal" way to know which driver registers this event, but by using the ACCDET and KEY_XX keywords in a source code search, I was able to find the corresponding source file (accdet.c), which contained the other information I was looking for (namely the voltage thresholds for each button detection).

Finally, it is also worth to note that one can simulate events using the sendevents command. So for instance, to simulate pressing (and releasing) the play/pause button, one would use:

sendevent /dev/input/event1 1 164 1; \
sendevent /dev/input/event1 1 164 0; \
sendevent /dev/input/event1 0 0 0

Hope it can help someone else...


Recovering a video that was deleted from a micro SD card after a factory reset

NOTE: I am not sure if this will work, this works if file is deleted or when sometimes files just dissapear(It has happened to me).

IMPORTANT: DO NOT USE YOUR SD CARD TO STORE ANYTHING NEW, IT CAN/MIGHT OVERWRITE YOUR DELETED/LOST FILE

Put it on your computer and use a specialised software for file recovery(try Recuva by Piriform, here: https://www.piriform.com/recuva). It will the SD card for any deleted/lost files it can find and you can recover them.


I had the same problem and think I found the place to correct it:
1) Open the e-mail client program on the Samsung
2) Go to "menu | account settings"
3) Disable SMS-sync

Hope it works!


I can't install the Facebook app on Android 6 Marshmallow

Go to this link on your phone: Facebook APK
And install the apk yourself but make sure you have unknown sources checked in the developer settings.


Limit on Android version on an Android device

Strictly Speaking I do not think so.

If you look on the google images for android site (https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images) the highest the Nexus S goes is up to 4.1.2. Also, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_S) the highest modded version is 4.4.3 KitKat via the CyanogenMod. Hope this helps.