Yes, you can. Connect your phone to a PC and use ADB to backup your data. Follow this guide to setup ADB, Fastboot and the Android SDK Platform tools on your PC: https://forum.xda-developers.com/nexus-6p/general/guides-how-to-guides-beginners-t3206928

Load your phone into fastboot mode by holding the power button and the volume down button at the same time, from there you can choose recovery mode by the volume and power buttons navigation of your phone, then access and copy your data from your PC by ADB.

Alternatively you could temporarily load a custom recovery as suggested here:  can fastboot be used to backup device?

For more Info see this answer here: Enabling ADB on Nexus 6 with dead screen


Can I add external devices to an Android device?

Most Android devices aren't set up for peripherals; it would take quite a bit of hacking away to get them to recognize them.  That being said, since Android is Linux based it's entirely possible that Linux drivers might work for your device out of the box.  I'd rate the chances of such as being very low, however.

Writing your own drivers is certainly possible, but again you'd also need the internal framework in place for the kernel, etc to accommodate peripherals.  And reverse engineering drivers is NOT easy!

As for your Windows CE device, it's very rare for an other OS to be ported for a device (an exception to the rule: the HP touchpad).  There's all kinds of major issues with reverse engineering from hardware specs, etc that generally keep that from happening.  XDA Developers would be your best bet for something like that if it exists at all.


For contacts, the best way is to sync them to your GMail account.
Settings->Accounts and sync
Then when you add the same account on the new phone, it will sync them automatically.

For settings without root, I'm not sure.
If you are willing to root, Titanium backup is very good. It will save the settings onto the SD card. Then with the new phone, install the application and you should be able to restore the settings off the same SD card.


Where can I download a specific version of an app?

Your best option would be reaching out to developers of these apps.  Other alternatives would be unsafe.


CyanogenMod 9 gives AuthenticatorException while adding account

Download the gapps from here: http://goo.im/gapps/gapps-jb-20121011-signed.zip (latest)  download the zip.
check the MD5 and flash it from recovery.
Wipe data and cache.
reboot.


"Ok Google" voice unlock stopped working on Google Nexus - "Actually I can't do that while the device is locked"

March 7, 2017 (this edit is no longer the answer):

No, Google Now ("Ok Google" command) is not broken when the phone is in sleep mode or when the phone is locked.  Don't believe all of the forums.  If you haven't asked a real software engineer (like myself) a question about phone configuration, don't trust the internet!  Period!  However, Android 6.0.1 has a slight bug.  The "Always On" toggle switch is broken after an Android 6.0.1 upgrade.  There are two ways to get to this from the Google Nexus 6P phone.

Settings > Language & Input > Google Voice Typing > "Ok Google" Detection > Always On (toggle)

Settings > Google > Search > Voice > "Ok Google" Detection > Always On (toggle)

If you don't reboot after the Android upgrade, this "Always On" option cannot be turned on.  It's forever in the off position.  To fix, reboot the phone, and then turn on the "Always On" toggle.

Wala!  Now you should be able to take your phone out of sleep mode AND unlock your phone with your voice by saying "Ok Google ... Call {contact} on speakerphone", assuming you've trained the phone.  Google paid to patent this.

Note: I also have "Trusted Voice" turned off.  I have NOT tested with this turned on yet.  Will do that now.

March 13, 2017 (this edit is the new answer):

Google decided to remove this feature now.  So now you get the "Actually I can't do that while the device is locked."

Settings > Google > Search > Voice > "Ok Google" Detection > Always On (toggle)

A Google manager must have read my post and told their team to disable this broken feature.  So now the configuration (Always On) controlling this feature (that Google paid the patent for) is missing.  So the Nexus 6P phone cannot be unlocked using this configuration any longer.

To unlock your phone with your voice:

Looks like Google decided to recently start using the Trusted Voice configuration to unlock the phone.  This must be set up and turned on.  Then you will get the functionality back.


Does flashing incorrect ROMs or changing the partition table ever result in damaged motherboard components?

This sounds like the device has one drive with separated partitions for system, data, etc. ...

If you flash the wrong rom, it will change the partition size to be different than the original...

For example, 2gb ram will be overwritten with 3gb ram... This makes 1gb less space for the system or data, And potentially overwrites the existing data ... You might accidentally overwrite the modem files with ram space ... and so on ...

Usually you can partition SD Cards for different devices, but Partitioning the system isn't advised !


WhatsApp : Stop auto download of voice messages

You can restrict background data by going to android settings > data usage > wifi > whatsapp and in the bottom you will see "restric app background data" just activate that and it will stop downloading in the background and it will somewhat solve your problem


Huawei Ascend G630 shows on the display: "Recovery image verify failed"

There is a quite simple workaround to solve your problem.

First you should search (on XDA example) and download an original-recovery.bin for your device.
After you can flash it in fastboot mode with the following command:

fastboot flash recovery original-recovery.bin

After this you have an original bootloader on your device.

Source: XDA-Developers


New Google Maps - how to launch quickly navigation

Solution for english is to use Voice Commands. Tap on a mike of a Google Search widget and say „navigate to ‚desired destination‘“.

In other languages you can find a voice assistant like Antelli for Czech who can launch the navigation for you the same way but in your language. (Set it to listen immediately after launch.)

Or with English UI language you can say the command phonetically in your language set for Speech recognition (at least on Android 4.4). If you tell it well so the recognition writes the english word, the voice command will work.


From @eldarerathis --

  Do you have busybox installed? Have you tried mount -o bind /path/to/dir1 /path/to/dir2 (I think the busybox version supports that on Android)?


Does flashing with stock rom conflict with country specific GSM regulation?

Those files which you see are probably mandated to be there by your carrier. Not knowing what those files are for is not a good reason to try to get rid of them. They may have been there all along but you can see them now because your device is rooted and can show files which were earlier hidden. You can check with the carrier or OEM what those files are required for ; you are not going to get rid of them by flashing stock ROM , if they are meant to be there
It is a phone purchased in your country and flashing stock ROM from OEM or from a reputable trusted source will NOT harm the functionality of the phone in any way (as long as you flash the correct ROM and of your region), but the moot point is what is that you are going to achieve by doing that ?


It seems there is a Galaxy Note 3 with dual SIM support.


Application to block icon movements on home pages

It highly depends on what device you have, because of different ROM and launcher variations. You may download a different (3rd party) launcher from the Play Store and easly lock its layout: GO Launcher and ADW support this. I don't know, maybe Nova also.


CAN a Simple Mobile SIM card be unlocked?

To use a device with a Simple Mobile sim card as a mobile hotspot, you have to purchase their 8GB data plan, which I believe is $60/month.


Are PIN lock and lock screen widgets incompatible in ICS?

Seems to work for me -- here's what I see:

(Click image to enlarge)


Internal storage missing: Nexus 7 16G down to 5.8G TOTAL

I had the same problem as OP flashing to 4.4.3 on a Nexus 7 16GB (2012).  My total storage as reported by the storage module of the settings app was like 6GB and running df from BusyBox/adb was reporting the same.  This is clearly a partition table problem and not hidden files or anything else.  I think that the problem was caused by several failed/aborted flashes that I did.  I was able to fix it by reflashing from adb.

In other words, I downloaded the latest image, decompressed it, and ran the flash_all.sh script.  (Of course after running adb reboot-bootloader).

For the record, I did NOT have to change the commands to fastboot format X.

It would be nice to understand this problem better but for the time being, going from ~6GB to >13GB of usable space is quite a relief.


Effect of Background Color on Battery Life in Android App

It would also vary with the type of screen, blacks on AMOLED screens do not turn on the cell, so there is no power drain. It's a bit more complicated than the paper suggests. Really the brightness will have far more effect than a colour, unless you are going all white or all black, and even then the screen type and the software rendering will have a huge impact. –  RossC Oct 22 '14 at 10:52


Go to settings, Security and then check Unknown sources. You have to remove any previous versions of Google keyboard so go to Settings, Application Manager and go over to Google Keyboard. If you are using a Nexus device then you will need root privileges. Download the modified Google keyboard from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2657791 After installation click open to enter settings or open the app from the app drawer. Configure the keyboard then set it as your default in settings.

Link:
http://www.techaudible.org/how-to-add-dedicated-numbers-row-to-native-google-keyboard/


Change path to store YouTube offline videos in external memory

Is it possible to change YouTube's offline video path to an external
  memory path?

This is currently not supported using official YouTube App.

The location for those offline videos is something similar to below:

  Internal
  storage/Android/data/com.google.android.youtube/files/Offline/(system
  generated folder name)/streams

And more so, YouTube controls access to the offline file.

The permission is controlled on their server per account basis, to access those downloaded files.

You may want to check this link for more details.


downloading 'boot.img' while using fastboot to copy ra recovery

At the time I was semi-blindly following another poorly written walkthrough that just had a series of commands without explaining them.  Now with some knowledge I eventually worked out that it was better to flash the image to the phone.  Still don't know why it was taking so long though.

Eventually with flashing to the phone and then the Cyanogen Mod, I got it all working.  Now with ROMManager on my phone it'll be sooo much easier in future!


Reading images of QR codes displayed in the browser

You can do this from the Browser itself using "QR Droid". Search for it and install it. After that:

In the Browser, long-click the image and select "Save image"
After downloaded, open image from notification bar
Select Menu > Share > "Decode with QR Droid"


Samsung Infuse is getting really hot when using a Samsung wall charger that came with Samsung Strive. Is this bad?

The phone should be correctly detecting the charge of the battery even if the charger isn't right.  So it sounds to me more like a phone problem.  Either way I would discontinue this ... if the phone really is trying to charge the battery past its limit you could definitely fry the battery or your device.

Did you ever have an Infuse charger, and if so did it work?

You could try running the battery dry and then charging from that state; I've heard that can help when the battery stats get messed up.  In conjunction you could wipe the battery stats (you'll have to Google how to do that for the Infuse) but that's generally a last resort since it takes quite a few charge cycles for the battery stats to get rebuilt (your phone relies on them to determine the charge of your battery with any accuracy).


Is using chargers of phone not meant for it harmful to the battery?

No, it should be fine as long as the charger is meant for a cell phone.

Most of the major cell phone manufacturers adhere to the the International Electrotechnical Commission's mobile phone charging specs which specifies the use of the micro USB charging standard.  USB 1.0 and 2.0 is capable of delivering 0.5A at 5V and USB 3.0 is capable of 0.9A at 5V.  Not all chargers adhere to those specs, but most phone chargers deliver a charge somewhere in that range.  I have had several HTC, Samsung, Motorola and some off-brand phone chargers and they all are 5V and put out between 750mA and 1A.

Also, your cell phone has a charging control circuit and voltage protection circuit that protects the device from power outside its acceptable spec.  I believe it also monitors temperature and will terminate charging if it falls outside of an acceptable spec, but I'm not sure about that.

Some tablets like the Nexus 7 come with chargers that put out 2.1A at 5V.  Using this charger will charge your phone faster but it will also cause the battery to heat up more.  Excess heat can degrade the life of a battery so I wouldn't make a habit of using a tablet charger on your phone.


My Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Doesn't Show an "Allow USB Debugging?" Prompt. Is there a fix?

There's an option called "Revoke USB Authorization" within the Developer options. Click it and it'll revoke the auth key.


Google Timeline error - "Can't connect to Maps, try again later" only on certain dates

I suspected that it was a data issue as it only affected  some dates so I contacted Google Maps support and they reset something. I can now view all my dates ok. If you get this problem view your timeline for a different date and if the problem only shows on some dates then I suggest you contact Google Maps support - they were very helpful as none of these message boards seems to have a reliable solution.


How to use Pie manual rotation on a phone with physical buttons?

the default launcher for my phone had this as well try and install lean launcher

edit it appears that on Nokia phones with the default launcher you can't have it be in landscape
permanently if you set auto rotate off it will just go back portrait mode but lean launcher will allow you to use your home screen in landscape if auto rotate is off
lean launcher will force apps to work in landscape mode

turn off auto rotate hold your device in a horizontal position then click the button highlighted in the screen shot

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hdeva.launcher&hl=en_US&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dlean+launcher&pcampaignid=APPU_1_l9KQXPfzGoHoxgPQrKfwDw


Moto G5 Plus with Square or PayPal chip reader?

Yes, they should work with your phone.

Squire:
This device is compatible with the Moto g5 plus according to squire compatibility page

PayPal:
According to the devices compatibility page, it works with any Bluetooth enabled phone that runs Android 4.0 or higher, and has the PayPal here app.

According to Gsmarena, the Moto G5 Plus is running Android 7.0 and higher, and has Bluetooth access.

Put the two together, and it should work.

Just double check that the PayPal here app is compatible with your phone, by finding it in the play store, and check if it allows you to download it.

Strangely, on the compatibility page it mentions that the phone has to have an earphone jack, even though this is a Bluetooth device. (But that's still not a problem being that your phone has an earphone jack anyway)


How can I remove all deleted messages from mail trash folder on default email app

Neither of the system-e-mails apps (e-mail and gmail) on my Nexus4 is able to accomplish that task - very annoying indeed.

So the basic answer is propably: You can not.

But there are mail-apps capable of doing so. One of it is K9-mail.


What determines whether something requires wifi vs network internet traffic?

Most apps do this now to protect the user's mobile data usage. Knowing that most data plans are limited (200 MB a month, in the case of my roommate), developers prevent users from, say downloading a 45 MB game from the Play Store/Amazon App Store via mobile network, as this would not be beneficial, seeing as it would take almost 1/4 of your data and would take a significant amount of time and battery. Same goes with uploading.

Most apps do this as an option, though some (in the case of the Amazon App Store) will block you completely from performing these actions without Wi-Fi. But no, this is not an issue with your carrier. I have Sprint (and unlimited data) and I am still forced to download certain apps and upload pictures through various services only through Wi-Fi.

NOTE: I have found that some apps that prevent Wi-Fi-less downloads (i.e. Amazon App Store) allow me to do these on my network as long as it is over 4G. If you have this option, try it and see if it works for you as well!


To answer your questions:

Am not aware of any Android version where the Dalvik was not invalidated on boot. Maybe the initial version 1.0 had that, I really do not know, have gone through Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich. You need to look into the source tree and rebase it back to CupCake or Donut (1.5 and 1.6 respectively)
The detailed reason :)

The reason the Wipe Cache must be used is because all apks, including system apks, have a dex file attached to it, when the ROM is booted up for the first time, Android's Dalvik goes through each and every one of those apks, and extract the dex file from it and place it in the cache /data/dalvik-cache thereby speeding up the execution of the app itself.

Most ROMs have apks that are odex 'ed, the cache is bundled into the apk itself as an external file.

A lot of custom ROM modders would have those apks deodex 'd, meaning the dex file is replaced and repackaged to make it easier to theme/modify an apk.

When you flash a custom ROM, and did not wipe the cache, the newer custom ROM's apk's will have a different dex file attached to it, and when the Dalvik goes through them, it sees the existing cached dex file found in the directory, and skips it, then when you run the app, you're guaranteed a force close or ANR (Application Not Responding).

You are not losing data per se, if using ClockWorkMod Recovery, and Wipe Data is selected, then yes, all the settings relating to the apps are wiped cleanly - look in /data/app.

So you can Wipe Cache but not Wipe Data, what is done effectively, is slotted in the newer apks in place, in which it has the settings retained. This was quite a common scenario with CyanogenMod nightlies where a unstable/testing ROM build is flashed, and the settings retained with cache wipe. The mileage will vary depending on what apps downloaded from the market (settings would have changed by version bump quite likely).

For best results it would be wise to perform both Wipe Data and Wipe Cache to ensure integrity and no program errors within the app itself.

Yes that would mean the boot time would be slower but its initial once off moment. After that it would be booting quicker. Really in a nutshell, explicitly wiping the cache itself via CWM actually helps speed it up and ensure no residue from the previous version in place which could get munged in (Now at this stage, am realizing your question so in all fairness, have not actually seen Android not performing the invalidating of the cache itself upon boot when flashing a new ROM..)

Use the source Luke seriously! :D

frameworks/base/core/java/com/android/internal/os/ZygoteInit.java is the bootup code for each apk runtime. It interacts with the native C code found in the dalvik directory tree which contains specific chipset instructions to interpret the bytecode within the apk to native CPU instruction set. ARMv6 is pretty much a hacked version of ARMv5 (which was the original chipset in the older Android versions prior to Eclair), so you will not see ARMv6 in the AOSP source from google. CyanogenMod will have that ARMv6 in their source.


Samsung Galaxy S phone USB device recognized by host VirtualBox OS but undefined in guest OS

Is the USB icon on the VirtualBox enabled on the guest OS.

If that's disabled, the USB on the host side will not pass it through the guest, this requires the handset plugged in host side.

It's a small icon on the bottom of the VM window, near the hard disk where it shows blinking activity? Click on that, to enable USB pass-through.

Are you intending to flash the device from within a VM?


How can I restrict the gallery to one folder on the Galaxy S?

If you add an empty file called .nomedia to a directory the media scanner will ignore it.


How Can I Use Data For Apps Blocked on Wi-Fi Networks?

You would first need to keep data enabled while being on Wi-Fi, and redirect application UID using netfilter, which require root to alter it's settings.


I cannot connect my one plus two to my computer or laptop. debugging option is saying "Device is in charging mode, USB Debugging is disabled"

I had the same issue, and, after the following steps, it seems to have worked itself out.

Disconnect the device from my PC
Go to Settings > More > Tethering & Portable Hotspot
Enable USB tethering
Disable USB tethering and Wait several minutes
Reconnect the device to my PC

After that, the USB Debugging option under Developer Settings was no longer greyed out.


Unfortunately Honeycomb and below is "dead" development, people are focused on doing more on ICS than anything.
When Eclair rolled out, development stopped on Cupcake and Donut, and now its quite hard to imagine someone still working on those old versions of Android. There may be around it involving rooting your phone but I doubt it. Look at your link, the third requirement: Deodexed ROM. That is part of what is holding older phones back. My suggestion would just be to upgrade your phone but i realize that is not an ideal solution. Sorry man.


OsmAnd (on Play store or F-droid.org (version is sometimes a little behind)) has those features:

Fully open source
Fully offline (w/ option for some online features)
Play Store: Limited to 16 downloads (free) or costs ~6EUR (for funding)
(build it yourself or use a nightly build if don't want to pay or use the free one)
Offline vector maps:

based on Openstreetmap data
create your own with OsmandMapCreator
many pre-built areas available with in-app downloading

Online tile-based maps (data-caching plugin for GMaps/Bing/Yahoo/ and 25? others)
OSM integration (bug report, GPX uploads, live editing)
Voice guided offline navigation
GPX tracking

The unlimited app (in Google Play) costs a small fee (around 3EUR) to fund the project. Please consider buying it once you tested the free version and like it and don't just leech the nightly if you don't just want to test the bleeding edge features. You can of course also build your own (its FOSS).


How to copy folder and website shortcuts from device to device (on many devices)

A possible way to export the shortcuts is to first install another launcher for example Nova Launcher, then create the shortcuts. Open Nova Launcher settings, go to "Backup & import settings" click on "Backup". Save your configuration to an SD card.

Install Nova Launcher on another tablet, open its settings -> "Backup & import settings", click on "Restore or manage backups", select the backup from the SD card. The shortcuts will be recreated.


Are Android 2.2 applications compatible with Android 3.0 and 3.1?

Yes, Android is fully backwards-compatible.  App makers can choose to have their apps limited to certain versions, though, but most don't.


How can I root my HTC Legend without erasing my data?

With rooting there is no guarantee that you won' lose your data, but in general it is safe. For rooting the HTC Legend it looks like the following is the best method:

Register with HTC Dev and unlock you bootloader
Get the ACS HTC Super Tools and drivers from here
Install the drivers
UnRAR the Super Tools
Ensure your phone has USB Debugging enabled
Plug phone into computer and run SuperTool.exe
Do options 1 and 3 (in that order) to root your phone
Download the S-Off file from here
Move that file to the htcsupertoolv3\root\ folder where adb and fastboot are
Open a command prompt and navigate to the root folder where you put the S-Off image from above
Run the following commands:

 adb reboot bootloader

 fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.0.2.0-legend.img
You are now rooted with a custom recovery.

Note: I don't have an HTC Legend and this is just a synthesis of research that I have done.


What happens if vendor partition is corrupted?

/vendor is sister partition of /system on Android devices which holds system applications and libraries that do not have source code available on AOSP but added by vendors (OEM's). It also contains SoC firmware images i.e. hardware specific libraries and binaries (OpenGL, ISP...).
Proprietary blobs (HALs) usually live in /vendor as shared libraries (.so files) which are loaded by Android binders when processes call a hardware component. This partition was optional before Treble support and /vendor used to be just a symlink to /system/vendor. However, on Treble devices it contains a separate filesystem, usually same as that of /system i.e. ext4 or f2fs.

If you accidentally flashed recovery image over vendor partition, it won't brick your device unless you have a ROM or factory firmware to flash. However its filesystem is erased which needs to be recreated. Factory firmware flasher will do this for you but you can also manually format it from TWRP Wipe menu or through terminal emulator using mkfs.ext4 or mkfs.f2fs commands.

Further reading: ANDROID DEVICE PARTITIONS and FILESYSTEMS


Forgotten parental controls password for Fire HD10

Hard reset your Fire HD10

Power off
Press vol up and power key at the same time for around 5-6 seconds
Reset it..

Follow this video if you're stuck somewhere.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayvWAyftosw
Comment if you're still stuck


Call volume can be adjusted by using the volume rocker buttons only during a call. If not in a call, it adjusts ringer volume and if a media is played, it adjusts media volume.

So, if you had mistakenly increased media or ringer volume then you might not have any effect on call volume.

Try making some calls and when it's dialing, press volume up to raise volume level.

I am just saying all this because you said you are new (though this is a common feature for other phones as well) to Android. If you had already done this and still you can't hear properly, I am afraid there are no further solutions to improve the volume. However, there are work around like using hands-free or headphones.


Galaxy s5 stuck in reboot loop after root

Your device is bricked, this means that unless you have a custom recovery installed then you cannot access your device. If your phone is still under warranty, then you may be able to get it fixed for a low cost, as this is a quick fix with the right equipment.

If you want to attempt the fix yourself, here are some articles:

MakeUseOf

XDA


There was a thread similar to yours a while back. It refered to a Stackoverflow thread with a overwhelmingly positive answer.
One of the answers is to clear dumpstack. Here is the excerpt from the Stackoverflow answer.

Here's a very simple solution that works on my Samsung Galaxy S II and NOTE 1 ; I have no idea about other models:
Open the Phone app and switch to Keypad.
Dial *#9900#
On the screen that appears, click on the button labelled "Delete dumpstate/logcat".

I've restored about one GB of system space this way.

Hope this solves your problem.


Might be a problem with the device's firmware - to be more specific with the LMK (low memory killer) which is part of the Android System. I have heard of quite a few Motorola devices with multitasking problems. A good article about memory management / the LMK and OOM on android can be found here.

  Google’s OOM_ADJ values for devices with limited physical memory (512 MB) will allow the LMK to kill the foreground process (running application) after the ZRAMis filled and all cached applications (previous foreground apps) as well as the restartable background processes have been killed

Furthermore there various issues have been submitted to google and they seem to have partially fixed these issues in android 5.1. Most custom roms seem to have addressed these issues aswell. You might want to update to the latest available build for your device to increase your multitask performance.

  Actually, the issue is not entirely fixed in 5.1.1. The activity manager keeps killing and restarting tasks even in CM12.1. Its just that the killing is not as aggressive as it was in 5.0.x, and after some uptime, the system does attain a sort of steady state, where killings and restarts are very few.


YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp are not working right and internet is not working

Seems to me like you've removed some of the Google apps, used by these other apps. Which apps did you remove? I'd advise reïnstalling those apps, and don't remove apps like Google Play, Google Connectivity Services, etc.
Also, see if you haven't disabled some services or apps that YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp need. You should read the description on the Google Play Services to understand more about this.


Why do I have to set lots of my settings again after a phone reboot?

Do you have either app moved to the SD card (using Froyo)?

If yes, then you need to move then back.  The apps aren't loading when the phone boots, so the phone is reverting to what is currently available on boot  (stock SMS/keyboard).

You have to remember: with Cyanogenmod, it will let you move any app to SD card, regardless of whether the app is set to allow you or not.  I made a similar mistake with Swype.


Nexus 7 wont appear on my PC in the bootloader, semi bricked

Did you ever tried using Wugfresh? Try it, they have everything explained in their software, how to install/remove drivers, easy root, bootloader unlock, and many other tools.


The only known solution is to hard reset....

Start the tab with Volume Up button Home button pressed...
Select "Hard format" from the menu (Be careful while doing this)

(Note:It will delete all apps,contacts &restore it to initial stage)


Accessing android device via ADB shell with broken touchscreen (can't authenticate)

I figured this out on my own. I solved this by installing Airdroid using an OTG USB adapter and a wired mouse. I then used the airmirror capability of the software to control a virtual mouse on the device. I do have root on the device, this may be significant to the operation of Airmirror. I could then accept the debug confirmation on the screen and complete the backups I wanted to do.


Your device is very very old. I am not sure if Google Play Store is still supported on Android 2.2 - if it would be still supported it would be the oldest
The current Android development tools can't create apps for Android 2.2 anymore, hence it is impossible to support such old apps. Also there are no emulators or devices available for testing apps on such an old platform. I assume for these reasons most developers have removed their apps with Froyo support from Play Store.
Additionally Froyo totally lacks support for TLS 1.2, hence it is now next to useless for Internet services as most web servers require TLS 1.2 or higher. There is a special Google Crypto Provider included in Google Services, however I am not sure if this provider is really available on Android 2.2 and additionally it is only used by apps which explicitly make use of it.


If it were to happen to me, my preferred approach would be:
Step 1: Clear data of Magisk Manager app
Whatever way your Android supports, open the App info page for your Magisk manager app, force stop the app, and clear its data/storage. Reboot (optional). Now launch the Magisk Manager app. If the problem still persists, follow the steps below.
Step 2: Uninstall Magisk (the boot image modifications) and Magisk Manager (the app)
You can do so from Magisk Manager app by chosing "Uninstall Magisk" at its home page/launching page. While you're at it, also remove the Magisk files and modules saved under /data/adb. I don't know whether they would be automatically removed by Magisk Manager app upon uninstallation, so it doesn't hurt to purge the directory by yourself.
If the uninstall option is not available in Magisk Manager app, than manually restore the stock (unpatched, that is) boot image to your currently active boot slot. You can restore the stock boot image using a custom recovery, or using fastboot, or if su (root access) is still working, than using dd. If you don't have a custom recovery, you may find this Q&A helpful: How do you root a device with Magisk when it doesn't have a custom recovery
Whatever means you choose, do remove the Magisk Manager app beforehand. It would not make a difference if you do it later, by why wait to do it?
Note: if you had installed Magisk using a custom recovery earlier or had upgraded Magisk from Magisk Manager app, you would be having a backup of stock boot image under /data/ with directory name(s) starting as magisk_backup_ followed by some random characters. If you fail to find that backup, than search the internet to get a legitimate full OTA / fastboot image for your currently installed Android build. The boot image there is your stock boot image and can be flashed instead.
Step 3: Patch the boot image with Magisk modifications
Assuming that you have successfully restored the stock boot image and rebooted the device to a running Android, you need to install Magisk again. Magisk is a work in progress, and its preferred method of installation may change in future, so I suggest you follow its FAQ for installation.
If you have followed the installation steps, you should have a working Magisk modified boot image and a companion Magisk Manager app. Try launching the app to see if everything is working as you would want it to be.
At this point you should be able to install/sideload a Magisk module through Magisk Manager app.


If an app is written for Android 2.3 will it run on 2.1?

It depends.  If an application uses features present in Android 2.3, then it will not work on 2.2 or lower.  If it only uses features present in older versions, then it will work on those older versions.

For example, an app written for 2.1 (i.e., an app that only uses features from 2.1 or lower) will work on 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, and 3.1 (and any future versions, unless Google changes how things work).


Oreo 8.1: Day of the week not displaying in notification drawer

You can use Date in Status Bar. It will display the day of the week in short format above the date. However, the month and year are not shown (I have not seen them when testing). When you expand the status bar, the day of the week, date, month and year are all shown.
Here are how the date is displayed:

a. When the status bar is not expanded

b. When the status bar is expanded


Saving a PDF file downloaded from browser

Actually, I found that all downloaded files are always stored in /mnt/sdcard/Download no matter they are "opened" or "saved" so I can grab them from there with any file manager


Aha, found them!

/emmc/DCIM

Then most of them are in the 100MEDIA sub directory.


Trying to unlock & access a password locked Android cell phone that has screen damage on a small section so I can't input the last # of password

Things I have done:

Remote into the device
Connect a peripheral input device
Use ADB to send inputs (added bonus of being scriptable and/or AHK/Rainmeter combo)
Use the accessibility tools Assistant Menu or Universal Switches
Screen casting
Specific to Samsung Note series: the phone screen uses two separate touch digitizers.  If one is broken (e.g., touch), the other (in this case the magnetic induction digitizer) may still be functioning.


Android-adapted BusyBox binary for rooted phone

There is busybox installer program in Market. Also good rooting programs may install busybox themselves.

You can install it manually into /system/xdev/ (with necessary symbolic links)

Here is one I have:

/system/xbin # md5sum busybox
26d429e0541c42684225a880dc331053  busybox
/system/xbin # ./busybox
BusyBox v1.19.0 (2011-08-14 23:46:58 CDT) multi-call binary.
Copyright (C) 1998-2011 Erik Andersen, Rob Landley, Denys Vlasenko
and others. Licensed under GPLv2.
See source distribution for full notice.

Usage: busybox [function] [arguments]...
   or: busybox --list[-full]
   or: function [arguments]...

    BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
    utilities into a single executable.  Most people will create a
    link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
    will act like whatever it was invoked as.

Currently defined functions:
    [, [[, acpid, add-shell, addgroup, adduser, adjtimex, arp, arping, ash, awk, base64, basename, beep, blkid,
    blockdev, bootchartd, brctl, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cal, cat, catv, chat, chattr, chgrp, chmod, chown, chpasswd,
    chpst, chroot, chrt, chvt, cksum, clear, cmp, comm, cp, cpio, crond, crontab, cryptpw, cttyhack, cut, date, dc, dd,
    deallocvt, delgroup, deluser, depmod, devmem, df, dhcprelay, diff, dirname, dmesg, dnsd, dnsdomainname, dos2unix,
    du, dumpkmap, dumpleases, echo, ed, egrep, eject, env, envdir, envuidgid, ether-wake, expand, expr, fakeidentd,
    false, fbset, fbsplash, fdflush, fdformat, fdisk, fgconsole, fgrep, find, findfs, flock, fold, free, freeramdisk,
    fsck, fsck.minix, fsync, ftpd, ftpget, ftpput, fuser, getopt, getty, grep, groups, gunzip, gzip, halt, hd, hdparm,
    head, hexdump, hostid, hostname, httpd, hush, hwclock, id, ifconfig, ifdown, ifenslave, ifplugd, ifup, inetd, init,
    insmod, install, ionice, iostat, ip, ipaddr, ipcalc, ipcrm, ipcs, iplink, iproute, iprule, iptunnel, kbd_mode, kill,
    killall, killall5, klogd, last, less, linux32, linux64, linuxrc, ln, loadfont, loadkmap, logger, login, logname,
    logread, losetup, lpd, lpq, lpr, ls, lsattr, lsmod, lspci, lsusb, lzcat, lzma, lzop, lzopcat, makedevs, makemime,
    man, md5sum, mdev, mesg, microcom, mkdir, mkdosfs, mke2fs, mkfifo, mkfs.ext2, mkfs.minix, mkfs.vfat, mknod,
    mkpasswd, mkswap, mktemp, modinfo, modprobe, more, mount, mountpoint, mpstat, mt, mv, nameif, nbd-client, nc,
    netstat, nice, nmeter, nohup, nslookup, ntpd, od, openvt, passwd, patch, pgrep, pidof, ping, ping6, pipe_progress,
    pivot_root, pkill, pmap, popmaildir, poweroff, powertop, printenv, printf, ps, pscan, pstree, pwd, pwdx,
    raidautorun, rdate, rdev, readahead, readlink, readprofile, realpath, reboot, reformime, remove-shell, renice,
    reset, resize, rev, rm, rmdir, rmmod, route, rpm, rpm2cpio, rtcwake, run-parts, runlevel, runsv, runsvdir, rx,
    script, scriptreplay, sed, sendmail, seq, setarch, setconsole, setfont, setkeycodes, setlogcons, setserial, setsid,
    setuidgid, sh, sha1sum, sha256sum, sha512sum, showkey, slattach, sleep, smemcap, softlimit, sort, split,
    start-stop-daemon, stat, strings, stty, su, sulogin, sum, sv, svlogd, swapoff, swapon, switch_root, sync, sysctl,
    syslogd, tac, tail, tar, tcpsvd, tee, telnet, telnetd, test, tftp, tftpd, time, timeout, top, touch, tr, traceroute,
    traceroute6, true, tty, ttysize, tunctl, ubiattach, ubidetach, ubimkvol, ubirmvol, ubirsvol, ubiupdatevol, udhcpc,
    udhcpd, udpsvd, umount, uname, unexpand, uniq, unix2dos, unlzma, unlzop, unxz, unzip, uptime, users, usleep,
    uudecode, uuencode, vconfig, vi, vlock, volname, wall, watch, watchdog, wc, wget, which, who, whoami, whois, xargs,
    xz, xzcat, yes, zcat, zcip
/system/xbin # ls -l | grep busybox | wc -l
348


Wipe your phone, and reinstall the OS following the official instructions. Make sure to download the ROM images on a computer that isn't backdoored, and verify the checksums before you install.

That's the only way you'll be able to trust this device with private data again. Since you don't know how this malware was installed, you also don't know what other malware might already be on your phone.


Click on the right-arrow ">" at the top of the keyboard.  This will pull up a list of words.  Long press on a word and it will say "___ will be removed from learned words". Then press OK and it's gone!

Unless you are trying to remove an email address; then it doesn't disappear! :(  Really annoying.  Anyone know how to fix that?

On a Samsung Galaxy Note 4.


Optimum video codec for low end Android phones?

I got H.264 (x264 encoder) to play with these settings on my Huawei U8150

Main profile
320x240 (original video was 4:3 which helps, 16:9 or 2.35:1 should become even easier to decode)
and tuned with the 'fastdecode' setting

I used ffmpeg as the frontend, as Handbrake makes selecting the "fastdecode" option impossible

ffmpeg -i "inputfile.avi" \
    -sws_flags lanczos+accurate_rnd \
    -vf "scale=320:-1" \
    -c:v libx264 \
        -crf 23.0 \
        -preset veryslow \
        -profile:v main \
        -tune fastdecode \
    outputfile.mp4

the resultant file was only 10% bigger than the one using high profile and no fast decode

I would also recommend using MX player as it actively resyncs the video and audio for those occasional slow downs it may have, but fastdecode seems to fix all the slow downs I could find.


Stumbled across this thread since I am having a similar issue with my unlimited google music subscription; hope your issue has been resolved by now!

I had this issue happen randomly to me. I was able to stream all the songs in my library, then suddenly half of them were grayed out and wouldn't play ("Can't play this song without internet connection").

I contacted Google customer support and they helped me fix the issue. They said that my phone hadn't checked in with their servers in 24 hours, so they had me force my phone to do that. They had me change the date, time, and time zone in the Date and Time settings. They recommended to change it so there were no similarities (i.e. if its AM there, choose a time in the PM; if its 2015 change it to a date in 2016; etc). I verified the time and date changes on the home screen, then changed the Date and Time settings back to Automatic.

They then had me fully close the music app and reopen it, and voila, all my songs would play via cellular data again.


Remove your sister's WiFi network from your list of APs.

Settings-> WiFi
Long press the network name, which should be "NetGear77-5G"
Select "Forget Network".

Also your sister probably should not be running a WiFi access point all the time. This will reduce her battery life, among other security issues.


Are there any landline phones running Android?

Apparently Yes. The Archos Smart Home Phone is an Android Phone priced at £130 in the UK:

http://www.androidcentral.com/archos-smart-home-phone-now-available-get-android-your-landline

Although the reviews on Amazon UK arent very good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Archos-501809-Smart-Home-Phone/dp/B005H0M8LW

Binatone iHome Phone iDect with DECT and Android Technology

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Binatone-iHome-Phone-Android-Technology/dp/B004EBV1GI

Currently unavailable (maybe its that good)


newbie: how to get near-stock MotoG out of boot-loop?

Do a Reset via Recovery.

You first have to power off your Android smartphone. In order to do that, press the power button and select “power off”.
Wait a few seconds and then press the volume up and volume down buttons along with the power button at the same time for about 3, or 4 seconds.
Release the buttons; the Moto G boot menu must be now displayed on your phone.Use the Volume Down button in order to scroll down and also up as the Volume Up button can be used only for selecting an option.Scroll down until you reach “recovery” and the press the Volume Up button once.
The android logo will now be displayed on your phone.Hold down Volume Up and Volume Down buttons for about 5 seconds and press power button once.The recovery mode menu should now be displayed.
That was all; you can now choose to hard reset your Moto G or you can return to Android OS by selecting “reboot system now”.


I thought about posting this as an edit, but I feel an answer will better suit the community. Here is what I found.

To unlock the developer options on an LG4 Go into settings... about phone..Software info. Finally, tap "Build Number" 7 times. Now back out to the main menu and there will be a choice for Developer Options. From here you can enable USB debugging and enjoy all of the other tools available. Rooting the phone from this point is easy.


How to bypass an app's ability to know is being run on an emulator rather than a real device.

In general there are three ways to bypass an emulator check:

Modify the app and remove the emulator check.
Modify the emulator so that it pretends to be a real device.
Modify the system calls the app does for detecting it is running on an emulator

As you can see all three ways are not that simple, however the third way may be the easiest as there are some tools that can help you.

Back to option 1 - it requires a lot of development skills to decompile the app (e.g. using apktool to decompile it to Smali code), identify the emulator checks (and to bypass app integrity checks that may exist).

Option 2 is even harder as it requires you to patch and recompile the Android emulator (which is available as source code).

Therefore from my point of view only option 3 is realistic for you. However it still may require some Java development.

You can install the XPosed framework onto your emulator. It allows to modify system calls the app uses for identifying that it is running on an emulator.
There are a some existing XPosed modules for hiding that a device is rooted or that it is running on an emulator. If you are luck there is an existing module working out-of-the box, letting you run your app on an emulator.


It is the blur tool. You can apply linear or radial blur with this tool.

(More details in the Instagram Help Center)

This tool is mostly used to simulate tilt-shift effect (used by photographers to highlight a plane or exaggerate a minimal depth-of-field).


Hide folder only from stock gallery without using Samsung's private mode

I wanted to do this and the .nomedia file approach is the way to go as it is used by certain apps to hide images that they don't want indexed (such as pics of birds in the birds of Britain app).

However it's a bit of a devil to do. Firstly you must create this .nomedia file in every directory that you don't want indexed, not just the top level one.

The main difficulty is trying to get the gallery app to forget the indexed images. It goes without saying that the next step involves clearing the app's data and cache to force a reindexing (this will also possibly require a reboot of the phone if the gallery app refuses to work afterwards - this happened to me and I had to reboot the phone to get it to work again - sometimes it just worked after clearing it's data, sometimes it didn't - random pot luck). I had to repeat this a couple of times to get it to work. Go to settings -> apps -> all apps -> gallery and tap on stop app, clear cache, clear data.

If you decide to create a new folder and create the .nomedia file inside that and then move the images you don't want indexed into that directory then that should just work as it does for other apps. The difficulty comes when you try and get the gallery app to honour the .nomedia file on directories that it has already indexed.

This worked for me on a Nexus 4.


Google Drive has taken over my internal memory

Logically, from what I know about Drive, all items that are marked appropriately will automatically sync to all devices where Drive is installed (to provide offline access).

I don't personally use Drive often at the moment, but I believe there is both a switch for offline access while viewing detailed file info, as well as a star feature, that both function to show which items are set to sync to all devices (there's been a few updates since I used Drive often).

You might have accidentally checked a setting that told Drive to mark all those uploaded items as favorites/offline accessible files, while uploading.

I've never personally added so many files to a current versions of Drive, web or app. So, I'd have to compete a test of the activity with some test files and follow directions based on what exactly you did to identify, with certainty, what happened.

And in order to correct the issue, regardless of the cause, it may be easier to use one interface rather than another. For instance, Drive via webpage/PC may allow you to select all folders and mark all internal contents as not available offline in one click, but the app may not.

I'm not sure which would be more efficient for such a purpose, I just wanted to suggest that it may be worth experimenting.

And there's always the possibility that it is just because of a glitch in drive.


After a long time trying I managed to finally root it

In summary, I think these are the steps to make it work:

Try to root with rootmaster. Check if it gives you root. If it does- check if it persists on reboot. If it does not do 2 and 3.
Try to root again with rootmaster then delete /system/app/kinguser, /system/app/superuser.apk, and /system/app/Superuser.apk (using a terminal)
Install SuperSu

Only thing missing from this smart TV that I want it to have is Google Play Store. I really cannot make it work. I also don't have YouTube because of this.


Folder in root directory (/) gets automatically deleted after reboot

The / (root) directory is not a persistent filesystem on Android. It's a initramfs, which is packed into the boot image on your device. Although you can remount it with write permissions, changes will always be lost the next time you boot because the original ramdisk will be re-extracted from the boot image on the next boot.

In order to make a permanent change you would need to get a copy of your boot image, unpack the initramfs, make your changes, then repack everything and flash the boot image on your device. Tools like dsixda's Android Kitchen can help facilitate this. Otherwise, you can try something like mkbootimg-tools to help you get the ramdisk, then gunzip/cpio to unpack it  by hand, and the reverse to repack everything.

The process - provided not much has changed in the last few years - would be something along the lines of:

$ mkboot boot.img /output-folder
$ cd /output-folder
$ gunzip -c ramdisk | cpio -i
... make some changes in the ramdisk and possibly /output-folder/img_info ...
$ find . | cpio -o -H newc | gzip > newramdisk.cpio.gz
$ cd ..
$ mkboot /output-folder newboot.img

You may need to check if there are any additional options to pass into mkboot for your specific device.


Encryption on SD card. Not recovering data after crashing

the proper way is give your sdcard + device + screenlock pin to the expert

the Nokia 5 is listed as exploitable. someone with skills can do:

on the device itself

make a full ROM dump of all partitions including encrypted userdata partition and encryption key using the read command in EDL mode
downgrade the bootloader to make bootchain vulnerable
flash avb/ dm-verity disabled vbmeta from EDL mode
flash (unsigned) magisk patched boot/recovery or twrp custom recovery from EDL mode
get root access to (decrypted) userdata partition
extract the encryption key of adoptable-storage from /data/misc/vold

on linux machine

dump the corrupt sdcard with ddrescue
decrypt the sdcard dump with extracted key
recover files with testdisk photorec extundelete binwalk etc


Smart Tips is part of Smart Bulletin - the permanent screen to the left of the other home screens on the default LG launcher.

It can be turned on/off in home screen settings, accessed either via the app drawer (three dots at the top right) or the settings app.

When you turn on Smart Bulletin, Smart Tips is automatically enabled. Occasionally it will notify you of new tips that are available.


How to change email associated with Google Play Games profile?

You can still change login email in Google Account settings page.
Changing linked account is not currently possible.


Specifying SD card mount options upon boot

Urukdroid has a special script, /system/bin/mount_sdcard.sh, that mounts the SD card upon boot. This script understands (V)FAT and EXT4. Anything else is left to the vold automounter. Archos modded vold so it could do a bit more than stock A 2.1 vold, e.g., mount EXT3 file systems.

I upgraded the file system on the SD card to EXT4, and now mount_sdcard.sh mounts the SD card upon boot with the correct mount options.

Thanks to $aur0n for helping me solve this.

Upgrading an EXT2 or EXT3 file system to EXT4 is easy, see https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto#Converting_an_ext3_filesystem_to_ext4 .


It turned out, that when I set system language to Russian, Smart Dialer adds Russian letters. I used MoreLocale2 to add Russian system language. And I had to use the "pm grant" trick to make MoreLocale2 work.


There is an app-Flying Dictionary on the Play Store which does the same things that are your needs. It works similar to the Kindle feature. Go try it out!


My Optimus X2 was missing its custom android

As far as I know (not from US/CA) the P999 is a T-Mobile G2X device with vanilla Android, whereas P990 is LG Optimus 2x. The specs are mostly similar but there are certain differences, such as the OS customization. Maybe a custom ROM will bring the functionality to the G2X as well.


Are there any issues if buying a Samsung Galaxy S3 without memory?

Are you talking about removable storage (microSDXC)? It's not required, and it's expandable up to 64GB.

Without removable storage, you will be using the built-in storage which can be either 16GB or 32GB.

Source


Where are the magnets on the samsung tablets

The magnets you are talking about, are on the smart cover. (S View Cover). The phone detects the magnet with a Hall Sensor.

Hope my answer helps


I don't think it's possible to change this without recompiling the ROM. You can't change the UID of apps after they're installed because they won't be able to access their files any more, and because it will confuse the app permissions system.

Maybe there's some other way around the problem with Xposed, but I don't know about that. It might be possible for an Xposed module to detect the exact call the package is making (to distinguish it from the calls made by other packages in the same process), and mark it for AFWall to allow it. That way you wouldn't need to split up the apps at all.

An alternative might be to find where it's trying to send traffic to, and whitelist that address for that process. Again, this would solve the specific symptom without splitting the apps. If it's the captive portal detection, it's probably http://client.android.com/generate_204.


Will my phone (carrier unlocked but initially locked to verizon) get locked after Kitkat update?

There's a 50-50 possibility of getting the phone locked because if the seller has unlocked through the proper way(legally) then you can go ahead and update your O.S else if your seller has unlocked by other means then definitely the phone will get locked to the Carrier with which it has the contract with(here Verizon).

I suggest you to get in contact with your device supplier and ask him his mode of unlock. An unlock never comes free of cost although some sites offer a legal unlock .The Same thing is what observed in other mobile OS(like ios) if you have unlocked it by other means and have updated your device then the phone gets locked to the carrier with which it was sold and you need to unlock it again.


Open a new tab in chrome from a shortcut or app

Solution for Android 7.1 (API level 25) and higher

If you're using a launcher which supports App Shortcuts you can:

Long-press the Chrome icon to bring up shortcuts.
Long-press the New tab shortcut and drag to desired location.
Use the new shortcut to launch Chrome with a new tab.


Getting the features of HTC Sense in vanilla Android?

You could replicate many Sense features with 3rd-party apps such as Launcher replacements, dialer/contact apps, various widgets, etc.  However, you will likely lose the deep system integration of such apps.  You will also most definitely lose the integration with the HTC Sense site.


You could disable the automatic updates from the Play Store.

Then you could control which app should be updated, so one at a time would be opened.

I'm pretty sure that is a bug that will be fixed in a near future, but you could turn off that until that fix come.


How to keep playing online videos when screen is locked?

You can try to use an alternative to the default YouTube app, a popular choice being NewPipe. Although I haven't tested this myself yet, one of the listed features is being able to play videos in the background - even just the sound, without having to waste battery by displaying something you dom't actually care about.


SIM settings icon always on notification bar

That is the SD card icon not the sim card icon.

Perhaps your phone does not recognise the SD card, or the card needs reformatting to be used with the phone.

Or you don't have an SD card inserted.

EDIT

After further research:

That icon is called "stat_notify_sim_toolkit." It is used in just two places, both methods inside com.android.server.MountService:

notifyMediaUnmounted()
notifyMeadiaChecking()

Tracing these methods backwards, I see that the MountService calls them when either:

1) a volume is detected as not mounted
2) it is checking to see if a volume is mounted

Num. 2 should only take a few seconds at longest.

So, "something" is not mounted properly, though I cannot guarantee that is the SIM that is having a problem.

You should remove and re-insert all plugable items (SIM, SD).

Another option recommends:

  settings > applications > manage applications > SIM Toolkit > Select Force Stop button

If this removed the icon 'temporarily' at least it confirms it's a SIM problem and not SD.

EDIT 2

Someone has a recommended solution for NON-ROOTED phone's here:
(I cannot verify this method as I haven't tested it)

SimCard Notification Icon Fix

For rooted phones simply use Titanium Backup and FREEZE the app: Sim Toolkit


You are absolutely correct in stating that the bottleneck is actually not the encryption/decryption but NAND write rate. In fact, the performance observed for read/write of encrypted v/s non-encrypted does not vary significantly owing to high cpu speeds. What you might look at though is the rate at which block level encryption happens for the first time. Once the device is block encrypted, the performance numbers are pretty close.

You can use AndroBench to profile your device pre and post encryption.


Samsung Galaxy Y GT-S5360 file transfer, USB not recognised. No USB options in Settings menu

Some USB cables don't include the data wires as they are only meant for charging. Check if other devices work with this cable, and try another cable.
Also, if the cable is sure to work, take a look at My computer -> right click -> Manage -> Device manager and see if you can find your phone there and try upgrading the driver from there.


As Death Mask Salesman pointed out, you need to be sure that the flashing process itself doesn't overwrite the partition table or the bootloader. But even if the flashing itself doesn't cause an unrecoverable problem, it's still possible for a broken ROM to break the hardware of the phone.

Here's a real-life example from when I worked on ROM integration. One of my colleagues bricked the development hardware we were working on by flashing a ROM where the kernel had had the CPU throttling and thermal cut-out disabled. The development board ran with the CPU at max speed for a couple of minutes and then melted the SoC.

Hardware can very much be damaged by drivers that have been edited or compiled with the wrong options. Overclocking the CPU or GPU (a popular feature in custom ROMs) carries its own risk of overheating - especially if your phone is slightly off-spec. Some kinds of screen backlight can be damaged by running them too hard, which the driver prevents in normal use. Also, some components such as NFC chips and secure elements have anti-tampering "fuses" - if you blow one of those by accident (by writing to the wrong hardware register), it might be irreversible.

This is why rooting or flashing a custom ROM voids the warranty.


Should I keep my Android tablets' power off or leave them on standby mode?

Turning the tablet off at night will most likely extend its life, but this defeats the purpose of having a tablet, since a key feature of the tablet is instant power-on from standby.

Generally, there are two things that drain the battery of any device: the display (when it's turned on), and any wireless communications (3G, WiFi, etc).  If you really want to conserve power at night time, turn off the tablet's WiFi and 3G (airplane mode).

The power draw of the CPU and RAM is negligible compared to the power consumption of the display and wireless comms.  And it's normal to feel a little heat near the CPU, the wireless antenna, and the battery when charging.

I wouldn't worry about battery life, in terms of charge-discharge cycles, unless you plan on keeping your tablet for 20 years. The same goes for the MTBF of the physical components.

The flash memory will not go bad if the tablet is left on. In fact, the tablet probably reads and writes to flash more when booting up than when it's idle.

Generally, I would suggest enjoying the tablet the way it's meant to be used!  If it breaks because of normal use, then it wasn't worth having anyway!


Email widget: How to show inbox instead of subfolder?

Try to scroll down the list to find the inbox.  I think it is listed below, but it seems missing at first. I could not see it at first. But after several tries, I got the list to scroll down to find the inbox.


Installing rom zip through TWRP replaces recovery instead of intalling os

alright I actually figured it out: the trick is to flash the stock ROM using this tool and then fastboot TWRP, install the TWRP and then install Lineage all without formatting the internal storage. I don't know why that works, but it does.


The apps on the internal memory are system apps. They can be deleted only if you have root.


Why does Android 3.x have no market share?

Honeycomb was a tablet-only version of the OS
It was only ever released for a few devices
The source code was never released not released until the source for Ice Cream Sandwich was available, and even then the Android devs noted that 3.x source was not complete
It never had much in the way of market share

See also:

What percentage of devices have each of the Android versions?
Is Android 3.0 Honeycomb only for tablets?


It is possible to forward all audio to the Android smartphone via wi-fi?

One way to do this is to use Airfoil Speakers for Android, which is free, but requires a server component (Airfoil) to be installed on your PC. The free version plays audio fine for 10 minutes and then overlays noise. The license key is $25.


Cannot connect android phone to pc on both Windows and linux

I have ever had experience the same problem as yours. Mine problem is the cheap USB cable which I use to connect my android phone to pc. Once I replace it with a higher quality USB cable this problem was solved.


Have a look at the following
Issue with the Apps that are installed on SD Card after reinserting the SD Card

I was one of the Hard user of Link2SD application. What I observed from this app is that you should not remove your SD card once you have applications on your SD Card. While phone booting some of the applications gets initialized.

If the phone system does not find the SD Card and its applications then it is going to break the link between the SD Card applications and the system.

You might be seeing those applications on Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications
but they won't be accessible.

To answer your question there might be a way but not known to all. You can mail the developer of Link2SD mentioning the issue. They might give you a solution.


Prevent reboot after fastboot -w image.zip?

I believe you're looking for the "--skip-reboot" switch, ex:

fastboot -w update image-marlin-opm1.171019.012.zip --skip-reboot

C:>fastboot --help

commands:
  update <filename>                        Reflash device from update.zip.
                                           Sets the flashed slot as active.
  flashall                                 Flash boot, system, vendor, and --
                                           if found -- recovery. If the device
                                           supports slots, the slot that has
                                           been flashed to is set as active.
                                           Secondary images may be flashed to
                                           an inactive slot.
  flash <partition> [ <filename> ]         Write a file to a flash partition.
  flashing lock                            Locks the device. Prevents flashing.
  flashing unlock                          Unlocks the device. Allows flashing
                                           any partition except
                                           bootloader-related partitions.
  flashing lock_critical                   Prevents flashing bootloader-related
                                           partitions.
  flashing unlock_critical                 Enables flashing bootloader-related
                                           partitions.
  flashing get_unlock_ability              Queries bootloader to see if the
                                           device is unlocked.
  flashing get_unlock_bootloader_nonce     Queries the bootloader to get the
                                           unlock nonce.
  flashing unlock_bootloader <request>     Issue unlock bootloader using request.
  flashing lock_bootloader                 Locks the bootloader to prevent
                                           bootloader version rollback.
  erase <partition>                        Erase a flash partition.
  format[:[<fs type>][:[<size>]] <partition>
                                           Format a flash partition. Can
                                           override the fs type and/or size
                                           the bootloader reports.
  getvar <variable>                        Display a bootloader variable.
  set_active <slot>                        Sets the active slot. If slots are
                                           not supported, this does nothing.
  boot <kernel> [ <ramdisk> [ <second> ] ] Download and boot kernel.
  flash:raw <bootable-partition> <kernel> [ <ramdisk> [ <second> ] ]
                                           Create bootimage and flash it.
  devices [-l]                             List all connected devices [with
                                           device paths].
  continue                                 Continue with autoboot.
  reboot [bootloader|emergency]            Reboot device [into bootloader or emergency mode].
  reboot-bootloader                        Reboot device into bootloader.
  oem <parameter1> ... <parameterN>        Executes oem specific command.
  stage <infile>                           Sends contents of <infile> to stage for
                                           the next command. Supported only on
                                           Android Things devices.
  get_staged <outfile>                     Receives data to <outfile> staged by the
                                           last command. Supported only on Android
                                           Things devices.
  help                                     Show this help message.

options:
  -w                                       Erase userdata and cache (and format
                                           if supported by partition type).
  -u                                       Do not erase partition before
                                           formatting.
  -s <specific device>                     Specify a device. For USB, provide either
                                           a serial number or path to device port.
                                           For ethernet, provide an address in the
                                           form <protocol>:<hostname>[:port] where
                                           <protocol> is either tcp or udp.
  -c <cmdline>                             Override kernel commandline.
  -i <vendor id>                           Specify a custom USB vendor id.
  -b, --base <base_addr>                   Specify a custom kernel base
                                           address (default: 0x10000000).
  --kernel-offset                          Specify a custom kernel offset.
                                           (default: 0x00008000)
  --ramdisk-offset                         Specify a custom ramdisk offset.
                                           (default: 0x01000000)
  --tags-offset                            Specify a custom tags offset.
                                           (default: 0x00000100)
  -n, --page-size <page size>              Specify the nand page size
                                           (default: 2048).
  -S <size>[K|M|G]                         Automatically sparse files greater
                                           than 'size'. 0 to disable.
  --slot <slot>                            Specify slot name to be used if the
                                           device supports slots. All operations
                                           on partitions that support slots will
                                           be done on the slot specified.
                                           'all' can be given to refer to all slots.
                                           'other' can be given to refer to a
                                           non-current slot. If this flag is not
                                           used, slotted partitions will default
                                           to the current active slot.
  -a, --set-active[=<slot>]                Sets the active slot. If no slot is
                                           provided, this will default to the value
                                           given by --slot. If slots are not
                                           supported, this does nothing. This will
                                           run after all non-reboot commands.
  --skip-secondary                         Will not flash secondary slots when
                                           performing a flashall or update. This
                                           will preserve data on other slots.
  --skip-reboot                            Will not reboot the device when
                                           performing commands that normally
                                           trigger a reboot.
  --disable-verity                         Set the disable-verity flag in the
                                           the vbmeta image being flashed.
  --disable-verification                   Set the disable-verification flag in                                           the vbmeta image being flashed.
  --unbuffered                             Do not buffer input or output.
  --version                                Display version.
  -h, --help                               show this message.


Download files from a .txt or .list file containing lines of URLs

I just wrote a shell script to do it:

#!/system/bin/sh
while read url; do
am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -n com.android.chrome/com.google.android.apps.chrome.Main -d $url
done < file.txt

This just reads each line from file.txt, opens the URL using Google Chrome Browser (using com.android.chrome package's MainActivity) and let Google Chrome manage the download.

As @Izzy said, you can also use this script to download using Download Managers, you've to just change the app package name and the corresponding Activity Name in the script.

Edit:
I just figured it out for Advanced Download Manager:

am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -n com.dv.adm/.AEditor -d $url

Note:
The names of application package and Activity Name are subject to change as per the developer's wish. Use it accordingly.


What's the recommended procedure when you need to stop using the SD Card?

If you didn't used your card as internal storage using adoptable storage feature or apps like link2sd than you shouldn't worry about anything, you just pull out card. But if your photos, and some other files are on sd card and you need it on phone than you should transfer it to internal storage via some file manager. Only trouble you can get is that some apps requires sd card and they won't work I think that world of tanks is one of them..


Enabling headset button automatically during calls

I don't know if they will work in this case, but maybe you could have a look at apps like Auto Bluetooth, Bluetooth Auto Connect, Automatic Bluetooth Toggle and many more (just look for somethinig like auto bluetooth in Play Store). Maybe there are some apps that can solve your problem.

As far as I know, there is no real built-in way to enable that button.


How can I diagnose if my it's my phone that has a problem with wifi?

I recommend connecting the phone to a different wifi network. The easiest way is to take it to the home of someone you know who has a well-functioning wifi, and log in. If a connection's successful, stay with it for a while. Use your phone in the same way as you have been, and if everything works as it should, your wifi is likely the source of the problem.

Another option is to test your network using a different phone or other device. You should log your phone out first, to get it out of the equation. If no problems occur with that device, your phone probably needs service.

There are also public places, like restaurants, that have free wifi. You can test your phone in that type of setting. It would be my last choice, though, because large public networks tend to have problems of their own.


Faster way to copy slot B back to slot A after update

I have had to do this while installing Lineage OS on my Moto X4. You can find the "copy partitions" ZIP file on the official installation site here:

Pre-install instructions
In some cases slot b can be unpopulated or contain much older firmware than slot a, leading to various issues including a potential hard-brick. We can ensure none of that will happen by copying the contents of slot a to slot b. This step is NOT optional.
To do this, sideload the copy-partitions-20210323_1922.zip package by doing the following:

Download the copy-partitions-20210323_1922.zip file from here.
Sideload the copy-partitions-20210323_1922.zip package:

On the device, select “Advanced”, “ADB Sideload”, then swipe to begin sideload
On the host machine, sideload the package using: adb sideload copy-partitions-20210323_1922.zip


Cyanogenmod 11 is extremely buggy on the Galaxy Note I (N7000), and this seems to be one more of its bugs. I solved it by reformatting the card to ext4 (reformatting to exfat didn't solve the problem).


LG G4 Showing Wrong 'Recovery Mode' Screen

You would need to choose and click the yes option in your screenshot twice:

If custom recovery is installed, you will boot into it
If you are on stock recovery , your device is wiped , i.e, factory reset (that's the only option )

See XDA source for more details, including installing custom recovery that gives you the option of advanced wipe and clean cache for flashing custom ROM. Without a custom recovery you can't flash custom ROM

Here are instructions for flashing custom recovery

Disclaimer: Never owned LG device, it's Google-fu


It is asked to you to reset your password from the Samsung site! Open a navigator (chrome, Firefox), go to account.samsung.com then reset your password using your actual Gmail email address.


It's still in Settings > Security on my Nexus 5.

This option will only appear if there are apps that register as being able to read notifications. (I have verified this by uninstalling the apps that appeared in the list, and the option was no longer there)


Can't change the language when phone screen locked

Press the space button and hold the English language, and other languages will appear. Choose the language as you like and it will change the language.


Can I control the permissions of pre-installed "system apps" in Android Marshmallow?

When using apps which require certain permissions for the first time, the app asks you to grant the permission, which happens with stock apps too. If it doesn't, then permissions for stock apps can be managed in the App Permissions section of the Settings.


Root to set a battery limit and unroot again?

Setting a charging limit is not persistent. Therefore the call has to be made (with root permissions) at least once after every reboot.

Rooting/unrooting requires at least a reboot. Therefore you can't "temporarily root" your device and set a charging limit.

If your device does not provide something like an intelligent battery charging optimization the only alternative is to use a battery charging notification app.

There are a lot if battery charging notification apps on Play Store. Even if it is a bit old I still use Battery Full Notification  which can be configured to notify at a specific charging level.


Is there a way to control the blink speed of the notification LED on Nexus 4?

There is no way to control the blink speed in the OS itself. However, Light Flow provides a plethora of options for colour, flash rate, etc.
There are probably other equivalent apps too.


Android smartphone battery suddenly drained twice as fast than usual

Next day, seems that all works fine again, apparently due to one of these two simple actions (but I don't know which one, or both, are the real remedy!):

Just after the most recent charge I temporarily (see below) turned the device into Economy mode (using Settings > Battery | Top right menu > Economy mode).
Having looked at several related questions here in AE, I wanted to try clearing the system cache, but inadvertently missed the double press power+volume so I ended merely turning the device off then on, instead of processing clear cache; then I gave up for the moment.

The unexpected (but fortunate!) result was that the battery level remained > 90% during the next 12 hours, so I decided to deactivate the Economy mode and wait to see what happens.

Now, about 24 hours later, the battery level is still 62%, and the chart shows a prevision of 4 days availability before to be empty: four times better than when I noticed the issue, and even twice better than it used before the issue appears!

EDIT: 10 days later, I can confirm that the improvement is real and persists. But there is more.

A very interesting (although unexplained!) point is that not only the battery stopped emptying in less than a day, but now it takes about 4-5 days before reaching 10%: in other words now the battery life cycle is more than 2x better than ever since I got the device!


It's very simple. Connect your phone to your computer, search for the Whatsapp directory (just called Whatsapp), and just copy it to your computer. Everything you wanted is stored in that folder.

When you want to restore your backup, you just copy the folder back to the phone and then install Whatsapp. You will then be given the option to restore backup.


Factory reset on merged storage - Shall I lose my data

According to the article  Reset your Nexus device to factory settings (Nexus 5 and Nexus 9 listed too) by Google,

  By performing a factory data reset, all data will be erased from the device. While any data stored in your Google Account will be restored, all apps and their associated data will be uninstalled. Make sure you back up your data before you do a factory data reset.

The testimony of a Nexus 4 owner, coupled with supporting arguments from other Reddit users confirms that factory data reset will nuke everything.

As per AndroidPIT on How to factory reset the Nexus 5 for better performance

  Since the release of Android 4.4, the ‘factory data reset’ option (accessible in the settings menu) performs the same job as a ‘hard’ reset. All of your user files, apps, etc will be deleted and your device will revert to a factory fresh state.

Their hard reset is not our hard-reset but our factory-reset using recovery mode.

Guide To Perform Hard Reset Android HTC Nexus 9 on guidebelajar blog (has useful screenshots) confirms that factory data reset for Nexus 9 would also remove every user file created or moved into the device.

As per the article How do I reset my phone? by Motorola

if you decide to factory data reset using Settings app, you would be given a choice to erase media (files under /data/media/ such as music, videos, pictures),
should you decide to boot into recovery mode, everything would be deleted

The information is also valid for Moto G (1st Gen, 2nd Gen, 3rd Gen) family of devices.

(That's all for now)


Yes, assuming the device has been rooted and someone has engineered the update to work with your specific device.  How fast that happens depends on how hard the devices manufacturer has made it, and how active the community is.  Its not as simple as just loading windows on a computer.

I asked a similar question a while ago. Check out the answers for more detail: What is involved in installing Android onto a device?


Is there a way to prevent a user from deleting apps on android?

I would suggest installing Smart AppLock (App Protector). You can password protect apps from being uninstalled using this app.


I tried Avast free antivirus and this allowed me to uninstall it.


It depends completely on the model/brand of the mobile phone - more exactly which drivers for e.g. ethernet chips/adapters that is has integrated in its hardware (since such drivers are not installed in software on mobile phones like this, but they are rather included in the hardware from the start or not).

The following is for example a very common USB-to-ethernet adapter, working for quite many mobile phones (just use a USB-micro-B-to-USB-C wire adapter to be able to plug it into a USB-C mobile phone), but as you can see in the compatibility list a bit down on the page, it depends very much on models and brands of the phones if it will work or not for a specific mobile phone:

https://plugable.com/products/usb2-otge100/

(your specific mobile phone model is not currently in that list, but it lists HTC ONE M9 as working, while listing HTC Desire 612 as not working)

There are also USB 3-based Gigabit ethernet adapters out there (including from the brand in my link above), but beware that these work for a lot fewer mobile phone models, due to the much less widespread inclusion of their drivers in current mobile phone hardware.


Netflix refusing to log in, tried all the typical solutions

Netflix has a troubleshooting guide for Android devices.

See if any of them works. If not, share your findings.


How to backup contacts to Google from Samsung devices which don't export vcf file?

Most of the contacts backup apps lack one feature or the other e.g. they don't backup high resolution photo when creating .vcf file. So I prefer CLI method to extract contacts data directly from database file using some scripting, but it requires root. That's how I do scheduled back up of my contacts without Google account.

The following script doesn't save Google sync account information to .vcf file but you can extend the script to include/exclude any data if the concept is perceived.

Original credits to dump-contacts2db.sh.

#!/system/bin/bash -e

# dumps following fields of contacts from Android's sqlite database to vcf:
# Name, Phone Number, Email, Address, Photo, Title, Organization, Notes, Website
# required binaries: sqlite3, base64, xxd (all included with Android)

# contacts directory, database file and photos directory
CONT_PROVIDER='/data/user/0/com.android.providers.contacts'
DB="$CONT_PROVIDER/databases/contacts2.db"
PHOTO_DIR="$CONT_PROVIDER/files/photos"

# vcf file
VCF="/data/media/0/contacts_$(date '+%d-%b-%y_%H-%M-%S').vcf"

# delete backup file if error occurs
trap '[ $? -eq 0 ] || rm -f $VCF' EXIT

GEN_VCARD()
{
    # skip blank contact for first time
    [ -n "$name" ] || return 0

    # count number of contacts
    n=$((n+1))

    vcard="${name}${tel}${adr}${email}${url}${note}${org}${title}${photo}"
    vcard="BEGIN:VCARD"$'\n'"VERSION:3.0"$'\n'"${vcard}""END:VCARD"
    echo "$vcard" >>$VCF
    echo >>$VCF
}

# fetch contacts data from different columns of 'view_entities' table of contacts sqlite database
ROWS="$(
sqlite3 $DB "
SELECT
    view_entities._id, view_entities.mimetype_id, view_entities.data1, view_entities.data2, view_entities.data3,
    view_entities.data4, view_entities.data5, view_entities.data6, quote(view_entities.data15), view_entities.photo_uri
FROM view_entities
WHERE view_entities.deleted = 0
ORDER BY view_entities._id, view_entities.mimetype_id
")"

# to parse rows
IFS=$'\n'

# iterate through contacts data rows
for ROW in $ROWS
do
    # to parse columns from a row
    IFS="|"
    i=0

    # iterate through columns
    for COL in $ROW
    do
        i=$((i+1))

        # data included in each column
        case $i in
            1)  # Contact ID
                id=$COL;;

            2)  # Mime Type ID
                mime_id=$COL;;

            3)  # Phone Number, Website, Email, Notes, Address, Organization
                data=$COL;;

            4)  # Type ID of Phone No. / Email / Address, First Name
                first_name=$COL; type_id=$COL;;

            5)  # Name of Custom Phone No. Type / Email Type / Address Type, Last Name
                last_name=$COL; type=$COL;;

            6)  # Name Prefix, Title
                name_prefix=$COL; tytle=$COL;;

            7)  # Middle Name
                middle_name=$COL;;

            8)  # Name Suffix
                name_suffix=$COL;;

            9)  # Photo thumbnail hex data
                photo_hex=$COL;;

            10) # Full resolution Photo URI
                photo_uri=$COL;;
        esac
    done

    # start new contact when all rows of same contact ID are parsed
    if [ "$prev_id" != "$id" ]
    then
        # echo current vcard prior to resetting variables
        GEN_VCARD

        # init new vcard
        for i in name tel adr email url note photo org title; do eval "$i=''"; done
    fi

    # add current row to current vcard, 'mimetype' determines data type on every row
    case $mime_id in
        1)
            # Email
            case $type_id in
                0)  email_type=X-$type;;
                1)  email_type=HOME;;
                2)  email_type=WORK;;
                3)  email_type="";;
                4)  email_type=CELL;;
                *)  echo "Unknown email type of '$data'" >&2; exit 1;;
            esac

            email=$email'EMAIL;TYPE='$email_type':'$data$'\n';;

        4)
            # Organization, Title
            org='ORG:'$data$'\n'
            title='TITLE:'$tytle$'\n';;
        5)
            # Phone No.
            case $type_id in
                0)  tel_type=X-$type;;
                1)  tel_type=HOME;;
                2)  tel_type=CELL;;
                3)  tel_type=WORK;;
                7)  tel_type=VOICE;;
                12) tel_type=PREF;;
                *)  echo "Unknown phone no. type of '$data'" >&2; exit 1;;
            esac

            tel=$tel'TEL;TYPE='$tel_type':'$data$'\n';;

        7)
            # Name
            name="$name_prefix $first_name $middle_name $last_name $name_suffix"

            # remove leading/trailing spaces
            IFS=' ' read name <<<"$name"

            # always add complete name as First Name
            name="N:;"$name";;;"$'\n'"FN:"$name$'\n';;
        8)
            # Postal Address
            case $type_id in
                0)  adr_type=X-$type;;
                1)  adr_type=HOME;;
                2)  adr_type=WORK;;
                *)  echo "Unknown address type of '$data'" >&2; exit 1;;
            esac

            adr=$adr'ADR;TYPE='$adr_type':;;'$data';;;;'$'\n';;

        10)
            # Photo
            if [ $photo_hex != "NULL" ]
            then
                # look for high-resolution photo instead of thumbnail
                uri=$(echo $photo_uri | sed 's|content://com.android.contacts/display_photo|'"$PHOTO_DIR"'|')
                if [ -f $uri ]
                then
                    # convert binary to base64
                    foto="$(base64 -w 0 $uri)"
                else
                    # remove prefix/suffix from hex output, convert hex to binary to base64
                    foto=$(echo $photo_hex | sed "s/^X'//; s/'$//" | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | xxd -pr | base64 -w 0)
                fi

                photo="PHOTO;ENCODING=BASE64;JPEG:"$foto$'\n'
            fi;;

        12)
            # Note
            note="NOTE:"$data$'\n';;

        14)
            # Website
            url=$url"URL:"$data$'\n';;

        *)  echo "Unknown mime type: '$(sqlite3 $DB "SELECT view_entities.mimetype FROM view_entities WHERE view_entities.mimetype_id = $mime_id" | head -n1)'" >&2; exit 1;;

    esac

    # preserve current ID to compare with next row
    prev_id=$id

    # reset IFS for parent loop to parse rows
    IFS=$'\n'
done

# echo last vcard, loop is done
GEN_VCARD

echo "Backed up $n contacts."

If you prefer GUI or don't have root, you can use some app like Contacts VCF.


The dimensions of my home screen and app drawer have reduced

Try su then wm density reset and wm size reset from ADB shell.

Please remove any lockscreen protection - including swipe - prior to doing this, so that if anything goes wrong you're still past the lockscreen and therefore still has ADB access.


Signing out and exiting (may need to check the task manager to make sure it's closed) should clear the local history.


No "Encrypt Phone" option on Android 7.0 Samsung Galaxy S7

Thanks to Samsung non standard implementation, OP couldn't factory-reset and encrypt before selling. They couldn't :

Check if the device was encrypted
Locate the option for encryption

Steps advised :

Install minimal adb on your laptop
(Is there a minimal installation of ADB?) and check device encryption status (Is there a way for a user to tell if their Android device is encrypted or not?). Alternatively, install Termux on your device and type getprop ro.crypto.state
Encrypt device from Settings → Lock Screen and security → secure start up → require password (Source)
factory-reset after signing out from Google account, else you will have problems with factory reset protection and buyer will not be able to use your device
Confirm device is encrypted. Decrypt device (to remove lock screen PIN ) and sell :)


You need to reduce the RAM size of your emulator. Even if you have enought memory it is recommended to have 1GB or less than 1GB memory. As it automatically allocates 864MB edit your emulator in the AVD manager and reduce the AVD's RAM.

Open AVD Manager and select your device and click "Edit" button.

Then in "Memory Options" find the RAM parameter and set it to 512 or 864 for example. Click OK to save the current configuration and restart your application or AVD.

You also should not provide a RAM size for your emulator which exceeds your HAXM allocated memory. Since you are running the emulator in HAXM mode it will run faster than normal. So you don't have to worry about your devices' RAM.


Read GPS location from command line via SSH

While I found no solution using SSHelper, it is indeed possible using Termux and the Termux-API. No root is required.

After installing the Termux app, one has to install the Termux-packages openssh and termux-api:

$ pkg install openssh
$ pkg install termux-api

I also had to install the Termux-API app from Playstore or F-Droid to get it working.

The sshd config can be edited as desired and can be found at $PREFIX/etc/ssh/sshd_config.

Set a password for SSH authentication (or, alternatively and even better, public key authentication with ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id):

$ passwd

Next, start the ssh server:

$ sshd

To stop the server:

$ pkill sshd

In my case it's on port 8022 per default. One should now have access to the Termux-API commands via ssh. termux-location retrieves GPS data as JSON. For example:

$ ssh u0_a202@192.168.0.7 -p 8022 termux-location
{
   "latitude": xx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
   "longitude": yy.yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,
   "altitude": zzz.zzzzzzzzzzzz,
   "accuracy": 64.31999969482422,
   "vertical_accuracy": 192.0,
   "bearing": 301.9921875,
   "speed": 0.4399999976158142,
   "elapsedMs": 8,
   "provider": "gps"
}

Sources:

https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Remote_Access

https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API

https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux-location


I factory reset my SM-A300FU with TWRP and lost access to Play Store

At first, we can see you do not have a good internet connection, so that might be the problem. Try getting closer to your access point, connect to another one, or use mobile data.

If this does not fix your problem, you could try flashing the original firmware of the SM-A300FU with the latest version of Odin

Disclaimer: Neither me nor the Odin developers are responsible for any damage you could cause to your device using this method.


How do I backup data (SMS/contacts) from a device with a broken screen?

All of the solutions above require USB Debugging to be on. If it is not and you are using Android 4.0 then you can press power and volume down buttons simultaneously to obtain screenshot. If USB is not connected it will be placed somewhere on the SD card (e.g. \Pictures\Screenshots). Then you can connect USB to see the screenshot, then disconnect, navigate further and so on till you navigate yourself to enabling USB Debugging.

When USB Debugging enabled it is all easy as pie.

Provided you have SDK installed you can use ddms.bat from tools folder to get screenshots fast and convenient, adjusting any options you need and even installing apps.
Classic way - adb
I've found Moborobo to be very convenient way to make full backup

I understand this is very late and hardly helps OP, but I hope it helps someone else lurking here for the way to save data, like me.


This feature is not yet available. It will probably be available with the new Pixel 4.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/30/20891465/android-10-pixel-4-live-caption-accessibility-feature


Why apps move from SD card to phone memory after upgrade and how to avoid it?

It is an existing behavior found in Lollipop. (May be an marketing strategy to make you buy expensive internal storage phones)

According to Lollipop the phone internal storage is referred as  SDCard  and removable SDCard as EXTERNALSD.

The apps is designed to be reside in SDCard (to support phone without external storage ) and hence the apps are installed back to internal storage.

This is fixed in Marshmallow were the EXTERNALSD can be configured to be an InternalStorage(SDCard).

So you can wait for an Marshmallow update for the device.


Pandora starts playing, un-prompted, in middle of the night

I just had to uninstall it since I couldn't figure it out. Not only did it start spontaneously, I couldn't even turn it off because it didn't show up in my list of running apps. It was like it was on, but not on. I would have to power down my whole phone to get it to stop. It's not worth the trouble, there are way too many other music apps out there to be dealing with this. No Bluetooth devices connected at the time and also in an area with a very weak WiFi signal.


While listening to music on head set: How to avoid sound playing from phone speakers when push event occurs?

While not 100% the desired solution (I don't know if there's any way to force Android playing sounds to a specific output device), as a work-around it is possible to silence undesired sources.
Background
As you mioght have noticed, Android has multiple "channels" for different kind of sounds, where you can adjust volume independently -- such as alarms, notifications, ringer tone, etc. So this can be used in the way of turning down unwanted types to zero, while keeping the once you want turned up. Of course, doing so manually can be a hazzle (and one might forget to reverse changes afterwards, especially when in a hurry). So let's look for an...
Automation
There are several "automation apps" on the playstore which might handle this, such as Llama - Location Profiles or Tasker. Using the latter, I can for sure say it can handle this in the following way:
Condition: App running (select apps you want to match)
Task: (Volume adjust: chose which ones you want to change to zero here, but keep media volume on)
What will happen now? Once an app from your selection comes to foreground, the rule will match and the volumes will be adjusted accordingly. As soon as none of the apps you chose is running in foreground any longer, volume settings are reverted to what they have been before.


How can I copy GPS coordinates from a marker in Google Maps app?

It's quite easy

When you drop a pin you get coordinates in the search bar that can't be copied as you observed

To do that, on the left bottom you will find More Info. Tapping on that will take you to next screen where you can see the coordinates and long press to copy to clipboard ! You will get a toast confirmation as shown and paste it wherever

Maps version 9.67.1

(Your GPS needs to switched on with the faint blue circle showing up before you drop the pin)


Nexus 5x stuck in download mode after flashing

There was no specific question posted, so I asume you have your phone bricked (unusable) now, and you want to get it out of that state.
Here you find a few alternatives:

Two people reported here that unplugging the cable, then holding the power button down restarts the phone, and it likely brings it back to life. Similarly here... And there are plenty of similar posts around.
You commented that this does not work.
There are further instructions here.
From here:
"If a battery pull doesn't fix the problem, turn your phone off, charge the battery sufficiently (while it's off) and then unplug from the charger. Hold Volume Down and Power to enter HBoot and enter recovery. Once you see the error symbol pull the battery out again and then reinsert the battery and start as normal. This (for some reason) works for a lot of people. If all else fails enter recovery and do a factory reset."