Here we are talking about completely different things. In Android almost everything related to UI is placed in Activity.

  Activities are one of the fundamental building blocks of apps on the Android platform. They serve as the entry point for a user's interaction with an app, and are also central to how a user navigates within an app (as with the Back button) or between apps (as with the Recents button).

When user minimizes the app, the Activity goes into pause state. This does not means system has destroyed the process of app, everything in kept into place and when maximizing the app everything will work correctly. However system may destroy Activity in extreme low memory conditions.
So, what is happening in case of YouTube?
When user minimizes the app, YouTube app pauses the playback and this is performed intentionally and there is nothing wrong with Process Manager.

Can we play YouTube in background?
Yes. There is an Xposed Module called YouTube Background Playback, which requires Xposed Framework installed, of course.

Further, YouTube developers can design the app in such a manner that playback does not pauses when app is minimized, like other music apps does. They can use a Service for playback, which can run in background even if app is minimized.


Is it possible to display nicknames in the contact list?

It is not possible with the default app for contacts. Try Go Contacts which is a rich app on displaying contacts.

Although the feature you are looking for is available on the default contact display of the MIUI ROM. If you have rooted your phone, consider installing MIUI.


Difference between Accelerometer, Orientation sensors used in Android devices

The only "real" sensor there is the accelerometer. The other 3 are actually synthetic; the device uses the data from it's accelerometer to find "up" and down" (relative to the ground) and magnetometer to identify which direction is "north". From those pieces of information it is possible for the device to know it's absolute 3-dimensional orientation relative to the Earth. Your best bet is to read the explanation of the sensors provided for Android developers.


Android ADB has root access but no SU binary

Two different sides of the card deck:

apps need the su binary to be able to use "root powers"
the ADB daemon does not; it gains root access while being started by the system in the corresponding mode

The latter is a simple setting in your device's build.prop file: ro.secure=1 (default on most devices) tells the system to start the daemon in "secure mode", i.e. not with root powers – while ro.secure=0 would turn off that security and run the daemon "as root" – which will be the case with your device.

Knowing that, the claim of being "pre-rooted" is partially true: you can use ADB to "push" the relevant files to your device. Four steps should do it:

adb shell "mount -o remount,rw /system"
adb push su /system/bin/su
adb push superuser.apk /system/app
adb reboot

After that reboot, your device should be "fully rooted" – and "root apps" should find everything they need to work, with you being in control of it via the superuser app.


Unable to update Google App on Nexus 6P running Android N Developer Preview

This is normal behaviour. My Nexus 6P also runs the developer preview and has this version: 5.14.15.NYC.21.arm64.

The reason it won't update is because the actual version code is higher then the one on Google Play. That's because it is targeted to Android N.

I wouldn't recommend you to install the version on Google Play, because it probably will keep crashing because of no Android N support.

In the following screenshot you can see the app has a very high Version Code and the Target SDK is set to 10000. (=Developer preview)

(Click image for larger version)


Why do two smartphones connected to the same WiFi network show different speeds (one displays the link speed as 135 Mbps and other only 72 Mbps)?

Just a quick comparison

Xiaomi Redmi note 3: Credits Gsmarena

Acer Liquid Z630s: credits: Gsmarena

The link speeds you mentioned are usually achieved only under ideal conditions which is not usually the case in situations where there is a lot of wave interference from other devices.

Additionally, the maximum speeds you see may depend on the wireless standard supported by the devices. I this case we see that the Acer Liquid Z630s supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, while Xiaomi Redmi note 3 supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, as well as dual-band.

Brief history of Wireless standards

  802.11b: This was the first commercialized wireless standard. It offers a top speed of 11 Mbps and operates only on the 2.4 GHz
  frequency band. The standard was first available in 1999 and is now
  totally obsolete; 802.11b clients, however, are still supported by
  access points of later Wi-Fi standards.

  802.11a: Similar to 802.11b in terms of age, 802.11a offers a speed cap of 54 Mbps at the expense of much shorter range, and uses
  the 5 GHz band. It's also now obsolete, though it's still supported by
  new access points for backward compatibility.

  802.11g: Introduced in 2003, the 802.11g standard marked the first time wireless networking was called Wi-Fi. The standard offers the top
  speed of 54 Mbps but operates on the 2.4 GHz band, hence permitting
  better range than the 802.11a standard. It's used by many older mobile
  devices, such as the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3Gs . This standard is
  supported by access points of later standards. 802.11g is also
  becoming obsolete.

  802.11n or Wireless-N: Available since 2009, 802.11n has been the most popular Wi-Fi standard, with lots of improvements over the
  previous ones, such as making the range of the 5 GHz band more
  comparable to that of the 2.4 GHz band. The standard operates on both
  2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and started a new era of dual-band routers, which accommodate two access points, one for each band.

  802.11ac: Sometimes referred to as 5G Wi-Fi, this latest Wi-Fi standard operates only on the 5 GHz frequency band and currently
  offers Wi-Fi speeds of up to 2,167 Mbps (or even faster with latest
  chip) when used in the quad-stream (4x4) setup. The standard also
  comes with the 3x3, 2x2, 1x1 setups that cap at 1,300 Mbps, 900 Mbps
  and 450 Mbps, respectively.

Comparison between the bands

The 2.4 GHz band is a pretty crowded place, because it’s used by more than just Wi-Fi. Old cordless phones, garage door openers, baby monitors, and other devices tend to use the 2.4 GHz band. The longer waves used by the 2.4 GHz band are better suited to longer ranges and transmission through walls and solid objects.  However, because so many devices use the 2.4 GHz band, the resulting congestion can cause dropped connections and slower-than-expected speeds.

The 5 GHz band is much less congested, which means you will likely get more stable connections. You’ll also see higher speeds. On the other hand, the shorter waves used by the 5 GHz band makes it less able to penetrate walls and solid objects.

One thing worth mentioning is that a Wi-Fi connection takes place on just one band at a time. If you have a dual-band capable client (e.g your Xiaomi device) with a dual-band router, the two will connect on just one band, likely the 5 Ghz.

As a rule of thumb: The speed of a single network connection (one pair) is determined by the slowest speed of any of the parties involved. That means if you use an 802.11ac router with an 802.11a client, the connection will cap at 54 Mbps. In order to get the top 802.11ac speed, you will need to use a device that's also 802.11ac-capable.

Troubleshooting the issue

Having gained this bit of background, we can see there are factors which may affect the speed of connection :

Since you mention that the Xiaomi device cant use 5Ghz band, its most likely it is restricted to bands which much lower speed using ealier technology.
The congestion in the 2.4Ghz band may actually slower the connection as explained above.
Your actual router may not support the latest band offering such higher speeds which may be the limiting factor, causing your device not to utilize its dual band capabilities.
Also, transmit power, receive sensitivity, and antenna layout varies between the brands and models, and can have impact on overall speed output.
Another thing I suspect (looking at the chart), it seems your Xiaomi device will be restricted to use the a/b/g channels while the Acer device can utilise all the b/g/n which achieve higher speeds as the 5ghz on n channel is un-utilisable. (Note this is my reasoning and may not be conclusive)

Improving speeds?

If your Xiaomi device was made not to utilise the shorter waves which are faster, sadly there is nothing much you can do than buying a device supporting larger wide of wavelengths.
You may salvage a speed increase by opting for a router with latest standards matching the device.

Acknowledgements

What’s the Difference Between 2.4 and 5-Ghz Wi-Fi (and Which Should I Use)?
Home networking: Everything you need to know
WiFi standards explained: what you should know about the new 802.11 ad, ah & af standards
Why does same wifi gives different speed for different devices?


How to turn off camera click sound on Samsung Galaxy S2?

Have a look at SilentCamera.
Alternatively, if your phone's rooted you can delete those files:
/system/media/audio/ui/camera_click.ogg
/system/media/audio/ui/camera_focus.ogg
XDA has a mod for devices with custom firmwares.


How do I get the Android 4 web browser to read arbitrary web pages out loud?

I have no idea how to achieve this natively -- but you could try Talking Clipboard, which can not only read everything you copy to the clipboard -- but also handle web pages directly. It even supports picking the web page's address from Pocket / Read-it-Later, can read from arbitrary text/html files stored locally, and also ePub books.


Android "Internal Storage" used but not reported

The free space difference can be accounted by three relevant factors that may end up giving you some misleading information about the real space available on your internal storage:

The Free space reported

The free space reported at the end of the "Manage Applications" screen is rounded to MB, and it gives you a general free space estimation based on the moment you opened said screen, and it gets updated from time to time (by my tests about every minute).

I've mentioned "rounded" because if you access the "Storage Settings" panel, you'll get a clear picture regarding the free space available, down to KB.
The App Allocation

As already mentioned by t0mm13b, an application may be entirely moved to the SDCard or leave a portion behind, this issue is more related with the development of the application itself and there's no standard rules to follow.

I've performed an exercise with "Angry Birds", and while the download mentioned 20MB, after installed it consumed 24MB. After moving it to the SDCard using the option for this end under "Manage Applications" screen, 1.85MB were left behind on the Internal Storage, plus 4KB of data.
Temporary System Files from other applications or running services

While I was writing this answer, the free space reported varied between 2MB, this tells us that the OS is constantly creating and freeing up space depending on the stuff running.

There may exist other factors that concern the ext4 File System specifications used by Gingerbread , but I don't believe they better account for the 2MB difference.

By the three points mentioned above, while performing an exercise with the application you've mentioned using a device with a stock Gingerbread ROM, I've managed to account for 2MB of difference, just like the space you've mentioned.

Determine Internal and External Space Occupied

Following up on the comments, regarding a way to accurately know how much an app occupies on the device, and being able to view it by external or internal storage, the most accurate application I'm currently using is SanDisk Memory Zone by SanDisk Corp. available for free from Google Play Store.

Open the application
Select the desired storage
Check the details about it


“Screen overlay detected” dialog? Turned off everything, doesn't work

There are three places to check. Mine was caused by the Forest app under Acessibilty.

Non-system Apps

Settings -> Application Manager -> Apps with Overlay Permissions -> Apps with Permissions

System Apps

Same as above, but with Show System Apps turned on

Accessibility Apps

Settings -> Acessibility -> Scroll to the bottom. It lists app names. Just turn them all off for now.


Unable to change time in Android emulator: Alarm driver missing

Yes, but some compiling is needed for the driver. Just not the whole custom image.

You need to set-up a cross compiler.

Go to your .config file and set the kernel driver you want to compile to

  =m

using the menuconfig command

By selecting 'm' for the kernel driver. This means ``module,'' meaning that the system will compile it, but not directly into the kernel, but as a loadable module."

Now you are ready to compile your specific driver using this make command.

make <ARCH= Path to arm-eabi- directory >  <path to the .c file of module>

Once compiled go grab the created .ko file. Copy it to

  /system/lib/modules/

within your custom rooted system image.

Lastly, from the terminal emulator use the insmod  command to inject it in. So it would look like

su

mount -o rw,remount,rw /system

insmod /system/lib/modules/modulefile.ko

That should do it if you encounter any errors read them carefully incase the module is interdependent. Check the Dmesg logs for success or errors.

References:

https://source.android.com/devices/architecture/kernel/modular-kernels#loadable-kernel-modules

http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Kernel-HOWTO-4.html


Why applications doesn't show up in "open with" list?

Android 10 bought about an important change regarding apps accessing data, which is a good thing for privacy. Quoting from answer

Before Android 10, any app could read or write any files to external storage (the place where apps store their data), if they requested the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permissions. Starting from Android 10,apps can only access data created by them and not other app's data or common data like images, downloads etc.

This means access to external storage apps need to access it using Storage Access Framework (SAF) . SAF isn't new, it's been around since Android 5.0 but many developers didn't want to use it since it was not developer-friendly

The messenger app you are using isn't seeking  permissions through SAF, so it can't show "open with" options.

Install Local Storage app to overcome this limitation. From app description

Local Storage uses the new Storage Access Framework to allow other applications to read or write any file in your primary storage and read from secondary external storage devices.


How can I prevent myself from powering down my phone while "Alarmy (Sleep If U Can)" is trying to wake me up?

I saw that they updated Alarmy (Sleep If U Can) to ver.7.3 on the 3rd of january with a new option called Preventing phone switch off. I wounder where they read about this idea;)


Displaying Bluetooth gadget's battery status on the phone

This is possible on Android, at least on Lollipop. The feature is dependent on the Bluetooth headset sending the battery level in the right format.
If the headset supports it, you will see an option in the settings screen for the Bluetooth device. The option will be right above the check-boxes for Call and Media audio. If you don't see this option, then the headset either doesn't send battery data or it doesn't send it in the correct format.
Once the feature is enabled, you will see a fill-able icon on the left side of your notification bar. I've confirmed this using a cheap earbud set from China.


Disable Ability to Change Language with Spacebar

yea I know how you feel I was an apple user but as Andrew.T states just touch where you want the cursor and drag and you will get to where you need to be. hold your finger down for longer you get copy paste etc etc :)


Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0 won't turn on after messing with build.prop

Are you sure you're rooted?
If so, have you tried su -c chmod 0644 /system/build.prop? Or you can also try entering su first and then the chmod command next.

To pull the build.prop: adb pull /sdcard/build.prop
Or maybe you can just replace the one in /system with the one on your sdcard:

su
cp /sdcard/build.prop /system/build.prop
chmod 0644 /system/build.prop


Can you show advanced settings in android by default?

It is how the developer of that Android ROM designs the settings screen. There is no user-end setting to decide how the settings show up and /or to sort them in different ways. As it is a Google instruction to hide less used settings inside the "Advanced" menu, most developers will decide on pushing additional settings behind that menu item. In fact my current phone did that even when there weren't at least 3 items in the advanced menu.

Short answer: It  is not possible to show the settings outside of the "Advanced" sub-menu. There's no way for users to disable the use of Progressive Disclosures.

Root and modification can help in adjusting the priority/place of that setting item. But that's probably too much effort to achieve much lesser.


Why SDK version in recovery is different from SDK version in build.prop

The recovery is a miniature OS in itself, built with separate sources from the OS. For your case, the recovery is built from Lollipop source. This does not affect anything, for this SDK level is not representative of actual OS SDK level and therefore should not be used in any updater-script, etc.


No. It doesn't. They are not backed up like apps,settings and call history. Only on Pixel phones SMSes are backed up.

There is a possibility though - If she had called that person and if backup was enabled on the phone and if she remembers the date and time when she spoke (lot of IFs) then you could take a backup of all important stuff on the phone do a factory reset, restore from Google backup and reconstruct from call history, to get the contact number . It's a slim chance  with so many IFs.

You need to weigh the efforts of backing up data and restoring the phone subject to her remembering when she called and of course backup being enabled on device


One of your apps is controlling your data connection. Find it and remove it. You can try clearing app cash. And last you can try factory reset.


I have a galaxy Note 2. I opened a new message and at the top of the screen is a keyboard symbol. I pulled down the screen to then be able to "choose input method" which I tapped on. I then tapped "set up input methods" and tapped the settings icon next to "Samsung keyboard" which then allowed me to de-select predictive text. I've now been able to customise my settings a little.


System apps location on Android Jelly Bean

To my knowledge, before Kitkat .apk files of system apps all went to /system/app. Kitkat added the /system/priv-app directory. The structure having an additional directory level came later (LP or MM).

References:

AOSP Privileged vs System app
What's the difference of /system/app/ and /system/priv-app
Android 5.0/Lollipop: Force rescan of /system/priv-app


Google Latitude and multiple devices - How to prevent location jumping?

There's an app called ALTitude that does allow you to configure those settings per installation (= per device in your case).

EDIT: Purpose of the app - updating your Latitude status/location base on more fine grained settings (update interval, location source).

ALTitude on Android Market

XDA Thread

I'd recommend to configure Latitude to "manual location" and ALTitude to automatic update, but first read through the thread to check if this tool does the trick for you.


unrecognized message, now all locked out

That sounds similar to cryptolocker, without the paying to release your device. Try booting in safe mode(look up how, it varies) and taking off what your child used.


How to avoid disabling internet and GPS?

If you have root access or adb on that device you could use an device automation tool like MacroDroid and make it re-enable the gps and 4g if it is turned off
Triggers would be gps disabled and mobile service status -> diabled
and Actions would be location mode -> high accuracy and mobile data -> on
If you also want to lock wifi then add trigger: wifi state changed -> disabled and action wifi configure -> turn on
In end enable password protection in the settings to prevent anyone to disable the macro


Why does "tar -czh" produce a corrupt archive but "tar -ch | gzip" work fine?

exec-out mixed up stdout and stderr
in 1st example the tar stderr message "removing leading '/' from member names" is redirected into target file
in 2nd example only tar stdout is piped to gzip
to avoid broken archive silent stderr see linked duplicate


Trying to update WhatsApp but having insufficient storage

First, uninstall WhatsApp, then go to the WhatsApp for Android's official website and install the latest version via the APK.
That should successfully help you update to the latest version of WhatsApp (old chats will be detected after you launch after the reinstall).


Does Android come with a built-in plain text editor?

No AFAICT, unless it it is preinstalled by the device manufacturer, for example some devices like Xiaomi, Huawei come with a preinstalled document editor (WPS), which not allows you to view but to edit text files as well.

As suggested above, stock android only comes with with text viewer , not editor, in any case if you need to install it, please see Izzy's list of suggested text editors


How do I force the 'showing' of an onscreen keyboard (soft-keyboard) when already 'paired' with a bluetooth keyboard?

You can use Secure Settings Hardware Keyboard Action to toggle the hardware keyboard. Interestingly, you can still use the hardware keyboard, but the on-screen keyboard still appears.

This is especially useful when you connect a mouse (and no keyboard) and it causes the keyboard to go into hardware keyboard mode.

The simplest way to do this is to create a shortcut on your homescreen. Select the Secure Settings shortcut/widget. Then it will prompt you to select the action. Select Actions > Hardware Keyboard. Then it brings you to a screen with three options: On, Off, Toggle.

On means you go into hardware keyboard mode and no on-screen keyboard will appear. Note, this only works if you actually have physical keyboard connected. It will simply give you an error toast if you don't.

Off means turn off hardware keyboard mode, and an on-screen keyboard will appear when you select text boxes.

Toggle means it will switch from whichever hardware keyboard mode it's currently on.

There are other ways to hook up to Secure Settings Hardware Keyboard Action, which you can learn about in the documentation, and using your imagination and research.


Tell HTC EVO browser to always "select all" when moving to URL field

My best guess is that this behaviour is not configurable and maybe solely HTC's fault (you most problably had a look at every option of your browser already before asking here).

Some options that come to mind:

You might want to try a different browser than the EVO's default (Dolphin, Opera, Firefox)
Root, unlock and install CyanogenMod or something different (alas, not an option for many due to difficulty, risk and warranty problems)


You shouldn't worry about ART or Dalvik since you have no control over which one they are using. Assume they are using the slower one and go from there.

ART is far off anyway and even after its out as the default for android it will still probably be years before its the biggest chunk of the market. And ART is still in beta so who knows how good or bad it will be after they optimize/fix all bugs, etc. Do NOT worry about ART  right now unless it causes your app to crash.

Scala can be slower but if it decreases your overall development time then just use it. Scala's compiler is still evolving and the possible gap in equivalent code is shrinking.


Root access via adb only, not any Android applications

You must go in Settings -> Developer Options and there must be an option called "Root Access". Set it to ADB + Apps.


please help me; my galaxy s duos2 keeps restarting

If you have a stock ROM backup, then flash it with odin. Doing this will wipe all your data. But it is worth a try.
You will get installation procedures from xda forum


How to ensure that the digitizer is faulty?

Open your settings menu and go all the way to the bottom, open Developer Options.

In the Input section, find the options called Pointer Location, and check it.

This is a feature for developers that shows the raw data from the digitizer.

Move your fingers around on the screen, and watch what you see, if your finger seems to disappear from the screen, Android is not seeing any data about it, it is a problem with your digitizer.


Will a license check fail if I am in a foreign country?

Usually no - however, it's my opinion that this is a rather vague question that can't be accurately answered without knowing the app developer's policy or whether the app is locked to a particular region.


Why does my phone automatically power off when there is still 2% battery?

Prowler answers your first question well: "Why does this happen" -> Prevents data corruption.

To answer your question "How can this behavior be overridden?"

You can try:

setprop status.battery.level 50 from a shell terminal.

Note that bypassing the shutdown is 10x more risky than a battery pull. However, in a true emergency, benefit > risk.

Why it's more risky:

Battery pull = power loss to logic board, only unsaved data or partial writes / data-locks can cause corruption.

Dry-discharging battery = undervolting entire logic board, 3.0 volts instead of 3.7 volts can be like running your car on 8.5 volts instead of 12: Canbus stops responding, voltage leaks into serial connections, capacitors explode, etc. The same can happen inside your phone, except it's that RAM doesn't hold its correct value, processor misinterprets, accidentally writes the wrong NAND cells, etc, more so after hooking the phone w/ trashed battery up to a charger. The voltage difference between live power and undervolt battery can cause the same leakage onto the I2C bus. (Ever use a car charger with aux cord hooked up to the stereo... The alternator feedback is considered a "safe" amount of leakage onto the I2C bus.)


Can cellular network providers detect the phone model/make when their sim is activated?

The amount of information your carrier knows about you can be scary What Your Wireless Carrier Knows About You covers this in  detail. To answer your question specifically, quoting from this:

In general terms, wireless operators capture three main kinds of information: information about the devices connected to the network, metadata about the packets of data that run through the network, and information about the content contained in the packets being downloaded or uploaded by the subscriber.

If they (carriers) wanted to, these engineers (network engineers ) could detect a single device entering a specific cell and identify the type of device it is, its operating system (if it’s a smartphone, a tablet, or a laptop USB modem), its IP address, its bandwidth consumption, and even the apps it is running.

Wireless operators need to know about the devices on their network so that they can make assumptions about the sorts of content their customers are using and the amount of bandwidth they’ll need. For example, if the carrier knows that the smartphones it has detected typically have large screens, it can conclude that those devices will probably be consuming a relatively large amount of streaming video content, which requires a lot of bandwidth.

Similarly, carriers can detect smaller, less expensive phones that don’t run a real OS but do sport a full keyboard. The operator can deduce that these devices are specialized for social networking, which doesn't demand a lot of bandwidth but does require a lot of signaling in the network.

This post What does your mobile carrier know about you? quotes a 2010 justice department memo and provides a link to retention period of such information by various carriers in USA

As revealed in the memo, mobile carriers capture a variety of data about you, including call detail records (who you called and when), text message details (who you texted and when), text message content, bill copies, payment history, and even which cell towers you use. Another category, called Subscriber Information, presumably tracks your name and all necessary contact details.

https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/71795/is-my-phone-carrier-monitoring-my-traffic provides related information


Okay, there were actually three separate issues here.

TWRP 2.8.6.0 is broken for my Nexus 4 (5.1.0)

Regarding the following error message:

could not mount data and unable to find crypto footer

The current Team Win Recovery Project (2.8.6.0) has a regression for some encrypted Lollipop devices.

Solution: revert to TWRP 2.8.5.2, which is able to decrypt the /data partition properly.

TWRP does not provide a working shell for some binaries

Regarding the following error message:

CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE: cannot locate symbol "__FD_SET_chk" referenced by "/system/bin/vdc"...

TWRP doesn't seem to set up the shell properly for vdc.

Solution: Switching to ClockworkMod Recovery provides a working environment for the vdc binary.

Lollipop ignores changepw

The command su -c vdc cryptfs changepw newpass had no effect on my device after upgrading to Lollipop (it had worked perfectly on KitKat), and the PIN of the device was still the encryption password.

I hope this helps someone in the future!


How do I easily bookmark sites on delicious.com?

Install DeliciousDroid, it will add an entry in the share menu of your browser where you can bookmark the current page and define tags for it and so on.

Edit: I tried some different tools (don't remember wich, sorry) some time ago and this one was the best in my opinion. Also I defined a tag called mobile-home and pointed my browser's homepage to the list of so-tagged bookmarks.


How to find local IP when connected to VPN?

Android's VPN uses TUN interface on OSI Layer 3. So you can find what IP is assigned to that interface using Android's built-in command ip. From any terminal app or adb shell:

~$ ip addr | awk '/inet.*tun/ {print $2}'


Why is suggested to OEM unlock when LinageOS can be installed without it

The official way does not always work, if your phone and flashing are ok, don't touch them is the idea.
Official way to unlock a bootloader, its different for different phones, but it I post a general overview:

Back Up Anything You Want to Keep
Use Android SDK or the light verision of the SDK called platform tools and the IMEI of your phone to get an unlock key for the bootloder. The unlock key or the procedure to get it can be found on your manufacturer's site.
Go to fastboot mode and enter:
fastboot oem unlock UNLOCK_KEY

Read more here:
This is for Sony devices.
Unlocking a locked bootloader will wipe all user data (but not the ROM) from the device. This is a security mechanism, so you can't get at the data on a phone by installing your own ROM on it.
Its locked for security reasons, because it controls all the hardware, independantly from the operating system.
You can read more about bootloaders here.


Not able to install google apps after following the suggested steps

The solution that seemed to work, at last, was the following. I connected the tablet with USB into my PC. Then downloaded the signed package of gapps for my Android version, from http://Goo.im and moved it in the same dir as the adb executable.

After that, I booted the tablet in recovery mode, chose the option "Update from ADB", and run the command "adb sideload gapps.zip", where gapps.zip is the filename downloaded earlier. Everything run good and I can now see, the necessary services.


How to fix "Cant play this video" error in Camera MX Live Shots after upgrade?

After using exiftool I went one level deeper and just opened one of the .jpg files with a hex editor.  Turns out the path to the 'live shot' is indeed embedded in the .jpg file, just not as EXIF data (or at least not standard EXIF data that exiftool can read).  I put my SD card into my linux laptop and tried using the following sed command to fix them:

sed -i 's/\/storage\/extSdCard\/Android\/media\/com\.magix\.camera_mx\/Camera MX (SD)\/\.LiveShot/\/storage\/3F25-4093\/Android\/media\/com\.magix\.camera_mx\/Camera MX (SD)\/\.LiveShot/g' *.jpg

This worked for some of the files, but others (with even older paths such as /storage/emulated/0) simply became corrupt afterward.  If anyone knows of a better fix I'd love to hear it.


How can see Google Now flights cards on my LG G2?

If you've already activated the Fligth's card, then you only have to do a simple search on google.
You WON'T have a card that let's you search for flights. Instead you'll have a card that remembers you of all the flights you searched.
For example: if I search a flight with Emirates that goes from Milan to Dubai, then Google Now will keep track of all the flight's info. After I make the search and close the browser, in Google Now there'll be a card that tells me if there are delays, the airport of departure and the airport of arrival and all the other info.
Long story short: there ISN'T a Flights SEARCH card in Google Now; there is a Flights Card and that's different ;)

P.S.: if my answer helped you could you accept it? :)


mp3 files from samsung s6 edge to whatsapp

In general, a lot of texting services, including whatsapp, have limits on the filesize of the files that you can send. These kinds of limits are also present in emailing attachments. The only way I can think to get around it is to split it into less than 16 minute chunks. Perhaps you might be able to compress it, but I am not sure if the 16 minutes will increase.


In AnkiDroid preferences, there is a "Reset Languages" item:

  Reset language assignments (for text to speech and dictionaries) for all decks. Reset specific deck assignments on deck picker


If the launcher icon is not visible in the application drawer, go to System Settings > Apps > Running select the launcher.

From there you can perform your fix.


What are the differences between android 2.1 and android 2.2

This article explains the differences nicely, and this one claims an incredible increase in speed. If you're a visual learner, youtube is always your best bet. But the general consensus is mainly centered around speed. Other perks include tethering, installation of apps to the SD card, and updated flash.


Oneplus 2 Stuck in boot animation after root

According to this thread on the OnePlus forum:
To return to full stock after a soft brick:

Download the Fastboot images here (,it restores to OOS 2.1.1)
Extract the zip file to anywhere you'd like
Boot the phone in Fastboot mode (Volume up + power button)
Connect the phone to the PC
Open the unzipped folder and run the file with the .bat extension (Windows) or a file with name flash-all

The above method doesn't clear the data partition, to clear it:

Download the userdata.img from here amd flash it using fastboot flash userdata userdata_64.img

And you need a working ADB/Fastboot environment.


Transfer Frozen: Free Fall progress between devices

In SD card android->data folder copy the folder name of the game and paste it in the new device


Can I make a flashable zip executing commands?

Find an empty flashable package somewhere; edit META-INF/com/google/android/updater-script and add delete_recursive("/path/to/your/directory"); to remove the directory in question.

(On second thought, is it really necessary to make a flashable zip for this single purpose? If your phone has TWRP recovery available, why not just use its built-in file manager?)


Not Rooted Huawei Device, Android 4.4.4, Locked Out. USB debugging not enabled One is huawei. h60 -L01 Second is CHM-U01

Huawei has locked bootloader by default, no chance to boot custom recovery from fastboot = no way to break in and reset locksettings.db
(you can check the unlock status with fastboot oem device-info)

If you are the owner of the bonded google account and phone, you can connect it over wifi, or insert a SIM card (with disabled PIN) to accomplish mobile data connection. if you recently changed your Google account password, you need to wait at least 72 hours.

Unlock your Kitkat Android device

After you've tried to unlock your device multiple times, you'll see "Forgot pattern."
Tap Forgot pattern.
Enter the Google Account username and password
Reset your screen lock

Unlock your Android device using Android Device Manager (ADM)

On a computer, visit: google.com/android/devicemanager
Sign in using your Google login details
In the ADM interface, select the device
Select ‘Lock’
In the appearing window, enter a temporary password. You don’t have to enter a recovery message.
Now click ‘Lock’ again.
If it was successful, you should see a confirmation below the box with the buttons Ring, Lock and Erase.
On your phone you should now see a password field in which you should enter the temporary password. This should unlock your phone.
Now, before you go on with your life, go to your phone’s lock screen settings and disable the temporary password.

Android system recovery <3e> userdata_20160823_100259.backup

If your device has slot for external MicroSD Card or USB-OTG Support, is not encrypted, and has "backup user data" option enabled by default, you can create a backup from stock recovery. This backup files can be extracted with linux tools (google: "bckp2win")

Brute forcing a 4-digit PIN

If you are not the owner of the google account, the only way will be to bruteforce a 4 digit PIN with a Hak5 USB Rubber Ducky or Teensy microcontroller via USB-OTG Adapter. if it is a longer PIN or password, no chance!


How to forbid my location only for Viber on my Android phone?

Unfortunately, when you get an android phone out of the box, no, there is no way to do that.

However, if you're willing to root your phone, then you can use apps like "Apps Ops Starter" which essentially launch the hidden settings for you to use which would allow you to find Viber (or any other app) and see its permissions and deny them one by one.


Recovering Erased Audio on Android cellphone

Try taking your sd card out and using recovery software like recuva on your PC... You may also take it to a professional data recovery store, but they typically charge a lot. Data recovery apps for android also exist but I cannot vouch for any... Spend your money carefully!

[EDIT] POSSIBLE SOLUTION(S):

SOLUTION ONE:

Download ES file explorer (free) on your android phone from Google Play. Search both the internal memory and SD card for the missing files... (Tip: There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube)

SOLUTION TWO:

Take your SD Card out and connect it to your computer with a SD card reader.
Use a data recovery software:

Windows:

Testdisk (FREE) [http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download ]
Recuva (PAID/FREE) [https://www.piriform.com/recuva ]
GetDataBack (PAID/FREE) [https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm ]

SOLUTION THREE:

Use data recovery apps on your phone:

Disk Digger (PAID/FREE) [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.defianttech.diskdigger ]

SOLUTION FOUR:

Take your phone to a Data Recovery Store (CAN BE EXPENSIVE!)


switch phone to data when wifi signal is weak

I am afraid that's not possible. When the data is on and when the device gets connected to Internet via WiFi, the data is stopped.

In Tasker, the WiFi near state has "Min. Activate Signal Level" with which you may monitor a WiFi for detecting the level. But if it falls below a point you cannot switch it off to connect to data.


Removing a contact from "Frequently contacted" on Hangout (formerly Google Talk) app

Long press on the contacts name when using hangouts from your phone. you will then have the option to hide the contact.  The contact will then no longer show up in your frequently contacted list. If it is a contact that you don't want in your hangouts list at all, go to your gmail account and delete them that way.


Install file manager

Locate folder where backed up photos are

Put a .nomedia file in that folder

(A .nomedia file is an empty file with no code, which hides media in that folder. To get it you can copy paste it from elsewhere, like if you have WhatsApp, you can browse to it's media in file manager, go to pictures or videos, then to sent, and it should be there, or just do a search in your file manager for .nomedia, or you can make the file yourself)

Go to settings, apps, media storage, and clear it's data.

Restart your phone, go to gallery.

You might need to wait a bit for photos and videos to show up, because you cleared media storage, but the photos in the folder with the .nomedia file won't show up.


Accidentally deleted superuser from CyanogenMod installation. How can I re-install superuser again?

Because you still have a working CWM, you can just reflash it.

There are 2 competing implementations:

SuperSU from Chainfire
Superuser from ChainsDD

Most rooting utilities install the latter, so you're safe to also flash this.


Many problem on Mega 6.3 GT-i9205 after rooting

From the thread you linked to (highlighting my own):

  The root via vcore doesn't work any more. Please get it looked up. Lots of people online are getting this problem as they flash the root. Problems are all of the internal storage are gone, left with 8gb and all apps in storage wont work.

Which seems to be the issue you are having. This appears to be that this root method does not work with the newer, Knox enabled bootloaders.

This method is the new way to root the device.

Right now, your best bet is to go to SamMobile and get the stock ROM for your device, restore back to stock VIA Odin, and try re-rooting, once you confirm your WiFi is working and your internal storage is back to normal.

It's always worth reading into a thread on XDA before attempting anything, to get a feel for what issues people might be having, and if there are any work arounds. I always put a big "READ, READ, READ" in my advice for rooting, as it can (and indeed does) go wrong and is not a nice feeling. Restoring to stock appears to work, and is mentioned in the thread you provided. Good luck fixing it and we'll be here to help if you need it.


Is it reliable to save some app files in /storage/emulated/0/?

Is it always fully reliable to save some app internal files at /storage/emulated/0/path/to/app?

No. External shared storage isn't reliable, as documented under getExternalFilesDir() and other related documentation, because of multiple possible reasons:

User or any other app with full storage access can read, modify or delete the files.
App's private directories in external storage get deleted when the app is uninstalled.
User might be using physically external SD card as the only primary shared external storage. So the data is lost when the card is removed.

Better use internal storage (getFilesDir() and sisters) for data security and reliability. For more details:

Android's Storage Journey
Where Android apps store data?
What is /storage/emulated/0/?


How do i check my Wireless earbuds Battery?

I have found the answer to this question, As User @Robert commented on my post, And i installed BatOn And now the battery usage shows up. Thank you!.


You should consider the R/W together. Both make differences. However, for the apps, they usually do read and pull the files into memory (RAM) and make use. Write will only be done where something changes or the app's job is to modify the files. Else there will be very less write happening during app's operations. The write will be more used when installing new apps to the SD card.

So, for most apps, the read will make more difference. Generally, an SD card with higher write speed will also have higher read speeds. In the end, the memory will still be slower than the inbuilt EMMC/UFS in most of the phones. So, some performance drop should still happen.


Huawei mate 20 lite bootloader-unlock doesn't work due to FRP

have you enabled allow OEM bootloader unlocking in settings, it is in dev options
Here's some steps:
(optional, to enable dev options):
settings >> about phone >> (tap build no. 7 times)
enable oem unlocking:
settings >> system >> advanced >> developer options >> allow oem unlocking(turn it on)
Screenshot:

(mine is disabled as I have a unlocked bootloader)


adb backup hangs and never finishes (Linux)

Settings → Apps → Titanium Backup → Force Stop may allow the ADB backup to continue and finish.


These aren't bugs or policies, Google simply hasn't implemented all of the Google Calendar web features in the Android Calendar app.  You can browse Android Calendar feature requests and bugs, as well as request and report them, here: http://code.google.com/p/android-calendar/issues/list


Reading the very first line on Google Play for Shark Reader

  Application for reading pcap files.

Which implies the OP needs some tool to generate pcap files..also, reading this also on Google Play for Shark for root

  Traffic sniffer, works on 3G and WiFi (works on FroYo tethered mode too). To open dump use WireShark or similar software, for preview dump
  on phone use Shark Reader. Based on tcpdump. Please leave
  comments/send e-mail if you have any problems/suggestions.

Bolded sentence is my emphasis, so it seems a bit confusing and mis-leading. From the description on the Play Store, it is saying that using WireShark is a pre-requisite for Shark Reader to work..but cannot find the actual app called the same.

There is one available for desktop PC's to allow sniffing of ethernet traffic, but for Android, remains to be seen.

Also, for what its worth, sniffing traffic on 3G is questionable as that's dependent on if the radio base-band allows promiscuous mode, that's a given in order to be able to sniff traffic, even though its unlikely, due to proprietary nature of radio firmware..)

Wifi on the other hand, is extremely dependent of the capability of sniffing also, not all of them have the capability to go into promiscuous mode, again mileage will vary depending on the Wifi chipset/driver and kernel regardless if rooted.


Samsung galaxy tab 3 lite connection to pc problem

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

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

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


Use AVD Manager without Starting Android Studio

You can navigate to the directory where you have installed SDK and launch "AVD Manager.exe"


On some samsung devices (rather newer, e.g. Galaxy A3), there is no need for root access to reboot into recovery mode.

Enable the Developer options on your device (Settings > About device > pushing several times "Build number") and switch on the USB debugging.

You need to install adb http://lifehacker.com/the-easiest-way-to-install-androids-adb-and-fastboot-to-1586992378/ and to run the following command:

adb shell reboot recovery

This should reboot your device into recovery mode without root.


The Play Store enabled emulator images are x86 images so they can be executed faster on an Intel/AMD CPU. Physical smartphones at the moment all use ARM CPUs (armv8a 64 bit to be precise).
If an app uses CPU specific native libraries it needs to include one version them for each CPU architecture it plans to support. Therefore if the app you want to install in the emulator only has native libraries for ARM then it can not be executed on an x86 emulator and thus will not be shown in Play Store.
Additionally when publishing an app in Play Store one can very flexible exclude or include certain device type(s).
As your app can be installed via side loading it seems to at least contain something for the x86 platform but detecting an emulator in an app and then let the app crash is simple. Besides that t!here are a lot of ways to detect an emulator. If an app developer does not want an app to be executed on an emulator it can get pretty hard and requires reverse engineering and code manipulation skills and many hours to make it run.
Especially financial apps disallow execution on an emulator as this is a common way for hackers to investigate such an app for attacking the bank, the app and their customers. Some banking apps even refuse to work on custom ROMs or rooted devices.


does charging the phone with other chargers affect mobile or battery?

Your phone can be affected by the charger if the wattage and/or the voltage for the phone is not the same for charger. It could also be a hardware issue like: a battery, certain apps, bad part, etc...


What happens after Unbricking a Oneplus 3

Since you're able to connect to bootloader, you need to flah the stock recovery then flash the stock firmware. This tutorial explains it better.

Go here to get Minimal ADB and Fastboot. Open it and run commands. You must CD to the folder containing the files to be flashed. Exemple: CD C:\Downloads\my_stock_firmware
and tape commands from there.


Shell script to reboot into recovery and install zip

I ended up looking at Cyanongenmod's source code and figured out how they did it.

Here is my working .sh script:

echo 'boot-recovery ' > /cache/recovery/command
echo '--update_package=/sdcard/update.zip' >> /cache/recovery/command
reboot recovery

Update:

with android JellyBean [4.1] and later versions, the sdcard data is located now at /sdcard/0, So the second command must be:

echo '--update_package=/sdcard/0/update.zip' >> /cache/recovery/command


Google Calendar sync back from Android phone?

Download iCal Import Export 2.2 from the play store and you can backup the calendar on your phone. Move the file to your pc and follow the instructions here: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=en to upload to your Google calendar online.

Or maybe you can just turn sync on? That I don't know. But create the backup first if you try it!

Good luck


How to select a power supply for a given Android device

I'm not aware of any way to find out the maximum current the device will use except checking the charger that came with the device and assuming that the manufacturer suppied the most efficient charger suitable.

The maximum current for USB connection is 5A, but usually the range used by phone/tablet chargers is between 0.5A and 2A.

Note that the amperage of the charger only tells what is the maximum current that the charger can supply, so it's safe to plug a 2A charger to a device capable of 0.5A current.


It seems when iphone owners deactvate imessage you can send and receive sms to/from them without problems. It seems lollipop cannot read sms because it seems an imessage and not a sms. A clear bug.


How to force dark mode on Firefox for Android?

Try Dark Background and Light Text add-on.
This is how it looks like using the mode (it's night time for me as I write). By toggling the Aa icon on the address bar, you can enable or disable it, select the global or select sites you want affected as also modify the default scheme


Not every device has this feature. I tested on my samsung-galaxy-s-3, and it doesn't have this option either, but the nexus-7 and nexus-10 do. I'm not sure whether the feature was only added in 4.2-jelly-bean, or if it's just missing from Samsung ROMs. Either way, you probably want a third-party text expander app as others have suggested.


What does the option "Allow mock locations" represent?

Fake GPS data.  Presumably this is for testing apps that use GPS, so you don't actually have to travel all over the world :P

Apps such as Location Spoofer take advantage of this.  You could probably fake Foursquare checkins or something using it, but they do check to make sure your checkins are "realistic" so you probably don't want to check in to London UK and Melbourne AU within the same hour.


Nexus 5x - No one can hear me on the phone

I had this same issue with my HTC One. It turned out that the background noise cancellation software build into the phone canceled out too much (thus cancelling out my voice). This especially happened when it was windy outside.

That being said, I haven't heard of this being an issue with the Nexus 5x. I would start with contacting Google support.


The "LINEスタンプ" account is automatically added (with your permission nor knowledge) to your friends (in the "Official accounts" tab) when you download any stamp collection:

Long-press it and select "block":

Then delete the conversation. It should not reappear this time.


I know that that there is a way to connect your mobile phone to your PC via USB to use internet, but I don't know a way like Wi-fi, there are some apps that probably can do it but I think you have to pay. Look at this link and say me if I helped you


How do I get the camera of the Lenovo ThinkPad to stop making a sound when I take a picture?

You're root, you could replace the sound files with silent clips. This is what I've found:

find /system -name '*ogg' | grep cam
/system/media/audio/ui/camera_click.ogg
/system/media/audio/ui/camera_focus.ogg

Audacity is a free and open editor to create an empty or  silent sample and export it as an ogg file.

EDIT: According to this question/answer you can also delete or rename the camera_click.ogg file. Plus: Before you do, you need to

mount -oremount,rw /system
[remove/edit the above ogg files]
mount -oremount,ro /system


Has Android 6 Update Caused PC Connection Issues for Galaxy Note 4?

Have you changed the USB settings on the phone from just charging to mtp?

Pull down the notification bar while it is plugged in and select the USB notification followed by Mtp which is just file transfer.

Some info on that:
http://m.androidcentral.com/inside-marshmallow-usb-connection-options


You can do this with the Secure Settings plugin. Parts of it require root, so I'm not sure whether this will work if you're un-rooted. It works perfectly for me, but I'm rooted.


Picture folder disappeared from gallery on Huawei Ascend G6

What the problem is, is probably this:
Your clean master probably enlisted your 500 pics as worthy of cleaning, thus deleted them all in the process. Its just a thought, but its likely to happen.

I use ES Explorer to clean stuff on my phone, and I verify every single thing it plans to delete everytime I'm about to clean. You never know, it might include your wheat among the weeds!

Another possibility is what happens when the storage is almost full. Happened to me once, and witness a friend face same trouble. Storage was almost full, phone restarted, and everything personal info was gone, from pictures to videos to everything I put on. Perhaps one of those nightmares, but only happening to images.


How can I completely remove all files from the device

In addition to that, go to Settings > Storage  and touch  Erase xxx Storage for all the types of storage. That should wipe all your stored files.


How do I group emails with same subject and sender in the Outlook app on Android?

In the settings, turn on "Organize mail by thread" to ensure responses sent back and forth on the same thread are grouped together.

From what I can tell, there is no setting in the Outlook Android app that will group multiple independent emails with the same sender / subject.


Does your sdcard have multiple partitions?

Most recoveries have built-in repair function to scan corruptions in sdcards which prevents your phone from booting properly, it is under Mount -> Repair if you are using CWM.

If it did not help, try removing your sdcard temporarily to check if it boots up properly. If it successfully boots then you need to reformat your sdcard, make sure to backup first.


AppMgrIII doesn't uninstall android bloatware - only disable

after looking at KINGOROOT more carefully I realized it has built in tools to remove the android apps. So I uninstalled this program b/c it was not necessary.


Use an Android tablet as a Wacom drawing tablet for a Mac?

You can do so using the Android remote control software scrcpy:
If you enable Development option on your Android device and afterwards enable the "Android Debug Bridge" option you can connect your Android device to your computer via USB and then remote control the Android device and see it's screen on your computer using a software like scrcpy (install it on MacOS via brew install scrcpy).
Then in a Zoom call you can share your computer screen which shows the Android screen via scrcpy.


there is a built-in feature that limits apps from background processing, where is it?

This is an option under Developer Options. To enable it:

Settings
About Device (may be under More tab)
Tap the Build Number 7 times

Once enabled, you can find Developer Options in Settings. If you scroll down near the bottom there should be an option for Limit Background Processes. Usually, there is no limit, but this might be your answer.


Go to :

  /data/misc/keystore/user_0

And find the file's with similar name like below :

USRCERT_fobar_WPA_EAPIEEE8021X_TLS_N


why does my mic not work with headphones plugged in I can hear they cannot hear me

This gogorapid link provides some things to try. Check if the issue is fixed after each of these.

Remove the battery from your phone for 30 seconds and then re-insert it before powering the device back on.
Use an app such as Smart Voice Recorder to record a short audio clip. Then replay the clip. If you can hear the sound clearly, it means that the microphone is working fine.
Factory reset your device but be aware that this will wipe all user data such as your contacts, photos, app data, etc. Make sure you backup first.
If the problem persists, it means that the microphone is damaged. You should take your device to a repair shop to get it fixed or replaced.


I have to delete my deleted call logs permanently

If you have a rooted device, you can delete your call logs by using any file explorer with root access and modify this file: /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts2.db


Accidentally cancelled update to 2.3 this morning; how do I get it back?

Others are reporting similar issues.  Is your build number 4.06, 4.08 or other?  I would suspect that if you missed the initial rollout you'll have to wait a bit, since they would want to do it gradually and not overload the network.  You might get prompted again later or they might enable manual upgrades at some point.

Verizon says you can update over Wi-Fi, though again it looks to be an automatic thing rather than manual, but maybe you'll get a second notification if you connect to Wi-Fi.


Properly migrating app+data backup from one phone to another with a broken digitizer

I wanted to be able to use ADB's ability to simulate touch input to pair a bluetooth mouse to my phone, but it does not seem like this is going to be possible because I am running 4.2+ which requires RSA fingerprint authentication... which none of my computers have permission for.

I will order a USB 3-way Y cable and use a hack version of USB OTG to plug in a physical mouse. I can do this because I can use ADB through fastboot to temporarily boot a non-touch CWM recovery, then use ADB to push the modified kernel img and flash using the non-touch interface, which should then hopefully boot up. Since I'm on CM10.2 I already know Franco Kernel causes soft-brick, so hopefully the modified OTG stock kernel does not cause soft-brick. Once I have the phone fully booted, it should just be a matter of connecting a power source and pointing device to interface with my device.


Is it possible to get bbciplayer working on an arm v6 device?

Highly doubt it can be done, since Adobe Air v3 targets ARMv7 instruction set, its like comparing chalk and cheese in regards to both ARMv7 and ARMv6 instruction set.

So the chances of back-porting to the older instruction set is difficult to say the least, not alone that, it is a proprietary software so no going in there.

The trend is there and is to stay this way with the advent of increased hardware, supply/demand which dictates support ARMv7 and let ARMv6 die off.


As amazing as it seems, changing the cable and USB port on the PC worked for me.

Reference:
http://androidforums.com/threads/nexus-7-2012-ruined-bootloader.794839/


Large files on machine after installing Eclipse and Android Studio

These files are all system images for the Android emulator. That is, they contain the filesystems for the emulated Android phone inside the emulator. The ones that are in SDK directories can be removed from the Android SDK Manager and reinstalled any time you want.

The ones in your user directory were generated by running the emulator: they contain the files and data you've created in the emulator. Only you know whether they contain any important data. If your emulated Android system doesn't have any data you want to save, you can delete them. Make sure to remove the corresponding AVD entries that use them from the AVD manager, as the AVD won't be able to boot once you've removed its files: you'll have to start a new AVD from scratch.

BTW, it's not necessary to download a fresh Android SDK each time you install an IDE. Just tell the IDE the path where you installed the Android SDK. Rather than just worrying about the large files, it'll be better to completely remove the copies of the SDK you're not using.


htc desire z cannot receive exchange emails completely

The attender from HTC asked me to remove my exchange account and add it again, and the problem is solved.


is there a reliable source of charging current?

Please consider these facts before jumping to conclusions:

The latest Fast Charge uses 3 voltages, 5, 9 and 12V. A higher voltage means a lower current thus a lower drop in voltage and losses, hence the whole point of increasing the voltage. If you have a standard 5V USB charger then all of the above has a sense (measuring just the current). However, if you are using a fast charge system, you need to consider the voltage also (if at 9 or even 12V) and not just the current when measuring externally.

Long USB leads for 5V charging are a no-no. Good quality copper wire is a must for power hungry devices (1600mAH+ devices). Samsung non-fast charge adapters are bundled with short cables (2 feet max) for this reason. The device does not control the remote charge current, it just is limited to what the cable can handle due to resistive losses. This means that to charge the phone correctly you need at least 5.1-5.2V ON THE PHONE SIDE. The charge circuit in the phone and battery are responsible for providing the correct amount of current depending on the battery and limit the voltage on the battery (max 4.3V with HV Li-Po or Li-Ion cells) and cut off the charge when full.

Charge reporting applications are only as good as the hardware used to monitor it. Different phone manufacturers use different vendor charge control circuits or make their own. This means that if this circuit is not provided with a SHUNT where you can physically SENSE the voltage drop across the calibrated shunt thus calculate a precise current, the current is only estimated based on some voltage drop sampling in time and may vary greatly. What you access through the android power supply class is what this hardware reports, and you cannot know if it is a precise value or not based on the above assumptions. You must know what kind of hardware is used in the device you are monitoring else you are walking in the dark. HTC and some other manufacturers use shunt based current detection while Samsung does not (at least not on its S4 S5 and S6 series), the current reported is based on an estimate that is calculated based on a prior measured voltage and its drop in a certain amount of time (usually a sample per second). This is greatly dependent on the battery state (new, old, defective) but it does give a rough estimate of what the current use is, however, it is NO WAY near the precision of a shunt meter. So please be aware of this fact and know that power reporting applications can only handle the data that is given to them by this hardware, there are no exceptions.

Having said this, the only way to be sure of current usage (current, not power) is using a shunt based meter in series with the charging device. If you want to know if your USB cable is good quality or not, you can easily test this by connecting a source Power supply and voltmeter on the output and see what the voltage drop is on the phone side. The higher the voltage drop the worse the cable. An alternative and easy method is using a sensitive Ohm Meter and measuring pin by pin (just the 2 external pins suffice) what the resistance is.
    5V 1A/h = 5Watts. If your cable measures more than 600-800milliOhms (0.6Ohms) it is a very bad cable. This is equivalent to a 0.2Volt drop when charging 1Amp, hence the phone will revert to 500mAH which is fine for standard USB plugs but half of what a 1Amp charger can charge.

Additional note: a 5V 2Amp charger will charge any phone or device fine if the device requires less or equal to that current. If the device needs a more powerful charger (3+Amps) and it is still a phone or tablet, the charge limiting system will limit that current to what the charger can handle (2Amps) as it will reduce current until the voltage stays at around 5.2V so it will charge but not as fast as it should. For ex. use an old 5V 700mAmp charger with an S7 will work, but it will take much longer to fill up the 3600mAH battery than with its original Fast Charge charger.

Fast Charge note: Fast Charging is only beneficial when the battery is under 60% charge (50% on some models). When the battery is over 60% it won't be charged at or near its Capacity rating (less if its over the Charge rating) as this will limit the battery life (this has been discovered over years of testing with Lithium Ion technology). The last 10% of charge (so 90% SOC) is well under the rated capacity current as keeping a cell charged too much for too much time will eventually lead it to dehydrate its Hydrogen and expand (bulge). It is best not to discharge Lithium Ion batteries under 40% and not keep them charged for too long over 90-95%. This explains why in recent phones the charge of the battery is sometimes reported 100 but can drop quickly to 95 after disconnecting it, it is merely a safety precaution to prevent overcharging and no defect.

All these things may not appear straightforward, and in fact, they are not for the not privy. Suffice to say that it is a long studied and rather intricate discussion. Charging phones is much more to what meets the eye as there are several components involved and not just the battery itself. It depends mostly on the hardware (phone brand) type of battery (Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer), charging circuit (phone side and battery) and lastly USB cable used and charger quality and type. Keep all these things in mind when you want the best from your phone's battery life and safety. There is also a difference with sealed phones and user replaceable/removable battery types. This is part of legislation for safety precautions - but this is another story.


Some devices don't use the Android system to process the audio that comes from the other end in a phone call: the audio goes straight from the phone hardware to the sound hardware. On such devices, there's no way to record that audio using software on the device.

It sounds like your HTC phone is such a device.


No.  It comes with a couple small booklets (see this AndroidSpin post for example images) but not the full user guide.  (Also see this HowardForums post answering your question).


Motorola Defy+: Black Screen and no BootLoader. How to discover what firmware version my device supports?

After months trying, I solved flashing the DEFYPLUS_U3_4.5.1-134_DFP-2311_BLUR_SIGN_USADEFYEMARAB1B8TFDE004.0R_PDS03C_USAJRDNGIBRO2DE_P020_A025_M002_Service1FF.sbf


What is the format of Android M1 Initial Preview system.img?

wrong offset, partition start at sector 4096. you can use kpartx instead
newer android running dynamic partitions. the super partition can be unpacked with Dynamic Partition Tools
furthermore partitions are flagged as read-only, therefore mount -r flag is required
sudo -i

git clone https://github.com/AndroidDumps/Firmware_extractor.git
PATH=$PATH:$(realpath Firmware_extractor/tools/Linux/bin)

mkdir -p /mnt/android-1/system_root ../extracted
kpartx -av system.img
lpunpack -p system /dev/mapper/loop2p2 ../extracted

mount -t ext4 -o loop,ro,noexec,noload,noatime ../extracted/system.img /mnt/android-1/system_root
thunar /mnt/android-1/system_root

(or whatever kpartx tell you 2nd partition is mapped)

in case you need to make ext4-dedup/logical partition writeable, increase partition first, then duplicate shared blocks
cd ../extracted
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1G seek=1 count=0 of=system.img
resize2fs system.img 1G
e2fsck -E unshare_blocks system.img

you should be able to mount -w afterwards

re-packing requires new vbmeta signature with avbtool.py stored in first partition system.img1 start at sector 2048 (which goes too far here)
superrepack third-party cross-platform tool for easy unpack/repack system.img2 is recommended to automatize the whole re-packing process
you can however do it manually with lpmake (requires all partitions to be unpacked into ../extracted see above step lpunpack)
source
resize2fs -M system.img
e2fsck -yf system.img
lpmake --metadata-size 65536 --super-name super --metadata-slots 1 --device super:3229614080 --group main:2369171456 --partition system:readonly:787050496:main --image system=system.img --partition vendor:readonly:83619840:main --image vendor=vendor.img --partition product:readonly:1366814720:main --image product=product.img --partition system_ext:readonly:131686400:main --image system=system_ext.img --sparse --output super.img


notification saying Google play services has stoped working

Once solution is to go into applications and disable Google play services. But u won't be able to use some apps such as Google photos.


Just flash a GAPPS package available on xda. You can choose from a variety of packages, available on multiple versions of Android. See here for more information.


how to change the default download folder on android pad

You should use the dolphin browser. While downloading file from the internet a popup appears and allows you to change the destination to save the file wherever you want. Hope you are looking for that. (Still figuring out android pad?)


Where to get the release version of lollipop for Nexus 7

The place you've already linked is where the downloads will show up first. Normally OTA updates are staged-rollout, meaning you'll have to wait until your device/region is eligible to receive the update unfortunately.


Performing actions whenever a certain Blutooth device is in reach and paired (and reverting them when it gets out of reach) can be done e.g. with tasker (see the tasker tag-wiki for details on the app):

Condition: BT Connected (parameter: name or address of the device)
Task: WiFi (parameter: On)
Exit-Task: (optional; Tasker should revert automatically to the previous state when the condition is no longer met) WiFi (parameter: Off)

This would similarly work with NFC when using the NFC plugin. More features are also offered by other plugins. Also see my Collection of Tasker Ressources for tutorials and available plugins.


Not all Galaxy S models have a front-facing camera.  Just (most?) GT-i9000's and Epic 4G's.  The Vibrant, Captivate, and Fascinate do not.


go to settings -> about-phone-> phone identity-> IMSI is your IMEI number

An International Mobile Subscriber Identity or IMSI (play /ˈɪmziː/) is a unique identification associated with all GSM and UMTS network mobile phone users.

Each Android device is equipped with an IMEI or IMSI or MEID number (depending on the device's radio technology and Carrier) which uniquely identifies the handset. Below are listed a number of ways for you to retrieve such number.

The IMEI / IMSI / MEID number can be displayed on most phones by dialing the code *#06#
The IMEI / IMSI / MEID is also usually printed on the compliance plate under the battery


Disappearing call logs later automatically it can be viewed....!

Go to settings, then apps, scroll to show all apps, go down until you see a phone icon that says call and message log, force stop it and switch phone off, leave about 2 minutes and restart phone, should all be back in place, hope it helps


Download free-software apps from official Android Market without logging in

You cannot download apps from the Market without an account associated with your device.

The only way to get apps without the Market (or an alternative market) is to get it directly from the developer and "side-load" it.


Macrodroid: I want a repeating alert when battery is less than/over than x%

Use the trigger Regular interval only. Do not use with any other Trigger. Setup your action, the media tone that is, and use the constraint battery level. You may have to use a logic constraint here, such as AND constraint in MacroDroid specific category.


How to show weather info on lock screen?

I found that in the Yahoo weather app, you can turn on a persistent notification. It will be showing up on your lockscreen.


Google maps can do this.  Long-press the map at your location; a popup should appear with the address; you can tap that and it'll give you the option to "share" that location.  From that you can send a text, email, etc.


This isn't possible, since Viber needs to be running in order to receive calls which are routed via Viber. If you shut down the background process, you can't be reached via Viber. The exit button just means it closes the UI, but keeps listening for calls in the background.


Nexus 4 Stuck at “Checking connection..” after factory reset

Flash using Nexus Root Toolkit via Fastboot

Go to fastboot (bootloader) power + volume down
Plugin usb and open NRT
Unlock phone
Check soft-bricked and flash stock

Hope this helps..!!!


How can I see which applications eat up disk space?

If you go to Settings > Apps, there will be a list of installed applications. If you press the menu button on that page, you can sort the applications by their size. Note that this size includes both the program files (APK) and stored data (databases, private saved files excluding those on SD card).


this happened to me you need to call android support and tell them your serial code and then you work with them from there if that does not work send it off to where it came from p.s make sure they are legit if you give them your serial code


Technically, yes, you can build the "plain version" of Android: http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html

However, it is difficult to do this for all but a handful of devices (official "Google" developer devices, such as the Nexus line of phones) because every Android phone requires its own drivers and these are not freely available.

This is where projects like CyanogenMod step in: they take the vanilla build of Android, add a few minor features to it, and then try to release it for as many devices as possible. Typically way before any manufacturer gets around to updating the phones (if ever). CyanogenMod 9 is the ICS version of Android, and is tba.

In short, the difference between HTC and Google is that HTC takes the vanilla Android version and then "skins" it with HTC Sense. This is one of the many reasons there is a bit of a delay between when Google release a new version of Android (for example, ICS) and when the manufacturers get around to doing it, because they have to fix their changes/skin to the new version of Android.


How to decrypt Island / Work profile and Parallel Apps user in TWRP?

Note: this solution is tested on Android 10 (OxygenOS 10.3.2) in OnePlus 6 with TWRP 3.4.0.3.
The idea for things to work smoothly in TWRP is that your main user must not have any lock screen security/credential for the purpose of taking backup in TWRP. This way, TWRP can automatically decrypt main user, work profile user and also the Parallel Apps user.
Follow these steps:

Setup a Screen Lock to PIN/Password/Pattern for your main user/profile, if you don't have it already.
In Settings → Security & lock screen, enable/tick Use one lock for Work Profile. This means that neither Android system, nor your work profile apps would ask for additional credentials to be used.
Set Screen Lock for your main user/profile to None. That is, remove lock screen security.

Now, boot into TWRP. TWRP would automatically decrypt your main user account (user 0), your work profile account, and also the Parallel Apps user (user 999). If you have setup a secondary user account, you can easily decrypt it with the command:
twrp decrypt CREDENTIALS SECONDARY_USER_ID

Alternatively, in TWRP, go to Advanced → Decrypt User → select your secondary user → enter its credentials.


Stop Google Photos app from deleting a local album

One option is to individually open the photos and on the options menu choose "Save to Device". This creates a copy of the photo on your device and will be stored locally for a while longer.

Another would be to visit photos.google.com on a Chrome browser, and then select the photos and download to device.

The cached photos within the Google Photos app will not stick around for long. So it's better to have the relevant photos saved to device.


Disabling automatic app updates has, for me, solved a severe battery drain problem that started a few days ago. Huawei P9.

For me Google Play Services and AndroidOS were the top users of battery.


Are battery monitors accurate ?

Battery monitors are  an approximation and not accurate :

They are usually based on Voltage measurements
You need Voltage and Current measurements to get an accurate picture. Most phones have only Voltage sensors. Current sensors ( Coulomb Sensor) are available in some at OEM discretion ( Honor 6 for example).  Even if the device has it, the kernel ( since you mentioned flashing ROMs) need to support it. For more details, see this How does the Android estimate the battery level without a current sensor?

I don't know about your device but let's assume that it has only Voltage sensor as is common. Problems with accuracy using voltage sensing ( apart from current sensor bit)

How often it needs to be updated (and reflect on the status bar), AFAIK is left to OEM implementation.  Is the battery icon on your Android phone telling you the truth? says that
updating battery SoC information is manufacturer dependent and not Android driven (emphasis mine and I haven't found any other source to dispute this)

  We contacted Google about this, and the indication is that the battery data given in the Settings is the correct one. The updating of the icon happens "every so often", we're told; quite how often is entirely up to the manufacturer, rather than being part of the Android code

Further voltage is NOT a true indicator of the amount of charge. This will explain in detail why
Yet another problem with Voltage based measurement is battery behaviour. Li Ion batteries display a "flattish" voltage drop even though the amount of charge falls relatively steep as seen here at Fig.2

Your app like other apps uses Voltage and inherently plagued with inaccuracies, so at best gives a rough estimate

Starting from Lollipop Android gives you an estimate of how long your battery is going to last, so the interpretation in other answer is valid

  Another strange thing: when i look at Android's battery statistics, the sum of percenatges of the battery that goes towards each app(including screen) is only at ~50%.

Measurement of consumption per app and therefore total can also be misleading. This post, though old sheds light on this How does Android calculate battery consumption by apps?

Now coming to your concern of battery problems - it's hard to say. I would suggest that you revert to stock ROM and then observe to establish ,if, there is a problem ( Could be custom ROM, kernel too)


Usually with the backup it will save things like your contacts, messages, photos remotely. It can save apps data also like settings and files but not all apps utilise this and you could potentially be left not backup up.

These are usually synced from the settings / accounts / google and each one can be toggled.

What data exactly was it that you got instructed to backup ?


Do you still have a link to the ebay listing, is it active? A lot of the phones on ebay are fake/imitation phones. Some even have user interfaces made to look like Android, but are actually running a basic feature phone OS. Tools like HTC Sync and ADB that only work with the real hardware often fail when tried on these devices.


Is it possible to sniff HTTP packets of Wi-Fi through firmware?

If you're only interested in looking at HTTP requests, then it's possible to do that by installing a web proxy and configuring Android to use it. However, that's not completely reliable, as not all apps respect the central proxy settings: Firefox is an example of an app that doesn't.

A web proxy doesn't require root, but the user has to set it up by hand: you can configure it automatically only if you have root. If that weren't the case it would be a bit of a security problem in Android: a normal app could eavesdrop or otherwise interfere with other apps' network communication.

Of course, even for real packet sniffing, you only need to root the device if you want to install the sniffer on the device. To see the device's network traffic, it's much easier and more convenient to install a sniffer on a desktop Linux machine acting as a (Wi-Fi) router.


In short: Yes, for the Samsung S4 Mini LTE (i9195), the NON-HLOS.bin is the modem.

To flash it with Heimdall, these are the correct steps:

Extract the NON-HLOS.bin from the tar archive
Connect the phone and PC
Reboot into Download Mode using (Vol Down plus Home button combi)
In a terminal, navigate to the folder with your modem file (NON-HLOS.bin)
Run heimdall flash --MODEM NON-HLOS.bin --no-reboot from a terminal
Reboot once again into Download Mode using (Vol Down plus Home button combi)
Run heimdall flash --MODEM NON-HLOS.bin --no-reboot from a terminal
Once done, unplug then reboot device manually.

Source: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=49395354&postcount=105


How to determine maximum capacity of a battery in mAh? - received fake battery

Battery calibration is a myth and definitely will not help you in any way. For details see my answer Bought a new battery. Do I need to calibrate it
3C Toolbox (and maybe other apps, not sure though ) read the battery information from the ROM files and not from the battery you have. This I learnt when I sought a clarification from the developer, when the app was showing battery capacity as 4000 mAh whereas the battery is 3100 mAh (Huawei Honor 6). To quote from 3C Toolbox developer mail

In Android, one can get the stock hard-coded battery capacity from battery profiles, an hidden API in Android. That’s the one of the 2 sources the app uses.
The other source is in the kernel, usually under /sys/devices/power_supply/battery/charge_full_design (On my device path is different). To know the path on your device, from 3C Toolbox, tap request support from Help and support menu. An email will be generated to the developer having information about your device, including battery_info.txt. This file amongst other things specifies the path of second source

When you change your battery and replace with an extended battery, the ROM information is not updated. To adjust the capacity of the battery manually (from Battery Manager → Tap the 4 small square icon → Adjust Capacity or use Configuration Wizard). This change is for this app usage only
How to measure actual capacity using 3C Toolbox  Your concern is on verifying the actual capacity ( which was mine too). This can be done by using the current sensor of your device. If your device doesn't have a current sensor, it derives from voltage sensor and may be less accurate (Edit (in 2020) , in recent Android versions most devices are required to have a current sensor, so you needn't bother checking if your device has a current sensor or not - they have it as a rule).
Here is the relevant portion of reply from the developer that should help you.

So in the end the only fully reliable way to verify capacity would be to pin the battery to an external meter. Less reliable is to use the current sensor when available and using my app you can get the actual capacity derived from actual measures of the sensor. For that the best is to use a 1 minute monitoring while charging, as sensors are often updated every minute using an average value (for the past minute). Sensors often provide very accurate results.

See snapshot below highlighted portion shows charge in 28 minutes.
(Battery Manager →Markers →  Choose plug state chargers→ Tap on the notification and set up monitoring settings)
Discharge your battery to say 10% and charge fully-you will know your battery capacity using this method

Hardware Measurement: If you want to rig up a testing circuit, this would help you How to measure capacity of a Lithium-ion battery or Li-Ion Battery capacity tester (Lithium power tester

Edit:  Neither does OEM description of the phone or apps like CPU-Z,  Hardware Info tell you whether your device has a current sensor  . You will need to spend time in searching if it has a current sensor. It is better to avoid that search, since we are looking at approximate capacity to determine if it is a fake. Hence, in 3C Toolbox settings, you could
set
Battery Manager →Markers →  Choose plug state chargers→ Tap on the notification and set up : Record all the time (on); mA retrieval method (automatic, if your device is not listed), Recording Interval -every minute while charging (accurate mAh calculation)

Edit:  For more details , please see Where are the battery capacity files located


I can't unlock bootloader of my moto g xt1033 android 4.4.4

There is a bug in Android KitKat 4.4.4 which causes this issue. A thread in the motorola forum explains how to resolve the issue.

Follow these instructions only if you have upgraded to 4.4.4! If you have 4.4.3 or 4.4.2 it is more likely that you misspelled your unlock key.

Download the boot loader patch (this the link from the forum)
extract the ZIP file & read instructions
your user data might be erased as part of this process
Then run following commands:

$ fastboot flash motoboot motoboot_41.15_testdrive.img
$ fastboot reboot-bootloader
... your device will reboot in fasboot mode

$ fastboot oem unlock [UNLOCK KEY]
... wait for unlock confirmation ...
... you might see some error messages here, ignore them...

$ fastboot flash motoboot motoboot.img
$ fastboot reboot


How to use Visual Studio Code on an Android device?

There are two ways to use Linux on Android so we can use VS Code :

First easy way (Virtual Network Computing) (VNC):

1. Install a Linux distro via "Termux"

 pkg update -y && pkg install proot wget tar pulseaudio  -y &&  wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AndronixApp/AndronixOrigin/master/Rootfs/Ubuntu19/ubuntu19.sh && chmod +x ubuntu19.sh && ./ubuntu19.sh

2. Install Linux GUI desktop environment like "Xfce".

sudo apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies -y

3. start a VNC server on your linux.

sudo apt-get install tightvncserver -y

4. Open "VNC Viewer" on android to start hacking.

you may need to do command vncserver -list to list the port

5. Install vscode for ARM64

6. Optional: Install NodeJS for ARM64.

apt install nodejs

Second hacky way (Linux Natively):

more info:

https://medium.com/@quantvc/running-debian-on-android-device-natively-73545c9b0757

Helpful Resources:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=studio.com.techriz.andronix

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

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.realvnc.viewer.android

List of some ARM64 Hackers:

@Lemon1I @boby2001820 @NTAuthority @gus33000

Worth mentioning:

https://github.com/WOA-Project


What is the Streaming Decryption setting in Google Drive?

Goggle Drive gives you some security options regarding your documents:

You can choose to encrypt all offline documents (that is, documents
stored on your device);
And can also choose to decrypt documents incrementally as they are
streamed to your phone, by selecting the Streaming Decryption, thus having just a small portion of the document decrypted when accessing it. Kinda like watching a compressed video.

Sadly enough couldn't find any official documentation to support my answer on Google, but here's some relevant links:

Access and Edit Files with Google Drive

Google Drive - View files offline in the Google Drive Android app


Store ePUB books on my external SD Card to be read in Google Play Books

If they're non-DRM epub books, you could use a third party reader. Otherwise, it may depend on what version of Android you're running. Generally you're stuck with whatever options Google offers. With DRM (paid/protected) books you pretty much have to play by their rules as that's what stops people from say sharing books with those who haven't paid for them.


My Samsung Note 8.0 GT-N5100 is stuck in a boot loop. I want to retrieve data ... is there any hope?

I tried various suggestions to get past the bootloop but could not even get into safe mode. All I had to work with were the options on the recovery menu. Clearing the cache partition seemed to make no difference, so I eventually gave up and selected wipe data/factory reset.

This also seemed top have no effect. However, the device unexpectedly closed itself down and when I restarted it, there were signs of life and it booted up again for the first time for weeks!

I went through the start-up procedures carefully and selected "restore" for any google/ Samsung data and applications, even though it said I had not backed any up ... and it seems that all my data has not been lost after all! I already knew that my pics and vids were on google+ so was not too disappointed to find quite an empty gallery, but was delighted to find ALL my S-note docs were restored, and a number of my apps.

Some - quite a few - are missing - all my kindle ebooks for example, but I will see if these are transferrable, and there are apps I can find again if I need them.

I would recommend anyone with a Samsung device to have a Samsung account and enable "back-up" - also to save as much data as poss onto the micro sim card.

Thanks to Izzy and everyone for helping me through this traumatic afternoon!


Ok I'll say this for a hundred time that SD card cannot be used for apps as is, you can do that with apps like APPS2SD or link2sd (you'll need root for that), or if you have phone running android 6.0+ you can adopt sd card so it becames like internal storage but you can't use it with other phones until you format it.

Here is how to do it (it says for galaxy s7 but it works with all phones the same way):
http://www.modaco.com/news/android/heres-how-to-configure-adoptable-storage-on-your-s7-s7-edge-r1632/


Can people tell whether I've read their SMSes?

No, there is no way to know whether a SMS is read or not. As of now it is only possible to know whether a SMS is successfully delivered to the phone or not.

This delivery report is not a phone specific or app specific feature but it is provided by the operator, which is usually free.  However the app should sport a feature to enable delivery notification and the SMS that are already sent with this setting off do not get the effect.

Also, you a recipient do not have any means to avoid sending the delivery notification as it is not controlled by any of the phone or app's settings.


How do I export my favourites from Chrome to the stock browser?

Have you tried doing this with syncing your bookmarks over google account?
I know that stock browser reads the bookmarks synced with google account when logged in.
If you log into google using chrome browser, syncing bookmarks and then logging into google using stock browser should get your bookmarks there.
Can't test it because I am currently on 4.2.2 and don't have Chrome for android installed so this is just a guess how it could be done.

edit

When you first start your chrome browser it asks you right away to login into your google account.
If you have done that it asks you the same question as in the desktop version - whether to synchronize things like passwords, bookmarks etc. between your chrome instances.
If you have done the first thing and answered the following question with "yes everything" or just "yes" with a marked checkbox for bookmarks you're pretty much set up.
If you don't have this done yet you can reconfigure synchronization in chrome settings.

Now if you take a look into the bookmarks section of chrome you should see some folders like "mobile bookmarks", "other bookmarks", "desktop bookmarks" (due to my german version the titles may differ a bit).
Every bookmark saved under "desktop bookmarks" will be synchronized back to your google account.
If you open your stock android browser some minutes later and login to your google account when asked you will see your google email address as a folder/category inside bookmarks section containing your bookmarks from chrome.
Even if you will install i.e. a chrome browser on your desktop some day you will end up with your bookmarks/tabs/passwords/... beeing pulled from your google account once you login.

Here are some screenshots (as I already mentioned they're unfortunately from my german version):


What causes the error "No certificate found in USB storage." when trying to import a certificate?

I figured out a workaround.  The workaround is to download a File Manager tool and then double click the .p12 cert, which opens up and prompts for the password.   I still don't know why the control panel doesn't do what it suggests, but at least I found a solution.


Google Clock how to remove added city time

Open Google Clock.
Switch to Clock menu.
Press and Hold city time you need to remove, then you can see a Delete icon there(globe icon changed to dustbin icon), swipe down to Delete it.


Is there a way to play music files from a specific time? (From 0:30 til the end of the track, for example.)

This isn't gonna be a the best answer but just Google MP3 cutter. I used one of the apps and they do a good job EDIT: Just select your points and hit 'Start Cut' https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beka.tools.mp3cutter


Droid Explorer does not recognize my HTC Incredible S

Part of the problem here had to do with Droid Explorer. There was a bug in version 0.9.0.0 that did not support when adb devices -l returned the "slimmer" format. This bug was corrected in 0.9.0.1.

I just had a breakthrough.
The device is not responding correctly to the adb devices -l because the adbd that runs on the device, in this case the Incredible S, has not been updated to support the newer commands. The -l switch is a newer addition to the devices command. It only knows how to respond to adb devices, not adb devices -l, so it just ignores the -l and responds to the devices request as it normally would.

Since you have an SDK from when Droid Explorer used to install it here is what I suggest.

Uninstall Droid Explorer
Go into C:\Program Files\Droid Explorer\ and delete everything.
You can also delete C:\Users\Ryan\AppData\Roaming\DroidExplorer.
Open Registry Editor (WIN+R -> regedit -> ENTER)
Delete any of the following (if you don't have one or more that is ok, but delete all the ones you have)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\DroidExplorer
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\DroidExplorer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DroidExplorer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\DroidExplorer

Reinstall Droid Explorer
Make sure you pick the location of the Android SDK that you have installed

The SDKPath is no longer pulled from that config file. But I do actually have plans to put it back in the config file in the future.

The reason you have to uninstall is because we are deleting the registry settings, all of them. If you would like to try the Advanced Route, you can try the following:

Instead of deleting all the registry paths above check for one that contains InstallPath\SdkPath. This is probably in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\DroidExplorer, but could be in one of the USER locations as well. Change the value of SdkPath to be your path to where you have the Android SDK installed.


It sounds like you're not using the correct update.zip file for your model; if the software/hardware architecture is not a match, installation will fail.


How to ensure apps get uninstalled cleanly?

Before uninstalling the app, go into the App Info, force stop the app, clear the cache and data, and then Uninstall.

This is not 'guaranteed' to remove absolutely everything, but it should be a lot cleaner then just uninstalling it.


How can I backup my contact list without rooting my phone?

Did you try it over the build-in Android <-> Google Account synchronization? That keeps your contacts always synched up and moreover you have them available also online within Gmail. From there you can even export them in different kind of formats as an additional backup if you like.

More details, perhaps...: In contacts->menu->more->contacts storage (translated from my non-english-speaking phone...), you can select Google.  That will store any new contacts you add there, but as far as I know does not handle pre-existing contacts on your phone.  What I did to sync up these old contacts was contacts->menu->import/export, and exported the contacts to a file on the SD card.  I then used the gmail app on the phone to send this .vcf file to myself as an attachment (menu in the gmail application to attach a file) and used gmail from my PC to import the contact list from that message, merge any duplicates etc. etc.