TWRP: No OS flashed after flashing LOS 16.0 on Samsung S5

if you wiped all partitions under TWRP advanced wipe. You need to flash Samsung factory firmware because you wiped the framework that the ROM is built over.


Apps can't see the light sensor but automatic brightness works anyway?

I also had this problem with Lux, always light reported -1, which I don't know it's a problem either from phone, sensor, Android, or Lux itself! BTW, I solved it by using front camera instead of light sensor. here is how:

go to Lux settings
click on Sample Collection
click on Light reading modes
select Camera instead of Light sensor
select Front camera (it's obvious that its better than rear camera for this purpose)
Now, from main screen of settings, click on Modify Linked Samples
from top, click on Luma (this app uses Lux for sensor readings and Luma for camera readings)
then you can see app reads ambient light value from camera and displays at top.
Now the app should do its job, but you may want to check other settings to match your preferences.

good luck


ReChild's app is called Advanced Task Killer and there is very little reason for you to use it.  In most cases, using a task killer will hurt the performance of your device.

Android is not like Microsoft Windows.  It is designed to keep the devices memory filled and to manage that memory on demand, killing apps only when more memory is demanded.  If you kill an app, Android will start another one to run in the background and take up that extra memory.  So killing an app which forces Android to start another one and write that to memory is going to use more system resources and drain the battery faster than letting Android go about its business.  It is unnerving to look at what running and see some stupid bloatware app that you never use but don't despair, it is not hurting your performance.

That being said there are exceptions to the rule.  Android in general is designed to manage the memory so you don't have to but, Froyo is much more effective at this that than earlier versions.  I found that even though it wasn't theoretically needed, the task killer was effective in Android 2.1.  Also, poorly coded apps may go rouge and begin to unnecessarily hog resources.  It's appropriate to kill these apps, but you should be uninstalling once you identify a bad app.  As far as a list, I don't know of any.  It would change very frequently as apps are updated and bugs are fixed.

There are a couple programs that ARE going to be more effective in helping you manage you apps and resources...

Watchdog Task Manager: This app watches your apps and will notify you if one starts to behave badly and hog too many resources.  This is a good way to identify problems so you can efficiently address them.

AutoKiller Memory Optimizer (root only) or Auto Memory Manager:  Android watches how you use your device and tries to intelligently prioritize which apps get killed when more memory is needed.  If you want a little more control of this decision making process, these apps let you set the out-of-memory priorities that Android will follow when deciding which apps get to stay running and which apps get killed.

So, to sum it up and answer your question...

  Any idea why this happens?

Because Android was designed to do this, so go with the flow.


You can swipe down the Notificationbar and it will show Charging only. If you click that entry you can select the desired mode. The selected mode won't be set as default, so if you plug your device again, it will be on Charging only again.

To set the default mode you first need to enable developer mode (don't ask me why...). This can be done by going to About phone settings and clicking on the build number a few times.

Then go to the now accessible Developer Settings -> USB-Configuration (should be under the Network section). This should be set to the desired mode. In my case it was allready set to MTP (the desired mode), so i had to set it to another mode (for example Charge only) and then set it back to MTP.
Hope this helps!

EDIT: This only seems to work once. So if you disconnect and reconnect the device 2 or more time, the default is again on "Charge only". It is mentioned in the changelog of Android 6. Link-https://developer.android.com/about/versions/marshmallow/android-6.0-changes.html#behavior-usb


Is there a way to perform a memdump of an android device?

Since Android uses Linux as kernel /dev/kmem exists. It's a virtual character device file that is an image of the main memory of the computer.
You can simply dump it with

cat /dev/kmem > file

but only as root.


How can I restore the encrypted files contents from the Gallery Vault app?

Gallery Vault uses encryption to hide media. If you have done a Factory Reset, then there is no way to recover your previous data, even if the file still "exists". To decrypt, you would need some sort of decryption key or file, and chances are you lost it when you did a Factory Reset.


My phone reboots after a kernel oops, what can I do?

Have had a look at the kmsg, and logcat,

The logcat was showing this:

[ 01-13 13:14:11.036   138:0xc46 I/mm-camera ]Open Device node : /dev/msm_camera/frame0
[ 01-13 13:14:11.036   138:0xc46 E/mm-camera ]Got exception but camframe_exit == 0!
[ 01-13 13:14:11.046   138:0xc46 E/QualcommCameraHardware ]ignoring preview callback--camera has been stopped
[ 01-13 13:14:11.196   138:0xc04 E/mm-camera 7x-vfe ]Received VFE start ACK!!! This is a user preview start.
[ 01-13 13:14:11.196   138:0x8a D/QualcommCameraHardware ]startPreview X
[ 01-13 13:14:11.226  2840:0xb18 V/camera   ]mJpegCallbackFinishTime = 725ms
[ 01-13 13:14:11.337  2840:0xb18 D/camera   ]
.....
[ 01-13 13:14:14.400   138:0x8a D/QualcommCameraHardware ]FLASHLIGHT is ENABLED
[ 01-13 13:14:14.410   138:0x8a D/QualcommCameraHardware ]stopPreviewInternal E: 1
[ 01-13 13:14:14.410   138:0x8a D/QualcommCameraHardware ]cancelAutoFocusInternal E
[ 01-13 13:14:14.410   138:0x8a D/QualcommCameraHardware ]cancelAutoFocusInternal X: 0
[ 01-13 13:14:14.480   138:0xc04 I/mm-camera 7x-vfe ]vfe_process_QDSP_VFETASK_MSG_VFE_STOP_ACK: call mmcamera_vfe_stop_ack_callback()

Am wondering is there an issue with the Camera, as matter of interest, when taking a snapshot with the camera, it usually plays back an audio clip of sound of "snapshot" when the button is pressed?

This is coinciding with the oops:

[ 4264.409912] adsp_pmem_del name JPEGTASK vaddr:0x40e68000 paddr:0x27012000 len:4096
[ 4264.420715] adsp: closing module JPEGTASK
[ 4264.421173] adsp: disabling module JPEGTASK
[ 4264.422485] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.444183] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.465789] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.487548] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.509094] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.530853] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.552398] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.574157] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.595733] [KEY] gpiomatrix: key 272, 0-0 (35-42) changed to 1
[ 4264.600616] [AUD][audmgr.c:audmgr_enable] audmgr_enable: ARM9 did not reply to RPC am->state = 2
[ 4264.601013] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000
[ 4264.601226] pgd = e321c000
[ 4264.601593] [00000000] *pgd=26037031, *pte=00000000, *ppte=00000000
[ 4264.602294] Internal error: Oops: 817 [#1] PREEMPT

So my guess is that the media player, somewhere, between Qualcomm hardware that controls the camera, and the playback crashed. Am hedging bets on the kernel's camera itself...

Best to post this on CM's forum to see if this is known issue.


Do widgets run if not on current home screen?

Short answer

Widgets don't actually "run" themselves, like normal apps do. The widget host (i.e. the home screen app, or the lock screen) is in charge of drawing all the widgets. The widget provider (part of the app) tells the host what layout to give each widget, and how often it wants the widget to update. There's nothing running to "suspend", regardless of whether the widget is visible or not.

Resource cost

While the widget doesn't "run", it still has to be shown on the screen. Every widget therefore makes the host process (i.e. the launcher) a little more expensive in CPU usage and memory. Every time the widget is redrawn (whenever it changes, or whenever the home screen animates), it makes that redraw use a few more CPU cycles. Also, once the provider has told the host what layout to use, the host has to use RAM to remember the widget's layout. Because it's the host storing that information and drawing the widget, it counts towards the host's battery use and memory footprint, not the app's. How much cost it is depends on the host (that is, which launcher you use), as well as on how complex the layout is.

For this reason, Android puts strict limits on the complexity of each widget's layout, as well as the total size of all images used in the widget. The limit depends on the pixel size of the screen, so on a nexus-10 it's huge. If you have lots of widgets, all using large images or complex layouts, the launcher process can take up quite a lot of memory, so it's more likely to be killed while you're running an app in the foreground. The effect of this would be to cause a short delay when going to the home screen.

Services

Of course, it's also possible for a background service to keep giving the host (home screen) a new layout for the widget. This is how (say) an email widget can be updated when you have new emails. Such a service would run whether the widget is currently displayed or not: there's no way for the service to tell.

For example, if you have an email widget, the normal email service should run at intervals to check mail, and update the widget during the course of its normal run if there's any new mail. In this case, the only cost of the widget is the small cost inside the host, because the service would be running anyway to sync your mail in the background.

Having a rotating list (such as in your example) shouldn't in itself make you think there's a service always running in the background, for this reason:

Lists and rotating banners

The interface that widget providers use to specify what the layout should be allows them to give a list of items. For example, this might be a list of email messages, or a list of calendar appointments, that you can scroll through. The provider can also have the home screen rotate through the list automatically. The YouTube widget uses this, for example, so that the widget can keep showing new videos without the provider having to keep changing the layout. If your widget uses this facility, then the home screen only runs any extra code when it's time to rotate the list.

Which cost is important?

The resource cost of a normal widget (that is, one that doesn't have an insanely complicated layout and doesn't use huge bitmaps) is tiny compared to the cost of a background service to update it with new information. To take your EA daily deals example, you don't need to worry about the widget rotating, but rather how the daily deals are updated. Does the service run all of the time, or every few minutes; or does it actually run once a day to fetch the new deals? Does it stop itself if there's no internet connection? Will it wake the device from sleep to do an update? These are all things the app author had to program, and that users can't control (and don't need to know about directly), but they have a much bigger effect on the widget's cost than anything the launcher does.

TL;DR

Drawing widgets, even rotating widgets, is cheap: too cheap to measure the cost. The real cost is whatever app runs in the background to update the widget with new data. How often that app runs depends on the app, and doesn't depend on whether the widget is displayed at any given time.


Found the combination to enter the recovery mode. Holding the power button and volume up - after 10 seconds the tablet shuts down, after 5 more seconds shows "service menu". First for half a second there appears a standing android with spinning blue thing in front of him, and after half a second there appears a lying android with open bonnet and a red exclamation mark (error) and nothing else on the screen.

Then you have to hold the power again and press the volume up - the menu appears.

Cleared the cache and device started normally. That's pretty weird, as I've re-installed the whole system and cleaned the cache with fastloader. But it works now :)


As stated in the comments, this is the screenshot icon.

If you pull down the notification bar, you should see a notification that says "Screenshot is being saved" (it's not "Screenshot was saved" because you can't swipe it away and it's not "Couldn't have screenshot" because it doesn't have an ! in it).

It's possible you accidentally hit the key combination to take a screenshot (like Power + Volume Down) and that made the notification.


Have you tried installing Kies?

Other Solution is,

Windows 8 will take some time to load and install drivers. Please keep you phone connected to Windows 8 in USB mode. It will install the driver.


Why there is no Calendar sync Option on android 4.2.2? (Lenovo A850)

Install Calendar app

Enable calendar sync

Select calendars to sync


Notifications don't show up when phone is asleep - Samsung Galaxy s4 running CM12.1

Try installing Echo Notification Lockscreen. It is a decent third party app.
Check their official site here


can't mount /data while installing LineageOS

These /data-related errors are likely because TWRP can't decrypt the current /data partition. This often happens with stock ROMs, since TWRP is only made to handle the encryption method of AOSP.

To work around it, in TWRP, choose Wipe - Format Data. This will wipe all data from the device, but at the same time remove encryption and allow you to start off fresh. You can then reboot to recovery again to check if there are still errors displayed, and if not (it shouldn't), proceed with any other flashing actions.


Auto Complete coming up with strange suggestions

The keyboard also has a language setting, that can be different from the phone.

Go to (Settings > Language & imputs > Language > LG Keyboard > Input Language and type)  Select your preferred language (English) and keyboard type (QWERTY)


Is it possible to change camera settings of an app on android emulator?

However it depends on the emulator I personally recommend bluestakes4 it also have an option for default apps and supports almost everything


DNS resolution in Android is handled by Net Daemon (netd) which runs in background as an init service. netd uses the DNS server set in Wi-Fi settings or that received through DHCP. Or it can possibly be set through CLI. See details in How does Android OS do DNS name resolution?. But there is no way to specify DNS server on per app basis.

Using Android's VPNService API it's possible to control network traffic on per UID basis (every Android app owns a unique UNIX UID). Or with root access the same can be achieved using iptables to NAT traffic going on port 53. An example VPN based open-source app which lets whitelist apps and configure DNS server is personalDNSfilter (I have no affiliation). It's configurable enough and supports root mode, encrypted DNS (DoH, DoT) and other features.

However in both cases (VPN or iptables), you won't be able to use Android's Private DNS (DoT) feature. It's because DoT (DNS over TLS) queries aren't plain DNS (like HTTP) but encrypted (like HTTPS), going on port 853. So the only entity that can receive and respond to the encrypted DNS queries is the DNS server set in Private DNS settings. Though it's possible to intercept DoT (like we can intercept HTTPS) but the hassle doesn't worth a try.

If you don't want to go with VPN or root based solutions, or don't want to leave Private DNS, another option is to setup DNS forwarder on local network, preferably on default gateway if possible. Or your app must itself have capability to make DNS queries, not depending on Android's resolver.


Effect of changing resolution on battery

I suspect the reduction in power consumption will not be significant, but you can easily test this yourself using free software like Trepn Profiler. Disclosure: I am part of the team that makes this software. Make sure to follow these best practices, if you want to get the most accurate results.

Another method to measure power consumption is using Monsoon Power Monitor hardware. I forced the screen resolution to 240 dpi using this adb command:

adb shell wm density DPI && adb reboot

Then I measured the power consumption idle and under a load at 240 dpi using the Monsoon Power Monitor. I used the Adreno Test app to load my device. Next I remeasured at the 560 dpi, which is the native resolution of my Nexus 6. At 240 dpi, icons and text appear much smaller on the screen.

Here are the results:

Idle power consumption

  240 dpi: 514 mW

  560 dpi: 522 mW

Power consumption under load

  240 dpi: 3155 mW

  560 dpi: 3287 mW

Bottom line: My simple test showed there is almost no benefit to reducing the resolution of your screen via software.


You can do that using remote screen sharing apps like TeamViewer.
Install TeamViewer host app on the host phone(phone on the stand in this case). Log in to your teamviewer account and setup unattended access to the host. In this way there is no need to tap on the screen to allow access.Install Teamviewer app on the other phone.
Type the code from quicksupport app in TeamViewer app, you will get the display of that camera in another phone.. Now simply click the shutter button to click pics and record videos

Hope this helps
Enjoy!


How to patch and sign android bootloader image to enable "volume_up" button?

I live in the U.S. and what was once the land of the free is now the land of the locked bootloader.  Good luck

https://www.geektrouble.info/explore/android/view/218873

"OEMs/SoC vendors implement a Chain of Trust which must have a hardware-backed root of trust - a cryptographic key. On boot every software component verifies the integrity of the next component before loading it in memory. This chain of trust starts with BootROM (the very first executable code which runs on Power ON) and ends at /system and /vendor partitions. Everything in between - bootloaders, Device Tree, Linux kernel and Android OS code - is verified to be unaltered."


Folder inaccessible, labeled as "file", tried rescanning sd card

I've found that the best way to fix the problem was to use a file manager app (because there isn't one on the device by default) to move the ROM into the right folder.


MMS messages go into a group conversation with sender and my own number instead of the regular SMS conversation

The solution is to set Your phone number to the actual phone number within advanced settings in Messaging.


Did you try "Volume Up + Menu Button + Power Button"?
That should get you to Recovery Mode and you should have an option there to Factory Reset your phone.


how do I restrict my android phone to just my home and work wifi?

Android won't connect to a wifi access point without you specifying that you want to and saving it.

Under settings, wifi, long-press on the names of any access points you don't want to connect to and choose "Forget Network".


USB debugging in lenevo vibe p1 through android studio

Download PdaNet+ software from below link, and enable debugging mode in your mobile.All devices can easily connect as a Debugging.Its working for me.Try it.I hope it is definately usefull for you.This software is avilable windows as well as MacOS.

http://pdanet.co/a/


Android 5.0 display keeps turning on with black and white notifications

I once encountered similar behavior which was triggered by Ambient Display feature inside Settings. There is a guide on OnePlus Forums here (see Usage of Privacy Guard & Built in Settings (All Users)) which mentions this:

  Ambient Display – this is again another option under the Display section of the Settings, when turned on (is ON by default) splashes notifications on the lock screen in black & white, every time you grab your phone off a table or something. This is a built in feature of Android Lollipop and is very useful. However, it is not that every time you grab the phone you wanna view notifications. You could be heading some where and want to keep the phone in your pocket or mounting the phone onto your car dashboard and the list goes on. So every time you do this, the ambient display comes and goes. While this may not eat up a whole lot of battery, turning this off will do something good.

Now that you know its under Settings →  Display & lights , you may try unchecking it and see if the issue ends. I had this issue when I flashed Lollipop and it ended right after unchecking it.


HTC software update causes phone to reboot in the TWRP recovery mode and does not update. How to fix it?

Official OTA's from HTC could only be installed if you posses the stock recovery.
You can download the right one for you from XDA here.
When you have downloaded it you can just flash it by typing this (with your phone connected in fastboot mode):

fastboot flash recovery path/to/recovery.img

Disclaimer: Probably the update won't work if you have a custom ROM installed on it (custom ROMs sometimes have different packages that the OTA will corrupt). If you want to update via OTA you should first install a stock HTC ROM too.


How does power usage for data over WiFi compare to data over 3G? (Ignore LTE for now)

I never really did a precise comparative test but it is clear that wifi uses way less power than the 3G data connection. So I would recommend to use wifi whenever possible if the goal is to extend battery life.

The only exception I would see is if you often use the phone but for a very short moment at a time, the delay it takes for the wifi to connect can be a hassle. In this case only I would deactivate the wifi.


Allow download on a specific wifi-connection

Goto Data usage,  network limitations. Here you can mark networks as metered.

Tested on Android 6 & 7.


How to disable a specific calendars notification?

You could use e.g. Calendar Event Reminder, and disable notifications in the default/stock calendar. With CER, you can setup reminders for each calendar separately, and even deactivate alerts for calendars you don't want to be alerted for (in your case, the "work" calendar).

The added plus is you will never miss an alert anymore, as you can configure CER to annoy you until you shut the alert of manually. I've bought the app when it was still payed, and it never let me down.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to do that with the native calendar -- but at least this is a free solution, though it takes an extra app :)


HTC Desire, Froyo - Gmail hangs when sending attachments

I've found that Android experiences random hangs and lockups when there are less than ~20MB of internal memory. In particular, I've found that on startup there will be a few force closes from the latin keyboard and the system; also the phone becomes noticeably laggy. When there are less than 10MB, the phone is so laggy that it becomes totally unusable. You might want to clean up your internal memory and see if it helps with your problem.


What is /system/bin/mediaserver on Android, and why is it pegging the CPU?

The media server is responsible for indexing the images, videos and music files on the device. It then is queried by programs like the media gallery or the music player for filtered lists of certain media types.

I think that it would be restarted pretty fast after killing. I would assume that somehow there are many write options on the sd card and the media server will constantly reindex your mass storage. But I don't know a solution for that.


Application for automatic synchronization of remote folders?

I use SugarSync. It does exactly what you are looking for and you get 5 gigs of storage on the free account.


Run shell script in background process no matter what activity in foreground?

It worked by just doing sh /mnt/sdcard/touch.sh & after having started a shell with adb shell. Then, when I closed the terminal forcibly while the process was in the background, the process remained running in the background of my phone as expected. I was able to kill the process later by getting with adb shell the using ps to find the process ID and kill -s KILL <ID> to kill it.

Basically, turns out I didn't have to make an Android app just to make my script run in the background. Clash on...


How can I get a overview and manage the default applications for file types?

As you maybe already know, for each application that currently is a default application for something, say a PDF viewer, you can reset this default in the application settings (Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> Your app -> Clear defaults). After this, the next time you perform the action (e.g. open a PDF), a popup will appear, letting you choose a new default.

As far as I know, this is all you can do with stock Android.

There are however, 3rd party apps, that give you an overview of the currently set default applications for common things, e.g. Default App Manager.


Add multiple identical homescreen widgets

In Realme UI. you can only add one widget at a time. The user can't add same widgets multiple widgets.  However there is trick, use Launchers like nova etc. Where you can add multiple widgets.
:)


I can think of two reasons why a CM ROM might reduce battery life:

CPU governor:
The cpu governor controls the frequency of the CPU depending on the requirement. Your ROM might be using a governor that favours performance over battery life. Selecting a governor that achieves a good balance between performance & battery life might help you. You can learn more about cpu governors here
Battery calibration:
The battery status is stored in a file called batterystats.bin. Its possible that your phone is using the same batterystats.bin that came with the rom. You can use an application like Battery Calibration to regenerate this file with new/accurate stats.(a myth according to this)


recover whatsapp conversation after hard reset

The new feature of WhatsApp allows users to take backup in Google Drive. There are chances that you will be able to Restore your backup from Google Drive.


In case of FB Messenger you have to 'Save' image.

Click on the image in the Messenger app.
Click 'more' in the lower left corner of the screen.
Tap 'Save'.

Now the image is saved to your device and it can be seen in Gallery.

Dedicated folder:
   Internal Storage/Pictures/Messenger


Since I just upgrade to 5.0/Lollipop, I can't confirm for sure if this setting is present in KitKat/4.4, but in 5.0, you can hide the last digit in the PIN unlock screen by turning off the Security setting labeled Make passwords visible, as seen here:

This is found under the general Settings app under the Security section.  Note, however, that this also affects password fields elsewhere in Android, such as in the Chrome browser.


How to download an audio file from a web site?

in your android browser long click on MP3 file link or any audio link and click on Save Link. It will be downloaded to your phone and it will be stored in download folder in your sdcard.

Hope it will help you.


Why screen turns on while connecting/disconnecting charger?

You can disable it on settings, depending of your device and ROM.


Why does Wi-Fi fail to connect to certain public networks?

If your phone is waiting for an IP address, then your WiFi is connected. And the third last row in your log seems to confirm this status:

03-19 13:12:22.441 D/AutoSetting( 4710): Util - wifi connected

If you can't get a valid IP address, then:

the network doesn't have a DHCP server
the network has been explicitly instructed not to give IP addresses to everybody (a whitelist)
your WiFi lost a DHCPOFFER packet so it's not able to go on with the negotiation

The interesting part of the third case is that it's not necessary for the signal strength of the network to be excessively low. I suspect that also the implementation of the network components has its role in such cases. For example, I recently had lots of issues setting up a temporary WPA2 network using hostap on my home computer. My Android phone simply refused to get an IP address more than half of the times. Whatching my DHCPserver logs I noticed that the negotiation procedure stopped just because my phone stopped answering packets in the middle of the negotiation for apparently no reason. Well, I didn't investigate further the problem (too much time lost with it) but now I know that there are really many things that can go wrong setting up a WPA network.


Are there any apps for storing SMS online for latter viewing and searching?

There are several programs that will allow you to save your texts (among other things) on a computer, like Myphoneexplorer. It depends if you want to be able to access them everywhere, or if having them on one computer is enough for you (you can still do copies/backups of the texts).


Google Voice Input special characters and symbols no longer working?

This was fixed somehow after switching back to Cyanogenmod 7.1. Sorry I don't know exactly what caused it, but for anyone with the problem, I'd suggest flashing a more stable ROM (if you're rooted).


Google's Android specific features were not included in the mainline Linux development. So they took the then LTS branch and added their own code.
Android does not use or include the native GNU C Lib, it uses Bionic.
OEM specific changes could not or were not included in the mainstream branch.


How do I change the factory settings that an Android device reverts to?

A factory reset simply wipes the userdata partition (and sometimes some extra cache partitions as well, but that doesn't matter). This resets all settings to the defaults set in the system image.

Exactly where in the system image is different for different settings. For example, some things come from the build.prop, which is relatively easy to change with root: you just mount the system partition read-write and edit the file. Most settings that you'd change through the Settings app are stored in that app itself, so to change those defaults you'd need to edit the APK of that app or install a custom ROM.


What do the different device/code names mean?

Huawei P8 Lite: This is the basic model; design, UI and features are usually assigned to the model name.
ALE-L21/ALE-L04: This is the specific model; depending on carrier, location etc. This is often used for determining different revisions of one model and specifies the firmware that needs to run on the device.
hi6210sft: This is the internal product name used for identification (e.g. in apps) and update configuration.
BalongV8R1SFT: This is the Mainboard model. It defines which chips (CPU, GPU, RAM, antennas etc.) are build in your device. This may or may not differ from different models, revisions of your model etc. and are usually important for updates, firmwares, custom ROMs etc.


Is it possible to disable gmail sync completely, without logging out?

Disabling sync and removing email history is possible, but it will not stop others from simply enabling sync.

Option 1.
To disable sync for Gmail, go to settings -> accounts -> Google. And deselect the Gmail sync option.

Now, go to settings -> apps -> Gmail -> storage -> clear data. This way, when you open the Gmail app, it will not show the email history.

Option 2.
disable the Gmail app. Go to Settings -> apps -> Gmail -> disable. This way the Gmail app will simply not show on your home screen, and you will not get any notifications from the app.

But to fully disable sync without anyone having a way to enable it again, is not possible as far as I know.

Email could be access in many ways, like open the chrome browser and going to gmail.com there, it will not even ask for you password because the phone is already logged in.

In short your options are: lock the phone with a simple code that can be used even by seniors, or remove the current account and add a different one, or use the options above, leaving the phone vulnerable.


You could watch out for an automation solution. I e.g. use Tasker for a lot of things like that (yeah, it's EUR 5 -- but you can obtain a free 7-day trial at the project page, and according to the dev even make it work another 7 days by exporting its settings, uninstall, reinstall, import settings). Rawly described: You combine events/conditions with tasks. In your case, you'd e.g. set the default timeout to 30s, and have Tasker take care for specialities:

Profile "Reading":

Condition: App running (Browser, eBook-Reader, ... -- make your choices)
Task: Set screen timeout to 2min (automatically reverts when condition is no longer met)

Profile "LockScreen":

Condition: [Screenlock On]
Task: Timeout 15s

You've got the idea. Unfortunately (as indicated by the square brackets), Tasker seems to have no condition for "Screenlock active" (or I did not find it), so this might require some addon (Locale addons are compatible). Nevertheless, you've got the idea -- and there are other automation solutions out there on the Playstore which might do the job to your liking, and even may be cheaper. I'd look out for addons, then check Llama - Location Profiles etc. as well.


Why is this app install failing as incompatible and can it be force installed?

Install this APK with adb install from your PC, or pm install from a terminal emulator on the phone. This will give you the reason of failure. Alternatively, you could also search through the log output of adb logcat, though this approach is more tedious.


If Lenovo didn't change the stock messaging app: open Messaging and press the Menu in the down-right corner and choose Settings. Scroll down to the Notifications section and uncheck Notifications.


Reboot when uninstaling the application LG G4

Have you installed any custom software on your phone recently? If so than that could explain some issues. First of all the bugs you are experiencing with the settings, but also when trying to update the phone. Many of the custom versions of Android do not support the OTA (Over the Air) updates.

However, if you do have stock version of Android there could be numerous issues. My recommendation would be to backup all of your files and simply restore your phone. Sometimes this can resolve any internal issue that Android is experiencing.

Hope this helps.


Which WiFi-Direct commands can be used in Android?

On some devices which do support WiFi-Direct, the corresponding binaries come pre-installed (e.g. the wpa_cli command; see also How can I install wpa_cli on my rooted device?). If you have those ready, you can use them on your Android device as you would do on a Linux machine (find a closer description e.g. in the blog post How To : Use wpa_cli To Connect To A Wireless Network).

Of course that would require a terminal emulator to be installed on your device (take e.g. a look at Android Terminal Emulator for a good candidate) -- at least if you want to issue the commands directly.

As the linked "How To" describes, you can use wpa_cli in interactive mode (by directly executing it). On the "wpa_cli shell" you then can execute different commands: scan scans for available networks, with add_network you can select an available network to configure with set_network. An example could look like this:

> add_network
0
> set_network 0 ssid "WLAN-Network"
> set_network 0 psk "SupahSecretPassphrase"

This would trigger a connection phase, which could look like:

> <2>Trying to authenticate with 00:55:ab:25:ac:5a (SSID='WLAN-Network' freq=2437 MHz)
> <2>Trying to associate with 00:55:ab:25:ac:5a (SSID='WLAN-Network' freq=2437 MHz)
> <2>Associated with 00:55:ab:25:ac:5a
> <2>WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:55:ab:25:ac:5a [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
> <2>CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 00:55:ab:25:ac:5a completed (reauth) [id=0 id_str=]

Another good source to take a look at is Android from the command-line, which gives some more examples -- not only restricted to WiFi.


Yes, adding a second account and disabling sync on the original one will work as you are expecting.  You'll retain the ability to install and use apps you purchase with the original account, while having the sync enabled only on your wife's account will ensure the data from your own account is not present on her phone.


Google Sign-in not working in new Huawei devices: "There was a problem communicating with google servers"

You should change your phone identification to any other smartphone brand and to change IMEI codes as well but let me tell you that it's against the law and I do not encourage it.
But in your place, I will simply sell it on any online platform and buy another smartphone with not a banned brand such as Samsung or Nokia.


For future reference: What worked for me was setting the search & voice language inside the Google App to German. Voice commands / TTS is now German while the UI is still English (my prefered way).


Is it safe to delete logcat.txt files or the whole psysinfo folder to make more space on my Android phone?

It shouldn't be a problem to delete them if there are only .txt or .log files. If you are not sure, delete a few files with smaller to medium sizes. Restart your phone, and check if all apps are working normally. If they are, then proceed with deleting the others.

Log files are used mainly for debugging purposes. Deleting them should not bring chaos onto your phone.


How much power can Android output via OTG?

OTG devices can provide up to 500mA, but in realistic terms, handheld
  portable electronics don't have 500mA to spare for external loads.
  100mA is a commonly accepted realistic maximum.

Source

So basically, don't expect any device that draws over 500ma to work at all without an external power source of some kind, but depending on your device that maximum may be closer to 100ma in reality.


If you have windows pc try this. Back up any data in sd card and save it in pc.

Insert your sd card in any card reader and insert in pc
Press Windows Key + R and the Run dialog should popup. Type in
diskpart and hit Enter.
Once DiskPart comes up, type list disk. (This will show you all the
disks that are attached to the system. You'll want to note the
number of the one that is your sd card/flash drive. You should be
able to distinguish it based on it's small size compared to your
hard disks.)
select the sd card by typing select disk number (eg:select disk 2)
Type list part and it will show you what partitions are already on
the disk.
Next to remove all the partitions from the disk just type clean.
Afterwards type list part and the console should say that there are
now no partitions on the disk.
(If you need more than one partition goto step 8 )Type create partition primary and this will create a new partition that fills the available space on the disk. You can type list part to confirm that the new partition has been created.Goto step 11
If you want it a particular size add the size parameter size=20 eg: create partition primary size=100 (with the size in MBs)
select the new partition select partition 1 (you can list partition using list partition command)
Now format it to fat32 format FS=Fat32 label="SDCARD" repeat 8,9,10 to create more partition (you can use exFat instead of Fat32 if you have more than 4gb sdcard, you can omit the label part if not needed)
Thats it now you can close diskpart and eject the sd card and insert in your
android


Provably, temporary, disable wireless networking on Android tablet

As no "bullet-proof" system is required here, and at least some level of trust assumed, possible solutions hide behind the buzz... ahem, key-words kiosk-mode and child-protection. In short: you create a "jail" you're working in, and hand it's key (password) to the teacher (let him/her set a password – of course on the premise to unlock you once the exam is over).

Options on establishing a kiosk-mode are already discussed in several other questions tagged "kiosk-mode", so there's no need to repeat them all. You might wish to take a look at SureLock Kiosk Lockdown, which should meet your requirements: one of its features is to prevent access to system settings. So disabling all network features (mobile data, WiFi APNs, etc.) and then locking the settings with the teacher's password should satisfy both sides – provided you've allowed all required apps for kiosk mode. As the "dirty trick" to regain control would also remove all data from the device (factory-reset), it cannot be expected you'd do that during the exam ;)


How does the Asus transformer keyboard dock work?

It appears to be an I2C interface. According to this post on xda-developers asusdec is the name of the keyboard dock device. When I cat /proc/bus/input/devices on my Transformer, this is what it says about asusdec:

I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="asusdec"
P: Phys=/dev/input/asusdec
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/tegra-i2c.1/i2c-1/1-0019/input/input15
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=sysrq event3
B: PROP=0
B: EV=20003
B: KEY=3fffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff fffffffe
B: LED=2

Also, ps shows a com.asus.keyboard process running as system. That's an Android process. I'm not sure how exactly it's getting the input from the keyboard, though. I assume it has sufficient permissions to open the device for reading and converts the incoming keycodes to Android events.


If I install a ROM that doesn't exactly match my phone, will it work at all?

The answer is almost definetly no.

Although there might not be much difference between the models, there are bits that are different. These bits won't work. Other bits may depend on these bits, and they won't work either. The baseband and radios might work fine, but the rest of the mismatched components will lead to, at best, a soft brick. I have a Moto G LTE second gen, and accidentally flashed a ROM from its non-LTE brother. Almost exactly the same apart from the radio, and a different model number of processor (both Snapdragon 400s though). I ended up with a brick that was very hard to sort out (not helped by the fact my nandroid backup was corrupted).

Also (correct me if I'm wrong), I believe that a number of ROMs will refuse to flash if they detect the wrong device. I found that out when an old copy of TWRP kept feeding a zip the wrong information. Don't try and test it out though :)

In short, flashing ROMs on devices they weren't intended to be flashed with is a bad idea, no matter how similar in specs they may seem.


Can I put a Galaxy Note on Virgin Mobile (US)?

No, this isn't possible. The Galaxy Note is a GSM phone whereas Virgin Mobile USA is a CDMA network (it is a subsidiary of Sprint). The two are not compatible. In addition to this, CDMA carriers typically only activate phones that are specifically branded for their networks, so you can't even use a Sprint phone on Virgin unless you "know a guy" or find a really nice rep.

The Galaxy Note is quad-band GSM/UMTS, supporting the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM bands and 850/900/1900/2100 MHz UMTS (3G) bands. If you get one that is not carrier locked then you can use it on AT&T, T-Mobile, and any smaller US carrier that uses their spectrum (Straight Talk, for example).


How to unpack and edit boot.img for ROM porting?

Tools selection
The method I present here relies on CyanogenMod's Android source code.
While Google's AOSP only provides the tool to build the boot.img file, CyanogenMod also adds the unpackbootimg tool allowing you to unpack it. This tool does not seem specifically designed for CyanogenMod in any way, so most chances are that it will work for other ROMs as well.
There are, however, a relatively large number of alternatives to unpack the boot.img file which all work more-or-less the same.
Basically, such unpack tool will extract the content of the boot.img file and display a set of parameters you will have to pass to Google's mkbootimg tool to build a file whose configuration (mainly kernel parameters and memory addresses) will match the original one.
Here are a few examples, I did not test them personally so cannot recommend any and I present them only for reference purposes:

A few are open source or script based:

The Android Kitchen was apparently meant to be some kind of Swiss army knife for Android developers. The original author officially stopped maintaining the project, a few other users forked it like javilonas or cmotc.
szym targets easiness by adding shell script wrappers to its toolset to make the complete unpacking and repacking process more straightforward.
osm0sis proposes a fork of CyanogenMod's tools "forked and updated" according to the project's own description. This project seems indeed still maintained which is not very common in this area, however the actual advantage over CyanogenMod's original tools remains unclear to me.

Some are free closed source proprietary binaries:

Kuisma's unmkbootimg appears pretty often in help forums and seems to do a good job in helping to handle odd cases, outputting "human readable" English recommendation when some modification are required in mkbootimg source code and displaying the exact command-line to use to rebuild the image.
Xiaolu's mkbootimg_tools seems also mentioned quite often and allows to unpack and repack boot.img and the device tree file dt.img. Don't be fooled by the fact it is hosted on GitHub: it is a closed source proprietary binary and only compiled binaries are available on their repository (actually I'm even wondering about the exact interest of using a source-code repository to store binary blobs, but different people, different minds...).
CNexus on the XDA forum provides an archive with a selection of tools.
This answer in Unix.SE recommends some tools from the now seemingly defunct Android Serial Port project. The file names, however, lead me to think these should be old prebuilt versions of CyanogenMod's tools (the project being closed, there is neither documentation nor support).

All these tools (and others you may find with any search engine) should work the same way, but some may work better than others in handling some particular edge-case you may face with your own device. Most of them however, at least in the open source arena, do not seem regularly maintained, so the best bet in my opinion to have working, maintained and documented tools is to go with CyanogenMod's ones.
Some manufacturers produce ROMs which are more or less far from AOSP standard (unusual addresses, headers, file format, etc.). If the standard procedure below does not work, maybe one of these alternative software may do the trick. Otherwise, you will have to check for issues specific to your device: some seem to need a specific procedure or even specific tools (confer this question related to MediaTek devices, for instance).
Tools installation
Compiling CyanogenMod toolset for boot.img packing and unpacking is quite straightforward.

If you already have installed the complete Android source code tree (you can check my other answer to get more information about this), go in system/core/mkbootimg/ directory (as a reminder, Google's AOSP source code only provide the tool to build the boot.img file, they do not provide any unpacking tool),

If you haven't and don't need this for any other purpose, an easier and quicker solution is to only clone CyanogenMod's android_system_core repository:
  git clone https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_system_core.git
  cd android_system_core/mkbootimg/

Once in the right directory, compile and install:
gcc -o ./mkbootimg -I ../include ../libmincrypt/*.c ./mkbootimg.c
gcc -o ./unpackbootimg -I ../include ../libmincrypt/*.c ./unpackbootimg.c
sudo cp ./mkbootimg ./unpackbootimg /usr/bin/

Note that Google is replacing the C mkbootimg with a Python version, so in future versions no compilation may be needed anymore for this command.
You will also need to install Android tools on your computer to let it communicate with your phone. You will need adb (Android Debug Bridge, a shell utility allowing to communicate with Android's debug subsystem), adbd (the related daemon) and fastboot (a shell utility allowing to communicate with your phone's bootloader system).
Your favorite Linux distribution may provide them in a single or separate packages, but usually they are always called "android-tools":

Debian / Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install android-tools-{adb,adbd,fastboot}
Fedora / CentOS: sudo yum install android-tools
openSUSE: sudo zypper install android-tools

Fetch the boot.img file
Extract the boot.img either from ROM .zip file or directly from the device:

From the stock ROM .zip file: some applications like SuperSU may modify the boot.img directly on the device, replacing it with the stock one would break such applications.
Directly from the device: some people report read issue leading to corrupted boot.img. IMO, these issues are most likely linked to the use of poor USB cables or USB hub and can be simply avoided by using good quality cables connecting directly the phone to the computer. You also need the ability to run ADB in root mode (depending on the ROM used, this may be trivial or not).

The first method is very obvious: extract the .zip file with any ZIP software, the boot.img file should be right there at the root of the archive.
For the second method, you will first have to determine the (sadly device-specific) path to the storage device where boot.img's content can be retrieved. I know two methods for this:

ls /dev/block/platform/*/by-name/ (where * covers yet another device-specific folder name, chances are it is the only directory below platform/), the exact name to search is also platform dependent but makes usual sense (some examples: boot, LNX (acronym for "Linux")). The files in this directory are actually symbolic links and some people bother to manually go to the target, but I recommend sticking with the higher level name based path which, while longer, remains less error prone. So you will end-up with a path like /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/LNX.
On some (older?) devices, the right device could be found by investigating the output of cat /proc/mtd. If you see the device mtd2 associated to the "boot" label, then you will use the path /dev/mtd2.

Now:

From the phone's developer menu:

Enable debugging on your phone,
Allow root access to ADB (this step applies to phones running CynogenMod, other devices may require some potentially more complex procedure),

Connect it to your computer (and from there to the VM guest if you are running Android tools from within a virtual machine).

If this is not already done, I recommend to manually start the ADB server on the computer's side, this will allow you to directly validate the RSA key on device's side without affecting the behavior of the following ADB commands:
adb start-server

Then switch ADB in root mode:
adb root

Finally, you should be able to directly extract the boot.img file from the device using such command (the source and destination path and names are given as examples, adapt them to your needs and preferences):
adb pull /dev/block/platform/sdhci-tegra.3/by-name/LNX ./boot.img

The command will copy the whole partition, both used and free space, so don't be surprised that the resulting boot.img file will be larger than the original boot.img file coming with the stock ROM .zip file, the content itself remains similar.
Once the transfer is finished, disconnect the phone and don't forget to disable both debugging and root access from the developer menu.
Unpack the original boot.img file
Unpack the boot.img file itself using the command compiled previously:
unpackbootimg -i ./boot.img

This will output several information essential to let you rebuild a new boot.img with the correct structure with respect to the stock boot.img. However, don't rush on your notepad since CyanogenMod's upackbootimg also saves the very same information in several files we will use later on.
This command generates several files with particular suffixes added to the input file's name:

*-second: This is the second-stage bootloader, optional and rarely used on end-user phones. If this file is empty (the most common case), then the phone's bootloader will directly call the Linux kernel.
*-zImage: This is the Linux kernel.
*-ramdisk.gz or *-ramdisk.lz4: the RAM disk used to populate the device's root directory. The extension differs depending on the compression algorithm used.
*-dt: The device tree, populating /dev.
The rest are small files each storing one of the values displayed in unpackbootimg output. These values define the command-line parameter to pass to the Linux kernel and the addresses where the bootloader will have to load each object at boot time.

Most often, one unpacks the boot.img to be able to edit the content of the phone's root directory. As seen above, this content is stored in the *-ramdisk.gz or *-ramdisk.lz4 file and it can be extracted using the commands below:
mkdir ./ramdisk
cd ./ramdisk/
gzip -dc ../boot.img-ramdisk.gz | cpio -imd

For an LZ4 compressed RAM disk, replace the last step with lz4 -d ../boot.img-ramdisk.lz4 | cpio -imd.
You are now free to do the modification you want before proceeding. However, it could be worth to follow the full unpack - repack - boot procedure once without changing anything to ensure that your tools are working as expected. Otherwise, in case of an issue, you will not be certain if the cause is your modification or some incompatibility (see my remarks at the beginning about some manufacturers requiring non-standard procedures or tools).
Rebuild to get the new new-boot.img file
CyanogenMod ROM building process relies on an internal tool, mkbootfs, to produce the boot.img file (this happens in build/tools/releasetools/common.py). However, the steps to build this tool seems uselessly complex to me, whereas using the system-provided cpio seems to work just as fine. The main difference between the two, as per my understanding after a (very) quick check in mkbootfs souce code, seems to be that the latter applies some sanity measures by not including dotted files and the /root directory in the resulting archive while the cpio-based procedure below will just blindly put the whole selected directory tree in the archive.
Conclusion: unnecessarily complex to compile with very few advantages, so let's stick on system provided tools!
Begin by creating the new RAM disk, from the ramdisk directory created above, type:
find . ! -name . | LC_ALL=C sort | cpio -o -H newc -R root:root | gzip > ../new-boot.img-ramdisk.gz

Or, if you need to generate an LZ4 archive:
find . ! -name . | LC_ALL=C sort | cpio -o -H newc -R root:root | lz4 > ../new-boot.img-ramdisk.lz4

The goal here is to create a new RAM disk file with properties as close as possible to the original one (for instance, setting the owner seems often missing in the procedures shared in forums and blogs, however this was required on my device).
Go now in the parent directory to generate the new-boot.img file itself.
cd ..

As seen above, CyanogenMod's unpackbootimg command generates a file matching each parameter expected by mkbootimg. Therefore, all you have to do is issue a mkbootimg -h to get a listing of all parameters, then set each one of them to the appropriate value using the matching file. Note that some parameters expect a file path while others expect to receive the content of the file as value. See an example of resulting command below:
mkbootimg                                           \
--kernel ./boot.img-zImage                          \
--ramdisk ./new-boot.img-ramdisk.gz                 \
--second ./boot.img-second                          \
--cmdline "$(cat ./boot.img-cmdline)"               \
--base "$(cat ./boot.img-base)"                     \
--pagesize "$(cat ./boot.img-pagesize)"             \
--dt ./boot.img-dt                                  \
--ramdisk_offset "$(cat ./boot.img-ramdisk_offset)" \
--second_offset "$(cat ./boot.img-second_offset)"   \
--tags_offset "$(cat ./boot.img-tags_offset)"       \
--output ./new-boot.img

Only two parameters are not set here:

--board: As per my understanding, this is just an informative field allowing to insert a model name in the resulting image.
--id: This one does not expect any value, it just prints out a unique identifier after the image has been built (combining a timestamp and a checksum).

Flash the new-boot.img file onto the device

Start the device in fastboot mode (aka bootloader mode, usually by holding power and volume up buttons).

Connect the USB cable.

Check that the device is correctly detected:
  sudo fastboot devices

Try to boot using the new ROM (without flashing it yet, so in case of issue you just have to restart the phone to get it back on trails, replace the ./new-boot.img file name with your own):
  sudo fastboot boot ./new-boot.img

If the phone works successfully with the new boot image, then go back in fastboot mode and flash it permanently:
  sudo fastboot flash boot ./new-boot.img
  sudo fastboot reboot

Conclusion
This procedure may seem daunting at first, but once you get it, you will see it is actually not.
The "daunting" aspect comes from the fact that there is not a single "Android system": a lot of manufacturers and ROM providers make changes which can range from a subtle path difference to a completely non-standard environment.
What you have to do is determine your particular device's posture, and then what are the few commands which are appropriate in your case. Once you get them, you can stick to them and even easily script them if you need them often.
I voluntarily went into relatively low-level details sometimes because it will make you troubleshooting your issues more easily. Would you use some "easier" opaque utility to build and flash your new boot.img file and see that your device cannot start with it, it would be harder for you to determine which step went wrong. Here, at each step, you will be able to compare the data you are manipulating with the data coming from the original boot.img file or the data as seen on the phone, or try for instance to rebuild the boot.img file with either the original or the newly generated RAM disk file to check if that makes any difference (this allows you to pinpoint if the issue comes from the boot.img or the RAM disk file generation procedure).


For external headsets you would be better looking at the incredible range of bluetooth enabled headsets for mobiles. I doubt that there will be any support for the current desktop usb based ones anytime soon as its not the focus of Android atm. A hardware vendor would have to write the drivers for them, or an opensource effort.

I was just playing with the new native sip voip on Android 4 and its now deeply integrated. I was using the voip account that my home phone uses so my when someone call my house my mobile also rings and uses the wifi, very cool I wonder if this will pick off.


Samsung Galaxy S4 GT I9505 Cyanogenmod 13 6.0.1 Marshmellow 'Andoid starting loop'

Please note that first boot always takes around 5 to 10 minutes to be sure that you've got boot loop on your device.

Before we go into the detailed instructions? Have you tried wiping dalvik cache? If not do it otherwise follow the steps below.

Here is how I would fix this issue:

Make sure that you've already installed USB drivers on the PC.
Also setup fastboot adb drivers. The minimal adb software by xda developer should work fine.
Hopefully you've got the ROM file, extract /unzip to get the boot.img file.
Copy it to the Fastboot drivers folder (Not needed if you've enabled site-wide adb commands, If you're not sure what I mean, I have written a guide on my blog)
Reboot your phone into custom recovery mode.
Run adb fastboot.
Type: "fastboot devices" make sure your device is listed.
Now type this command to flash the boot.img file:

  fastboot flash boot boot.img

Once done reboot your phone using recovery options.

This method has worked for a number of people and devices including Motorola, Google Nexus, LG , Sony and HTC. Feel free to let me know if you have further questions.


Using multiple devices with the same cloud accounts

It is very unlikely that such a setup messes anything up. The only possible scenario where this could happen would be a badly coded app.

In most cases, your apps would only allow you to log in from one device. Once you login on another device, you get logged out on the first. For instance, WeChat works like this.

Other chat clients like Skype or Google Hangouts push your messages to all other devices that are connected. Email clients should work in the same manner.

Cloud storage apps like Dropbox or Owncloud synchronise your files. Unlike messaging apps, they allow modifying and sharing of files. In rare cases, synchronising errors can occur. To solve such conflicts, the cloud server creates a duplicate. This would only happen if you try to edit a file from two or more devices at the same time.

Apps that include an editor (such as Google Sheets or Simplenote usually allow only one version at the same time. That means, even if more than one person edits the file, there won't be any synchronising issues as changes are made instantly. If these persons delete each others changes, data loss would also be instant and can be reversed using the history function of the app.


@aivknow tech

I did this on Samsung Galaxy Tab sm-t330nu

edit the lpm service entry in init.rc from

service lpm /system/bin/lpm
    class charger
    critical

to

service lpm /system/bin/reboot
    class charger
    critical

Result = from powered off state, plug in charger, battery icon displays briefly, then device reboots to normal operation.

to mod your device's service in your init.rc in the

  on charger

section find that equivalent service.


My HTC Desire has suddenly become full and is displaying the "Disk Space Low!" Message

Try viewing your disk usage with DiskUsage, it helps visualize the problem.


How can I tell if a Watch Later video has been successfully preloaded?

I assume you're talking about the Youtube app. As far as i know videos are only preloaded when your phone is charging and connected to wifi. When a video is preloading it shows a little white arrow pointing down on the bottom right of the video (when viewing your watch it later list). When it has fully preloaded it shows a green circle with a white down arrow in it.

The files are stored in /sdcard/Android/data/com.google.android.youtube/files/ then there will be another folder (mine is seemingly random numbers). Within this there is one file per preloaded video. As far as i can tell they aren't able to be played with anything other than the youtube app.

This screenshot shows videos that have been preloaded:


According to the official site, version 4.0.3 is the most up-to-date version of Android released for the HTC Vivid (AT&T) phone, and no newer OS versions will be released for it by either HTC or AT&T.

There are 3rd-party ROMs available for this phone with more recent Android versions, including 4.3 Jelly Bean and 4.4 KitKat.  Installing these requires unlocking the bootloader on your phone, rooting it, and installing a custom recovery image.  This usually voids the manufacturer warranty.  There are tools such as WinDroid Toolkit that make this process easier, but those are not without risk.  Head over to XDA-Developers HTC Vivid sub-forums and read up on the details.


Will joining notification be send to my contact number if he doesn't have it?

No. He will only receive notifications of those people who are in his contact list.
Imagine a famous person getting 100s of notifications per day of people joining telegram he doesn't even know. LOL


Save accepted untrusted certificates on email app (HTC Sensation)

I'd suggest switching to an alternative mail app -- K-9 Mail probably is a good choice. I use it for about 2 years now with a mail server having an "untrusted" (self-signed) certificate, and never experienced what you describe -- so this should solve your issue.


Android input language adding phonetic variation

After you've added Russian language to GBoard go to Languages, click Russian and it will show you additional keyboard layouts. Swipe right and choose the phonetic layout you like - there are even more than one!


Why isn't my internal storage usage going down after adopting an SD card?

The comment from Irfan Latif pointed me in the right direction. My "Music" directory was still on /data/media/0 as well as the adopted mount. I deleted it from /data/media/0, the directory still shows up in /storage/emulated/0, and the usage summary makes sense now. Down to half usage.


go to setting > accessibility > notification reminder.


Tricking the file system to mount a LINK2SD drive as mnt/extsd

/mnt/extsd/179_49
/mnt/extsd/179_50
/mnt/extsd

some type of round-robin.

Your going to have to move your data in '49 & '50 to someother directories. mkdir /sdcard/externalData

rmdir '49
rmdir '50
rmdir extsd

cd mnt
ln -s /sdcard/externalData extsd

cd extsd
ln -s /sdcard/new49 179_49

ln -s /sdcard/new50 179_50

Whether this will work will depends on the capabilities of ln.  This would work in normal unix  / linux boxes.

R


The password recovery is the same as recovering your forgotten Google account password. On your computer, go to Google Account Recovery and follow the instructions there. The process depends on many things, such as do you have 2-step verification installed, do you have backup codes or have you set up an alternate email.


How to know if an keyboard/input related app is safe to use

You can't. A keyboard, by nature, is required to know everything you type, including your account credentials. Your best bet is to select keyboard coming from top developers.

My favorite? Multiling Keyboard, supports multiple languages (including Vietnamese), highly customizable, the only keyboard I know of that doesn't require Internet permission (so the keyboard can't send what you are typing on the fly).

Some other popular keyboard that support Vietnamese includes Swiftkey (free), Swype (paid).

As for Vietnamese products, Laban is fine (comes from Vinagame I think), Gotiengviet also was used by hundreds of thousands users without any incident.


How to do GREP text searching without root?

You are mixing up two things:

Installing a binary like busybox system wide from within an app (which includes grep)
Running a binary

The default app based installers for busybox require root access to install busybox system-wide. This is true, however this is just because it is an app. Once the binary is installed you don't need root access.

Additionally even without root you can also install a busybox (or whatever) binary on your device:

You need to activate Android Debug Bridge (adb)
Copy the binary onto your phone (if it is not already there): adb push busybox /sdcard/
Copy the binary from the sdcard section (where it can't be executed) to different directory like /data/local or /data/local/tmp: adb shell "cat /sdcard/busybox > /data/local/busybox".
Then make it executable using adb shell chmod 0555 /data/local/busybox

Now you can execute it using its full path from within a terminal app or inside adb shell:

/data/local/busybox grep ....


I basically connected my android device to the internet using a VPN service (unotelly.. I currently live in Lebanon although when I first registered with the economist.. I was living in Canada).

Connecting via the vpn solved the problem


Disable screen compatibility mode as a user

Your only option is to contact the developer of the application via the contact email in its Google Play page.  The only compatibility option ICS has is a way to force accelerated rendering.  This can be found under the Developer Options section of the Settings app.  Based on your description, though, this probably won't resolve the scaling issue you have, besides possibly speeding the app up a bit.


How do you download an apk file on sd card?

You need to use either Your smartphone or the card reader. Insert appropriate for Your nook (apparently it is a tablet according to what Google told me. Have never encountered it before) SD/memory card in the phone/card reader and connect it to Your PC/laptop.

After downloading the needed .apk file on Your computer, copy it into a folder of the SD/memory card (for example "E:\Downloads" or any other name it will be given by the system) and disconnect the card reader/phone from comp. via safe way (most probably nothing will happen if You will simply plug it out, but just in case).

Insert the memory card (if it was in your phone in the first place - take it out beforehand. Don't forget to switch off devices when inserting/unmounting memory cards) into your nook device and switch it on. Go for the file browser (aka File Manager and so on), find the folder you have put .apk file before (Downloads folder for example) and open it via touching it's name. The system will suggest to install .apk file and demand for Your approval of the action.

That should be it, pardon if too much text/too detailed explanation.


Why can't Android phones record VoIP calls?

....why is cell recording allowed,...

AFAIK call recording is not a feature of stock Android, though certain OEMs and custom ROMs enable it or can be done using apps. I guess legal restrictions is the reason for not enabling  this feature, as call recording laws widely vary

VOIP recording is quite different from voice recording

Firstly, it is possible:

App recording VOIP calls  is possible, see Call Recorder - IntCall for instance. There may be others too
Non app based services that record VOIP calls seem to be more - Dingtone, for example

What is common for VOIP recording and different from voice recording is that VOIP recording is done when it is routed through the servers provided by the app (see description in both links above). Ordinary voice recording is not bound by such limitations and can be natively record if enabled on device

Call Recording Software Wiki

  VoIP Recording
  is usually restricted to streaming media recorders or software developed by the softphone or IP PBX creator. There are also solutions which use packet capture technology to passively record VoIP phone calls on the LAN.

Since VOIP is using data packets to transmit voice, these packets need to be actively or passively sniffed ( see wiki above for details) and this requires dedicated setup unlike voice recording ( which can be done natively on phone (if enabled) or using apps ). Hence, VOIP recording is not simple to implement on device like voice recording-  a technology constraint


Phone Shuts Down, Apps Force Close Since New SD Card

Formatting the SD card on the phone itself seemed to do the trick. My apps are finally running and my phone longer keeps shutting down with the new SDHC. :)


Method 1:
Root Galaxy S4 and Install Recovery:

  Note: THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND MAY BRICK YOUR PHONE. THE GUIDE BELOW REQUIRES WINDOWS. (FOR ADVANCED USERS: Extract the .tar and flash the img files with "Heimdall".

Download the PhilZ recovery for your device.
Download the latest SuperSU package and copy it to your phone.
Download the Odin tool and unzip it.
Download and install the Samsung USB drivers on your Windows PC.
Enable USB Debugging on your Galaxy S4.
Now turn off your phone and boot it into the 7. Download Mode by holding the Volume Down + Home + Power buttons together for 2-3 seconds. When you are prompted to press the Volume Up key, do it.
Now connect your Galaxy S4 to computer via USB cable.
Open Odin folder and launch the program as administrator.

  Note: Make sure the message box in Odin shows “Added!” text. If it doesn’t, reinstall the drivers, reboot the PC and the phone and connect it again.

Uncheck the Auto Reboot option on Odin (do not touch any other option).
Click the AP button on Odin and add the PhilZ recovery file with .tar extension.
Now click the Start button on Odin and wait till the installation is finished.
When you get PASS!/RESET! message on Odin, disconnect the USB cable.
Now long press the power button to turn off the device, or remove the back panel and pull out the battery for 20 seconds. Reinsert the battery and then hold the Volume Up + Home + Power keys simultaneously. When the screen turn up and you see the Samsung Logo, release the Power key. Keep the other two keys pressed until your phone boots into the recovery mode.
In PhilZ recovery menu, select Install zip option, navigate to the SuperSU update package (.zip file) and install it.
When you are done with installation, return to PhilZ main menu and select Reboot system now option.


Power on S3 Mini without working power button

Okay my solution was to buy a cheap Samsung JIG from eBay (~2.5€). You can also build one yourself, but I did not have any resistors laying around at the time, so I just chose to buy on already made.

I plugged it into the mobile and after just a few seconds it turned on into download mode.

I then removed the jig, and connected my samsung s3 mini to my computer. I had to install the correct drivers and started odin. I did not find a way to simply boot my device, but I was able to create an emptpy .tar file to flash. I chose this file via the "BL" button in Odin. I made sure "Auto Reboot" was enabled and hit Start. It worked like a charm. Because the tar file I provided was empty it did not actually flash anything, but the device turned on.

I can now turn on the device whenever I need, using the jig and  my pc.

One other problem I ran into is: How do I turn the screen off, having no working power button. The Solution: Apps. There are a number of apps out there which enable you to turn off the screen via many different methods. Choose one that fits you best :)


Yes. It is possible to have more space allocated for personal use.

First, I would suggest that your download Terminal Emulator and run the command df in it to get the memory allocated for each partition (ie /system, /data etc).

The space allocated to /data partition is only space you can use. Rest is for system/firmware that you cant use. There are three ways to get out of this problem->

1) Repartition

We will reduce the amount of memory allocated to /system and give that memory to /data. Manufacturers often give /system partition a farily good amount of space for future os upgrades. But when you use custom roms, they are relatively lighter and use much less space, so we can shrink this partition. But unfortunately, there isn't any such method made yet for xperia z ultra as far as I know. So this is a rather difficult (almost impossible, considering working of sony phones, the TA partition etc).

2) Installing as "system app"

You know that /system partition has a lot of unused space. So how to use it? Install apps inside system partition! They will become system apps and you will need special app managers to uninstall them (you can use some app manager to install app and move it to /system partition. Not all apps will support doing this). Downside is that apps will still store their data in /data partition, so again, this isnt a very good option. (You can also just create a random folder inside /system partition and probably store a few things like songs inside that? Ok that might be a stupid idea, even though I do practice this on my Nexus 4, which has relatively even less memory).

3) App2SD

This leaves you with only one efficient option as this. Use some app like
Link2Sd to move apps and their data to external sd card. Hence more space inside internal. Again, not all apps are supported, but most are.


How to add Chinese Input Method to English Android 2.2 Phone

There are a lot of alternative keyboards available on the playstore, which register as separate IMEs. One example I found is LIME HD Chinese IME1, another one Cantonese keyboard2:

There are several more available (the developer of the second keyboard offers some other variants as well), many are linked on these apps' playstore pages.


Do you need to run uninstallers/cleaners on Android to maintain performance levels like on Windows?

As for uninstalling apps, I don't think so.  Standard apps (ones that don't use root access) have at most three parts:
A single executable file

A .apk archive containing the entire app -- similar to Windows apps that are entirely contained in a .exe file (like most installers: It not only carries all the code it needs but also all pictures, config files it needs, etc.)

It is stored in /data/app usually

A single folder containing all userdata

This is for things like settings storage, or caches

Although this is comparable to yoir appdata folder it doesn't get cluttered because apps are only allowed a single folder here that is managed completely by the system and is easily deleted when uninstalled

Stored in /data/data

Possibly another folder in /sdcard/Android/data

Basically the same as the /data/data folder but if the app needs a lot of space for extra files it puts them here

When an app is uninstalled, all these parts are destroyed by the system, so I can't think of anything that would get cluttered but the fragmentation of the sdcard.  DO NOT download any defrag apps (I haven't found a single one that wasn't some sort of scam).  Instead, get a card reader and defrag it on your PC if need be.
Edit: As suggested by Izzy below, SD Maid is a nice manager/cleaner


How can I search the contents of the books I added to my Google books?

I think your question could be worded better as it seems to ask a couple of questions.

Google books are filed as cryptic alphanumeric IDs, and they seem to be HTML type files it makes it more difficult than with most other book types.

finding books on your device is very easy, use an explorer like File Expert or Astro (both are free, however Astro's search function is better) which contain a search option. You will probably have to use multiple searches depending on how many different types of ebooks you have on your SD card - I know I have epubs, mobi, prcs, pdf, txt and doc files.
If you are looking specifically for just your google books then as long as you have set to store them on the SD card they will be under the following path - Storage Card/Android/Data/com.google.android.apps.books
Searching contents of books within google books - you can't from the library or app itself, unless you are already in the book - in which case press menu and then use search.
However due to the nature of google books you could probably do this much quicker via the website. With other book and file types you could try Astro's search within text - might just pull up what you are looking for as I have had this work on some txt and doc files.


By "project", do you mean "play video"? Because that might be a bit of a challenge, depending on your network and (phone) CPU.

To just get screens/presentations, you could connect a laptop to your TV and a VNC server on your phone.

If you do want to play media files, and you have a DLNA client (Xbox 360, PS3, one of the million media boxes like Roku) connected, you can install a DLNA server on your Android (search Market - there are plenty) and stream media.

Plenty of the latest TVs even have a DLNA client built in.


ADB bricked android doesn't connect to pc

Well, you've just messed with the system partition, so there's nothing much to panic.. Here's a stock ROM for your phone:

http://www.needrom.com/category/bluboo/x2-bluebo/ (Choose the ROM for the SAME android version you had before bricking).

The good news is you won't need to lose your data. Everything will be safe.

Download SP Flash Tools, load the scatter file from this ROM, uncheck all the partitions except ANDROID (SYSTEM) as this is the only partition you need to rectify. Click on Download and connect your device. Your device will be unbricked without having to lose any data.


How do you disable "add icon to home screen" on Android Oreo?

I've been looking all over the internet for an answer to this for a while. In hopes of alleviating other people's headache's, here's how to enable/disable automatically adding home screen icons of newly downloaded apps in the newly released Android Oreo.

You won't find the setting in the Play Store anymore, nor is it in the Google app settings, or the device Settings. Instead:

Hold on the home screen
Tap Settings
Toggle "Add icon to Home screen"
Rejoice in knowing you didn't search for this for over an hour

Note that this fix is confirmed for the default Android Oreo launcher, tested on the Pixel. Other launchers and devices may differ.

Credit goes to Reece Gale for posting his answer on Google+.


INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS on Android 9

Even though Google states that this works for the Android 9 and 10 images as well from my experience it works only for the Android 11 preview images.

I have tested this on Windows using the latest default x86 Google enabled images shown in the emulator manager for Android 10 and 11. As test app I used an Telegram armv7 only apk file from 2019:

Android-R - (Android 11 preview) Google Play Intel x86 Atom System Image (revision: 1)

Installation success, app start success

Android-29 (Android 10) - Google Play Intel x86 Atom System Image (revision: 8)

Installation failed INSTALL_FAILED_NO_MATCHING_ABIS

Therefore my results contradict to the Google description you quoted in your question. At the moment only the preview x86 images of Android R seem to be capable of running armv7 apps.

Test environment: Windows 10 64 bit with Intel Haxm installed.


Does the Amazon App Store charge for updated apps?

No, Amazon does not charge again for apps you've already purchased.  You are misunderstanding the message that pops up.  When they say "Please find it in My Apps" they don't mean in your device's app drawer, they mean within the Appstore.  While you are still within the Amazon Appstore, do the following:

Open the side drawer (by sliding it out from left to right, tapping the Amazon logo on the upper-left corner, or simply pressing the menu button):

Select the "My Apps" option which is under the "Library" section:

Tap on the "Cloud" tab, and all of your previously purchased apps will be there, with an option to install on your new device:

You may need to refresh the list if it doesn't show up.


Uninstalled apps still show up on "Apps installed on" in Google Play Store

In the Play store there is a 'installed' tab which as the name implies is of currently installed applications. The 'all' tab shows apps which have ever been installed on the device.

If you don't want a application to show up in this list, then from the phone open Play store, go into your My Apps and on the All tab you can click the circular remove icon to the right of the app will remove it from your Play account.

This is what it should look like.


How can I share my screen from Android device to another Android device?

Try this app. It allows you to share the screens between two tablets or two mobile devices of varying dimensions wirelessly and does not require any thing extra as per your requirements.


ADB sideload and fastboot uses. What's the difference?

Folks consider adb sideload <ZIP> when they have a ready to flash .zip file. The command is mostly used when booted into Recovery mode.
Fastboot on the other hand often deals with per partition flashing at a time. E.g. fastboot flash  recovery <IMG> -- only flashes Recovery partition and not all the relevant partitions for ROM installation. ADB sideload <ZIP> usually does full ROM installation in one go.

You unlock the bootloader only if it is locked. Google Nexus devices comes with locked bootloaders while some Chinese Mediatek devices comes unlocked. You've to search web for your model.

No, the command doesn't work on every Android device. The reason is 2.


Why won't FWDN see my cheap Chinese tablet?

I found the answer I was needing in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eQ7Z6_v_Fc

I was holding down the wrong side of the rocker switch when booting, ending up in "recovery" mode.


Is it possible to use an AT&T phone for android development without rooting?

This question seems to say that it's necessary to root an at&t phone (like the samsung captivate) in order to install apps from unofficial sources.

That is not true. While you cannot download apps from the Web, you can install apps through the development tools, or things based on the development tools (like the Sideloader Wonder Machine).

  My question is a bit more focused: if I'm working on my own android app, will I be able to load it on my at&t phone for testing (via the android SDK, etc.) without first rooting the phone?

Yes.


WhatsApp messages on my phone were not backed up to the latest date. My phone stopped working and new phone does not have all the messages

If you still have access to your old phone, perform a backup and then restore on your new phone. Make sure, however, that all your messages are present on your old phone or else you will lose the ones after 1st June.

If you don't have your old phone, then I'm afraid there's no way you can retrieve those messages, for if there was, it sort of beats the purpose of taking a backup in the first place.


How to “adb connect” to Samsung Galaxy Tab (P3100)?

you have to tell adb to use tcpip

adb tcpip 5555
adb connect 10.0.0.2

then to go back to usb mode

adb usb


Verizon and AT&T locks down the bootloader of its phones, usually killing possibilities of root and custom ROMs in the progress. Luckily it seems Note4 has an unlock solution (read here and here), although it does require your current build to be old enough (Lollipop). After that, flash a custom recovery and a custom ROM and you're flying with no Verizon bullsh!t and generally better performance.


Here is a checklist of what you need:

Is the cable you are using the official one that came with the phone?
Some third party cables are untrustworty
Is your computer's USB socket working correctly and transferring
data? You can check this by plugging in a simple USB flash drive. This is the most likely problem because android should enable this option as soon as it detects it is connected to a computer.


At this time there isn't a way to attach a contact. You would have to copy and paste the details or use a different messaging app. Hangouts is still lacking in many essential features, unfortunately.


What is the URL of the bookmarks or favorites section in Chrome for Android?

There is no such URL for Chrome for Android as of version 80.0. All Chrome specific URLs are listed and can be accessed from chrome://chrome-urls. Bookmarks related URL is not listed there.

Second, for a user to access their Bookmarks a separate activity is launched named org.chromium.chrome.browser.bookmarks.BookmarkActivity, but this activity cannot be launched outside of Chrome.

In short, what you are after and specifically in the manner you are after is not possible on Chrome for Android.


Can't find Google Now in CyanogenMod 10.0 for Galaxy S2

It seems that you have a version of Google Search that doesn't include Google Now. The easiest way to fix this would be to install a new version of the Google Search app. I have linked to the googlenow apk below so that you can install the version I had on my device.

This should then allow you to access Google Now by pressing the Google Search option in the app drawer, or using the quick search bar on the default launcher.

GoogleNow.apk


Is there a way to log into and root my device without using ADB?

There are several ways to achieve root access on an Android device -- and they differ a lot, depending on manufacturer, device, Android version, and even Linux kernel version running. Unfortunately, devices don't ship with "root" accounts (as we are used to from our desktops and laptops) -- but there's no common way to "root" them.

Rooting is mostly done via Exploits. Some require ADB installed and an USB-Session established. Others do not require ADB. And again others ship as a single .apk to be copied to the device and started there (so-called "one click root"). And again another method might involve a custom recovery being flashed...

So many methods. But to explain them all in detail, this is not the right place -- while your question should be answered already, as it required only a "yes" or "no" :)


In my case it was a full memory - deleted Gigabytes of photos -> worked


Difference between ADB shell and TWRP terminal

I wouldn't tamper with partitions currently in use – which would be the case when the system is booted up. While booted into recovery, they are not in use unless you explicitly mount them (or if they'e auto-mounted, you can unmount them and still have a system running).

So things like repartitioning or formatting are better done from recovery. Same applies to imaging (dd) where you want to be sure the contents don't change while you create that "disk image", as you want it to be consistent (not an issue with partitions mounted read-only of course).

And again this applies if you want to repair the file system: the corresponding partition must be unmounted for that, which cannot be done e.g. for the /data partition while booted up normally – fsck (File System ChecK) requires exclusive access to it.

As for your underlying problem: I'd recommend to boot into recovery and run a file system check first to see if any partition is corrupted. In most cases, fsck is also able to repair the corruption, and you'll keep your data that way. If fsck finds issues it cannot solve (or you want to be "absolutely sure and clean"), you still can run that make_ext4fs – which of course would mean "all data lost". If you do that on /system it also means you need to flash a ROM afterwards, as your OS would be gone. And if you do it to any partition other than /system, /data or /cache (or the SD card), you might brick your device as you wouldn't know what to put there to bring it to live again. Oh, and also make sure the partition you want to "format" is really using ext4 before running make_ext4fs against it. While it should be transparent, an unexpected file system might confuse the OS :)


How to update the LG GT540 Optimus to the lastest stable Android version?

Backup your phone

this is important if you wish to keep any data from your phone. You will have to restore backed up data (such as apps) after you update. The only way to update to the latest software is to erase your device, so backup whatever you do not want to lose.

Extract the .zip file, which you can download from this AndroidForum thread or this XDA thread. Open the folder and install MSXML 4.0 SP3 Parser (msxml.msi).
Once that has finished, install LGAndroidDriver_WHQL_ML_Ver1.0_All_Win7.exe which are the drivers so your computer will recognize your phone. Windows XP Users download this driver, extract the contents anywhere (e.g. desktop), right-click on the 'android_usb.inf' file and click 'Install'.
Next, open KDZ_FW_UPD.exe
(i) Change 'Type' to '3GQCT' THIS IS A MUST, THE UPDATE WILL NOT WORK OTHERWISE AND YOU MAY BRICK YOUR PHONE
(ii) Make sure 'PhoneMode' is set to 'DIAG'
(iii) Browse for the 'V20B_00+Fastboot.kdz' file.
Prepare the phone by enabling USB Debugging by going to Settings>Applications>Development>Enable USB Debugging and connect the phone to the computer via USB cable and wait for the drivers to install for the phone. Sometimes the computer still won't recognize the phone, if this is the case, try this: Windows Vista and Windows 7 users press start and type device manager (Windows XP users right click 'My Computer' and click properties, then click the Hardware tab and click Device Manager) then locate LGE Android Platform Modem, right click it and click disable. Accept any warnings that come up. Also, make sure you've disabled Mass Storage Mode on your phone. To do this, go to Settings>Storage>Enable Mass Storage, and untick the box.
Click 'Launch software update' and do not use your computer until the update is complete. The update will take roughly 10-20 mins to complete.

This method was found in the AndroidForums. There is also a Youtube tutorial on rooting the GT540.

Bricking is always a possibility when modifying software that doesn't come directly through the intended channels

That said, the methods here have been proven to work and your risk is significantly less if you perform these steps correctly.

Let us know if you need any help!


This turned out to be a hardware fault which is pretty common on the SGS2 units. The vibration device is mounted next to the audio jack, meaning that it sometimes fails if the jack has been stressed. There's a short video (warning: nsfw language) that describes the issues and how to fix them.

Essentially it works as following:

Insert a cable into the headphone jack.
Lightly press on the jack, in the direction of the front-facing camera (left, if looking at the phone from the front)
Whilst lightly pressing in this direction, remove the jack.
Vibration should be restored... for now.

The long term fix is to get the vibration motor re-mounted by a qualified repair technician.


Android owner locked: Can't update phone

You can try  resetting the device to factory then when you'll be promoted to verify your Google account, simply put the owner account that was synced with the device then after that you can put any account and you should be able to download OTA updates


Debugging bootloop: Get an information log without ADB? Can an emulator help?

You will know if the kernel has hung, the led light stays on and not go further.

As for your question, you need to be more clearer and specific as we do not know and since you posted a similar question before. You have not stated, what device is it, what android version is it, what kernel is it, all those are left out and thusly playing a guessing game here.

Is it the ramdisk not created correctly?
Is it the address used for booting incorrect?
Is the ROM built for VMSPLIT 3G and the kernel is built with VMSPLIT 2G or vice versa?
What chipset is it? ARMv7 kernel with ROM compiled for ARMv6...
Is the kernel actually booting? if yes, how do you know?

Far too many things here to speculate.

Edit:

This bit is related to kernel level debugging.

The only way you can know if the kernel is indeed booting in the first place is to use a USB to Serial TTY cable with JTAG pinouts on a small circuit board clipped/soldered to the back of the device in question, and having the serial driver compiled into the kernel and treating the console as a tty device, and reading from it via minicom or hyperterminal to see the boot up sequence.

As for bootloops,

The cause of boot-loops are down to the ROM itself, the initialization sequence is crashing somewhere. Now be careful :), the kernel in itself, can boot-loop also due to malfunctioning driver, panic's and reboots itself.

So the question is, which is it?, Is it the kernel that keeps rebooting itself or has it got passed that stage and started loading the ROM? If its at the stage of loading the ROM, then something in the initialization is crashing, when the ROM crashes, it sends a signal to shutdown SurfaceFlinger, AudioFlinger, adb daemon, MedaServices etc.

What you can do is this - in the init.rc, where you have this:

service console /system/bin/sh
    console
    disabled
    user shell

Change disabled to enabled, the next time, Android will dump you into the console, i.e. no familiar graphical interface.

Also, look for the  lines containing servicemanager, if the adbd daemon is listed there, take it out as what happens is the directive clause critical and onrestart will cause you to not have any adb facility!


Fake missing network connection for single app

You can use Xprivacy for that. In case you don't know, this is an XPosed module (available from the XPosed repo) dealing with privacy related permissions; details can be found in its XDA Thread). Instead of simply blocking access to the internet, Xprivacy fakes its inavailablity. To be on the safe side, you additionally can block internet access for that app using a firewall like AFWall+ – cannot hurt.

Side-effect: You can block/fake a lot more – e.g. your location, device IDs and other things. This can be done by defining a fixed value, or even in "random mode" – having Xprivacy either randomize data on boot, or even on each access.


How to mount external SD card at a fixed path in CM13?

I've found a reasonably easy way to do something close enough: just set the volume serial number to something fixed. This is easy enough for FAT32-formatted SD cards: just use Sysinternals VolumeID:

D:\>vol D:
 Volume in drive D has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 07F5-432C

D:\>volumeid D: ECAD-ECAD

VolumeID V2.01 - Set disk volume id
Copyright (C) 1997-1999 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

Volume ID for drive D: updated to ecad-ecad

("ecad" for "external card" but there are other possibilities, of course)

Now my external SD card is mounted at /storage/ECAD-ECAD, which is easy to remember for typing in those apps which don't let me pick a path, and more importantly, can stay the same when I upgrade to a faster card, for example (if I repeat this procedure).

The only complication is SD cards larger than 32 GB, which Windows refuses to format into FAT32. The best tool to work around this is Rufus, an open-source tool with a focus on bootable drives, but it can also just format a large FAT32 drive.


I cleared the storage and cache of the Phone app. Now it is working fine.


Contact sorting in ICS? (Galaxy S alpha version)

Is there something like:

  People app -> press the menu button bottom right (the 3 vertical dots) -> settings -> Sort list by