As per the screenshot of the desired color scheme, I can confirm that you can have such color scheme in Android. This is a rather indirect way but works fairly well.

Rather than using a terminal emulator I'm using an SSH client having color schemes. Three useful apps I found are JuiceSSH, Serverauditor and Reflection for Unix. I tested the first two apps.

Why SSH client you may ask? Because I stumbled across one of them and this question struck me as well. Anyhow, we need to host a simple and easy SSH server on your Android device.

I prefer Servers Ultimate Pro(paid) but you may use SSH Server(free) too. Both offered by same developer, though feel free to use any server app that can setup SSH server.

Instructions

Open any of these server apps and make an SSH server with credentials. It's extremely easy so no instructions are required here. However, you may take a look at this answer(Method #3) for basic know-how.

A thing to note that free version will make your server available on all network interfaces (including cellular network) which one won't prefer for some reasons. That's why I use the paid version as it can limit it to 127.0.0.1 or Wi-Fi easily.
Install and launch JuiceSSH and enter SSH server details:

Addresss: 127.0.0.1 (Only for Pro app, for free app the IP will be listed)
Identity → New → type Username and Password you created in step 1.
Port: you entered in step 1.

Save it.
Tap the new entry in connections and select Accept to accept server fingerprints.
Solarized dark is available under its Settings → Theme/Colors.

A look of this app in the said theme:

(Click image to see larger variant.)
If you want more options in color scheme then try Serverauditor(Solarized default) app. Its options are straightforward, but it did not work in my device on 127.0.0.1 (no error, just blank toast).

You may try it running on said address; could be device specific problem on my side. Otherwise, either use the cellular IP or if you're connected to Wifi/hotspot then use that one.

A look of Serverauditor in Solarized dark theme:

(Click image to see larger variant.)

About JuiceSSH

  The all in one terminal client for Android including SSH, Local Shell, Mosh and Telnet support.

  Features:

  Full colour terminal / ssh client
  Popup keyboard with all those normally hard to find characters
  Use the volume keys to quickly change font size
  External keyboard support
  Local Android terminal support
  Dark, Light, 80's hacker, Molokai, Solarized Dark and Solarized Light terminal color themes
  ...

About Serverauditor

  Serverauditor is the most innovative SSH client ever designed for a mobile device. With Serverauditor you can easily manage UNIX/Linux servers from your Android device on the go.

  XTerm, VT100 and vanilla terminal types support
  SSH key and password authentication
  Built-in RSA/DSA key generator
  Multiple SSH connections to the same host
  Bluetooth keyboard support
  Associate volume button or shaking gesture with actions, e.g Ctrl-Z or session closing
  8 awesome color schemes and adjustable font size
  Automatic UNIX/Linux OS recognition, e.g Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mac OS X etc
  ...

Perhaps all of this can be avoided if only we can have a Terminal app with color schemes. Do let me know, otherwise this solution should be enough. :)


Can I use OTG USB pendrive with Galaxy Nexus

Yes, it works. You need to root and install the StickMount app. Source.


Mounting an USB wireless adapter to a Nexus 4

There is a very good chance that you may not have a driver problem.

There is a very important detail everyone seemed to miss about using network connections via USB: they must be plugged in before the phone is powered on! The phone must also have Wifi and Data turned off, and potentially Airplane Mode! All before the device is turned on. Some devices can get away with not needing a reboot sesh, but this is the general rule explained with BobjGear and their Android ethernet adapters.

Secondly, another very important detail, is that sometimes, you need to manually configure the adapter and its ip address through ADB or Terminal Emulator. The commands follow this format, as described in this article:

ifconfig [eth0|eth1|eth2|etc] [IP] netmask [NETMASK]
route add default gw [GATEWAY] dev eth0

ifconfig is not a typo. You will have to figure out which network "slot" your dongle is attached on via netcfg. It will list all network components in use or idle, usually wlan0 is built-in wifi, rmnet listings are mobile data, and p2p0 is VPN. Your dongle will probably fall under eth0 or 1, or wlan1 or 2.

Finally, if all else fails, you may need to find an adapter that either a) has matching (or close to matching--starts with RTL8) chipsets, or b) a (Android/linux-confirmed) truly universal wifi dongle.

If that cannot be done, this XDA post explains how to modify a Nexus CM11 kernel (your lucky day) via modprobe to enable additonal drivers. You may want to contact him for help, as his flashable kernel is specific to a custom CM11 ROM posted on XDA, just to match the checksums.

Good luck!


When do Force Closes imply hardware problems?

Random force closes are only suspicious if it's truly random (i.e. no plausible causes) and it's only happening on your device. In most other cases, it's simply due to poorly coded third party apps.

There are two kinds of force close dialogs:

Android offers to force close applications that fail to respond to an input event within five seconds. When this happens, the force close dialog offers you to either "wait", "report", or "force close" the app (this is also called the ANR/Application Not Responding dialog).
There is also another force close dialog that happens due to an unrecoverable crash or unhandled exception (e.g. null pointer error, stack overflow, array out of bound, etc). This crash dialog would not offer you to "wait", just to "report" or "force close".

In any case, check the report dialog and see if you can scrap any useful info (most importantly, the traceback) to determine whether it's an application bug. Google the traceback message with the name of the app to see if it's probably a common issue with that particular version of the app.

Make sure you keep your apps up to date.


No mobile signal after installing CyanogenMod

Looks like Toggle Mobile just doesn't work well with my setup. I bought a £2 SIM card from Lycamobile a couple months ago, and it's been working flawlessly with no setup changes. Not much of an answer I'm afraid, but I'd rather lose my remaining Toggle credit than use several more days on this.


In-app purchase got cancelled, but money debited from bank

If it's banks payment error you get refund in around 6 days. Or later you can ask the developer for a refund. You can mail the developer to his email given in developer details


Why I get permission denied on ADB on Android phone?

before actually running adbcontrol you must specify paths in config file
check adb connection is working fine (previously authorized) and find a writeable location on device, for example
/sdcard
/storage/emulated/0
/data/local/tmp

depending on encryption and lock screen the location might not be available in this boot state, so better double check adb push is working
adb push ~/file.txt /sdcard

now open the config.properties file and define paths
adbCommand = adb
screenshotDelay = 100
localImageFilePath = adbcontrol_screenshot.png
phoneImageFilePath = /sdcard/adbcontrol_screenshot.png

if your adb binary is not in env you must specify path in first line. for windows paths backslash should escaped like
adbCommand = C:\\Android\\platform_tools\\adb.exe

when configured you can finally run adbcontrol from command line. the terminal will floated by debugging log (you can minimize). another window will open showing your phone screen. your keyboard and mouse input is recognized in android now
java -jar adbcontrol.jar


Editing text - how to change the cursor position?

Using the trackball or D-pad for this is pretty accurate.

You can easily go up, down, left and right with it.


Its not the android version describes that it can connect OTG(On-The-Go), its the capability of the device. Huawei P8 Lite has no OTG connectivity as described here : P8 lite review


Is it possible to record calls on Galaxy S3

I used to use Auto Call Recorder as well (before my S3), and I was highly unsatisfied when it stopped working (when I switched to S3).

Just yesterday I found out this another great app that just works. And seems like much better than ACR: Record My Call - The solution! No idea how that's even free (even if it does have ads). And, I do have root, but I think this doesn't even need it.


"Other" folder on SD card with Kindle Fire 10

"Other" is cached data (browser, other apps), downloaded files, game data (e.g., Minecraft worlds), etc. Basically anything that doesn't fit the named categories.

You can clean some of this up by using the functions in Settings->Storage to clear app caches/data, delete downloads, etc. If you know what to look for, you can also use a file manager to manually delete things that may not get cleared via Settings menus. However, please make sure you know what you are deleting if you attempt the latter.


Are you talking about Google Play Movies & TV? I think this is only for rented / purchased movies in Google Play.

To play an MP4 file on your device, try an app like MX Player.


Why can't this application be deactivated after screen is locked?

WhatsApp employs a mechanism that ensures messages are always notified (as long as data connectivity is present) , which is well explained here How is WhatsApp able to receive messages when not in use?. That's the reason on your device, the red warning is displayed

You can instead Greenify WhatsApp . For details  see greenify questions like How does hibernating an app work technically? and XDA - Greenify

Edit Protected apps feature may be used. I am not sure if this feature exists in the emui version you have. What is protected apps in Huawei phones?


You can use Samsung's Kies program.

The link below describes some details of the program.  It includes backup of calendar as well as most other content of your device.

What can I backup and recover from my device using Kies


Forwarding text messages from an android phone to a TCP port of a PC

It isn't difficult to create the necessary code to listen to incoming messages, handle their data and send them to a TCP socket. I've done such an app but can't release it's code, unfortunately. All I can say is it's pretty simple, just research incoming SMS handling (for example here) and sockets (for example here).

As to your other question, there is some latency when receiving SMS, but this depends on your carrier. They store the messages in a queue and send them to your phone as fast as they can. So, depending on your carrier they may have some limits on how many messages they accept into the queue.

You can estimate the delay in the messages by sending a SMS to your phone from 2 other phones simultaneously, and check the difference in receiving the messages. You can then estimate the handling speed per minute. For example, if there's a two second delay, it would take (200*2)/60=6m40s to process 200 messages.


Do Android 3.0 tablets have standby/hibernate mode?

As far as I'm aware, Android basically just doesn't work this way. You can turn off the screen ("sleep" mode) and put it into airplane mode for some extra battery saving, but there's no "standby" equivalent like on a laptop. The processor should underclock itself when you do this, too (how much probably depends on the device). And, as Lie Ryan points out in the comments, for phones this is largely due to the fact that a call could come at any time. I'd guess Honeycomb's behavior is essentially a hold-over from that since it's easier than rewriting it.

That being said, if you just want a book reader, you might consider something like a Nook Color. The Iconia is really a full-fledged tablet PC (though running Android), but something designed specifically for e-reading will probably offer better battery life.


How can I install swype on HTC Wildfire S?

Swype uses a "closed" beta system to distribute its app rather than using the Market. You can register for the beta and get a download link for their installer by simply visiting the Swype website.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the Wildfire is "officially" supported, but QVGA screen support is noted for v3.0. The forum thread you linked to in your question is about 5 months old, and QVGA was not supported at that time.


Does Whatsapp notifies if my security code has changed to people I don't have in my list of contacts?

If you're in a group and your security code is changed then every member of that group would be able to see that notification. I'd observed this many times even though neither me nor them knew each other or had each other's number saved. They would see your number in the notification (not technically a notification), not the name.


Brand new Moto G6 won't send or receive SMS

After installing another generic SMS app and seeing it was receiving and sending SMSs, I uninstalled it and opened the official SMS app and it worked.

It makes no sense but I'm posting here to help.

And yes, the official SMS app was setted as the default SMS app AND had SMS permissions.


How can I disable popup-SMS notifications (2.2 Froyo, HTC Evo)?

Nevermind. This was a "quick reply" feature of chompsms. Wow. That was hard to find. Guess will accept this in 2 days.


As i didn't find any solution neither on the internet nor here, i've desided to just flash my tablet using image from google, it helped.
Edit: Factory images for all nexus devices can be found  at this page, it contains simple to follow instructions on how to flash your device as well as images. Take care though failure during flash can brick your device


If it has no name but just "a number", it's usually some "native" system background process (the number is the "user ID"). You could find out more using adb shell or a terminal app, if you're not afraid of the command line – or using a process monitor app. A good choice here would be OS Monitor, which is available on F-Droid as well as on Google Play:

OS Monitor (source: Google Play; click images for larger variants)

Your candidate would find its equivalent in the process "149" (3rd line from the bottom) in the first screenshot. Being a "native binary", Android cannot find any information in its package list, and thus only gives an ID. First entry in the second screenshot shows what details you can additionally obtain on a process by using OS Monitor.


galaxy3 update that keeps updating for 3 days plus!

It is unlikely that your phone is useless. From the symptoms you state, it sounds like you have done one or more of the following,

Rooted your phone
Unlocked the bootloader
Installed a custom recovery
Installed a custom ROM

If even any one of these is true, the OTA update will fail and redownload itself because it thinks it was a bad package download.


Can I access the filesystem of an android device?

To get access to the filesystem you need to be rooted and you need to use ADB. MTP is way to limited for the low level access your needing.


The issue was evidently resolved by using a different USB cord.


handling multiple devices on the play store

1) No there is currently no way to sort them. As you have noticed you can hide them and give them different names but not remove them. From my experience they disappear after 9 months without checking in to the play store, so simply hide any that you don't want to see.

2) Again I don't think this is possible at the moment via the Play store.


There's a APP that allows you to set custom ring tones and notification sounds. To your particular case, this APP allows you to loop endlessly when you receive an SMS.

SMS Sounds Plus paid

SMS Sounds free

On the APP, you can check the loop when you are in the ringtone picker.


Messenger pics iv sent to friends move sometimes to gallery

On Facebook Messenger,

Go to Settings › Photos and Media.

There uncheck the two options, if you wish to. This will stop messenger photos from appearing in the gallery in the future.

My Messenger is version 55. I think this option exists in all recent versions, too.


Transfering contact information from one phone to another using SIM card

If you installed a different contact application that isn't using the normal Google android system you would have to specify the program and someone familiar with it will chime in.

Your contact information, by default is stored in Gmail's contact.  Activating your new phone and setting up the same account on the new phone as the old phone will automatically sync your contact information to your new phone.

You make a reference to sim card, where I believe you are trying to refer to an sdcard.  Many phones, especially the newer ones, will allow you connect to an external usb drive.  You can do two things to get the data off your sdcard.  You can alternatively get an adapter for your computer (which generally cost between 5 an 8 dollars), transfer the date from the card to your computer.  Then connect your new phone to your computer VIA a usb cable and transfer the data from the computer to your new phone.


Canonical explanation of Android Encryption and Vulnerabilities

I envision it works like this:

Storage is encrypted using synchronous random key.
When the user chooses or changes a password that is based on whatever input, be it a password comprised of letters and numbers and characters, or be it a pin code, or pattern swipe, or finger print, or any other input, an asynchronous encryption algorithm is used to encrypt the master key, such that correct identification ends up decrypting the input resulting in the master key, which in turn makes it possible to encrypt and decrypt storage.
The moment the user logs out, the memory holding the master key is overwritten

The big trick here is that asynchronous encrypting of the master key. Once Android has the master key, it has the ability to exchange data with the storage. Only when the user is logged in, that master key is known. Asynchronous encryption is what is called public key encryption. What happens is that a public key encrypts data (the master key in this case), and a private key decrypts data. Not to be confused with the storage encryption here. The storage is just synchronous encryption. There the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt. But the finding/retrieval of that "master" key, is the biggie. It means that if at one point you have a weak login method, like for intance "1234" as a pincode, and you change your mind, and change the pincode to "5364", which is harder to guess, unless that earlier "1234" was stolen, snooped on, at any point, the security has just become better. Same deal when changing the login method to a full password that is impossible to guess or dictionary attack. The storage itself does not need to be re-encrypted at all. It's all about hiding that master key - internally. The user never sees that master key, because it's most probably just a random hash code of sorts - nothing will ever "find" or "guess" that hash code. Not even the NSA or any other security body on the planet could ever find a matching key like that.
The only attack vector is hoping for a weakness on the user's part. Perhaps the user chose a pincode login. If it's 4 digits, then it's a maximum of 10000 possible pincodes. The OS might "block" the device after trying out a few in a short time. The solution is then to "hack" the OS, so that it becomes possible to try all possible pincodes without the OS intervening and blocking the device. I believe that is how the FBI eventually got access to a phone of a criminal. A third party company (some Israeli company from what I recall) did the hacking for the FBI I think. They bypassed that pincode-try limit.
If the login is a full password, and if the user picked a strong password, and you're sol. Not in a life time with all the cpu power on the planet will hack that in a million years. I'm not buying any of the NSA can decrypt anything rumors. I think those people watched one too many men-in-black movies. All one has to do is look at the scientific documents about the various encryption algorithms (eg. AES), and you'll know that hacking simply won't happen, except in the olden days when there were 40 bit keys. Those days are long gone. AES128 is already unhackable I think, and if anyone is concerned, jumping to AES256 makes it more secure by a magnitude to the size of the universe pretty much.
Maybe one day quantum computers might decrypt it, but I'm skeptical. Not sure if it is possible to have a probability system simply highlight the solution. We'll see about that, eventually. Perhaps that's a few lifetimes away anyway. Nothing to worry about right now.

So, end of day, the security limitation lies entirely on the login method that is used. One can change the method without having to re-encrypt the storage. All this because of the asynchronous public key encryption of the master key.


Stream audio from any app on phone to receiver

You can use XPosed Framework and BubbleUPnP's Audio Cast Feature.


Establishing MTP connection for Android Studio

Android Studio needs a device connected in ADB not MTP, though MTP can be activated with no effect.

On the device:

Open the Developer options
Enable USB debugging.
You  need to install drivers for the device to get detected by the PC.

On the PC, Android Studio:

Alt + F10  should open a window showing your device connected

Then you'll be able to test apps build with Android Studio


Facebook Messenger incompatibility with Nexus 7

It seems the incompatibility came only on the current version. You may install and use an older version or wait till it becomes available to your device.

In this thread there is a link to an older apk version that should work.


Help! My phone becomes unbootable suddenly

Maybe you cant get your photo back. Try to flashing your phone with odin. Its work for me with samsung galaxy s4 later month ago.

There is file system that missing in your android rom, and you should flashing it.


Can I use my bootloader-locked phone with a different network?

The bootloader being locked has nothing to do with whether it's SIM-locked to a particular network. It just means you can't flash a custom ROM to the device (without unlocking the bootloader). You don't need to unlock the bootloader to change SIM to a different network, but if it's SIM-locked to a particular network, you need to unlock it from that network.

Whether you can switch to a PAYG SIM is entirely up to the carrier, and nothing to do with Android. You should check with the carrier.


Can I copy data to be restored, if phone is stuck in bootloop?

This was a long process with lots of side problems coming up. Somethings I don't know why they worked or did not work. I will give a recount of what did work in hopes the information will be useful in the future.
At a high level the idea is to backup the data partition, reflash firmware and ROM to fix the bootloop, reload the backed up data partition. Perhaps in some cases this would be enough, but recall the whole data partition is restored - you can't choose individual files or apps. In my case this corrupted some system settings but the data and apps were still there. I used Titanium backup to back those up to external storage, then flashed firmware and ROM again.
Whenever the phone is stuck use the "hard shutdown method" by holding the volume up and power button and waiting for the phone to vibrate 3 times. At this point the phone is off.
STEPS

The first thing to do is get into recovery mode with TWRP.
(If you already can do this, skip to step 3.)
https://twrp.me/sony/sonyxperiax.html

Notes About Sony Devices:
The Xperia devices have a recovery-in-boot arrangement. This means that the recovery is booted using the regular kernel / boot image in the device. Team Win has worked with the FreeXperia device maintainers to come up with a way to extract the ramdisk from the FOTAKernel partition and use the ramdisk from that partition instead of the recovery that is included in the boot image of your device. This means that if you install current CM nightlies and flash TWRP to the FOTAKernel partition, you will be able to use TWRP instead of the CWM or CM recovery that normally comes in a CM boot image. Other boot images including stock kernels can be repacked to include this extraction utility to allow you to use TWRP from the FOTAKernel partition. This setup allows you to choose what recovery you want to have installed and allows you to update your recovery more easily.  Unfortunately this setup requires that the boot image that you have installed include the ramdisk extraction utility.
TWRP may not work on your device unless you install other custom software as well.

You will need adb and fastboot, in Windows represented as adb.exe and fastboot.exe which run in command line terminal - (for adb and fastboot Windows XP click here)
If you do not have TWRP, follow these instructions (for the Xperia XZ1 Compact)
a) download the ZIP file from here (it is that TWRP but with working adb)
b) extract the img from the ZIP file (not a flashable zip)
c) connect the phone to the computer via a USB cable in fastboot mode. To put the phone in fastboot mode, completely power it off. Then hold the volume up button and the power button at the same time until the light on the phone turns on. connect the phone to the USB cable if it's not already.
d) If you're on Windows, open a command prompt with administrative privileges by right clicking on it and choosing "run as administrator". I recommend to use cmd.exe and not the Windows PowerShell. Navigate to the platform-tools folder with the cd command. Type in fastboot devices. If nothing is returned or it says "unauthorized" that means you need to install the correct drivers. The official drivers are here but I found I couldn't install them directly. I needed to download the Google USB Driver and replace android_winusb.inf with that from Sony. I found I needed to reboot using advanced options to disable Windows Driver Verification in order to install the drivers. Right click on the inf and choose "install".

Now that the drivers are installed, from the elevated command prompt run
fastboot devices
fastboot flash recovery C:\path\to\folder\twrp-3.3.1-0-lilac-android10-2.img

Boot to recovery. This can be done by turning off the phone, holding the volume down button and power on button at the same time until the screen turns on.
(If it doesn't work you can also boot image from fastboot without flashing)
fastboot boot C:\path\to\folder\twrp-3.3.1-0-lilac-android10-2.img

If your phone uses FBE file-based encryption the data will be encrypted with lock screen password/PIN (hence the strange file names in /data/data such as +NiZZaTrs3RFzYegpkEk). Newer versions of TWRP support decryption. TWRP should prompt you for a password when it first starts, however I found this buggy and it sometimes just didn't ask for a password. If this happens try restarting the phone in recovery or reflashing TWRP. Also going into terminal emulator from Advanced, try the command twrp decypt [password], see here if you had a pattern.

Backup your (decrypted) data from TWRP backup menu. make sure backup location is MicroSD Card or USB storage. Only choose the Internal Storage if you planning to save all your files to PC before factory reset.

Don't forget to backup Internal Storage manually as it is not included in TWRP backup. You can do this via cmd line
adb devices
adb pull /sdcard C:\path\to\folder

Note for adb to work, the phone must be in recovery mode (i.e. TWRP is open)

Download Flashtool, a ROM of your choice and compatible firmware. You can try to flash the same ROM that you have been using, but I was unable to find  stock ROM for this phone. I recommend Lineage 16 with this firmware (Lineage requires 47.2.A.11.228). I tried Lineage 17.1 but setup would go into a loop. Also download GApps Pico for Arm64 and Android 9. Download Magisk zip and apk. This is needed if you're going to use Titanium Backup to backup the apps and data you want to save. Perhaps in some situations this isn't needed if you can migrate without root.

Install Flashtool.

In Flashtool flash the FTF for the firmware first. Then flash the ROM (e.g. Lineage).

Boot into TWRP and install Gapps pico and Magisk. Magisk is needed for root which is needed by Titanium Backup, which will be used later.

The phone should be able to boot normally now. Give it plenty of time (e.g. 10 minutes). Take a break to go for a walk.

Confirm everything is working relatively ok. For example browse the web, download a simple app from the play store. If it's not, flash a different firmware or ROM with Flashtool.

Install and setup Titanium Backup. If you prefer alternative you can also use Migrate! (from the Google Play Store or anywhere else)

Reboot to TWRP

Restore only the data partition.

Clear cache and reboot to system.

In my experience all the data and apps were restored. But some system functionality was broken (like the WiFi). If it wasn't we would be done on this step :)

Use Titanium Backup to selectively backup the apps and data you want to keep. Make sure the backup is put on an SD card or USB storage so it won't get over written.
If your device is not working, there is also a method to do this 'offline' from recovery. refer to the Migrate support thread on forum.xda-developers.com (development in progress)

Do a factory reset from TWRP -> Wipe -> Format Data -> type 'yes'
if Format Data fails, Repeat step 7 and 8.

The phone should be working normally again.

Use Titanium Backup or Migrate to restore the apps and data from step 18.

Done.


You might be having a number of APNs pre-loaded on your handset. Just keep the right APN and delete the extras. Keeping only the right APN will force the messenger to use that particular APN.

Follow this path for deleting APN.

Settings → Wireless and Network  → More   → Mobile Network → Access point names.

To find out which APN to keep refer this documentation.

PS. After deleting APN, if you face network issues, you can simply reset it to default by  Settings → Wireless and Network → More → Mobile Network → Access point names → menu → Reset to default.

Hope this helps.


If you change Theme (Settings > Theme), you can select boot animation as one of the attributes from that theme to update.

I use the boot animation from one theme and other attributes (icons, fonts, colors) from others.

In Play Store, you can usually see a small preview of the boot animation in the screenshot section. Search for "12.1 theme".


How can I protect my phone against Krack Attacks if no updates are forthcoming?

If your phone manufacturer or service provider will not push updates there are a few things you can do (some already mentioned in comments.) From easiest to hardest, these would be:

turn off wifi and only use mobile data (easy but possibly expensive, depending on your plan)
update your own wifi router, and only use wifi on your network and others that are confirmed patched
buy a new phone (They will have updates - could this be an excuse to get a new one?)
use a different kernel. LineageOS is generally leading edge, as Једноруки mentioned, so it will have an update very soon
write your own kernel. Tools exist to help you work on Android kernels, and the update required is publicly documented.

The thing to remember is that currently it is unlikely to happen. Yes, once the exploit is out there and spreading, you'll want to be on a patched phone, but don't panic about it today. And the attack is mitigated by VPN's, https etc.

For technical analysis and up to date security commentary on this, look at the Krack tag on Security Stack Exchange.


Creating a script that cleans RAM upon locking the screen

Try installing Clean Master. In older version (Not sure about last update) you could select an option to clear RAM when screen was turned off.


Preventing Google Play Services autoinstallation into an ancient Android phone

This is from Android 5.1.1 in Google play. The first picture is for only one app under the app and the stacked dots. The second picture is under Settings/Auto-Update apps. This obviously isn't the author's Android version, but you may want to see if there is a similar setting in your version.


How to disable bad RAM addresses and fix bad storage blocks?

This might not be a direct solution to your problem, but I'm sharing my thoughts on it.

SHORT ANSWER

It's not very likely for RAM on embedded systems to get defective. And if it does, solutions might not be readily available, except if someone has already done that specifically for your device.
Modern flash storage devices manage bad blocks on their own, users haven't much to do in this regard.

If any of both problems requires user intervention, usually it's time to replace phone.

  This error appears in the log of TRWP:
  E:Invalid block device on /sdcard ext4 [][][]flags=display="Internal SD" ; symlink ', 'flags=display="Internal SD" ; symlink' , 27
  When trying to change partition type or repair 'Internal storage' at TRWP it says Invalid partition selection (maybe becouse of 7?)

To me these symptoms look like those of a dying eMMC.

BAD BLOCKS ON RAM

I suppose you are talking about a phone or similar device.

Phones have SoCs, the module which includes CPU, GPU, RAM, eMMC, modem, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS along with other critical components. In addition to that, LPDRAM and eMMC are in most cases manufactured together as a single Multi-Chip Package (MCP).

That said, what you are saying is highly unlikely to occur on phones. On PCs RAM is installed as independent modules which are prone to physical damage and wear and tear e.g. due to moisture, rust, dust, jerky movements, vibration, loose connections, pressure (during installation), heat (because of overclocking or improper ventilation) etc. So there are tools like memtest86 to regularly check for memory faults. All of these factors are ignorable for phones because the RAM is tightly integrated with less than a square inch sized SoC chip, keeping in view all above factors.

Another possible reason is electrical failure of the circuits/components e.g. due to electric shock in a sudden blackout which renders it totally useless. This again doesn't seem very probable for phones as the RAM is part of SoC, so the whole SoC should fail along with other, some kind of, surge protection mechanisms (if any).

Since RAM is volatile memory, its cells never get physically changed while reading/writing data unlike eMMCs. eMMC is persistent storage, so the physical properties of silicon cells change during E/P operations. That's why eMMCs have a limited life but RAMs aren't subject to any such limitation.

So if RAM is defective, the most likely is that it was manufactured with faults. RAM failure because of growing bad blocks isn't a common case, at least no sooner than other components of device, but still can't be utterly rejected. So how to fix it?

Since hardware is handled by kernel, the only way to mark some memory addresses bad is by making kernel not allocate those addresses to any userspace program (as can be done on Linux with BadRAM which modifies kernel source). And that too if the bad memory lets the device boot to kernel stage. Otherwise you'll have to handle the matter at SoC/bootloader stage where RAM is being initialized after power on (as can be done on Linux with GRUB and on Windows with BCD). It's definitely impossible on phones since bootloaders are closed source. If your bootloader is configurable like in case of development boards, that's an exception. But in each case you probably have to go through thousands of lines of code.

BadRAM is no more maintained after kernel version 2.6.28, that was 10+ years back (probably because it wasn't accepted into mainstream kernel tree). You can ask the developer if he can assist you to port the patch to ARM (if it's possible at all). Or may be you can exploit kernel parameters mem and/or memmap somehow to achieve what you want. Again the situation might differ a lot when there is no ACPI and no BIOS. Personally I never came across such situation for mobile phones.

BAD BLOCKS ON STORAGE

Coming to the other point, fixing bad blocks makes sense only with hard drives or at maximum with old raw NAND drives (ref). HDDs have a linear LBA to CHS mapping, which means a filesystem knows to which physical location data is being written. Modern flash memory storage devices (including eMMCs, SD cards and SSDs) have a built-in firmware controller called Flash Translation Layer (FTL). FTL handles LBA to PBA mapping, the filesystem and OS are quite unaware of. As a wear-leveling strategy, FTL doesn't map sequentially and the mapping is dynamic. First LBA could correspond to last PBA and last LBA could point to somewhere in the middle, continuously changing with Garbage Collection.

FTL also scans and keeps track of all bad sectors (more specifically silicon cells) and remaps worn bits from overprovisioned (kind of free) space if required. Filesystems will never identify a sector bad, unless the stage comes when E/P cycles limit of flash memory is reached and it starts behaving funny, becomes read-only and ultimately crashes. Even if a purchased software identifies a sector bad, you can't mark it as not allocatable; refer to dynamic nature of LBA to PBA mapping. You mark a sector bad in filesystem and after few minutes that would be moved to some other partition.

HDDs usually don't die at once. Their built-in firmware maintains a list (G-list) of bad sectors from the day of manufacturing (ref). LBAs corresponding to bad sectors get replaced with spare sectors which every HDD has. Once the pool of spare sectors is depleted, any newly appearing (possibly partially) bad sectors are exposed to OS/filesystem. So when a program like chkdsk, e2fsck or badblocks identifies a bad sector, it can handle that at OS level or make it marked bad by HDD firmware. Quoted from here:

  If you give permission to overwrite a bad sector SeaTools will attempt to write a pattern of zeros to that sector. Usually, this action will assist the disk drive firmware in managing the problem by retiring the problem LBA and activating a spare in its place.

That's what hdparm --write-sector does.

Mostly filesystems can also maintain a list of bad sectors to be ignored during read/write operations. For instance on ext4, dumpe2fs -b shows a list of bad blocks reserved in bad block inode.

Mostly HDDs (as well as SSDs) are also built with SMART technology to monitor device health, but not eMMCs. In case of eMMC, the only thing e2fsck does is to identify errors within filesystem (and possibly repair using e.g. information from jornal), not in flash memory. All OS's including Android perform filesystem checks on boot before mounting, so that manual checking is not needed.


How can i cofigure a sabai router using a samsung s tablet

You can either connect to the router via WLAN connection or directory via cable i.e LAN with your Samsung tablet

Open a web browser e.g Chrome and enter 192.168.199.1 in the address bar. (Login is admin/sabaipass123.)

You can configure desired settings from this page;

Navigate to Settings → Static IP
Edit accordingly

Get more instructions from the Sabai support page


com.android.providers.settings does not exists

Since Marshmallow, all the settings are scattered everywhere, you won't find settings.db

many settings are available under /data/system/users/0/ saved as XMLs. Try looking there.


When you leave an app that was running in the screen, it stops running, but Android keeps its process in memory. This means that next time you want that app in the foreground, or next time it runs a service in the background (e.g. to check for email), the app can run again without Android having to load it from storage again. This means it starts faster and uses less battery.

Apps that have been kept alive but not running in this way are called cached background processes. They still use some RAM, but Android will automatically remove them from RAM if it needs to free it up for running apps, so they don't affect the amount of RAM available to other apps.


Does a broken screen on a Nexus One automatically mean the touch screen digitizer needs to be replaced?

Screen protector might help protect your fingers, if glass is even and no missing pieces


Why so difficult? Simply install AppMonster Pro Backup Restore (yes, the Pro version -- the free doesn't do this automatically), and on each install/update the corresponding .apk file is automatically backed up to your SDCard. You can configure the app to keep all .apk files, or only the latest N (number freely configurable), even pinning of a "stable version" to always keep is possible.

AppMonster only takes care for the .apk files (not for app data). As a side effect, it even shows you if an app contains an ad module, and you can have it notify you if an just installed app can be moved to SDCard via App2SD.


Can I use Android's Holo theme on versions earlier than Ice Cream Sandwich?

There are Holo themes available for the T-Mobile/CyanogenMod Theme Chooser. If you have the theme chooser you just download a Holo theme from the market select it.

You can find out more about CyanogenMod (has the theme chooser built in) here.


Is there any way to Tether through wifi?

There's an app called Easy Tether (XDA questions about doing it) which can do that. You basically just set up USB tethering and disable the "use LTE" or "use 3G" settings, to force it to fall-back to wifi. Personally it seems a bit silly to do that, when a $10 wifi adapter that plugs into the PC with USB would likely work better.. but yes, you can in theory do it.


What folder are Google Podcasts downloads stored in?

data/user/0/com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox/filesvelour/feature_data/wernicke_player/downloaded_episodes

Found using the Disk Space Analyzer on my GNOME computer :-).

This is the only folder that appears in data/user/0/.

Apparently, there are a lot of other folders that might look similar, but would not be accessible by other non-system Android apps, and would not be expected to be accessible through USB either.  But my Android is quite happy for me to access this specific folder through USB.

I have enabled "Developer options", but I have not used it to change anything AFAIR.  If I disabling "Developer options", I can still plug my phone in and access the above folder using USB.


Did you try pressy? it maybe blocked the sound! if not, call google to help.  if it does not help, get a new phone.  lastly, they are not compatible. if one of these do not work, comment and ill try to fix it.


A way to get location coordinates from command line

Looks like there is a way:

  adb shell dumpsys location > dumpsys.txt

This will give you a file with all location service information. In this file search for 'Last Known Locations' and you should see something like:

passive: Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{noGPSLocation=Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{coarseLocation=Location[network 92.918919,55.603997 acc=2000 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms]}]}], networkLocationSource=cached, networkLocationType=wifi, travelState=stationary}]}]

network: Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{noGPSLocation=Location[network 92.915479,55.610965 acc=22 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms {Bundle[{coarseLocation=Location[network 92.918919,55.603997 acc=2000 et=+1d4h10m34s255ms]}]}], networkLocationSource=cached, networkLocationType=wifi, travelState=stationary}]}]

Of course, the list will include another entry if you have the GPS provider enabled on the device.

Going by android code, I tried to find out how apps get the location when they use LocationManager.getLastKnownLocation(). After a bit of following, I ended up in LocationManagerService here. which implements getLastLocation and also a dump function.

The coordinates are not stored in any file as far as I can tell. They are stored in memory in a hashmap and dumped for the dumpsys command. This also explains why a directory heirarchy search did not reveal any files with gps info.

If you want this info in a more standard format, you will need to take the app route and go with something like this. This app exports the info in a GPS or a KML file that you can feed into geo based apps.

PS: This works on non-rooted device just as well.


Answer compiled from comments

The SPFT version you are using is probably incompatible with your device or firmware, and it is failing silently. Try downloading the latest version of SPFT and the correct firmware, and it should probably work.


I realised thanks to an answer from another question that the problem was actually with the cable. I had been using an old Samsung cable and when I replaced it with a new one the displayed milliamps went up to 1200.


Music and Ringtones no longer found - Nexus 5 with Lollipop

I ended up trying the following
1) Looking at the logs. Saw no smoking gun
2) Clearing the memory on the media storage. That didn't do it. Wasn't a good idea either. It couldn't see the pictures I had taken after the issue started.
3) Resetting the phone and restoring from backup. That did it. Bit painful.


On an Android phone, how to create a shortcut to read new Gmail emails with a specific tag?

On your home screen, long-press an empty space, then select widgets.
Look for "Gmail label". Add it to your screen. You might be prompted to select an account if you have multiple one.
Select the label, give it a name and click "Done".
A shortcut to emails with a particular label will be created on your home screen.


USB debugging permission alerts stopped although USB Debugging is enabled on android 4.4.2

It was a hardware problem. When I pushed the cable hard into the port, it connected. I will need to fix the port. Thanks for the support.


Android Market on Google TV not working after update to Google Play

"Doesn't work outside US currently. We are working on getting a fix out." ...

told me Les Vogel who is the Staff Developer Programs Engineer - GoogleTV

So i think we will have to wait.


touch screen failed on my android tablet--my email logged in

Change the password on your Google account from the web interface. Next time your device tries to connect, it'll be signed out.

You could also boot into the recovery (the way to do this depends on what tablet you have), and factory-reset the tablet from there. The recovery menu is operated by the hard buttons, not the touch screen, so you should still be able to do this.


Try installing another launcher. Then press the Home key and it will ask you which launcher to use. Select the "new one". Then try going in to Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications -> ADW and Clear the data.

You will probably also want to delete the "settings backups" that are stored on the sdcard, if you created them.

Then you should be able to switch back to ADW.

If you can't get to the market to install another launcher, you will probably have to side load i using ADB.

Or as Lie Ryan suggests, use the Market Web interface to install another launcher.


Do the following and it will solve your issue (install correctly): Copy the zip file to pc form "Phone\Download\OTA_M7_UL_L50_SENSE60_MR_HTC_Europe_7.19.401.2-6.09.401.11_release_XXXX.zip"

Extract "firmware.zip" from OTA_M7_UL_L50_SENSE60_MR_HTC_Europe_7.19.401.2-6.09.401.11_XXXX.zip
Extract "recovery.img" from "firmware.zip"
Activate USB debugging on your device (if not already)
Reboot your device on bootloader. I believe holding down "Power" + "VOL+" will do it (if not google it). You can use ADB command as well. "adb reboot-bootloader"
install the recovery using ADB command "fastboot flash recovery recovery.img"
Now try to update once again form OTA and it will work.

To avoid redownload this large file:

Copy the zip file which you copied from Phone to phone\update.zip
Reboot phone to recovery
Apply Update from Phone Memory (As HTC one to not have external memory)
Choose the Update.zip file

I hope you get the idea even if few steps might be slightly off.

Thanks
Shurid


Usually sideloading is not prevented by the manufacturer, but by the operator. All the tablets I've tried had no operator customizations and supported sideloading. Of course, this depends on your country and operator.


In google contacts where is the contact for me?

The contact record for you I assume just has your name.  If you link the two (top right corner when editing a contact) it will pull all of the information in.  On the down side it will eliminate the "Me" entry.  At least that's how I remember it working when I went through this.  My Wife just left with my phone for the evening...


What's an up-to-date method of getting S-OFF on a HTC One S?

I had: hbot 2.15, s-on, twrp 3.x cm12.

I tried:

moonshine = told me to read
rumrunner = told me to stop it on the 1st swig
sunshine = I am a cheapskate, so no
fre-something-can't-remember_with_soff.bin = couldn't get the bin and it needed super-cid and was just a bit too much of "could go wrong"

What worked for me:

Flashed MagioRom_ONE_S_RC6.zip
Flashed the boot.img from that zip
booted the rom and disabled screen lock and fastboot
enabled dev/adb debug
let rumrunner do its work

Could be that rumrunner stalled for you because your phone asked for permission for the adb-connection.
I had to flash the MagioRom because rumrunner seems to prefer a sense rom and cm12 was a bit to far along.


How to take a picture and uploading it with a comment to Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter?

One solution would in fact be using a specialized photo app: Fotor for Android. Next to a bunch of features for taking and editing photos, the app description mentions:

  Using Fotor you can easily share your amazing photos with friends and family! Share photos via email, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, with just one touch.

Which is exactly what you asked for. This app even supports HDR, and much more... So this would be your all-in-one solution. Seems hard to beat...


WhatsApp is not compatible with tablets on Android. You could try using https://web.whatsapp.com/ through the web browser on an android tablet.


Android uses GUID Partition Table (GPT) as its partitioning system which is possible to modify using tools like parted and gdisk. But there are a few constraints I can think of, other than the OTA problem you have already mentioned:

Android devices with A/B partition scheme have many partitions in (_a/_b) pairs including system, vendor, aboot, sbl and modem. New partitions require space which obviously isn't available on flash memory (eMMC) and needs to be freed from your userdata partition. So you will get short on your /sdcard space.
Since all the partitions to be created aren't adjacent to userdata partition (which is usually the last one), you may need to delete and create dozens of partitions. Exact details depend on the order of partitions in your partition table. So there are bright chances of bricking your device. :)
Application bootloader (aboot) on A/B devices is different than on non-A/B devices. On A/B devices, there are two boot partitions and no recovery partition. So the process of making choice from where to boot the device is different than on non-A/B devices.
Also the other functionality of aboot that depends on partition names such as fastboot update will also break. And since bootloaders are closed source, you can't modify it to be compatible with your new partition table (unless you are lucky as well as an expert at hexediting binaries).

So it seems practically impossible to convert a non-A/B device to A/B device.


Close app as opposed to letting it run in the background

This is really a question about Android in general, and is based on a misconception of how Android handles background apps. Check out this XDA post for a nice explanation of why processes sitting in memory in the background really aren't a bad thing. You should only worry about exiting/force-quitting/killing an app if things start misbehaving.


Is it possible to extract Nexus 7 serial number through command line (e.g., ADB)?

The "device offline" output means that the device is detected, but it refuses any operation because the user didn't allow that particular computer to connect (secure ADB). Your device is up and running, and displaying a confirmation window on its non-functioning screen. You could try to power the device on and blindly hit the OK button after unlocking the screen, then all ADB commands should work. Alternatively, if you have used ADB with another computer, try it with that.

Also, all devices offer some kind of ID even in this state, displayed by "adb devices"; this is the serial number most of the time. See if it's the right format.

Edit: "fastboot devices" should show the serial number too. Also, it should be easy to put the N7 into fastboot mode even without a screen.


Developer options > Device Hostname should get you where you need to go.
You may need to mash "build number" in "About phone" a few times to make the Developer Options appear in your settings app...

EDIT: Apparently that's for CyanogenMod only. Without that option, you'll need root...


Will a Motorola DEFY+ sync with my Outlook calendar and contacts?

Actually I bought the Motorola Defy+ and I'm disapointed, as it seems there's synchronization is only possible via Google account.


Migrate media to external storage in Marshmallow

Go to "Settings -> Storage & USB" then tap on you SD card. Then tap on the "three-dot menu" at the top right corner and select "Migrate data".


I think that three or more touches are useful on tablets because actually it's hard to do so many touches on the small screen. From my experience I know these two applications:

Simple keyboard. Yes, sometimes you can put tablet on the table and print with two hands like on real keyboard to improve writing speed.
Any Piano Emulator. Same situation as above.


You must be referring to a firmware reflash. Keep in mind that this is a dangerous process if you're not sure what you're doing; so if you do choose to continue, follow these instructions to the letter. Oh, and I'm assuming you're using Windows.

Download Odin from here, and install the Samsung ODIN drivers from here.
Type *#1234# in your phone dialer and take note of the CSC value. If SuperSU appears instead, reboot to stock recovery and take note of the CSC value. If you're using a custom recovery, you should now try to recall where you bought your S4 and whether you bought it unlocked or not.
Now that you have your phone's region, head over to SamMobile and search for your phone's model number. When the list of available firmwares appears, look for the listing that matches your CSC or whatever info you have about your phone's place of purchase.
Download the firmware once you've found it. If the download comes as a ZIP or a RAR, extract it so you're left with a .tar.md5 file.
Switch your phone completely off. Now, press and hold Home + Volume Down + Power and hit Volume Up when your phone asks you if you're sure.

Here comes the part where you should really be praying that nothing bad happens. Any mistake from here might turn your phone into a nice expensive doorstop!

Open Odin. Click the AP button if you downloaded Odin 3.09+, or the PDA button otherwise. Now, browse to and select the .tar.md5 file you downloaded.
Open up Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and make sure no processes related to Samsung Kies, such as Kies.exe or KiesTrayAgent.exe, are running. Close them as necessary.
Uncheck everything except Auto Reboot and F. Reset Time. Now, connect your phone thru USB and wait for a blue box to appear in ODIN. Say your prayers now, then hit Start.

After a few minutes, the firmware reflash should be done and your phone start to boot up. Don't worry if it takes too long to boot, this is usually normal if you didn't do anything wrong.


Why does the home screen stay empty (no application icons/no widgets) sometimes?

The Milestone (original Motorola Droid to all you Americans) doesn't use the default home screen app because of the slide out keyboard, since the default home screen app doesn't support landscape.  Switching to one of the other alternate home screen apps might solve your problem.


What to do after replacing the phone's battery?

You shouldn't need to do anything, the time remaining displayed in the phone may be incorrect for a short time (a few days at most), but it should correct itself with a few charge cycles. Wiping batterystats.bin has no effect on the actual life of the battery, but it can have an effect on the display of the remaining life of the battery. Source: XDA/Google

If your phone is getting hot, it is an indication something is not right... and since you replaced the battery that probably is not, and likely was not, the real issue. Either you have a hardware problem, or a software problem, the heating is likely due to the an application not sleeping properly and keeping the device awake, which will also reduce you battery life. I would install GSAM or BetterBatteryStats (paid), and possibly WakeLock Detector (root needed), and try to figure out exactly what is using your battery up. Although more rare, this could be caused by defective hardware as well.


If you are using Google Photos app, long-press on a photo. That would put a checkmark on that photo. Now single tap on as many photos as you want to select them. Afterwards, tap on the trash icon to delete them altogether.


Configurations

For most devices, you can only modify the volume of the earpiece, bluetooth, media volume or call volume if you are currently using that feature.

So, the best is to use your device "menu" button when you are using the bluetooth earpiece and check if said option exists. Alternativly, use the volume up/down from your device while with the bluetooth earpiece in use to try and control its volume.

One user at droidxforums mentioned a working solution for him:

  Turn off the Bluetooth on the Droid X. Place a phone call like normal. Adjust the call volume to the MAX and then hang up. Turn the Bluetooth on the Droid X back on and activate your voice command. It will work. You can adjust volume up or down in that fashion.

Apps

If to no avail, currently, there are a few apps available from Google Play Store to deal with issues like this:

Recommended for custom ROM:

Volume+ FREE and the donate version Volume+ (Volume Boost)

Gives great results in controlling volume settings separably for each sound output available.

Recommended for Stock ROM

Bluetooth Volume

Worked as promised to control the bluetooth sound output, ideal for boosting in call volume.

This are the ones I have used with excellent results, you can find others at Google Play Store.


Repartition Internal Storage of SGH-I717

Sorry I don't have a final answer for you, but I have some info that can lead you on your way.

Sidebar: not all apps have to sit in the 2GB partition, you can use various Apps2SD apps, TitaniumBackup, or the built in app manager to move certain apps to the 10GB partition.  Apps that run all the time (background processes, widgets, etc) should stay on the 2GB partition.

I've owned 3 android devices and I seem to recall repartitioning one of them once upon a time, I think it was GT-P1000 going from android 1.x to 2.3.  I was following a guide and didn't fully understand what I was doing, just following step by step instructions...  I know that repartitioning was needed because up until that point my ROMs were all for an RFS based filesystem and I was making the transition to ext4 for improved kernel performance.  I think they were also shrinking /system (ROM) to give more space to /data (Apps).

Firstly, get familiar with XDA.  Every answer I've ever needed has been in there.  I know all the pieces required for you to accomplish this are in there, just maybe not compiled into a single thread.  I've been learning all this stuff over the past 4 years, and have a professional background in programming and system administration for 15+ years prior to that - it may take some time for you to pick it all up.

Secondly, yes absolutely this is possible, just maybe not practical.  You could either modify a PIT file or do it with fdisk through ADB while in recovery mode.

You talk about resizing NTFS, but be aware the filesystem format is independent of your partition table.  In the PC world you can have up to 4 partitions on a hard drive, and you can mix FAT16, FAT32, NTFS on each partition all you like.  The first primary partition comes up as C:\ then D:\ then logical partitions (Win9x & DOS only supported 1 primary partition, the rest had to be extended partitions with 1-4 logical partitions within the extended).

Resizing a partition does not resize a filesystem.  Most modern disk tools do both steps for you with a single click, but it's still two steps.  Also not all FS support resizing, some can only grow, and some can shrink & grow.  Then again there are 3rd party tools that can resize non-resizable formats (PartitionMagic).

Because you mention NTFS I'm presuming you're a windows guy, but if you're familiar with Unix (and thus Linux) it will be easier to follow along.  Here's a high level translation:

HardDisk1 (primary master) on a PC will show up as /dev/hda in Linux x86.
HardDisk2 (primary slave) is /dev/hdb
HD3 (secondary master) is /dev/hdc
HD4 (secondary slave) is /dev/hdd
SCSI, SATA and USB disks might be /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, ...

Partitions are subordinate to the drives:

HD1, Part1 = /dev/hda1
HD1, Part2 = /dev/hda2
HD1, Part3 = /dev/hda3
HD2, Part1 = /dev/hdb1
HD2, Part2 = /dev/hdb2

Then you put a File System on your partitions, and mount them.

Windows:

HD1,P1::NTFS, mounted as C:\
HD2,P1::ExFAT, mounted as D:\

Linux x86:

/dev/hda1::ext3 mounted as /
/dev/hda2::JFS mounted as /usr
/dev/hdb1::ExFAT, mounted as /data

Also, the partition table has a hint indicating what filesystem type is laid out, but they don't always match.  Just because the partition table says /dev/hdb1 is type 0x07, doesn't mean the file table is actually NTFS.  A good OS should compare the two and refuse to mount the filesystem, and a good formatting tool should update the partition table, but not always...  Samsung or Android is notorious for assigning seemingly arbitrary partition types to indicate function rather than filesystem.  I'm sure there's a rhyme and reason somewhere but I have no idea what it is.

Android has many partitions, the first 3 are primary, the 4th is extended and contains up to 30 logical partitions.  Each has a specific function, and there are many different FS, some known and some proprietary.

The 16GB built-in storage is equivilant to x86's /dev/hda - but they call it /dev/block/mmcblk0

The first SD card is /dev/mmcblk1 and so on.
Partitions on each 'disk' get ...p1, ...p2, ...p3 and so on.

Each product vendor and device has its own scheme for laying out partitions.

See http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1959445

The i717 uses the following scheme, I don't know what everything means, but most of it I do (I got this from combining android's "df" & "fdisk -l /dev/block/mmcblk0" and from MacOS "heimdall print-pit" while in download mode):

/dev/block/mmcblk0 <-- entire 16GB 'disk'
/dev/block/mmcblk0boot0 - ???
/dev/block/mmcblk0boot1 - ???
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1 - SMD_HDR - Primary boot loader
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2 - SBL1 - Secondary boot loader #1, your flash counter sits in here
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3 - SBL2
/dev/block/mmcblk0p4 - Extended Partition, container for the following logical partitions
/dev/block/mmcblk0p5 - RPM
/dev/block/mmcblk0p6 - SBL3
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7 - ABOOT
/dev/block/mmcblk0p8 - BOOT
/dev/block/mmcblk0p9 - TZ
/dev/block/mmcblk0p10 - SSD
/dev/block/mmcblk0p11 - PIT
/dev/block/mmcblk0p12 - PARAM
/dev/block/mmcblk0p13 - MODEM - 100MB /firmware vfat (baseband modem part 1)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p14 - MSM_ST1
/dev/block/mmcblk0p15 - MSM_ST2
/dev/block/mmcblk0p16 - MSM_FSG
/dev/block/mmcblk0p17 - 100MB /system/etc/firmware/misc_mdm vfat (modem part 2)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p18 - M9K_EFS1
/dev/block/mmcblk0p19 - M9K_EFS2
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20 - M9K_FSG
/dev/block/mmcblk0p21 - DEVENC - 10MB /efs ext4 - individual info like IMEI and Encryption
/dev/block/mmcblk0p22 - RECOVERY - 10MB  - Recovery, ClockWorkMod or TWRP
/dev/block/mmcblk0p23 - FOTA
/dev/block/mmcblk0p24 - SYSTEM - 1GB /system ext4
/dev/block/mmcblk0p25 - USERDATA - 2GB /data ext4
/dev/block/mmcblk0p26 - CACHE - 300 MB /cache
/dev/block/mmcblk0p27 - TOMBSTONES - crash dump area?
/dev/block/mmcblk0p28 - UMS 10GB /sdcard user's playground (usually a vold virtual device)

So, your 2GB partition is /dev/block/mmcblk0p25 and your 10GB partition is /dev/block/mmcblk0p28.

To do what you want while preserving data is not really possible, but I've done similar on x86 before as follows:

first you have to shrink the filesystem on /dev/block/mmcblk0p28,
then shrink the partition,
then move the partition to the end of the disk,
then move p27 to end just before p28 starts,
move p26 to butt up against p27,
grow partition p25 to fill the empty space in front on p26,
then extended filesystem on p25 to fill the partition...

In reality, there aren't any readily available tools to do all that.  A more practical method:

1 You'll have to back up the contents of p25, p26, p27 and p28 to external SD,
2 rebuild the partition table with the new boundaries,
3 create new filesystems on each,
4 then restore data onto each.

You're basically looking at a factory reset, the ROM should stay intact.  If I were to do this I would:

0 insert a brand new 32GB sd card into the note
1 boot to recovery
2 connect with adb shell
3 mount /dev/block/mmcblk1p1 to /external_sd
4 mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p25 to /data
5 mount /dev/block/mmcblk0p28 to /sdcard
6 tar /data to /external_sd/data.tar
7 tar /sdcard to /external_sd/sdcard.tar
8 unmount /data and /sdcard
9 use fdisk to rebuild partitions p25, p26, p27 & p28 where p25 is bigger, p26 & p27 are moved and p28 is smaller
10 make new filesystems on all four p25-p28
11 mount /data and /sdcard again
12 untar /external_sd/data.tar to /data
13 untar /external_sd/sdcard.tar to /sdcard
14 pray
15 reboot

Here's the full partition table:

~ # fdisk -ul /dev/block/mmcblk0

Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 15.7 GB, 15758000128 bytes
1 heads, 16 sectors/track, 1923584 cylinders, total 30777344 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

              Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
/dev/block/mmcblk0p1               1      204800      102400  92 Unknown
  Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p2   *      204801      205800         500  4d Unknown
  Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p3          205801      208800        1500  51 Unknown
  Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p4          208801    30777343    15284271+  5 Extended
  Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary
/dev/block/mmcblk0p5          212992      213991         500  47 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p6          221184      225279        2048  45 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p7          229376      234375        2500  4c Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p8          237568      258047       10240  48 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p9          262144      263143         500  46 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p10         270336      271335         500  5d Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p11         278528      279527         500  91 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p12         286720      307199       10240  93 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p13         311296      511999      100352   c Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/block/mmcblk0p14         516096      522239        3072  4a Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p15         524288      530431        3072  4b Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p16         532480      538623        3072  58 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p17         540672      741375      100352  8f Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p18         745472      751615        3072  59 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p19         753664      759807        3072  5a Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p20         761856      767999        3072  5b Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p21         770048      790527       10240  ab Darwin boot
/dev/block/mmcblk0p22         794624      815103       10240  60 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p23         819200      839679       10240  94 Unknown
/dev/block/mmcblk0p24         843776     2940927     1048576  a5 FreeBSD
/dev/block/mmcblk0p25        2940928     7139327     2099200  a6 OpenBSD
/dev/block/mmcblk0p26        7143424     7761919      309248  a8 Darwin UFS
/dev/block/mmcblk0p27        7766016     8030207      132096  a9 NetBSD
/dev/block/mmcblk0p28        8036352    30777343    11370496  90 Unknown

I was going to describe what you might do with fdisk, but I see that the existing partition table leaves unequal gaps between each partition - this bothers me because I don't know why.  Traditionally on disk you would create each partition starting 1 sector after the previous.  Then again your partition sizes would always align with cylinder boundaries so perhaps each new partition is starting on some boundary (multiples of powers of 2?) even if the previous partition didn't end on one???  The gaps are all (multiples of 1024) plus 1, but until I know what the rule is for making a gap I would not touch the partitions...  Does it mean I can make the previous partition 1024, 2048, 3192, 4096, ... blocks bigger?  Is the system sneakily using that blank space for undocumented purposes?  who knows...

Sidebar: You ask if installing CyanogenMod would help or if this is lower.  Partitions is about as low as you can get, then there's the boot loaders, then the kernel, then the ROM (Cyanogen, ParanoidAndroid, etc), then user space like /data, /sdcard and /external_sd.  Booting into recovery mode is kind of like booting a LiveCD image of a diskless OS where the entire system is loaded into RAM.  That way you can do whatever you want to hard drive: backup, format, partition, restore, resize, dissect, clone, etc; then as long as you put it all back together correctly you can reboot back into your original OS.

As for why Samsung chose this arbitrary 2GB limit, it's a backward compatibility thing from back when 2GB memory chips was the biggest you could get, and in a device you would have 2 x 2GB chips.  1st chip would have partitions for boot loaders, kernel, root(/), /usr and the /system ROM - and be READ-ONLY from the running OS to prevent users from breaking the thing; the 2nd chip would be mounted READ/WRITE on /data for users to install apps & settings.  That was basic android using built-in storage.  If you wanted more space it was through an SD card you put in a slot, and this was mounted on /sdcard.  When chips got bigger & cheaper Samsung stuck with the basic design and basically gave you 12GB (10 usable) of internal storage presenting it as /sdcard, then they added external storage and made up /external_sd.  This caused lots of confusion, and some ROMs mounted the external SD card as /sdcard and mounted the 12GB as something else like /emmc.  Jumping ROMs back then was a pain if you were swapping between Devs who followed different paradigms.
Today it's become more standardized with /storage/sdcard0, sdcard1, etc and apps are being designed with this in mind, letting users pick which SD card to use rather just assuming /sdcard or /emmc exist in the right form.

All in all, I agree 2GB is too small for /data, I'm constantly moving apps to SD and integrating google app updates back into the ROM. I don't think I'd go equal though, and I know I wouldn't combine them into one big /data and just have external SD as /sdcard - the old way...  Maybe 4 GB for /data and 8GB for /sdcard...

Anyways, good luck.


How to sync playlist to Samsung Galaxy S3 from Kies?

Same Issue.  On my old android phone the best solution for me was Songbird with the Folder Sync plugin.  Unfortunately Samsung Galaxy S3 only supports MTP mode and not mass storage mode, and folder sync will not work in MTP mode.

I have tried several desktop players and they all fail to syn playlists properly: Windows Media Player, Songbird, Media Monkey, and WinAmp.  They all have the same problem, they create the play lists in the playlist folder and if you click on them they look OK but when you open them in the phone's player no songs.

I did find an interesting post for creating .m3u files with a script and copying them to your music folder here: http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s3/583712-syncing-music-playlists-galaxy-s3.html

Turns out that Songbird + Folder Sync plugin will create the right kind of m3u playlists so you can stage what you want on your phone using Folder Sync then cut and paste it into the phones music folder using Windows Explorer.


You can run su wm overscan LEFT,TOP,RIGHT,BOTTOM from Terminal (Superuser privileges needed)

If you do not have Superuser privileges, you can hook your phone to a PC and run ADB command
adb shell wm overscan 200,200,0,0

For example, to achieve what you've shown in the picture above try running
wm overscan 200,200,0,0.

But I must warn you, before running that, be sure you have USB debugging switched ON just in case overscan messes up your display, you can run
adb shell wm overscan reset from the PC connected.

WindowManager (wm) commands work on devices running Android 4.3 and above

May require a Reboot to achieve proper re-size.

Alternatively you can use Niwatori module if you have Xposed framework on your device.


Galaxy Note 9 stutters on QHD resolution

Please refer to this link: https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-9/help/note-9-camera-lag-freezing-t3834632/amp/

It seems that clearing G camera cache can help temporarily. It seems to be phone issue and I would suggest that you should raise this issue in Samsung forum or seek help from Samsung service center.

Quoted from the link above

  Dear trebills and others in this thread, This is Cole from Samsung Electronics’ North American offices. We would like to further discuss this issue with you. Would you be willing to provide your contact information in a private message so that one of our technical support agents can get more detailed information about your difficulty?

Thus best way would be to contact Samsung support. It seems they are also trying to debug the issue.


Skip lock screen (formerly "Unlock with WiFi") will let you bypass your device lock screen if you are connected to your home WiFi network. (Or whatever WiFi SSID you define.)

I used it a year or two ago and it worked well.

There is also a trial version.


What does it mean when Wi-Fi icon is gray?

It means that your Android device is not connected to the Google Servers. Because of this, your device can't receive any push notifications such a Gmail messages.


How to get my Note 9 to read aloud incoming email ONLY from one specific Gmail account?

FairEmail
since version 1.1254 released on 17 Jul 20, allows you to read out aloud  mails from selected sender(s).
A big shout out to Marcel, the developer who accepted this feature request and implemented it. I have tested it thoroughly over the last few days (I had a test version much prior to the formal release) and it works faultlessly for me.
Here is how you do that :
Create a rule:
Go to the inbox of your primary account, long press → Edit rules and tap on the + icon to create a new rule.

Set order to 1 (lower the order, higher the processing priority). Make sure the rule is enabled.

In the Sender Contains  enter email address of the sender.

In the Recipient Contains enter email address of the recipient.

Type and not copy-paste email addresses (at times copy-paste has invisible blanks which can break the expected behavior)

Leave Subject Contains blank.

Select Action as Text to Speech

Press Check setup. If it says OK, you are set up, else install voice data(TTS engine).

automation approach had mixed results. You can read about them in previous version of the answer
Notes

You need the paid version of FairEmail.

The rule should be created in inbox folder of the recipient account.

At the cost of repetition, leave the subject on the rule blank

This is for one sender. If you want this action for more senders, you need to create more rules as explained. You need to create one rule per sender (tip: you can long press a rule to copy and edit, instead of starting all over again) .

The mail text that is read out is limited to the text that is contained in the notification text, that is 500 characters (Android limitation of notification text size). IMO, this is more than enough to get the message in full most of the times (unless it's a very long mail).


I use MixZing music player. I have set it as default player for music and when I click a mp3 file link in browser, it opens the file in MixZing by default and streaming works well. It plays the mp3 file in background when you press the back button.

This is an alternate solution. I don't thing it is possible to play the mp3 links in background in Android's default music player.


Reinstall a new OS on zigo nebula 6.9 tablet

NEBULA6.9_V46_MT6577_V1.26 FIRMWARE :

NEBULA6.9_V46_MT6582 FIRMWARE :

FIRMWARE FLASH TOOL WITH SUPPORT

The above links should be everything you need,
from what i can gather, your device comes in two different CPU Models, a MT6582 and an MT6577.

You'll need to identify your exact model before attempting to "DOWNLOAD" the system partition only.

DOWNLOAD ?
SP Flash Tool has a few different options when you flash a new firmware, The first being DOWNLOAD, the next is FIRMWARE UPGRADE ...
 You should never use FIRMWARE UPGRADE, EVER ... It is specifically for changing the entire android partition scheme, meaning that you will loose alot of partitions that aren't included in online firmware's such as the NVRAM, among other partitions, that hold your IMEI number and modem information, these partitions can not be restored after FIRMWARE UPGRADE and will need to be rebuilt by another software, however most imei, nvram repair tools no longer work on many newer MTK device's.

HOW TO USE THE FILES ?
• Download & Extract the correct firmware
• Download / Extract / INSTALL SP Flash Tool v 5.16+ ( link is 5.17 )
• Open SP Flash Tool
  - select load scatter
  - find and select the MT65xx_Android_scatter.txt file from the extracted firmware
  - unselect all partitions except system to be flashed
  - select DOWNLOAD as the method of flashing
       NEVER SELECT FIRMWARE UPGRADE !!!

• Turn Off your device and remove the battery
• Put the battery back in, and DONT turn it on.

• Place a USB cable into the computer, and then select START or FLASH "I can't remember the exact text"

• NOW Quickly insert the other end of the USB into your switched off device

• You should see the it loading and changing colors

• After it's finished, a big green OK sign will pop up if it was successful

NO GREEN OK SIGN    ?
Usually this is caused by a mismatched firmware, however their are a few different errors that may occur..

Incorrect Scatter File

Chipset Mismatch

Partition Scheme Changed in Firmware

Sometimes you'll get the wrong error response for the wrong reason, I'll explain.

First we need to look at the scatter file with a non destructive text editor like notepad++ , Wordpad and Notepad will change line endings to a different format and destroy a good scatter file, so don't use them.. and if you do, don't replace or add any line endings, like pressing Enter.. at all.

Ok so let's say i change my scatter file to say it's for an MT6578, now SP Flash Tool will say Chipset Mismatch, instead of incorrect scatter file...

If i correct the chipset in the scatter file to correspond with my device, it'll bypass that problem with chipset mismatch, but i can only do this if I'm sure that the firmware is designed for my device...

Usually with a working device, you can cross reference the scatters partition scheme by looking at your devices partition scheme...

on your device or adb,  you'd use the command

adb shell cat proc/partinfo

or

cat /proc/partinfo

and then crosscheck the partitions are correct.

In your case, their are methods of checking SP Flash Tool log files to find the partition scheme mismatch information, that'll include your devices scheme, and the scatter files scheme ( as to compare them )

Their is many ways to fix any flash errors, but using FIRMWARE UPGRADE is not one of them !

If you must try, use notepad++ and edit the scatter file, it's the only way for a successful flash...

Even if the system partition is from a different firmware with the same Android Version and Kernel Version and bit version x32 or x64, it can be used... This is because it purely contains system software that is designed for the corresponding hardware.

All other thing's like graphics drivers, modem drivers etc, are stored in separated partitions from the system partition.

Anyway, good luck on your endeavor. I have had lots of valuable lessons breaking my MTK's and needing to do exact clones to get it back ( not recommended )   ... and i hope some info here will help save you a few bucks, while also stop you from making the many mistakes that i have.

P.S
Every new Flash attempt, requires removing the USB cord from your device and then plugging it back in for a new connection to the preloader.

HANDY TIP :
I wish someone had of told me this years ago, but i know that it's kept pretty quite for good reasons, but here's how to put SP Flash Tool into Advanced Mode

1 - Open SP Flash Tool
2 - Hold CTRL + ALT + V and release

You should see it change to Advanced Mode in the title,  this allows full read write access to every single partition on your device, so be careful !

You can now READ your device and WRITE back to it at any partition sector, this allows you to ignore the devices partition scheme, as with FIRMWARE UPGRADE, but without the Automatic removal of all sectors.. meaning you can still flash a file to an exact location represented as hex start position and length of image to flash ( you essentially become the scatter file ).


On my device running 2.2 Froyo, that method (from 2.1) was replaced by long-pressing on text to select it.  Two "handles" appear at each end of the selection, and you can drag them wherever you want (e.g. to the top and the bottom).  Maybe try that.  If it doesn't work, what Android version are you using?


Can I find which app is making certain DNS requests?

Try Net Monitor!
It shows network connections of installed apps.


Customizing the notification-area toggles in Lollipop

I wasn't able to find any way of doing it via the stock ROM, and it seems like there is none. The second best solution I found was an application, Power Toggles, that adds toggles to the notification screen itself.


Android NIC MAC address changed automatically

Problem is with your phone and not router. Your phones software keeps assigning new MAC addresses every time you turn your wifi on. If you are using MAC address filtering then it will need a static address.


My phone has the USB host installed but disabled, what's the point of disabling USB HOST?

USB Host would be required to allow USB On-The-Go, often abbreviated USB OTG.  It is a specification that allows USB devices such as digital audio players or mobile phones to act as a host, allowing other USB devices like a USB flash drive, mouse, or keyboard to be attached to them.

Security - by disabling USB OTG, a device manufacturer may want to limit support calls of third party devices or enhance security by disabling all chances of low-level commands being sent via USB port at the cost of user functionality.

CPU/Memory Performance - when a USB OTG device is plugged in, the device needs to process the new resource.  This can be loading additional kernel modules or cataloging the files for presentation to the user.  On a low-end phone with limited processing power and/or memory, a design decision may have been made that it be better to appear to always be fast rather than risk having more features, but a more laggy user experience; hence disabling the feature altogether.

Battery - a device connected will draw power from the device's battery.  Although this issue can be resolved by using a Y cable to draw the power from a secondary source.

Is this the default on Android?

It is typically common for higher performance Android devices to have USB OTG enabled.

OTG enabled devices

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/landing/otg-compatibility-list

http://www.kingston.com/us/usb/otg

http://usbotghelper.wordpress.com/confirmed-devices/


I assume you are using the default browser that is provided in the android mobiles.

If so, Open your browser, go to settings by pressing the menu button, now go to General option and then set home page to whatever you like.

settings-->General-->Set Homepage


Unknown error code during application install "-24"

According to a thread on AndroidCentral, this is a problem with either...

the app itself having trouble to update an already installed version (unlikely after a factory-reset) → uninstall first, then try a fresh install
certificates not being handled properly → install from a different .apk (e.g. one from your backups, if you've made any, or from an alternative source)
certificates (variant 2) → Go to Settings→Apps, select the "All" tab, scroll to Google services framework, tap the entry, "clear cache", "uninstall updates". Repeat the same for Google Play Store, then reboot, then try again

I didn't verify this (don't have the issue, so I didn't even have the chance to), but it sounds reasonable.

Additional sources on this error:

Unknown error code during application install: "- 24 " (XDA Developers)
App description of the PocketTool App:

  The -24 error is a killer. People think it is because of PocketTool when it is actually the device. You may want to include in the description that if they get the -24 error to reboot the device, then try reinstalling mcpe. If that doesn't work, uninstall all apps that could be used to modify the game, reboot, and try again. If even that doesn't work, the only other option I am aware of is to back up important things such as Kindle books, music, movies, and saved app data on something (I used my laptop) and do a factory reset. If they are on Jelly Bean, then they will get a -24 error if they try to reinstall mcpe after a failed mod install.
  Users had the same trouble with Spotify. A second factory-reset solved it.
  A thread on Android-Hilfe.DE (German) again supports the first variant of my answer (remains of a previous install). Maybe your factory-reset did not complete cleanly.
  A Google search on "google-play error-24" reveals even more sources.


Google play store is missing after installing Cyanogenmod 12.1

I forgot to wipe system partition. I just performed factory reset and wiped dalvik cache.
After wiping these and installing gapps again worked for me.


Can't read Comixology comics purchased on my Kindle Fire since app update

There are a few things you can try before contacting Comixology support.

Go to the Settings of the Comixology app, and then tap the Restore Purchases button. That might solve things if you're logged into your comiXology account.
If that doesn't work, you can go to the Purchases section of the app and Read from there. Click on the Comixology icon in the top left corner of the app to view the menu to switch from Featured, Publishers, Purchases, etc.  Once you're on the Purchases screen, click on a book, then click the Read button.
The final solution to try would be to re-install the Comixology app.


Cannot make calls in Microsoft Lync 2010 app

Lync 2010 has support for calls:

  Lync 2010 for Android extends the power of Lync to your mobile device
  – including rich presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and
  calling features from a single, easy-to-use interface.

However, you will need to check with your IT Department if it has been enabled for your account.


"Converting to multimedia message" when forwarding large SMS

This was fixed in Froyo. Anything over 3*160 (480 characters) will convert to an MMS prior to Froyo.

You do have a couple options.

Use a 3rd Party Messaging App, like Handcent, for example.
See if you are able to install this "Hack"
Root your phone and flash a Froyo Rom
Wait for a Froyo update from Samsung

Edit: Some additional information
Anything over 160 characters, technically, is no longer an SMS. The stock Messaging app, and others too, allow for "longer" messages but it is just splitting up the messages in to 160 characters. In Eclair (Android 2.1) a message will be converted to an MMS after it exceeds 480 characters. At that point, the default Messaging app will no longer split up the messages, instead it just sends it as one MMS. If you are using a 3rd party messaging application and find that you are still being charged the MMS rate, it may be that your carrier is grouping messages that come through "at the same time".


Enable Developer Options on Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4

This is a bit of a desperate idea, but try rotating your device between portrait and landscape. It doesn't seem likely, but it's possible somebody at Samsung may have accidentally left out the Developer Options item from the layout or changed something that caused it to remain invisible.

If that doesn't work, try installing an app from the Play Store that acts as a shortcut to developer settings (like this one). It's not the most elegant solution, but it should be enough to get you there.


How to enable USB Debugging in Android if forgotten pattern for screen-unlock?

Details for that can be found in our usb-debugging tag-wiki (where I've just added them):

  By default, USB debugging is disabled with stock ROMs (some custom ROMs however have it enabled by default). To toggle it on or off, you can find the corresponding switch in Settings › Development – a section originally hidden with Android 4.2 and up. You can make this section visible by going to Settings › About device and "hammering" the entry telling your ROM's build version until a toast-message congratulates you for having become a developer.

If your issue is however that you cannot boot up your device normally, and thus cannot reach the settings section described above, please take a look at the following questions:

How to backup broken screen phone when USB debugging IS NOT enabled?
Broken screen while debug mode was disabled. How can I re-enable adb?


Use stock recovery to install superuser?

Android has a chain of signature verification that (by default) protects your device from being hacked or having an unofficial image installed. Recovery images, updates, and OS images all have to be signed. The bootloader verifies that the recovery is signed by the manufacturer's key, and the recovery in turn verifies that the OS image (and any updates you try to install) are signed by the same key.

That's why you need CWM or TWRP to flash an update that roots the device. You don't need to root to install CWM or TWRP, but you do need to unlock the bootloader. This wipes all user data on the device. It's a security mechanism, to protect your data: if someone steals the device while it's locked, and wants to flash a different OS to bypass the lock and steal your data, they first have to unlock the bootloader.

So, there's no loop at all. Unlock your bootloader and flash a recovery using fastboot, then use that recovery to install the "update". The exact details of how vary from device to device, so find yours on our rooting index.


Is there any way to sign into Google Play without also signing into Gmail?

As pointed out by Hiemanshu you need to do this by using a separate account.

Now, as Android itself doesn't differentiate between Google accounts the question in your use case boils down to: How can I create a Google Account that does not have Gmail (and various other Google services with possible private information on them) associated to the account in question?

I have had similar cases at hand both in work and private use and would advice the following three options:

Create a regular Google account without Gmail. You can do this via https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail . Note that You need to provide some non-Gmail email address to do this but it can be anything and it's only used as a username, ie. it doesn't give access to that email address in any way. (I use guest@myowndomain.com for which I have a catch-all email set up so that I can just invent emails on-the-fly and will get emails pushed to that should anyone ever email to those, but that's another thing).
You can also delete the Gmail address. In essence this will make your whatever@gmail.com Google Account become the same as one created in the prior step. You'll still login with the whatever@gmail.com but you just won't have the Gmail email service active anymore after that. You can do this here. Lastly
You can use a Google apps account and simply limit the services available for the username in question. If you don't have a Google Apps account you can still create one for free even though it's been officially discontinued for some years not. You can find this advice by searching the web for: Techwalls "How to Get Free Google Apps Standard Account for Single User"

I've been using options 1 and 3 myself and they have both worked fine. As a final additional advice I would remind you to pay attention when you are adding the account(s) to the device in question. There are two things to pay attention to, actually:

ALWAYS add the limited account as the very first account on the device. The thing is that (at least on older devices) you can't delete the first account that was added to the device. On shared devices you might very well run into situations (that you don't come to think of now) in which you want to completely remove your personal account when you give the device to someone.
Last but not least, pay attention when adding the non-gmail account that you don't activate the synchronization of any of the Google services (unless you specifically want to).

That's it!


Propably this could give you a hint:

we have 3 accounts:

company@gmail.com
buddy1@gmail.com
buddy2@gmail.com

buddy1 and buddy2 added company@gmail.com's calendar as an external calendar (granted by company@gmail.com)

buddy1 adds an event and sets it as "Private" & "Available" --> company & buddy2 see nothing!
buddy1 adds an event and sets it as "Private" & "Busy" --> company & buddy2 see the appointment but can't read it's title or content, buddy1 of course can see his own appointment!


Samsung Galaxy S2 - Screen Lock Options Disabled

Try checking the "With swipe lock" checkbox and see if that enables it.

I have no idea what "With swipe lock" does, other than enabling the "Lock screen options". You can enable it, change the options, and disable it, and the options will stay changed. shrug

No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.


Xiaomi A2 stuck in a reboot loop because of data partition

So, here's the best I could do:

Try to boot normally
The phone will crash and try to reboot to the recovery partition.
At that very instant, press volume down and power, so that it goes to fastboot instead
From fastboot, launch TWRP with fastboot boot twrp-3.4.0-1-jasmine_sprout.img
Once in TWRP, get a shell using adb shell
Then from this shell, look at the file /sys/fs/pstore/console-ramoops-0. It contains the previous kernel boot log!

In my case, here's what the boot log contains : init: Rebooting into recovery, reason: enablefilecrypto_faile. So apparently something is wrong with Androi File-Based Encryption…