text:
How to delete gmail contacts from contacts app in Gingerbread
My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Y phone. I do not want my Gmail contacts in the phone contacts. I have disabled automatic sync. There seems to be no direct way to delete them

To completely remove them from device, go into:
Settings -> Accounts and sync -> (select your account) -> Turn "Sync Contacts" off

Now delete Gmail contacts from your phone:

Use the method @Ames suggested to filter out Gmail contacts only
Delete all contacts (only Gmail ones will get deleted)
Revert to displaying other contacts.

Since Contacts will not be synced, this will neither delete your contacts from web version of Gmail nor bring them back to your device. Just be careful not to turn this setting back on.

Depends on the firmware, but try this:

While viewing contacts select menu button and then More
Display Options
Under "Select contacts to display" uncheck the Gmail contacts.

Of course, strictly speaking, that doesn't delete them; it merely prevents them from being displayed.

I want to delete it though. Though I hide them, when adding a phone number to the contacts, it still shows the Gmail contacts.


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Does Google Talk push messages?
I would like to know if Google Talk works like Gmail where it actually pushes your messages onto your phone instead of the phone pulling periodically.

Yes.

Cool, so battery drain (by Gtalk) should essentially be null when no messages are received?

@Weboide I'm not completely familiar with the Jabber protocol but I would assume so, yes.

I suspect there is a minimal overhead, the server needs to know whether you are online. There might be regular pings. It's difficult to tell without digging into the code.

@DrG I think you're right about GTalk doing something like that, but I know some other clients don't do it.  If you lose your connection while using eBuddy, for example, you might remain "online" for days without knowing it.  (Which indicates to me that it only sends "I'm signing out now" messages rather than "I'm still online" messages.)

No, GTalk messages are not received on Android GTalk client while away (sleeping). So I assume there is no pushing, as it is done in the Blackberry GTalk client.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Is there a reliable way to detect the app responsible for an Airpush ad?
I noticed the other day that my Xoom's notification bar has started receiving Airpush ads (which is what it sounds like - push notifications that are really ads). I'm rather philosophically opposed to the idea of push-ads on my device, so I'd like to remove the offending application, but the ad doesn't give you any way to figure this out. Clicking on the notification star only gives you a link to the advertisement page, and nothing more.
I found Airpush Detector in the Market, but it doesn't seem to work on my Xoom, perhaps because of some Android 3.x differences. When I launch the app it says that no Airpush apps were found, but this is obviously not correct. Another option I've seen is systematically freezing apps using Titanium Backup until I find the guilty one, but that would be very time consuming and I'm not even sure if it would work.
I'm also aware of the permanent opt-out app in the Market, but I really would rather uninstall the app responsible for the ads (again, due to philosophical beliefs).
Is there any way for me to detect the origin of an Airpush ad?

Two points,
Firstly if you just want to stop getting the AirPush ads, AirPush themselves offer two ways that you can opt your device out of receiving the ads. Either:

Install the AirPush Permanent Opt-out app,
or visit their opt-out page and follow the instructions to enter your IMEI to be opted out.

Secondly I don't think that AirPush is the only game in town doing this. I uninstalled an app a few months ago when I tracked down that it was the one spamming my notification bar. Its ads didn't look like AirPush's and it didn't show up with an AirPush detector. Didn't track down who was providing the ads framework the app was using, I was just happy to get that rubbish off my device, for an app I only opened once a month or so I didn't need that hassle. It may be that these aren't AirPush ads, but one of their competitors. That app I just tracked down by working out which apps I'd installed/updated recently, then glancing through the Market comments to see which one was full of users screaming to get rid of the notification ads.

I suppose this is a good point, I didn't really consider the fact that it might not actually be Airpush. It definitely looked like it was, though, based on what I've read about Airpush (same icon, about once per day and such). Do you know the names of any other push ad frameworks offhand? I'm trying to perform a more generic search but I'm mostly just getting pointed back to Airpush.

@elder I wasn't getting the star icon on each one that you seem to with AirPush. Sorry don't know which framework it was, I was just happy I'd found the culprit and got rid of it, it wasn't an app I used often enough to investigate any further, looking at it they've since removed the push ads.

Install the Airpush detector app.  This will (in most cases) detect the app responsible.

As I noted in my question, this app did not find anything on my Xoom, but I was still receiving Airpush ads.

Touch the stars at the top of your phone and slide it down with your finger to view the ad.  Dont open the ad but instead put your finger on it and press and hold it down for 7 seconds and the app thats sending you the add will appear...................delete the app and the stars will go away.  My stars came from downloading the ringtone ( Fart) with my saMsung Galaxy Note 2 .

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Stop bluetooth answered or outgoing call from automatically unlocking screen
When I get in the car I leave the phone in my pocket.  Then when the phone rings, I answer the call through the car's controls, but the problem is that this unlocks the screen.  This causes buttons on the screen get activated accidentally and does things like muting the phone, or turning off bluetooth, etc.
Does anybody know a way to stop the phone from unlocking the screen automatically b/c of bluetooth?
Nexus S 2.3.6 on 2012 Volkswagen bluetooth

Same problem, HTC One X + Volvo bluetooth. iPhone used to return to the lock screen after the call, Androids seem to assume a pickup is an unlock - which isn't what I'd want really. Yet to find a solution.

Found this while looking for the same thing. No answer, but note that it's issue ID 17216 on google's project page for android, so it's a longstanding bug.

same problem with sony xperia z1 compact - citroen bluetooth


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Is it possible to remove the ":-)" smiley key in Swype for stock Messaging?
I love Swype but have a minor gripe with it.
Many times a word will be completely messed up so I hit the backspace key but instead accidentally hit the :-) key.
In almost all programs there will be a return key instead. It appears to only be in the stock messaging application (though it's where I spend most of my time!).
This is extremely annoying, as I never use the built in smileys (I prefer them without the nose, e.g. :)). Is it possible to remove that key and make the backspace key bigger or something similar?
My phone is a rooted Motorola Defy with a stock ROM.

I thought this was contextual. Handcent, for example, has a setting that lets you toggle between the smiley button and an enter/return button. Do you see the smiley button everywhere when you type?

@eld ah it only affects the stock messaging application. Do I really need to install a different messenger to get this to go away?

Hm, I'm certainly not seeing a way to do this in the stock messaging app. That's kind of annoying if so (I turn that button off on Handcent for the same reason).

What version of Swype?

No answers here, but just wanted to contribute my experience with this, which is that on my Droid3 (OS v2.3.4, NOT rooted; Swype v3.25.91.34494) it seems to depend on who I am texting with. In some (most) cases, the keyboard includes a return key. With certain (few) people, the return key is replaced by the "smiley" key and there is no obvious way to switch that key to the return key. I am using Google Voice (v0.4.2.66) for most of my SMS messages, and where this behavior is observed.

That's unfortunately not possible, Swype would need to provide a setting for this, which they don't. You might have more luck with third-party-messaging apps, but I doubt it, as this is a contextual feature that pops up whenever it makes sense for smileys to be inserted.

I have Jelly Bean 4.2.2 on a HTC One S and Swype 1.4 installed. I was ready to go on a shooting spree when I thought I couldn't hit a return button to start a new line!
I opened a SMS thread, tapped Menu > Settings and scrolled all the way down. There is an option at the bottom called Soft keyboard type. Open that and you get --
<> Smiley key
<> Send
<> Enter for a new line
Select the bottom one and you're golden!
This setting will change it for both the stock Android keyboard and Swype.
Cheers!


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Text App that supports Keyboard shortcuts
I'm a writer and i've just gotten a keyboard for my asus transformer (3.2 Honeycomb). However the included polaris office doesn't do keyboard shortcuts like CRTL i (for italics). Anyone know of any text editing app that supports these?
It would be great if it suported docx files but any text editor would do.

try PaSTE, free from the market, as per Text editor that supports italic text and tab indenting, via keyboard shortcuts
So far the only thing I've found that supports CTRL + I and CTRL + B.
G

looks like no support for word documents, but it's a nice start!

Can also confirm that Polaris on the Asus Transformer TF101 with ICS doesn't support CTRL + I (also they've specified their file formats as 'doc 97 to 2003' etc, so no docx either).


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Connecting Huawei Comet via USB -- shows as CDFS?
I'm trying to install a custom ringtone to my Huawei Comet, and when I connect it to my computer via USB it shows me a drive named "Mobile Partner" that is CDFS and has 0 MB free of 6.59 MB (not the 2GB MicroSD card I have installed). Do i have to use a separate SD card adaptor to plug it into my computer? Or how do I get my phone to show me the SD card?

You probably have it in Media mode or something, onik's answer should help in that case.

@MatthewRead I'd say it's in "tethering mode", since Huawei's 3G USB Modems use a software called Mobile Partner to manage the connection.

T-Mobile Comet Manual, p.14:
Using the microSD Card as USB Mass Storage
To transfer all your favorite music and pictures from your PC to your mobile phone’s microSD card, set the microSD card as USB mass storage.

Connect your mobile phone to your PC with the USB cable. Your PC will detect the microSD card as a removable disk.
Open the notification bar, and then touch USB connected.
Touch Turn on USB storage in the dialog box that opens to confirm that you want to transfer files. You can now transfer files from your PC to your mobile phone’s microSD card.


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launch application by name in android phone
How can I launch some android application by name on android device? Like in Linux, I pressed alt+f2 and typed name of application. May be it is some alternate launcher.

you can press the search, and type the name of the application there.

Yes, but it's dirty search for running only applications.

I found the filters in search widget. It works. Thank you, everybody.

Gesture Search will do something similar. It finds apps, contacts, bookmarks and music tracks.

+1 this is nice, I wish there would be a app indexing all these items, but let you search via keyboard instead of gestures?

The home launcher Go Launcher Ex gives you a search field for this, type in first letters and it will show matching apps. But it only lists apps, no music tracks or bookmarks.

It really depends what you mean applications in android are usually run using something similar to com.company.theirapp so you would need a "hashmap" for example which relates the application name to the actual apk name.


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How can I avoid the battery charging when connected via USB?
I'm using my Samsung Galaxy S2 for development so I regularly plug it while it's not fully charged, and my phone starts charging over USB. I think this (charging while in use) can affect battery life (is that correct)? Is there any way to avoid charging while the phone is on and connected via USB?

Does the phone function when plugged in but the battery removed?

That's quite a hack, I don't think it does since it doesn't boot when battery is fully empty.

This would also be useful you want to tether your phone to your computer with the least amount of power draw on your phone's battery.

adb shell dumpsys battery set ac 0; dumpsys battery set usb 0;

working way- not a direct way but simple turn around
While doing usb tethering, select "charge connected device" in the bottom of the USB preference menu.
I observed 0 % change in my android after 30 minutes turning ON "charge connected device", so laptop is not getting power from android and vice versa.

I have an Android 4.0.3 phone without root access so can't test any of this but let me point you to /sys/class/power_supply/battery/ which gives some info/control over charging issues. In particular there is charging_enabled which gives the current state (0 not charging, 1 charging) and may be writable on some phones?
$ adb shell
$ cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charging_enabled
1

There is also a file charger_control which sounds promising and is writable by root but I've found no documentation on it.
Someone has requested this feature as an enhancement on the google developer forum but so far without response:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=30612

user1059432, yes.
we can change value in /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charger_control to 0.
so we have connecting via usb without charging.

@xoxol_89 That is extremely dependent on what device and type of battery driver, not all of them work! Look at my project on github it only works specifically for the Zte Blade.

shell@pisces:/sys/class/power_supply $ ls
ls
ac
max170xx_battery
usb
seems I can't do anything with my battery max170xx_battery

On OnePlus 3 this path is exactly there and using the Automate app's superuser block on a rooted device I could use this trick not only to tell my battery level while charging but gracefully stop the device being overcharged. The icon will still show the charge symbol, but it is not doing it. The battery even starts to drop after a while.

This is very dependent on the battery driver found in the kernel for said device.
Unlike Galaxy S 2, that uses the TI battery driver which does not have that capability to be able to write out the value to the /sys/module/msm_battery/parameters/usb_chg_enable file.
For the MSM7x27 line of chipsets, Qualcomm to you and me, such as MSM7227 or MSM7627, for example, Europa (Galaxy 5), Zte Blade, as they use the generic MSM battery driver, which was rather easy to work with.
I have the open sourced project hosted on Github that does this exactly that, by selectively activating the charge or using it as ordinary usb without charging, it does require root though.

You can find an interesting article about phone batteries at http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries.
Basically, the more heat, the less lifetime your battery will have. My suggestion would be to charge it while the phone is shut down, that way there is no drain or load on the battery other than charging.

This does not answer OP's question (see the title) at all.

Actually, he's also asking if it is correct that the battery life can be affected by using it while charging, which increases the heat of the phone so reduces battery life. The article I posted talks about the relation between temperature and battery life.

Oh, my bad. I didn't notice that. :) Well it would have been more apt to state that what you're posting is just "partial answer" etc.


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How does Google Maps estimate my location without GPS?
I was wondering how Google Maps on my Android phone can locate me with a good accuracy when my GPS is disabled.
At first I though it was with the cell tower but I'm not sure it can achieve this precision and it is way better when the wireless is enabled (the accuracy go from 1600m to 100).
What I don't understand is that I have a dynamic IP - it's not supposed to be linked to my address. For example wolframalpha locates me with a very bad precision (the country is correct) and it's the same for all other IP location services.
How does this work?

See also Why does Google Maps Need Wifi? and What is assisted GPS

See also: How does Android get the coarse location?

Google and others like Apple and Skyhook build a Database which links WLAN BSSIDs to a geographic location. A BSSID is like the MAC Address of a access point that gets broadcast by that access point. It is therefore "publicly viewable" if the BSSID broadcast is enabled, which is the default for most access points. The BSSID operates on a lower layer than the IP stack; you don't even have to be connected to an access point to receive these broadcasts.
Every time you run Google Maps or Navigation with GPS and WiFi enabled and if your device is able to get a good GPS fix, the currently visible WLAN networks and your current location (the GPS fix) are uploaded to Google to build and update the database. This technique is sometimes called crowdsourcing. Every Android device acts therefore as data collector.
Since most access points are static in their position and only cover a small area - the coverage radius is approximately 100m - they are ideal anchors for a good location fix without GPS.

Thanks but how can they match a BSSID and a location at first ? I've a new wireless hotspot in my house for only about a month and it's already inside the database...

note that Google StreetView cars also carries a GPS and Wifi for the same purpose.

It can also use cell towers. Turn off gps and WiFi, you'll still get location data.

Ok thanks, nice trick, just a bit terrifying for the privacy... Concerning the cell towers there is something I don't get. If I don't have wireless and just know the cell id, how can it find the corresponding position of the tower. I guess there is a cache of last seen but so for new ones, no way to know ?

You can do it that way, although its less accurate. Typically there's triangulation using timing to and from the tower(s), then you ask the network where you are.

So the phone communicate with the cell towers to know the position with the GSM protocol ? I understand it's less accurate but it means it should be possible to locate me anywhere (which doesn't seem to be the case in Google Maps). Or maybe I need also to have the 3G enabled ?

Fascinating... it's the only logical explanation for my tablet (with no gps) to get 60m accuracy, off our home's WiFi. The center location shown is always exactly in the same spot, which happens to have gotten set just across the street from our house.

Besided: If the owner of the Wifi-AP moves to a different city, and your wife gets hold of your phone and Location Cache -- this method may yield unexpected side-effects: "What did you do in Vegas yesterday???" xD Not really kidding about the first part -- I had that experience being 100km off the track...

I think they use mainly cell towers in that case. They locate three towers (which provide your cellphone's calling/receiving connection) that are close to you, and then use the respective distances from the towers to you to calculate your exact location. That was how location of cellphones were done before the wide spread of GPS and WiFi technology.

In my experience, cell tower triangulation is not used for Google's LBS. It's done the same way as with the WLAN geo-location data, just instead of the BSSID they use the cell tower's GSM ID and map it to the location of the tower and it's estimated coverage. Which is sometimes very inaccurate. For example in urban areas where the area is to big and in rural areas the towers have a bigger coverage as what, for example Google Maps, tells you.

Thanks but I'm not sure you can achieve a 50m accurate location with cell tower triangulation

Under certain circumstances it is possible to achieve this accuracy. But triangulation can not be done by the GSM device itself. Only the carrier can do that and provide this information to the device. But given the fact that most smartphones don't need LBS from the carrier to provide a decent location information, most carriers turned off their LBS interface. At least that's the situation in Germany.

I don't have a plan for a phone number and the cell tower is farther then 100m. It maybe determines your location by the location of the router. Its radius is 5m - 1km.

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Google Latitude and multiple devices - How to prevent location jumping?
I have an Android smartphone and tablet which both are linked to my Google account and Latitude enabled. Since I don't carry the tablet always with me, my Latitude location sometimes jumps back and forth, if my smartphone has no connectivity.
I could disable Latitude on my tablet, but I wonder if there is a way to configure Latitude on the tablet to not provide any location information at all?

Personally I never enabled Latitude on my tablet, it spends most of its time at home, and the rest in Airplane mode!

So on the tablet, you just want to use Latitude to see where other people are, but not report your own location?  And the app doesn't provide an option to turn it off per-device?

That is exactly the problem, endolith. Since there is no offical Latitude for Android issue tracker, I have asked the question on Google's mobile forums. If you are also looking for a native solution, please star it. Hopefully we will get Google's attention.

There's an app called ALTitude that does allow you to configure those settings per installation (= per device in your case).
EDIT: Purpose of the app - updating your Latitude status/location base on more fine grained settings (update interval, location source).
ALTitude on Android Market
XDA Thread
I'd recommend to configure Latitude to "manual location" and ALTitude to automatic update, but first read through the thread to check if this tool does the trick for you.

I am not sure if this will work, since ALTitude requires to set Latitude to "manual update" and I think that this setting will also be synced across all devices which Latitude enabled and my Google Account. Edit: of course that could work, because ALTitude will then update my location, :-) I'll report back how it turns out.

Ok, this will work. But I don't like 3rd party apps. That's why I switched to remotely turning off wifi via GTalkSMS if I have left my tablet at home, so that it has not data connectivity. If there aren't any better answers until the end of the contest, I will accept this one. Thanks masterjo.

@Flow if there's any suggestions you'd like to voice do so in the XDA Thread - the app is in active development and the developer is very responsive.

This is probably overkill and might not even work, but you could root your tablet and install Cyanogenmod, which lets you revoke permissions for individual apps.  So you could revoke permission for Latitude to access your location on the tablet, but leave the rest of the app running.  This may just cause it to crash, though.

If you go to Settings in your Latitude, under Location Reporting it gives you the option "Do not update your location". Another option is to just turn off the GPS on your tablet, this way it won't give your position in Latitude.

I'm not sure if the first option is the same as Andrew's answer, but the second makes sense.

I am sorry but disabling GPS won't help since Latitude will still update the position from the WiFi and cell tower location data. Also GPS isn't used by Latitude explicitly, it's only used when the GPS postion is already there (e.g. because Maps with enabled GPS is running).

For the current version of Google Maps (7.2.0) set Settings > Google location settings >Location Reporting> Off on your tablet. For more details see the Google help page.
For an older version of Google Maps (6.14.4) I found: Settings > Location settings >Report from this device.

Under Settings > Accounts > Google, Privacy > Maps & Lattitude, I have disabled the option "Report from this device" on my Nexus 7 tablet. This makes my phone the only device to update my location.


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Why are playlists breeding like rabbits on my device?
I use Banshee 2.2 to synchronize music and podcasts to my Android 2.3 device. On the device, I'm using PowerAMP to play music.
When I open PowerAMP and look at the playlists, each one is repeated a dozen times. So, for example, I have a playlist called "Pop". After a dozen syncs with my computer, I now have 12 playlists called "Pop". 11 are empty, and one has the actual playlist in it.
At first I thought this was a problem with PowerAMP, but since I have tried the Android default music player and a few other music apps, the problem is repeated no matter what I use to play music. So it seems this isn't an app specific problem, but a system wide one.
I have scoured the onboard memory and the SD card, but I have no idea where the playlists are stored. (Note my phone is not rooted, nor do I intend to.)
How do I clear out the empty playlists and stop this behaviour?

This problem may have become moot. After an upgrade about a day or so ago, PowerAMP now seems to check for m3u files instead of the Android system playlists. I am not 100% sure of this, or if it will be a long term solution, but I thought that it was worth mentioning.

This sounds to me like a similar problem I have had with duplicating images in the gallery. I fixed this by clearing the gallery data, and allowing it to rebuild next time the media scanner ran.
I would suggest trying the same technique. I would imagine that whereas I deleted the data from the Gallery App, you should try clearing data from the stock Android Music Player, or failing that from PowerAMP.
Settings-Applications-Manage Applications-All-Gallery-Clear data (confirm). This doesn't delete your media itself, just the database that details where the media is. The media scanner will rebuild this database automatically next time it scans.
It would be prudent to backup your phone contents before you try this.

Unfortunately, this did not help. I did as you instructed, and now PowerAmp can't seem to find any music files at all, even though the files are still on the SD card.

hmm that shouldn't happen. Has the media scanner run since you cleared the data? It should do this when you start PowerAMP, or when you boot the phone or when disconnecting the phone after you've connected it to a PC over USB.

Yeah... this isn't good. I rebooted the device, and I also uninstalled and reinstalled PowerAMP. I reselected the folder where the music is, selected rescan, and it just says "scanned two folders and zero files". If I plug in by USB and check the folders, all the music is there. So... yeah... I don't know what's up with that.

Hmm, could try clearing data on the stock Android music player. That's forced a successful rescan for me before.

Okay, got the scanner to find the music again. Turns out the directory was marked differently than it was before. Now that I had the right directory, it found it. However, the original problem has returned. I have about 1 million duplicates of every playlist I have ever had.


text:
Unable to restore stock OS on Nexus S
I had a post on https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/14999/how-can-i-restore-the-default-os-on-phone-that-has-custom-build
however this got closed because it was a possible duplicate. Unfortunately the duplicate did not answer my question so I am posting again with further details.
Basically I had built the Android source and flashed this to my phone and now I would like to go back to the stock version.
The link in the duplicate points to the following recovery file http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespo/f182cf141e6a.signed-soju-ota-102588.f182cf14.zip
I renamed this to update.zip, and reboot into recovery. I then get a triangle with an exclamation mark. Then I hit the power and volume up key again and see more options, so I then selected 'apply update from /sdcard'.
I receive the error:
 E:failed to verify whole-file signature
 E:signature verification failed
 Installation aborted

How can I restore my phone with stock Gingerbread?

Explaining why your case is different is perfect :).  I didn't see your comment on the other question -- feel free to flag a question and fill in your reasoning if you think a question should be re-opened to make sure we see it.

Thanks! I wasn't sure how to do this (I'm new to android.stackexchange so I may not have enough privileges yet to do this!)

Oops, I didn't realize you needed 15 rep for that. I'll have to remember to comment on new users' questions so they can @Matt in their comments.

It's an official update, so the signature should be perfectly valid.  There are a couple things to check:

You didn't mention where you saved the update.zip.  Make sure it's in the /sdcard/ folder -- try viewing it via a file manager on your phone to ensure it's there.
I assume you've done this already, but make sure your bootloader is unlocked.
The download might have been corrupted.  Try the download again, and verify its validity with the MD5 sum (3e8908941043951da5a34bb2043dd1a0)
What's your specific model number?  Perhaps this update doesn't work for your model.

You can try this 2.3.6 for the GT-i9023 / GT-i9020t: http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespo/1ada25375426.signed-soju-ota-189904.1ada2537.zip
Or this 2.3.6 for the GT-i9020a: http://android.clients.google.com/packages/ota/google_crespoa/0b9c8148de0d.signed-sojua-ota-189904.0b9c8148.zip

Thank-you, I have the GT-i9020T, I tried your first link, ie GTi9020t however I still receive the same error :(
I believe my bootloader is unlocked, when I go into the bootloader it says: Lock State - Unlocked.
I do not have access to the File Manager to check that it is in /sdcard/, however when I plug in my phone to my PC, I dump the file in the first folder that appears, presumably this is the root of the /sdcard/.

@lost_bits1110 That might be the external SD card (/mnt/sdcard/external_sd/) rather than the internal SD storage (/mnt/sdcard/).  Samsung devices are weird like that.  Both drives should be mounted to your PC though, so try the other one?  I'm really surprised you don't have a Files app or anything (is that an AOSP thing?) but you should be able to side-load one, e.g. AndExplorer.

Yes it looks like its an AOSP thing, I wasn't able to find any kind of File Manager type app on here. Also I don't have the Marketplace nor can I connect to a network, so I won't be able to get AndExplorer unfortunately :(

Okay - when I connect my phone to my PC and run my Android app, I can open up the DDMS view in Eclipse, and I see the File Explorer. In here I see a folder /mnt/sdcard, and my update zip file is here (though I do not see a /mnt/sdcard/external_sd folder)

@lost_bits1110 Hmm.  In that case you could try using the fastboot update command via the Android SDK.  It's supposed to ignore signatures if you want to risk it.

I appreciate all the help, unfortunately I receive the error: error: failed to load 'update.zip'. I then tried fastboot devices and it comes up empty, though adb devices works fine - sigh!! I will have to keep at it

You have to be in fastboot mode (not recovery) in order for fastboot utility to recognize the phone.

@Chahk - thank-you, but how do I get into fastboot mode? The only options I see are Reboot bootloader, Reboot, Recovery, Power Off

Try Bootloader mode. Also, fastboot expects the images to be on your computer, not on your phone's SD Card.

@Chahk - thank-you, yes when I press Power+Volume Up then I am in bootloader mode, and when I select Reboot bootloader it quickly reboots into this same bootloader mode. I see Fastboot mode and Lock state - unlocked in red letters at the top. Unfortunately in this state, typing fastboot devices still returns nothing.


text:
Google Voice Upgrade: Get a new number from Google or use my mobile number?
Google voice added an upgrade recently, in which they allow to choose whether you want to use your own mobile number or get a new Google number.

Will I be able to activate my android with either one of the options? Is there a good reason why to prefer one over another?

Take a look at the Choosing your Google number page in their help section. Specifically, have a look at the "Learn more about the difference between the two options" expandable link.
The gist is that unless you have Sprint, choosing to use your mobile number will simply allow you to port your mobile number and turn it into your GVoice number or continue using GVoice Lite. This means you lose your mobile number for your cell plan, which is probably not what you want in most cases.
If you have Sprint then you can choose to have your GVoice number be a copy of your actual mobile number, allowing GVoice communication to essentially appear as though it originated from your mobile phone (among other things, explained more at About Google Voice on Sprint).


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Microsoft Exchange bandwidth out of control?
Yesterday afternoon I synced my Galaxy S II with Microsoft Exchange and my multinational corporation's exchange server. Mail settings were to push at all times.
Over night my phone drained its battery completely and rang up 550MB in mobile upload charges via Exchange. I'm certain it was exchange because I have a traffic monitor tool and that particular email client is only holding my exchange account.
This was, to understate, surprising.
Is this normal behavior for Exchange? I only received 8 emails over night, none of which had any attachments to speak of.

Well I finally figured this out, after racking up 800MB of upload and 3.5MB of download with my Exchange Email over 2 days... I had tried to send someone an 8MB PDF and it never sent successfully... so it tried again, and again, and again, and again.
The email was stuck in my outbox and couldn't be deleted. I'd get "server error" messages (DERP!). The solution was to de-couple the device from Exchange, completely removing that account, thereby deleting the message, and then re-registering the device.
Now all is as it should be...
Long story short -- keep an eye on your outbox!


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How does one install an emulator onto the Playstation phone (Sony Xperia Play)?
I got a Playstation phone (Sony Xperia Play) and would love to play old video games on it for free. I was hoping there was an emulator (maybe mame?) I could install on it. Is there some way I could do this?
EDIT: I'd like something that makes use of the playstation control buttons on my particular phone

For any particular system? Did you look in the Market? Searching just for "MAME" returns several relevant results: https://market.android.com/search?q=MAME&so=1&c=apps.

Thanks, I had assumed that I would need to jailbreak it. I guess coming from the world of iPhone to Android, my expectations don't align with reality.

Hmm, just took a look. Do you know if any of them can make use of the Xperia's playstation buttons? That's what I'm looking for in particular.

I'm not sure, to be honest. I feel like at least a handful are able to use other hardware buttons (like on the original Droid's slide-out keyboard), but I couldn't really say for sure. I have an EVO, which lacks any hardware buttons at all, so it's never been something I could test/consider.

The Xperia PLay supposedly has an emulator built in already,Sony is offering some PS1 games on the market, there were PS1 emulators on the market but due to this they were removed.

Yes there are! Currently I found a Mame, Gameboy, N64, Snes, ScummVM (emulates classic adventure titles like Secret of Monkey Island, THE DIG, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and Broken Sword) and a Genesis emulator.
All of them use the PSX buttons but you need to configure all of them in the internal emulator configuration.
I have them all installed but I only tested the MAME, Sness and ScummVM emulator. I also have been told that some of these were removed from the market since they were paid apps that were copied from open source emulators. I have no idea about the legality of the use of emulators.
Since some of the APKs are not available via Market you'll need to install a file manager and allow the android system to install apps that are not from the market.
I really can't find the direct links to the emulators, but here it is their websites:

Gameboy
N64oid
SNES A. D.
ScummVM
Genplus-Droid (GENESIS)
Tiger Emulator (MAME)

Btw: The Tiger Emulator page says that it also emulates other platforms, I've only tried Marvel vs Capcom and Metal Slug.
Oh yeah, they also run great with zero lag but they'll usually suck your battery dry.
Edit: I tested all of them and everyone works like a charm, with the exception of the N64 emulator. Some games like Mario Kart 64 run OK and other like Pillotwings64 are unplayable.
Double Edit: I've been doing some research about PSX emulators and some close friends have recommended me FPse (Free Playstation Emulator) - it's supposed to be free but someone is selling it on the Droid Market.
I haven't got the chance to test it and I'll only get my PSX games after the weekend I believe that if someone does want to emulate PSX, it seems like a good way to start.

You should try PPSSPP, which is a PSP emulator. Although it's still in the beta stage it works fairly well.

Please add a link to the App :)

There are huge number of consoles that can be emulated on android devices including gameboy, nintendo, myboy and some other similar consoles too.
The best by far is the PSP emulator for android called PPSSPP, it works best although might require good hardware configuration on your android device. Here is how to play psp games on android using ppsspp

Link answers are not good answers, not everyone may be able to access the link you provided. The page may no longer be available. The site could be down permanently. Linking to a url as a source of the solution is fine, but you should edit your answer and include the steps that answer the original question in your answer. Without the steps, your answer does not answer the question, you just tell them to go somewhere else.

@RyanConrad He gave a link to the app. If that link goes down, the answer will be useless however he describes it

@samsung, Yes, there is a link to the app. If the link doesn't provide anything extra, why is it included? Also there is already an answer from a year ago that links to the same app. If there is additional information needed, then it should be in this answer, not just a link to another site. Example, "might require good hardware configuration", an explanation of this, and what should be set, would be good information to include in the answer. An answer should not require the user to create more questions just to clarify the answer.


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Can't install from market: INSTALL_FAILED_DEXOPT
I have an LG Optimus V with CyanogenMod 7.1.  I cannot install/upgrade anything from the Market.  I keep getting "Package File Invalid".  I think it may have something to do with s2e, though I only have apps and download cache moved to SD-ext.
I tried to install an app from the Market, and it gave me "Package File Invalid".  I then ran adb pull downloadfile.apk to get the downloaded apk.  Running adb install downloadfile.apk gave me:
Failure [INSTALL_FAILED_DEXOPT]

How can I fix this, so I can install apps?
EDIT: Could this be due to not having enough space for my new apps' dalvik cache?  I tried to use s2e to copy the dalvik cache to sd-ext, but it's not working.  It says "reboot required", and after I reboot, it still says that; I don't think it copied the files at all.

Can you install any file off the market or are you getting the same error no matter which file you try and download?

It's weird.  When I try to upgrade an app, I get "Package file invalid".  When I try to install a new app (one I've never installed before), sometimes it works, and sometimes I get "Package file invalid".

I updated my market to 3.3.11, and it seems I can install/update some apps now, some still give "Package file invalid".  I was able to fix some updates by uninstalling then reinstalling.  Why do some apps not install, but others do?

When I rooted my G1 and was using Cyanogen and we had a similar error we didn't need to reflash the rom, but just the gapps package - try reflashing that. Or other wise on AndroidPolice they have the latest market apk file which you could download and trash flashing that and seeing if that will install over the current market.
If that still doesn't work consider reflashing the ROM and GAPPS package again, but make sure you wipe before flashing. I always found that doing a wipe before each flash made for far fewer issues and errors.
Case in point is my wife is using my G1 running Cyanogen's 2.2 version of Android and has been up and running for the last 6 months and we haven't had any crashes or errors yet on it, and I made sure to do a wipe and clean install when loading it.

Updating the market to 3.3.11 kinda helped.  Some packages installed/updated correctly, but others still didn't.  I can try to reflash GApps (and then re-update my market).

Thanks for the suggestion, but reflashing gapps didn't help =(


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Does Titanium Backup work with system using Link2SD
Titanium Backup is a root app that allows you to back up your apps and all their data.
Link2SD is a root app that moves all files an app stores in internal storage to a special partition on SD card, and creates symlinks into the internal storage in place of the original files.
Does Titanium Backup work with Link2SD? That is, does it correctly back up the files that the symlinks point to, or does it instead end up backing up just the symlinks?

I don't know about Titanium Backup but I can tell you that My Backup Pro didn't work with Link2SD. It backed up data perfectly, but not apps APKs.

It works, but can't tell the difference between an app installed on the phone's memory and an app that's been linked

Titanium Backup works fine with Link2SD. I've been using them together for about six months, with around 100 apps symlinked. There's no reason taking a backup would uninstall linked apps as Wolfgang reports, and I've also had zero issues restoring backups of linked apps, so it's clear that Titanium follows the symlinks correctly. In fact, I have just finished restoring all my apps from Titanium after flashing a ROM.
The only caveat is that when you restore in Titanium, Link2SD will not automatically link apps as they are restored, even if you set it up before restoring the rest of your apps. This is annoying, because it means you have to be conscious of your available internal memory and only restore in batches that will fit in your free space, then link the apps and do another batch.
Other than that, they work very smoothly alongside each other.

However, if you have the free version of Titanium Backup, the way it batch restores apps is different. It basically installs each app individually, requiring you to click 'install' each time. Because of this, link2sd actually works better because it is getting the app installed intent.

this is actually not true for me. even though i have to click 3 times for each app restore, it restores them all to internal storage. auto link in link2sd is enabled.

In fact it works, but only in the same terminal.
If you move your sdcard with a titanium backup done previously from a terminal with android 2.3.6 to another terminal with android 4.2, the titanium backup will detect the backup done before, but it can't restore anything of it.
Perhaps if you install link2sd in a android 4.2, can you do it?


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Can Android and/or Apps handle switching an SD card temporarily?
I have a lot of apps and app data on my SD card. I know Android handles unmounting and remounting that card very well.
However, what if I temporarily insert another SD card onto my Android device - will the system handle this OK and be back in the same state when I reinsert my original card? What about apps, should they in most cases handle this well too?
What I'm worried about is that Android seeing the empty SD card decides that I've removed all the apps that I had on my SD card, and any apps I have left will also think I've removed their data and rewrite some internal indexes accordingly...

AFAIK it is very difficult for an App to identify the inserted SD-Card. A regular App should be able to handle the case if the SD-card is not available (ejected or connected as drive to the PC via USB) but I assume that most Apps can not handle the case when you regularly switch between two SD-Cards.
In general you should not start any Apps that use the SD-Card while you have inserted the "wrong SD-Card".
Regarding the Apps moved onto SD-Card - this is a different topic. As my device does not allow to switch the SD-Card while running I have no clue what happens e.g. to the app data in your device if you switch the SD-Card.


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USB drivers for using ADB with Samsung Galaxy S on CyanogenMod 7.1?
I recently installed CyanogenMod 7.1 on my Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and I have some problems now to get ADB on my Windows 7 64-bit computer to recognize the device.
Currently, adb devices returns no entry for my phone and the Device Manager shows a device called "Galaxy S" but with a yellow exclamation mark because a driver is missing.
I've tried to install Samsung Kies as well as the Google USB driver for Windows Revision 4 and point the device manager at the directories with those drivers. It doesn't find anything it can use there.
Which drivers do I actually need for the phone now that it is running CyanogenMod 7.1? And where do I get those and how can I install them?

Use the drivers that come with the android SDK. The samsung drivers do not work once CyanogenMod is installed.

That's one of the drivers I tried, if I point the driver installation dialog to the folder with the Google driver it just says that it didn't find any driver for the device.

make sure you have android_winusb.inf in the folder, there should also be androidwinusb64.cat and an amd64 folder. If you have those, it should find the driver. That is the driver I use for my Galaxy S w/ CM7 on both my work and home PCs both run Win7 64bit

Thanks, the Google driver is the correct one, I just pointed Windows to the wrong folder, the driver installation fails when I choose the amd64 or i386 subfolders, it has to be the parent folder.

You can also just right-click on android_winusb.inf and/or oem6.inf and choose Install rather than going through the messy detecting/browsing for files/etc process.

i always got an error when I tried to "install" the android usb driver inf file.

For anyone else who struggled with not detecting their phone. Here's what happend to me: First I was trying to uninstall the automatic portable device that windows adds when I plug in my galaxy s3. That was silly seems if you manually install the driver it will pick up. I had to go to right click my computer -> Manage ->  Device Manager - > Action -> Add Legacy Hardware -> Choose Android Phone -> Browse to ..\AppData\Local\Android\android-sdk\extras\google\usb_driver and select android_winusb.inf -> Then I selected the "Android Composite ADB Interface" option
UPDATE
Ok, the above solution wasn't working any more after a reboot of my pc. So this time I saw my phone was  under "Other Devices" in Device Manager. Clicked Update driver, choose from my pc, "Have disk..." and forced it to use the above mentioned composite driver despite the warning and then it worked again.

If you found your device on devices->other devices as android then what you need to do is install the driver for your device. Even if it is cyanogen moded samsung phone, in most cases installing samsung driver will fix the issue.. You can get samsung drivers on the following link:
Android USB Driver for Windows | SAMSUNG Developers
I'm using samsung galaxy s duos with cyanogen moded cosmic ROM. It worked fine for me.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime DUOS G531H/DS and those drivers worked for me. I can now see the device using adb devices. Thanks!


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Is it possible to change the background automatically when charging battery?
This is a feature of older nokias, I would like to have it on android! On a related note, it would be nice to have a different background when silenced or on airplane mode.

Yes, using Tasker.
See "Set Wallpaper" action and "Power" state. It even looks like it'd be rather easy to configure that event.
For your related notes, also see "Airplane Mode" state and %SILENT variable.

I found two live wallpaper apps for you:

Liquid Battery
Power Puddle

You should also check out Battery Fun!


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Where (and how) does Android store music playlists?
I've noticed that Android keeps the same music playlists across music apps. Where are these playlists stored? How (in what format) are they stored? Can I access them remotely via the USB storage link, or is there instead an app I can use to access them?
Related question: Music transfer and playlists

See also: How can I backup playlists or extract path+filename information from them (generated with builtin MP3-player)?

They're stored in your music.db file - mine is /data/data/com.google.android.music/databases; I'm not sure if this is exactly the same across all devices but I'd guess it probably is.
They live in a combination of the LISTS and LISTITEMS tables, which are defined as such:
sqlite> .schema lists
.schema lists
CREATE TABLE LISTS(Id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, Name TEXT NOT NULL,
    SourceAccount INTEGER, SourceId TEXT, _sync_version TEXT,
    _sync_dirty INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, MediaStoreId INTEGER,
    ListType INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, ListArtworkLocation TEXT);
CREATE INDEX LIST_SYNC_INDEX on LISTS(SourceAccount,SourceId);
sqlite>

sqlite> .schema listitems
.schema listitems
CREATE TABLE LISTITEMS(Id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    ListId INTEGER NOT NULL REFERENCES LISTS, MusicSourceAccount INTEGER NOT NULL,
    MusicSourceId TEXT NOT NULL, ClientPosition INTEGER NOT NULL,
    ServerPosition INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0, SourceAccount INTEGER, SourceId TEXT,
    _sync_version TEXT, _sync_dirty INTEGER NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    ServerOrder TEXT DEFAULT '', ClientId TEXT);
CREATE INDEX LISTITEMS_ORDER_INDEX ON LISTITEMS (ListId, ServerOrder, ClientPosition);
CREATE INDEX LISTITEMS_SYNC_INDEX on LISTITEMS(SourceAccount,SourceId);
sqlite>

Interestingly, if you're using the new Google Music Beta, playlists that you create don't seem to appear in other apps but they do have entries in the DB. It looks like this is possibly because the MusicSourceAccount field is set to your Google Music account id; other apps set it to 0, and those appear across all apps that take data from the DB.

Nice! But how do you run this SQL query on your mobile phone? Are you using a DB tool for that? Which one?

I found a post from XDA Developers.
If anyone reading this doesn't find it on the directory listed above, try this one instead:
/data/data/com.android.providers.media/databases/external-{{some hex here}}.db
You can then copy it to your computer, use the SQLite editor of your taste and manipulate the data at your own will.


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How to upgrade / swap SD card without losing data and installed apps?
I have 2GB Micro SD card in my Android and want to upgrade to 4GB.
How can I achieve it without losing anything from my 2GB card? I mostly use this card to store images/music and most of the apps.

This can depend largely on what's on your SD card at the moment (i.e. if it's just music/pictures/files or if you have apps on your SD card). Related questions: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/13638/changing-sd-card-just-a-simple-copy-paste and http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/12555/how-to-switch-sd-cards-when-using-a-data2whatever-d2w-custom-rom

What should be filesystem of the new SD card ?

Again, this depends somewhat on how you're currently using it and how it's currently partitioned. Very broadly speaking, I'd assume you'd want it to be the same as your current one, which is most probably FAT32 for simple file storage (if that's all you're using your card for).

First, turn off your phone's radio by entering Airplane Mode - usually this'll be by long-pressing the power button and selecting Airplane Mode.
Next on your homescreen, press MENU and click SETTINGS (or navigate in your preferred way). In SETTINGS, choose SD CARD & PHONE STORAGE. Press UNMOUNT to dismount your SD Card.
Now remove your SD card from the phone and insert it into your card reader on your PC.
Copy ALL the files to a folder of choice.
Insert your new 4 GB card into your cell phone and choose to FORMAT it from within the device. This is the safest course of action. Remove the new SD Card and use your PC to move/overwrite all data from the copy of the old card to the new one.
Re-insert your new card into the phone and reboot so that the scanning of the card takes place.

Is there a particular reason for the airplane mode advice? In the past I've followed your basic procedure but powered off, swapped (and copied) and powered back up to the new card.

@Saiboogu I would assume Airplane Mode is to remove a source of (attempted) writes to the SD card.  But personally I would and have done the same as you.  I've heard some people/phones have problems with PC-formatted cards, though.

@Saiboogu - Just in case, some app tries to write to the card like Picasa syncing some photos or something similar. It'll save a reboot when a user needs to format the new card from within the phone. That's all. Power down works just as well.

@Sparx Formatting in the phone makes sense, I missed that. I haven't had trouble with PC formatted cards myself, but heard enough stories to believe it. Simpler than explaining formatting on the PC too, probably.

"insert it into your card reader on your PC." - I use my mobile phone as a card reader. Is there any way to do this without a separate card reader?

This still works... in 2019

When I followed the instructions of the accepted answer with my Samsung Galaxy S5, the phone would always tell me that the new SD card needed checking.
There seems to be a bug when you're trying to replace an encrypted SD card. Here is what I did to work around it:

Decrypt your old card (before you remove it from your phone).
Switch off the phone
Remove the old card
Insert the new card
Switch on your phone
Phone will detect the card and then complain about problems.
Decrypt the new card. This sounds like a mistake but it solves the problem. Apparently, the phone remembers that the card is supposed to be encrypted and tries to access it with the old key. Since the card isn't encrypted at all, this will fail.
The card should work now.
Encrypt the new card. If you skip this last step, you need to decrypt the card every time you switch on your phone.


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Is it possible to add a stopover or intermediate waypoint in Google Maps navigation?
On the desktop version of Google Maps, I can add multiple destinations, or drag the route created to include a specific spot that is not on the original route.   Is there a way to do this on the Android version of Maps, short of navigating to the first spot, and then entering the final destination once that's reached?
I'm running Maps version 5.11.0

A decent workaround, as suggested on droidforums.net: add your destination/route to My Maps via a PC. From your phone, select Layers > My Maps from the Google Maps App.

I can bring the map up with the route showing, but I don't see how to get it to navigate using that route.    When I select Navigation, it asks me to choose a destination and re-calculates the route.

On Google Maps, create your trip including all waypoints.
Save that map to "My Maps" within Google Maps.
On the Android device, go to Maps, layers, more layers and then choose "My Maps"
Select the map you want, it will come into maps on your Android device with each waypoint available.
You can choose each waypoint individually and you will get the blue arrow over it which will kick off Google Navigation.

Not the best solution (e.g. Google having programmed it as a feature), but at least one can completely plan a trip with Google Maps and then port the entire thing over to the Android device and navigate with it.

Note for posterity: the newer version of Google Maps on the web doesn't allow for the creation of custom maps.

Simple steps on Android phone.   Search for route on Android phone. Click on start Navigations button with whatever route it is suggesting.  Then Magnifying symbol will appear.  Tap on the magnifyling  symbol.  "Search along route"  will appear.  Here type the point through which the map should navigate and click on the name once it appears.  Now your new suggested route navigation will appear.
This is the simple and best step.

I just found out the following while I was trying to plot a more scenic route just minutes ago (mind blown!):

I plotted a route in Chrome (PC) with waypoints
(I did click the 'Share or Embed map' link hidden under the cog icon in the down right corner - but this isn't even necessary I think)
I opened my Chrome browser's history on Android and chose the most recent Google maps url I visited (you could also just bookmark it, or copy paste via eg. email or eg. Pushbullet app)
I chose 'Open with Maps' upon selecting the link and somehow magically the route WITH WAYPOINTS shows up, ready to click 'Start navigation'

Woohoo, welcome scenic route in Mobile Maps navigation!
Details about my 'setup':

I'm running Fedora Linux (21) on laptop with Chrome latest beta: Version 42.0.2311.82 beta (64-bit) - for all I know, this should work no matter what OS as long as you have an updated Chrome version, beta or not
I'm using the latest Maps UI in Chrome
I have Lollipop on my Sony Xperia Z2 (alltough keeping Maps up to date should be sufficient)
I have my history synced (obviously)

Below are the links with and without waypoints:
Default suggested route: Lijnwaadstraat to Brusselsesteenweg (Belgium)
Route with waypoints: Scenic version of the above ;-)
Can anyone confirm this is actually happening and not a figment of my imagination? ;-) - Google product forums confirmed this works (see last edit below)
Open the links above (they are safe, real Google Maps links from google.be) with your Android, chose 'Open with Maps' if asked.  The first one should take you there in about 17 minutes over mostly (sub)highways, the second one should take around 34 minutes and be completely different.
Sorry for stumbling upon this 3 year old question..  I'm happily plotting more scenic routes and bookmarking them ;-)
- edit -
This link on Google product forums contains a lot more information on this and I still need to confirm what will happen if I deviate from my custom route, triggering Maps Navigation into recalculation.  Will it recalculate to my next waypoint or straight to the destination (hence losing any further waypoints ahead)?  I just need to test this, tomorrow ;-)

There is a tool which allows you to do just that.
https://mapped.me


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set song as alarm tone
How can I set song from my sd card as alarm tone ? i tried to change the tone but I cant figure out how to make the songs from my sd card to show up on the list.
I am using samsung galaxy ace with android 2.3.4

Did you try restarting your phone ?

Yes I restarted my phone.

I also faced the same issue with the Stock Alarm. Stock alarm was not able to recognize the SD Card songs. I vaguely remembered the solution. Couple of restarts and removing the SD Card from the phone and plugging it again solved the issue fro me.
But now I installed Alarm Klock which has the option to see all the Songs on SD Card by Author and Album wise. It has vibrating feature which doesn't there in stock Alarm.

There are a number of apps that will let you set pretty much any sound file (mp3, ogg vorbis, etc) as a ringtone or notification sound.  Tone Picker is just one example.


text:
Save txt messages to PC?

Possible Duplicate:
How do I backup and restore SMS Messages?

Is it possible to move/backup txt/sms message from my phone to my PC?  I have Android 2.2  If this could be done via a usb cable, that would be ideal.

Use Backup & Restore application on your mobile. Take the Backup of your messages only. Its going to store in SDCard/data/backup/.sbf.
You can copy this file into your PC using a Cable or using Bluetooth.
Anyways I prefer SMS Backup+ which syncs your SMS, Call Logs, etc with your gmail.

Thanks, is a .sbf file a text file which can be opened on a standard pc to see the messages?

It is not a txt file.Its a binary file. As far as I know there are some editors available to open this file.


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How to monitor Wi-Fi usage?
Is it possible to monitor Wi-Fi usage in a similar method to how 3g watchdog monitors 3G usage?    I have android 2.2 on my phone.  I doesn't need to do everything 3G watchdog does, all I need to see is how much data I am using.

Recent update has made 3g watchdog  monitor to show wifi usage as well :D

Netcounter can monitor both cellular data and wifi usage levels.

My Data Manager also does a great job.
Tracks wifi and cellular down to the app level.  You can have it warn you when you are near a data cap. You can set it up to track by calendar month or by your billing cycle.
It has a widget as well as a notification bar item.
I used it to track down my runaway data usage (Doggcatcher) on my phone as well as a build.prop error causing huge data usage on my son's MIUI Incredible.

MDM looks great... It has clean UI, too.

Take a look at DU Meter for Android. DU Meter can show current network transfer rates in the notification area, it includes a home screen widget which displays daily or monthly data usage, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of DU Meter.

For more options, you can also try Traffic Monitor; it monitors both cellular and wifi usage as well. And you can also check usage per app.


text:
Truecrypt on Android 2.2?
Has Truecrypt been ported over to Android yet?  If yes, where can I get it from as I can't seem to find it in the Market unless it's named something different.  If no, is anyone developing it? If no again, any reason why no one is developing it?

A lot of people are asking that question. Here's one.
Some people are offering bounties. Like at XDA-Developers.
Some people have suggested alternatives. AxCrypt looks like an alternative, and there's an alpha product that works with it (and Dropbox) called BoxCryptor.
But I've not found an actual port of Truecrypt to Android, nor any information about plans to do so.

Recent versions of Cryptonite include an actual port of the TrueCrypt code to Android. The following restrictions apply at this time:

No GUI - command-line access only.
Requires FUSE. Most CyanogenMod ROMs except of Motorola builds support FUSE.
Requires root.
Only works with local volumes. No cloud storage support.

It's available on Google Play as well.
To get started, select the "expert" tab, click "Start root terminal", then use truecrypt from the command line.


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Noob confused about ROM's
I have a HTC Incredible running 2.2, and i understand you need to Root first before anything else, got that, but now I am confused about the ROM thing.
I would like to Root to uninstall the default HTC apps that keep causing my 'Low Memory Errors'.
If i install Gingerbread, is that a ROM like CM7 is?
Confused as to what exactly to do after a root, can i install Gingerbread without rooting?
If i want to install HTC sense, is that a ROM??
Thanks for the clarification here, i've searched numerous forums, but can't seem to find specific answers.

Have you looked at I've rooted my phone. Now what? and What is the meaning of “flashing a custom ROM”?

When you are talking about an Android ROM, you are really talking of a group of programs, including the Android base system, that are put together to work with your phone and that once installed are what you see and use when you start your phone without installing any app from anywhere else.
You can imagine that the ROM is the operating system of your phone plus the “default applications” that come with it.
The thing with Android is that is open source, so come people have managed to build systems configured to offer the user some things the original manufacturers of the phones don’t offer. This is the case of CM7 (CyanogenMod 7).
If I install Gingerbread, is that a ROM like CM7 is?
Gingerbread is the codename of a version of Android, the 2.3, to be exact.

Andorid 2.1 --> Eclair
Android 2.2 --> Froyo
Android 2.3 --> Gingerbread
Android 3.x --> Honeycomb (only for tablets)
Android 4.0 --> Ice Cream Sandwich
Android 4.1 --> Jelly Bean

CM7 is a ROM that uses as base system the Android 2.3 system, so you can say that CM7 is a ROM based on Gingerbread.
Confused as to what exactly to do after a root, can I install Gingerbread without rooting?
That depends. If HTC offers an official ROM upgrade to Gingerbread (version 2.3 of Android), you can. If HTC doesn’t offer this update, then you can only install an unofficial ROM (like CM7).
If I want to install HTC Sense, is that a ROM?
HTC Sense is a pack of applications developed by HTC to customize their phones and make themselves unique.
HTC Sense is not a ROM, but you can find ROMs for your phone that are based on the official ROM with Sense and some of the other parts of the system changed.
Rooting a phone is the process to gain full permissions. It is the equivalent of being the administrator of the system. Once you are root you have full access to the system, so you can change it.

I believe "rooting" means as in Linux you become root (administrator) and the ROM is the binary file specifically for the hardware you are using; a Samsung phone and an HTC would require a different ROM binary. Now since you are root that allows you to change the ROM to a new binary file (Cyanogen's version of the Android OS) suitable for the hardware on your model of phone.
This may be completely wrong but I gave it an educated guess.

Rooting gives you access to the root user (dah!) it basically allows you to modify the entire system. For example you can remount the /system partition to delete apps.
A ROM is an entire operating system that you install in your phone and it replaces your default HTC operating system (normally along with clockwork recovery which is a backup/recovery/installing tool). You can find many ROMs for many phones. Cyanogenmod is the most popular one. It is very nice but it does not include Sense (so you would lose any Sense based app like the nice dialer). You can also find some modified Sense ROMs, these might not be entirely legal (not sure about this) but you can find them normally in sites like xda-developers.
Sense is not a ROM, it is a framework that HTC uses to create a very specific look and feel for applications. you can only find it (legaly) in HTC phones

This isn't meant as a complete answer, but only to address the issue of installing a ROM vs rooting a phone first.
It is possible to install a custom ROM before you root your phone (looking at installation directions for any custom ROM will verify this), and to my knowledge, most, if not all, custom ROMs are rooted, meaning that when you install it, you have full root rights.
However, you may want to root your phone before installing a custom ROM, simply so you can back up your entire phone.  You can do this via Titanium Backup.  I'm not completely sure if there is a way to backup your phone without rooting.

Yes, HTC sense is basic ROM provided by HTC. If you want to increase your phone speed and internal memory you can keep your original rom and make it fast and full of memory by using link2sd with root privilege.
Just root your device and use link2sd to create links of your apps to sd-ext

HTC sense is not a ROM.


text:
How can I prevent the signal and 3G icon from turning it to white icon when my connection to Google server is lost?
I have a limited plan for mobile data usage(only 100MB per mounth) so I use mobile data for sending/recieving MMSes and for browsing only. I have mobile data turned off 99% of time. White signal bars are hard to see, so I would like to know, if there is any way to turn the "icons goes white while not connected to Google servers" funtcion off?

You have to edit your Framework-Res.apk. Its a bit complicated and differenct on every phone. So I can't simply provide a guide.
But I suggest you, to ask in your phone forum on xda-developers.

My first instinct is to tell you to find a theme where the "not connected to Google" bars are painted the same color as the connected bars.  Of course that only works if you have a theme manager on your phone and can find one you like.
Or hell, make one.


text:
Unlock problem with HTC Desire
I have a HTC Desire with original OS. I arrive to start the device by pushing Power button.
The screen lights on with HTC start screen (HTC quietly brillant) then the home screen of the telephone is displayed.
There is a first problem because all my widgets and apps on my home screen aren't displayed. Unfortunately, this is not my main problem.
When the telephone is locked, when I want to unlock by push Power button like usual, the keys to the bottom of the telephone light on but the screen stays black ! The telephone is well unlocked because when I try to increase volume there is the sound of that action.
So, I don't understand very well the problem :(.
Someone would have an idea about this problem ? And some advices to fix that ?
Thanks by advance for your help.
Sylvain.

Just to clarify: When you first boot up, everything works ok (except for widgets not displaying). But when the phone locks (screen blacks out) when you try to unlock the screen doesn't turn back on? Recent problem? or your phone has always been like this?


text:
I want to execute shell commands on my pc from my android via USB
I have a linux box, without any network interface, only usb. I have my andorid phone, and the USB cable. I would like to connect from my android device to the linux box,and execute shell commands on the linux box, via usb. there is not wifi, ethernet, oer any other interfaces.
Any idea? I tried ConnectBot, but could not make it work over USB.

Reverse USB Tethering
adb shell netcfg usb0 up
adb shell netcfg usb0 dhcp
adb shell route add default gw X.X.X.X dev usb0
adb shell setprop ro.kernel.android.ndns 2
adb shell setprop net.dns1 4.2.2.2
adb shell setprop net.dns2 8.8.8.8
adb shell setprop "net.gprs.http-proxy" ""
adb shell setprop net.usb0.dns1 4.2.2.2
adb shell setprop net.usb0.dns2 8.8.8.8

Do not copy and paste these commands.  Read them and see if you can understand what they are accomplishing and modify them to suit your needs. You are routing over USB.
ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0
ifconfig usb0 0.0.0.0
brctl addbr br0
brctl addif br0 eth0
brctl addif br0 usb0
ifconfig br0 up
dhclient br0

Do not copy and paste these commands.  Since you don't have network access on your PC, you will not need to make a bridge, but if you ever add a NIC, then you may want to create a bridge.


text:
How do I turn off the power-on sound and camera sound in a Galaxy S II?
I have followed several guides and can't get any of them to work on my Galaxy S II. How do I disable these sounds?!

See also: LG Optimus P690 - how to launch silently

This requires a rooted phone. There is a good guide here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1103399
If you don't have ADB, get the full Android SDK from here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html (it might come in useful multiple times, and all app developers should already have it). Don't trust websites offering ADB alone unless it the official Android site. After installing it, browse to the install directory, then "platform-tools", then open the command line -- on Windows 7, this is done by shift-right-click and choose "Open command window here", then type "adb".
Power-on sound
This sound file is NOT in the standard location for Android (/system/media/audio) so most guides haven't worked for me.
Connect your phone to your computer and open ADB. Go into shell with "adb -d shell". Now become super-user with "su" - your phone must be active and unlocked - a dialog will open which you accept. In ADB again: " mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system".
Now rename the sound files so they can't be found!
"cd /system/etc"
"mv PowerOn.wav PowerOn.wav.old"
"mv 1_Power_on.ogg 1_Power_on.ogg.old"
Restart your phone. There should be no power-on sound.
Disable camera sound
Again. this sound file is also not in the standard Android location (/system/media/audio/ui/camera_clicker.ogg) so most guides haven't worked for me.
First, make your / read-write. In ADB, go into shell then type "cat /proc/mounts", find the line where "/" is the second column, and remember the first column which in my case is "rootfs". In ADB do "mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 rootfs /"
Now you need to edit the root default.prop (that is, "/default.prop"). In ADB: "cp /default.prop /sdcard/default.prop". Copy it from your SD card to your computer (Samsung Kies is the easier way). Add the line "ro.camera.sound.forced=0" and save. Put the edited file back onto your sdcard with the same name. Now "cat /sdcard/default.prop > /default.prop"
Restart your phone. Open the camera app. Taking photos and videos should now be silent.

Just go to sounds and set volume to 0 for system


text:
How do I easily bookmark sites on delicious.com?
On my desktop I often use delicious.com chrome plugin to save bookmarks to interesting sites. Quite often I also want to save interesting sites to delicious.com when browsing on Android browser.
What is the best way to do that?

There is a dedicated Android app available now for Delicious from AVOS.

Does it have the feature the questioner wants: is it easy to save a site to Delicious from the browser?

Link to Official Delicious Apps from AVOS
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.delicious

I've installed this Delicious app, version from 14 January 2014. The previous app I used Andricious haven't been updated since 2012. Hence marked this Delicous app as the accepted answer.

Install DeliciousDroid, it will add an entry in the share menu of your browser where you can bookmark the current page and define tags for it and so on.
Edit: I tried some different tools (don't remember wich, sorry) some time ago and this one was the best in my opinion. Also I defined a tag called mobile-home and pointed my browser's homepage to the list of so-tagged bookmarks.

Is there no link to post to delicious on the page you want to save or am I misunderstanding you?

TQ Silas. How does DeliciousDroid compares with Andricious? I'm trying the latter first, since it seems more popular.

sabre23t: Don't know why, but Andricious is not available for my device (Galaxy S2 running 2.3.5), so what I'm writing may be wrong. As far as I understand Andricious is only a bookmark browser and manager for android (plus widget) but not a browser extension to bookmark pages. And there seems to be a bug that it  deletes assigned tags on edit (see market comments).

Thanks for the response, Silas. So far Andricious works okay for me (Samsung Galaxy S2 running 2.3.3). No tags deleted on my delicious bookmarks page. However, DeliciousDroid is still in my todo list, just in case. ;-)

You can also try Droidicious. It works fine for me.


text:
How can I download email attachments only when requested?
The default email application seems to be downloading email attachments when I try to read an email.
I don't want to download attachment by default, it should on request. I should be able to read the mail body text without needing to download the attachment.
I am using my own POP3 server and not GMail.
Is there any way to enable this or another application which I can use for this?
I have Samsung Galaxy Ace Model GT-S5830.

K-9 Mail does load attachments only on request. But your problem is not only the Client, it's more the protocol used for retrieving E-Mail: POP3 does not support the partial download of an E-Mail without their attachment(s), whereas IMAP does. Besides of that IMAP has some nice extensions when it comes to mobile usage: Lemonade Profiles

Is the link to 'Lemonade Profiles' still up to date? Looks like an ordinary blog to me and I didnt find anythin IMAP related. The oldest entry is June 2012. Did someone take over the domain?

@PetPaulsen Hmm, maybe. I changed the link to Wikipedia for now

Both the POP3 and your email client are issues.
As prior poster pointed out, POP3 doesn't support partial downloading.  However, many email clients do support limiting message download size.  By setting up the right limit, you can just download message but not the attachment. When you click on attachment, you'll be asked whether you want to download the attachment.  This method does work.
If you're current mail client does not support this, consider changing clients.  I too use k-9 and feel it is pretty good, plus its free (open source).  k-9 does support limiting download size on POP3 accounts.
If you're email provider supports IMAP, you ought to switch.  IMAP is way way better.


text:
Albums are split by artist
When I had 2.2 on my Desire, the album view of the stock music player would show each of the albums on the device.  Now I've upgraded to 2.3 (CM7), albums which have tracks by more than one artist appear multiple times in the list, once for each artist.  I'm using the same SD card with the same files -- what do I need to do (preferably to the app, not the files) to have them appear in a similar way to the way they looked under 2.2?

It looks like the easiest way to fix this is to add albumartist tags to each album.


text:
How can I explore my Android from my computer?
I'd like to explore the content of the internal memory. I have a rooted phone with a terminal emulator which allows me to navigate through it.
The problem is that it's quite hard to use (small screen, no physical keyboard) and I cannot transfer files from internal memory to my computer to examine it (maybe memory -> SD and then SD -> computer but not the easiest).
Is there a way to have an SSH daemon (I've ConnectBot but it's only a client) on the phone, control it with a USB cable (with USB debugging maybe), install a backdoor (maybe no), or something like this?

For which operating system?

The Android Debug Bridge (adb) can do pretty much everything you want. It is part of the Android SDK, just download the SDK and enable USB debugging on your phone.
You can get a shell with the command
adb shell

and you can get files from the phone with
adb pull

All the commands are documented in the first link I gave.
Another way to get any file from the phone would be to use any of the backup utilities available and back up your whole phone to your computer where you can examine it. As you already rooted your phone you might already have a backup utility installed, or you can easily install one, e.g. Titanium Backup Root or Nandroid. I have no experience with those two though, I can't tell you anything more about them.
The kernel I used to root my phone included ClockworkMod Recovery with a backup program already integrated, so you might already have that available too.

Useful adb commands: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/11052/

Only if we used an SSH server on Android, we could explore it via the network, "wirelessly", without the USB cable. That's something presupposed by the OP's first idea about how to do this. So, for ssh servers, see http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/9905/is-there-some-ssh-server-for-android

If you are looking for a GUI you should take a look at Droid Explorer. Basically, it is a graphical frontend for ADB especially developed for rooted phones.
I know that it runs under Windows (.NET) but AFAIR, it also runs Linux using Mono.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Samsung Galaxy Y Hangs up when connected and tethered with USB
I just purchased a new Samsung Galaxy Y and it works fine normally. But when I connect my mobile with USB the explorer works fine in "my computer", but my phone gets hung up such that nothing works on the phone. It behaves like it has no resources to work with, as though someone might have sucked all the RAM/Processor from the cell.
Please suggest what can be done in this case. I have tried clearing RAM before connecting to PC, but it did not help.


text:
How can I make Dolphin open bookmarks in the current tab?
I have loaded the Dolphin browser on my HTC Android phone.
Each time I open my bookmark it loads a new tab in the browser which means I have many running and I have to go in and close the tabs.
Does anyone know how to make it use an existing tab of the browser? I don't want the browser to have so many tabs open. I realise this will mean if I have TWO apps the previous will show then open the bookmark. Alternatively, is it possible to have Dolphin close my tabs when the Home button is pushed?

In the current version of Dolphin:
Menu Button > Settings (ship's wheel) > Customize > Open links in > By default
Default will open in the page is set up to open the link into (normally the same page), other choices are Open in background tab (current tab remains the active tab), and Open in new tab.
Older versions of Dolphin had option under Labs instead of under Customize.

Optional:
I find it best to stick with the default open in the same tab, but will often use a bookmarklet to force tabs to open in a new tab when I want to make sure I don't fail to use the context menu to open a link in a new tab, for which I assign a gesture written as "nt" in Dolphin, or a keyword shortcut of "nt:" in Firefox (where : is not hard to type on a keyboard).
Name:     NT:  New Tab
Address:  javascript:(function(){var%20a=document.getElementsByTagName('a');document.title='||'+document.title+'||';for(var%20i=0,j=a.length;i<j;i++){a[i].setAttribute('target','_blank');}})();
When creating the bookmarklet in Dolphin, create by replacing content of a newly created bookmarklet with the above content, typing a space instead of  %20 and  and suggest changing the folder to one you have created as "bookmarklets" within your bookmarks.
see my page on Dolphin Gestures


text:
How can I log the start and stop connection with known WI-FI networks
At the end of a week , I would like to see a log for each connection with a (known) WI-FI network I made with my Galaxy phone.
I automatically connect to different networks.
It would be nice to see the time of start/end connection for those networks I am connected to. This would give me an indication for hours spend at each place.
Anyone knows if this is possible ?

I will answer my own question until someone else shows me another application.
I have found the following one in the market : Wifi Monitor.
Time will tell whether it really does what it promises.
Still, if anyone has got some other software which does this, please let me know !
UPDATE
After trying this app for a week now, I can confirm that it works. When I enter/leave buildings with a known WiFi connection, the start and end of the connections are logged. This gives me an easy although crude way of hour-logging.


text:
apps missing from My Apps part of Market
I have a HTC Desire, with the official Android 2.3.3.   My problem is that not all the apps I have installed are showing on the Market, which means that I can't check for updates to them.  To pick one example, Dolphin HD.  It's missing regardless of whether I move it to SD or phone memory.  I can't detect any pattern to explain which ones show and which ones don't.
I've googled a fair bit and most solutions posted involve uninstalling the updates to the market (no longer possible on this version of Android), clearing the cache of the Market app, or clearing the cache of Google Services Framework, but this doesn't fix anything. I've turned the phone off/on, removed the SD card, dismounted/remounted the SD card etc, plus several combinations of the above.  I had the problem before applied the 2.3.3 upgrade.   On earlier versions, uninstalling updates to the Market seemed to usually do the trick.
Any more suggestions for things to try?

Is your phone rooted?

No.  I uninstalled one of the missing apps - Dolphin HD - and then installed it again.  Clearly I've missed an update (at least one!) as it's quite different.  During playing around trying to fix this I ended up with no apps in My Apps at all!  Uninstalling and reinstalling one made them come back.  I'll have to check later whether all the apps in My Apps matches all the apps on my phone.

Do you have multiple Gmail or Google apps on your domain logins? I found it confusing, because whatever email account I happened to be reading became the current account in the Market.
So some of my apps ended up being assigned to these other accounts until I figured out that I wasn't logged in as expected. I didn't realize it because they were free apps so there wasn't the issue of requiring a registered credit card for these other logins.

I have a few accounts.  Now that Google+ allows Google Apps accounts I'm going to remove my other accounts and see if that helps.

Try this:

Go to Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications -> All
Scroll down to Market, tap on it, and then tap on Clear cache button.
Go back to the listing of apps, scroll up to find the "Google Services Framework" app, tap on it and tap on the Clear data button.
Reboot your phone.
Launch the Market app, and accept the license.

Your installed apps should now be properly linked to your account in the Market.  If not, simply download or update any app, and everything should be back to normal.

Restart of power off then turn on? I followed your suggestion to the letter (and did a restart) but I didn't get prompted to accept the license and now I have even fewer of my installed apps showing in the Market.  I've not been prompted to accept a license for a few months now, so I guess a newer version of the Market app has been rolled out.


text:
Are there any apps for storing SMS online for latter viewing and searching?
I like how Google voice stores all my text messages online so I can search them and store conversations for ever. But I am not a fan of Google voice and want to use my own number etc.
I saw a few apps that upload texts to Gmail but I don't want to clutter my gmail inbox. Any separate apps that are specialized in this?

ON a side-not most of the apps that upload your texts to GMail (like SMSBackup) let you select a custom label to put all your texts in and specify whether or not you want them in your inbox. My texts are backed up to Gmail this way, and I never notice them unless I specifically go into the "SMS" lable to look for a specific text.

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


text:
Does Accelerometer Sensor work on my Samsung Galaxy S2?
I have Samsung Galaxy S2 and i'm experiencing with an issue that is annoying me very much.
When I do \auto rotate\ , the rotation happens after 4-5 seconds.
I've done the calibrations and all that stuff that you will find on google or forums.
After i checked secret code *#0*# , i noticed that: at Accelerometer Sensor I get:

ACC Raw Data - X: changing numbers, y: changing numbers, z: 1024

( z is not changing like X and Y)
After this test i noticed  that somthing is wrong with this phone, and i doubt that the problem is with the sensor.
The strange thing is that sometimes my phone and accelerometer WORKS JUST FINE, but most of times it doesn't work at all!
So, does my phone have problem with sensor or something wrong with the software?
Here you can see in the graphic Accelerometer values
https://i.stack.imgur.com/OvUzb.png
Please Help Me!!!

Not a programming question. This is not the right place.

Yeah, except it is a programming problem, because he's developing an app and the output he's getting from his code isn't jiving with what is expected.

Al Everett - you think that this is a problem with programming, not with sensor chip or whatever?!

It may very well be a problem with the sensor, but my point was that it should not have automatically been moved to here.

Having an SGS2 myself, I just checked *#0*# and all 3 axis values change. So you definitely seem to have a problem here, either in software or hardware, and since you've already tried to search for solutions online and could not find anything which works, perhaps it's best to contact Samsung directly for help.

It's very very weird... today the accelerometer is working perfect. I didn't do nothing?! all 3 axis values change now.
After this, yet i really don't know what is the problem on phone. Is it sensor or software issue!!!!

After i did the calibration of the compass (this app https://market.android.com/details?id=com.apksoftware.compass) the accelerometer is not working.
Again, cheking #0# at Accelerometer Sensor I get:
ACC Raw Data - X: changing numbers, y: changing numbers, z: 1024
( z is not changing like X and Y)


text:
making android provide notification for email with specific header
Currently my gmail in android notify me when there is new mail arrives. I wonder if the notification can limit to the messages with specific words in their title.
Thanks

In latest version of Gmail you can specify notifications based on labels.

Create a filter in Gmail's web interface and assign it to a Label.
On your Android device, open the Gmail app, press Menu key and go to More -> Settings
Tap on your account, scroll down and tap on the "Sync inboxes and labels" option.
Tap on the label you created in step 1, and change the preference to "Sync last 4 days" or "Sync all."
Go back one step, scroll down and tap on the "Labels to notify" option.
Tap on the label name from step 1, and set the notification options to your liking (custom ringtone, vibration, etc.)

You can use one trick. Use filters in Gmail to put a label on the message with that particular word. Now in Gmail app go to settings -> Notifications. You'll see option to set notification as per the label.


text:
Are the custom ROMs different for different phones?
Are custom ROMs different for different make of handsets? Or is there only one CyanogenMod for, say, Android 2.2?
Can someone please elaborate why a 'ROM' is called as such? I mean has it any similarity to Read-Only Memory?

FYI, my phone is Motorola Quench XT3, and couldn't find any version of cyanogenmod for that particular model..

The simple answer is Yes there are usually multiple versions of each Custom ROM. If not the ROM may be only usable on some devices.
Usually for each device model (or group of very similar devices) there is one custom ROM version. The reason are the different hardware each device is equipped with. Like in your desktop computer each component needs a suitable driver for being used. This starts with the display which sometimes even changes from model revision to revision and ends with WLAN chip used.
As space and memory are significant on a Smartphone a custom ROM only contains the drivers needed.
Another reason for having different custom ROMS are the different cell phone standards. You have devices built for GSM/UMTS and some are designed to work with CDMA. The telephony stack has to be either the one or the other - again a reason for different ROMs.

so, is it possible to use a closley resembling phone's ROM on my phone? eg. Moto Defy's ROM on Moto Quench??

No, it is generally not possible to use a "similar phone's" ROM on your device. Most of the time hardware is subtly different and while some things will work, enough won't that the entire exercise is not worth your time.

ROM here would mean Firmware, which would be the Android OS in the device.
And like Robert has said, with varying hardware specifications across the devices, the ROM needs to be modified to include the respective hardware drivers so that every functionality of the phone works fine.
Also not every phone may be supported by custom ROM developers. Forums like xda-developers.com may have more information about the ROM's available for your phone.

As your first question was answered properly, I will address your second question:
ROM is an umbrella term for any data you can flash to NAND. In this context flashing ROM = installing mobile operating system. In other contexts it may just mean replacing some files to customize your skin. Etc.
While ROM may be a bit of a misnomer (actually refers to non-volatile memory--not data), most people don't know the difference between a kernel, OS, bootloader and etc. So many modifications just get called ROMs, this avoids confusion and flamewars (like when people call linux an OS instead of saying GNU/linux is an OS or even GNU/linux/X).
So we kinda accept the nonsensical language "Flash this ROM to your phone" because the meaning is obvious to experts, and language purists like me be damned ;)

Yes,  custom ROMs vary by device models and configurations supported. You can always Google for a specific ROM for your device model. And never use a ROM of a different phone on your phone (unless you really know what you are doing and know that one phone is a re-brand of the other). It will certainly lead to soft or maybe even hard bricking of your device.


text:
Is it possible to continue upgrading an Android device if the OEM stops supporting it?
Suppose the OEM loses interest in my device; can I still install the stock distro updates when issued by Google? Are there issues with device drivers if I go this route?

Root, install Unofficial Android ROM, Done. They don't lose "interest" they just don't want to spend time and resources on older devices, which they can and will use on newer ones.

@Uri so no issues with drivers? I would have thought that since all devices are different, they might require OEM-supplied drivers.

What kind of phone you have?

@Pitto none yet, thinking of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

If on your device you find written somewhere "Samsung" I think you should stop worrying :)
Cyanogenmod guys care about you. U_U

Once a manufacturer abandons supporting the device, your only choice is rooting it, unlocking its bootloader (if possible) and installing custom ROMs.
Google only releases the Android source code into AOSP (Android Open Source Project,) and has no say whether or not the manufacturer or carrier will update a given device.  The only exception is the Nexus line of phones that are supported by Google directly.  As it stands, AOSP cannot be built for any non-Google device without major work.  Even though manufacturers and carriers are required to provide the source code, it is true only for the part of the OS.  They don't have to (and rarely do) provide sources for the proprietary drivers, which are necessary to build a completely working Android version for a given device.  The community developers usually use the drivers from older OS versions, which greatly limits the upgrade potential.  The drivers sometimes are reverse-engineered which gives a greater flexibility to developers.
There also is an issue of locked down bootloaders on most new Android phones and tablets, which limits the extent of the changes a custom ROM can bring.  Most manufacturers and carriers lock bootloaders to prevent people from "bricking" their devices.  There are ways to unlock/bypass such locks for many devices though.
Bottom line is that if you are looking for a device that will be supported the longest - your best choice is a Nexus line.  Otherwise, I suggest looking at various online forums (xda-developers or rootzwiki, for example) to see if there is enough interest in your device from community developers to produce custom ROMs for it.

As Uri Herrera commented, you'll need to root your phone to be able to install custom firmware, and then install a community aftermarket firmware, like CyanogenMod. Most likely the open source community will keep updating the firmware (ROM) even after OEM has lost interest.
How to root: You can refer to a nice guide by LifeHacker - most likely it can be easily done by connecting the device with USB, and using a Windows program called SuperOneClick.
How to install custom firmware: The easiest way is most likely to use the Android program called Rom Manager. It's available from Android Market. The premium version will even notify when your custom ROM gets updates, so it's easy to keep up to date.

Thank you, this was useful. Sorry I can only accept one answer, both are good.

+1 to installing a custom ROM. Got my desire hd in January, was fed up with the bloatware so rooted and installed cyanogenmod around may time. While the manufacturer skins like sense are nice and all, custom roms allow a lot more customisation, andI guarantee I'll be on ics before HTC release an update (if they even do)