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Do I need a complicated root? Why? How (Samsung GT-S5660)
I am trying to install  "Samba Filesharing" on my Samsung GT-S5660.
The requirements is that it is rooted, and also the application "Superuser".
Rooting, seems to be a complicated hack.
Why is that necessary?
This is a phone sold without a contract, and I am concerned that phones with contracts are a bit different, and i think in a phone like mine it should be a simple setting or something.
What should be the best approach in my case?

http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/236/what-does-to-root-a-phone-mean

Ok if you havent checked out the link Uri posted, "root," to put it simply, is administrative privileges on the phone and gives you the ability to mess with core system files and configurations.
The "Superuser" app is just an app that is designed to grant or block root permissions to different apps.
Rooting android phones is sometimes complicated but it mainly depends on the phone and manufacturer as different manufacturers lock down their phones in different ways. Some developers have brought it down to you just plugging in your phone when a certain app is running and everything is done for you while other times will require you to run terminal commands, and download specific software onto your phone. Unlike standard desktop Linux, root has to be acquired through exploits apparent in the phones.
Now why gain root?
Well for android phones, it allows us to a variety of things such as have the ability to underclock our processors for considerably better battery life or overclock them for performance. We can also create wifi-hotspots with ease, run network based attacks such as ARP-Poisoning, conduct cookie hijacking and so on. Its like jailbreaking an iPhone (except its a LOT more power to tinker in the palm of your hands).
In your case, your app probably configures the network card on your phone for the File Server in a way that cannot be done with the traditional Android API and so needs more system access (hence the request for root permissions).
There is no "simple" setting to turn on root no matter what phone you have. This is because carriers make money by locking down your phone and forcing you to pay for more functionality (i.e tethering/wifi-hotspot). If they give you the ability to activate root, then some people could easily circumvent their control, thus making them lose money. The other possibility is that careless people who don't know what they are doing could seriously mess up their own phones and thus making it a support nightmare for carriers and manufacturers who now have to deal with bricked phones.
What should your best approach be? It all depends. If you really plan on tinkering with the phone or want custom software or want better battery life, then rooting is for you. If you just want to use your phone with no extra functionality or no hassle, then don't bother for root as you probably don't need it.
If you do want to root, CAREFULLY follow all instructions and do your research. Your best place to start is on your device forums on xda here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1404
The 1 click root also has a very good chance of working but this isn't verified to work with your device afaik.

I tried one or two generic root-applications, and it didn't work to well.
In the end I googled for my model, and it was quite easy (Though it seemed to be carrier differences)


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Unlocking bootloader on Sony Ericsson NEO V
Has anybody managed to use Fastboot on Ubuntu to unlock the Sony Ericsson Neo V? I tried and got the blue led light (bootloader) while connecting the USB. But Fastboot still doesn't recognize the device. I did follow the instructions to check if it was unlockable and yes it is. Is there some compatibility issue between Ubuntu 11.04 and Fastboot??
p.s., I have managed to root the phone using the ADB script I found on xdaforums.

Check whether you installed ADB drivers.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Having trouble with voice command to navigate to contact address
When I select a contact, then select its address, Maps opens. Then I can navigate to it with the Google navigation app.
However, if I try doing this directly with the system-wide speech input, this is not working. The input is interpreted correctly (correct contact and Google navigation opens), but then the address of the contact is not found.

What command are you giving? I use "navigate to john doe home" and haven't noticed a problem. We probably need to know the version of Android and the device.

The command I use should be correct (it's German though). The contact is understood right and the navigation app opens as intended. I'm using 4.0.3 on a Nexus S.

The German command is "Ilse Müller ansteuern". Because of different grammar, the syntax is different in comparison to English.

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


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Android Deep Sleep
I am confused about the utility of deep sleep over complete shut down. When I am putting my phone to deep sleep, I am no longer getting SMSes nor can people call me. I receive the backlog SMSes after power on. Why should I use it instead of complete shut down?
What keeps running during deep sleep? What's the point?

I would assume "deep sleep" is akin to Windows' "Hibernate".  That is, the state of everything is preserved as is, so whatever was running before is still running when you wake up.

Faster startup would be the biggest reason to deep sleep as opposed to completely shutting down.

I've never heard of "deep sleep" when working with Android. Where are you seeing this option?

What Al Everett said.

Unlike many phones, no Android phone I know of has a deep sleep state where (usually) nothing but the alarm works.  It's either off or on.  Unless you can provide more info this question can't be answered.

Perhaps you're talking about airplane mode?  If so, it saves on battery without having to actually turn off your phone by shutting down all the radios.  It's also useful for places that don't allow cell phones (hospitals, airplanes during take off/landing, etc) in that it won't ring, etc.


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How do I switch my Android device's SD card without causing problems?
I just got a new 32GB SD card for my Nexus One. On the old one I have a bunch of apps installed and store the data there because the internal memory doesn't handle it.  So now I want to switch SD cards, but how do I go about doing that without causing any issues?  Do I just simply copy-paste everything, or is there another way to do it?
I'm on stock firmware on the Android and using Mac OS X Lion.

Unless you did some App2SD magic with ext4 partitions on your SD card (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you didnt), the SDCard will only have a simple FAT32 partition.
So all you have to do is copy all the data from old SDCard and to a new one and everything will be fine.
Easiest way to do it is to plug the phone in your laptop, put the card in the card reader (with help of an adapter which is usually bundled with new SD Card), copy everything over and swap the SD Cards in the phone.
EDIT: Android stores applications that were moved to sdcard in a folder named .android_secure which is hidden on OS X Finder and Linux Nautilus by default. Don't forget to move that :)

awesome, just had to restart my phone after copying and all is good :)

@Mavrik But SDHC card with FAT32 has 4GB limit per file transfer. Is it wise to copy from old FAT32 SDHC card to new SDHC card with newer file system that does not have 4GB limit?

Android requires the SD-card to be formatted to FAT32 and not to any of newer filesystems so this is moot point (root hacks excluded, but for those you really have to know what you're doing).

Does this answer still work? Seeing as my .android_secure folder seems to be empty. Can I still migrate this way?

Yes, folder names have changed lately, but the process didn't.

Also note that, like .android_secure already pointed out in the answer, there might be more "hidden directories" starting with a dot. Make sure to catch them all :)

If you have done anything fancy on a second partition (usually is EXT4 or EXT3 fs), or if you have CWM (ClockWork Mod) and can thus make full backups easily, I'd take a look at this answer.
In a nutshell:

Make a backup with CWM (creates a backup stored on the SD card),
Copy everything from the SD card to the PC,
Insert and format the new SD card,
Copy the data back to the new card,
Restore the backup (including ext4) using CWM.

I believe you can do step 2. with the usual USB-cord method and that it only needs to include all data from the first partition (FAT fs). Do remember to include hidden files.
On older versions of Android (older than 2.2) if you are, say, using link2sd, you may also need to:

Re-link apps (may need to 'reinstall' via link2sd's quick reinstall feature).


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How can I insert a customized emoticon in SMS? Galaxy S2
Just wondering if is it possible to insert a customized emoticon in SMS.
I get only those :-) default ones. I'd like to use smth like :) or :-x or 8-)

Depending on the keyboard you are using, the SMS emoticons will show up in the bottom right (where the enter key usually is). If you long press on the key, you will get a pop-up of other emoticons you can use. Using :) is the same as :-) so they wont show that one.
You can send any emoticon you want, but if who you send it to doesn't "change it" to an image, they will only see the normal "8-)" version.

First go to type a text, then tap the ?123 key then press the 1/3 key twice and you will be shown a page full of emotions.
Alternatively, you can download another SMS app such as Handcent.

An alternative keyboard like Smart Keyboard has similar support. It also allows a user to customise which smileys are shown and to edit them. A user can also specify whether they prefer an ENTER key or a SMILEY key to be shown. Long-pressing shows a pop-up with smileys.
Note that these are punctuation marks and not images. If the user's SMS app can convert these punctuation marks into graphical image smileys, then the recipient will see those, else he/she'll see the text characters.

You could use GO Keyboard app, instead of the stock keypad. It has an advanced setting which allows you to pick from the following styles:
:)
:-)
:^)
:o)
GO SMS Pro app is even better. It lets you display emoticons as cute images, but it's good only if the other user also has GO SMS Pro.


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Is there a way to set app-specific volume?
I'm looking for a way to set the media volume depending on the app being used.
I generally keep my media volume down fairly low so as not to annoy my fellow humans overmuch; while playing Angry Birds, for instance.
When I go into Doggcatcher, though, I generally want to crank the media volume way up, because I'm listening through earbuds or my car speakers and need that volume way up.
Not such a big deal, but if later I go back to Angry Birds and I forgot to turn the volume back down it wakes up the whole house.
This is exacerbated by the fact that the media volume does not follow the "Sound off" setting (accessed by a long-press of the power button).
So, is there a way to do what I want?
(Android 4.0)

My solution is tested on Android 4.2.1 and 5.0.2. There are three apps I'm aware of which can do the job here.
Tasker
It's a paid app but works well for the objective.

Create a profile in it using +→Application → select your app.
Create a task in it, then an action using + → Audio → Media Volume.
Set the Level to the sound level you want in your app. (Hint: if you're running a music in background you would notice changes in the sound if you move the slider, thereby helping you to choose the level efficiently).

That's it. Play some music in the background, open the app you selected in instructions, and you would notice instant reduction in sound. Close the app and the sound level would return to the setting that were in place before launching the app.
AutomateIt
It has two versions. The freeware can do the job but I didn't test if it has limits on active rules for being free.

Under My Rules tap Add Rule.

Choose Application Status Trigger  under Trigger.

Tap the lens icon under Application → select your app → tap Next.

Choose Set Volume for Single Stream Action under Action.

Move the slider to desired sound level → choose Music Stream → tap Next.

Choose Default or No if you want to see a toast  when the rule gets triggered → tap the floppy icon in the title bar to save the rule.

Now launch the app that you selected in this part of instructions and the media  volume would go down with the launch. Sadly, in contrast to Tasker, the volume doesn't revert back to previous settings.
To overcome that, you may create a new application based rule featuring your  launcher app and tweak the sound level under Music Stream action as we did earlier.
Automate - Llama
This is also a freeware and is said to be user friendly yet powerful app. Unfortunately, I don't how to use this app other than performing a rudimentary task. Regardless, it has a block (action) under Tools named Audio Volume Set which you may use to get the job done.
As for instructions of using this app, the app will show you the basic usage on the first run. And I already told you where to look for.

If you have tasker or a similar scripting app, then i guess you could "record" a sequence of actions to be undertaken each time a particular app is started / in focus.


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Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus will not enter recovery mode
I have recently gotten a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (Wifi only). I am attempting to boot it into recovery mode for the sake of rooting the device, but it is not working as anticipated. When I start the device by holding down power + vol down I see the warning screen that prompts me to press volume up to "continue", or volume down to "cancel (restart tablet)". When I press volume up, it goes to the Odin Mode screen, showing the green android robot, and the words "Downloading... Do not turn off target!!". It remains that way indefinately until I hold down the power button to turn it off. Kies is installed on my PC, and I have tried to reboot it into recovery both with it plugged in to the PC and without. If it is plugged in to the PC while it is stuck at "downloading", eventually a popup appears in Kies stating "Device not responding. To resolve the issue reboot the device." Does anyone see something I am doing wrong? Thank you very much for any help!

Well, I will answer to help anyone else. I still cannot get to recovery with only the device, but I was able to reboot into recovery and successfully root the device by using "adb reboot recovery" from the command line on my PC while the Galaxy Tab was attached to USB.

I know this is an old question but hopefully this answer will help someone.  For the Samsung Tab 3, Tab 3 Lite, Tab 4, and many other tablets:
To get into recovery mode

Hold Power button and Volume Up button and Menu button.
If your device is rooted and you have ADB enabled - Type in: adb reboot recovery

To get into Download Mode

Hold Power button and Volume Down button and Menu button.
If your device is rooted and you have ADB enabled - Type in: adb reboot download


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Transferring contacts, calendars and applications from one device to another
I am completing my contract on my EVO 4G and replacing it (with a Galaxy SII Epic 4G).
Both are Android - I am wondering what is the best way to transfer my contacts (a few thousand) and calendar (a few dozen) from the old to the new?
Also, I assume I have to install all apps one by one on the new device, any better ideas.

If you're using Google to sync your contacts and calendar you won't need to do anything. If you're not you should. I just moved from a Droid to a Galaxy Nexus and everything was seamless (including all of my apps) because of my Google account.

Assuming you're using Google calendar and that the contacts aren't being stored on your SIM card, all you need to do is set up your new device with the same Google account that you used to set up the previous phone(s).  If you are storing the contacts on the SIM, there is an option in the contacts to move them to Google contacts.
As for installing your apps, any apps you've paid for will automatically download and reinstall from the Android Market (again, provided you use the same Google account on both devices).  You can also use services like AppBrain to create lists that you can then use to mass install apps on another device.
I would recommend using Titanium Backup to back apps up on one device to your SD card, then either transfer the SD card to the backup files to the new device, install Titanium Backup on the new device, and then restore from that.  That way you get too keep you settings for the apps, too.  Don't backup the system settings though, as going from one device model to another may be problematic.

Also, if you're moving between Android versions, I'd suggest restoring the apps from Titanium with "App only" instead of "App+data" to minimize application data incompatibility.


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Is there a calendar that I can sync with my phone, without using Google?
My Google calendar is getting messed up big time. Birth dates are multiplying on my Android phone. Even the dates are changing.
I want a calendar on my PC that I can sync with my Android phone, without using Google. Is this even possible?

Have you tried resolving the multiplying birth dates? Or the date-changing that's going on?

The table at http://www.syncdroid.net/ is quite comprehensive. If you have Outlook, there are ways to sync your calendar with your device. Always list your device and OS - it helps.


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Any "must read" docs for Linux-head buying an Android device?
I've decided to finally upgrade to an Android phone from my perfectly good N900 because Twitter open sourced the encrypted SMS messaging application TextSecure by Whisper Systems.
I'll want vanilla linux software though, probably busybox/bash, sshd, rsync, perl, python, latex, duplicity, git, git-annex, gnupg, encfs (fuse), and tahoe-lafs.
Is there any good resource for comparing issues with rooting different Android devices?  Or perhaps resources to suggest issues I should google before selecting a carrier?
Are there any HowTos or other docs I should skim before buying an Android device?  Is there a debian derivative who's package list I should explore?
Basically, what's the due diligence for a Linux head buying their first Android device?

I can't answer the question, but I've personally been disappointed with Android as a Linux system. It's a good mobile OS, but running most native Linux programs on it is an exercise in pain. First, you have to compile (cross-compile actually) most programs yourself. If you manage to do that, and they actually run at all, you'll be tormented by sub-par terminal emulators (and touch screens make the experience even worse), and you can forget about X.

I suppose one answer I already knew about is guardianproject.info, which gives an idea about how the cryptography stuff like GnuPG gets integrated.

Android != GNU/Linux. That is a common misunderstanding.
You will never have the same Linux experience like you had with your N900 running debian. Sure, you can install busybox, sshd, maybe rsync and fuse should also be possible. Latex for example, with it's various dependencies will be hard to get running. Mostly because there is no package manager for Android and the toolchain (i.e. libc) is not the same. It's all technically possible, no major blockers. There are even ways to get debian/ubuntu running on Android, even side-by-side. But this doesn't seem a practical solution, more a proof-of-concept for now.

not true. you can run linux easily on devices using chroot. This will allow you to run linux while running android at the same time. However, this of course means that linux will run slowly

@GauthamC. Ahh, I didn't know that this can be done by now. Can you provide any further links or references?

Theres this too many to count haha so I am just linking u a general search query. This should get you started:
https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=+site:forum.xda-developers.com+xda+chroot+ubuntu&pbx=1&oq=+site:forum.xda-developers.com+xda+chroot+ubuntu&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=5570l5570l0l5743l1l1l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=a1bc1589ec616832&biw=1440&bih=799
The main concept is to run a headless/hidden ubuntu distro using chroot via terminal and then use vnc to connect to your own phone lol. Its laggy but it works.

As Flow already mentioned, Android although based off of linux will not give you the same experience. This also means that the linux utilities will have to be cross compiled. Sorry.
If you want a development device with vanilla software and fast updates, then the Nexus line of smartphones is the best way to go.

Galaxy Nexus - GSM version (This is if you want to go for the most updated phone with the most support in terms of drivers, and OS)
Nexus S - This is if you dont need a top of the line phone but still want something supported by Android Open Source Project or AOSP for short
Nexus One - Google has recently dropped support for AOSP of this device so it will need some tinkering but this is by far the cheapest out of the 3 on ebay with enough power to still run the latest version of Android.

The one stop shop for all Android development needs:
http://forum.xda-developers.com


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Movie or Video of mobile web application for demo

Possible Duplicate:
Is it possible record videos of my screen?

Is there any way to capture mobile activities of user on mobile capture as a video.
I have samsung galaxy S running 2.3, is it possble using this? or is such feature introduced Android 3.0
or, if above is not possible, could you please help me out in finding out any software which does window activity capturing in Windows7 , I will use Android emulator to create video of my  mobile web application.
-Thanks.

You can try Screencast Video Recorder FREE and if it works you can get the paid version Screencast Video Recorder.
For Windows I'm sure many software exists. Why don't you ask on Super User if you can't find one.


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Screen brightness too high on auto mode when in the dark room
An Android-based HTC Desire S is set to "auto brightness" display mode. The brightness is adjusted okay unless the device in a completely dark room. In a dark room then display is very bright - tolerable, but really uncomfortable.
Is there a way to make it less bright without disabling "auto brightness" mode?

go to the market and search for screen filter. It Can get much dimmer than the brightness control by controlling the screen colors rather than just the backlight.

Short answer: no.
Auto brightness is usually a battery waster.
I like to use the Brightness widget, it will let you turn on/off auto-brightness or with one touch adjust the brightness to one of several presets.


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Is there a web browser+Java plugin available for Android?

Possible Duplicate:
Are there any Android browsers that support loading a Java Applet in-browser?

I am having some issues accessing internet banking etc on my tablet with Android as the operating system. Is there any way of avoiding this, or solutions so that i can access webpages that rely on Java?

I've never even heard of a java browser plug in for Android, and I'm quite surprised to hear of a financial institution using java as an integral part of their website.  I do believe you're hosed for that particular issue.


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Real time events show up with a 4 minute delay
So I just bought a Milestone 2 and installed CM 7.2 by Endless (based on the Defy CM ROM). Everything is working great, but there's one thing that annoys me.
Everytime I tweet something it never shows up as x secs ago, instead it shows 4 min ago.
This also happens on the Facebook app. The real time events always shows 4 minutes. It is like the OS is adding the time by itself. This really doesn't make much difference but I'm really curious as it why does it happens. Any help is much appreciated. :)

It sounds like your clock is 4 minutes fast.   Check to see if your phone is getting its time from the network (on Gingerbread, it's Settings/Date & Time, not sure about CM 7.2).
If you are getting time from the network, try disabling automatic updates and set the time manually to a source like time.gov or time.is.


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How do I disable background data in Ice Cream Sandwich?
The option for "Background data" used to be under Accounts & sync in Android 2.3.  But on my Galaxy Nexus, the option is missing.  Therefore some applications are still using background data... How can I disable "Background data" in ICS?

(Click image to enlarge)

Settings / Data Usage / Menu button / Restrict Background Data

(Click image to enlarge)

I think this is it... weird, it requires you to set a mobile data limit :/

Bryan Denny's solution works, but beware that in ICS, it applies only to cellular data connections and not WiFi - even on a phone. Source: xda-developers


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Android 2.3.3 on Kindle Fire - lost internet conectivity after modifing /etc/permisions/platform.xml - FIX?
I tried to install an app that requested com.google.android.maps.jar.
It gave me INSTALL_FAILED_MISSING_SHARED_LIBRARY and after i runned adb install, logcat showed:
Package se.norstedts.svenskastora requires unavailable shared library com.google.android.maps; failing!.

So I copied com.google.android.maps.jar to system/framework.
Installed Google maps v5.12.0.apk from the device.
I tried to install the app again. Got the same error INSTALL_FAILED_MISSING_SHARED_LIBRARY because of the missing com.google.android.maps
Modified /etc/permisions/platform.xml. I appended at the end of the xml file in the "list of all the libraries available for application code to link against." :
<library name="com.google.android.maps"
        file="/system/framework/com.google.android.maps.jar" />
restarted device and discovered that i lost internet conectivity!!

I am still not able to install the first app, and didn't regain internet conectivity after i restored platform.xml to it's original form.
What should I do now? It seems to be a permision problem. Wifi connects with no problems. The apps cannot acces internet.

Judging from your actions, I am guessing you have root access and possibly a custom recovery.
First, a word of advice:
DO NOT modify the system framework directly especially permissions/platform.xml. This along with a few other files is responsible for defining what android permissions are, giving the permissions for the core part of the system and the mappings involved with it and the SDK. If you somehow mess up the files, then you could seriously lose functionality and as you noticed, permissions. If you modify other parts of the framework, you could cause system instability, boot loops or it just might fail to boot Android altogether.
Additionally, dropping the jar file into the framework directory doesn't work. This is because its actually installed in system/lib or system/bin (have to check android source. Might have this confused). Next, this jar file is usually installed with Google Apps package (or gapps for short) and the updater-script takes care of all that so if you still want to manually install the jar file, I suggest you look at the updater-script for the location of install.
Now, what is the quickest way to fix this and install the jar file?

reinstall whatever ROM you have - you dont have to wipe the data as only the system was modified. If you have a stock ROM, factory reset wont help. This is because a factory reset wipes the data and cache. It doesn't wipe the system partition that you changed and so the problem will still remain when you reboot.
Flash the latest version of gapps to your phone using recovery. This will reinstall all the Google Apps as well as the corresponding libraries needed to extend their functionality. It will also help your other app work.


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Can I transfer my Thunderbird Lightning Calendar from home computer to my Android phone
I use Thunderbird with the Lightning extension on my home computer for email and calendar. Is there a way of transferring just the calendar to my Android phone? It would be so useful when away from home so I can make appointments. The only way to do it now is to print the page or remember!

If you use Google calendar, you can

Export the calendar from lightning as an .ics file
Import that .ics file into Google Calendar

Missed and important step.  To avoid having to do that going forward (ie, automatic syncing), after you import the .ics file you can also add your Google calendar to Lightning, make it the default calendar, and then delete the local only calendar.  This will ensure that all future TBird calendar events go on your Google calendar, which will then be pulled down by your phone calendar app as well.

Google calendar doesn't just accept any ics from any guy. I tried one from banana soft and it stops with Error at line 11: String index out of range: 5. Line 11 is 11 TZOFFSETFROM:0100 (line 4 is 4 PRODID:-//Apple Computer\, Inc//iCal 3.0//EN).

@ott: that's obviously a bug; please report it to Google.


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Is there any free (not trial) software by which we can run android on windows xp PC?
Is there any free (not trial) software by which we can run android on windows xp PC?
I have search and found this http://youwave.com
However, it is trial for 7 days

you can do it in emulator right.

Duplicate of Can you run Android in a VM on PC?

You can try LiveAndroid. It's around 180MB and comes as an ISO file. Create a virtual machine in your Windows Machine and load the ISO to boot the VM into Android.

You can download Android SDK for free from Android Developers website. The SDK includes an emulator or all major versions that have been released. The emulator can run any Android applications that doesn't require specific hardware (e.g. GPS, Accelerometers). Graphic intensive applications (e.g. games) could be slow though, unless you have a very, very powerful PC.


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How to add/delete languages from android phone?

Possible Duplicate:
How do I add a new language?

I want to deleted some installed languages from android phone and also add some languages to android phone. How this can be done?
(android 2.3.6)


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Why is sound on my Android suddenly increasing?
I am running Android 2.3 on a Samsung Galaxy S 2.
Recently, when I play music, at some random time, the volume will suddenly increase. It's hard to put an exact measurement on the increase, but I'd estimate it's about 20 to 30% louder.
It's quite jarring, and if my volume is already up near maximum, it can be a little painful.
This happens with any application that plays MP3s, so I don't believe it's application specific.
It also happens without any action on my part. When the volume jumps up, I'm not holding my phone or using any interface, or touching any buttons. It's not that volume buttons are accidentally being hit, either. It happened just now, and my Android is lying on the table beside my laptop, without anything touching it.
Is this a bug of some kind?

What music player do you use?

I use at least three different players, one for podcasts, one for music, and another for streaming internet. I don't think this is connected to one player.

It could most likely be a bug. I suggest you upgrade your Android via Kies or manually.
Galaxy Nexus is known to have a similar software issue with volume: http://techie-buzz.com/mobile-news/galaxy-nexus-to-get-a-software-update-to-fix-the-volume-bug.html Perhaps it could be the same with your S2, especially since it is on older Android version.

It could be a built in limiter to the audio player. It is keeping the volume below a certain DB and then when the track actually drops below that DB the perceived volume increases because the limiter is no longer active. Annoying, not too sure how you would turn it off but try a different audio player perhaps.


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Cleaning the screen of a tablet safely
My 4 year old son loves my ASUS Eee Transformer, and likes the games and stuff.  But he has a cold, and the screen is literally gross.
What are safe methods, and conversely what are unsafe methods of cleaning it?
Being a touch pad I am not sure if the surface is specially coated and say, Windex will destroy it.
I understand there might be device specific concerns as different manufacturers may use different screen cover materials that react differently.

You can find special screen cleaning mixtures to use, but they're mostly just alcohol. I've been using a lens-cleaning spray on my phone for years with no adverse effects. Just spray a bit on a piece of paper towel and wipe the screen down. You'll want to use an alcohol based spray, as it evaporates much faster than water, and so won't short out your device.

Good to know.  Was not sure if there was anything that would damage the screen.

They're pretty good about making the screens neutral.

Do you mean neutral pH, or neutral electrically, or something else?

Chemically neutral, so they're not going to easily react with other substances.

The Transformer's screen is quite impervious, as this video demonstrates.

A bit extreme it would seem.  However, the point is well taken.  I doubt it would survive my Great Pyrenese dog.  He made mincemeat of my Blackberry that he picked up off the counter as it was charging.


text:
Free movies on Youtube on Android
When I use Youtube on my computer, they have a stack of older movies available for free, in the Movie section.  (Ghostbusters for example!  Who ya gonna call?)
To be clear, they still had the rentals, but they had a way to filter or search for free ones as well.
When using the Youtube app on my Android 3.2.1 ASUS Eee Transformer tablet, I cannot find this manner of filtering Youtube in the Youtube app.
Is this a limitation?

I do see what you are talking about. In my YouTube app (ICS version) I can see several categories under "Browse", where it seems movies would fit in, but this category is non-existent. I do know that there are many videos on YouTube that are "Not available for viewing on mobile devices", and I think this is what's happening in this case.
For example, "Talladega Nights" is currently available under the YouTube movie section, but cannot be found in doing a search on the mobile app.
It looks like this is a desktop only feature for now :/

It appears that the "view free movies only" functionality has not been added to either the youtube app nor the mobile version of the site.
Presumably this will be added at some future date, but until then, a workaround (which works for me in Canada, at least from brief testing (I was able to open and start watching Final Fantasy : The Spirits within)) would be to do the following:

Open youtube.com/movies in your device browser.
Hit the "desktop" link at the bottom-left.
Open the free section as normal and find the movie you want.
When you hit the watch now button, select to open in the youtube app rather than in browser.

If at some point in those steps it just jumps on its own to the youtube app, you'll need to go into settings->applications->youtube and clear the "launch by default" setting for the app.

The Youtube app does not provide these free movies.  I believe the only movies Google provides is in their Play Store; obvious not free options.

Depending on your country there are free full length movies on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/movies


text:
What's in an update?
My Samsung Galaxy S2 just updated to version I9100XWKI4. Is there a place where I can see what's in that update? And in the ones before that?
All I could find was a blog post from a site that shows how to root the device. Isn't there an official change log somewhere?

For the ASUS Transformer tablet I found via a post here, http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/15546/info-on-firmware-upgrade I guess you are looking for the analog for your device.

You can look at the Google Changes for each release of android, but this device uses Samsung TouchWiz. This release contains the Google changes, plus the changes that Samsung made. I do not know of a "change log" page that Samsung has.
I read that this version is the official Gingerbread 2.3.5 release of Android TouchWiz. But also, if you use a USB Jig, that it breaks the that functionality.


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Samsung Galaxy Mini GT-S5570 Gets disconnect during firmware upgrade via kies
Whenever i try to upgrade the firmware of my galaxy mini gt-s5570 via samsung kies.....first KIES starts to download the firmware...but the phone doesn't show "downloading" on screen first...but every time (8-9 times that i've tried) when the download reaches around 69%-70%.....the upgrade process halts and says"PC cannot recognize the mobile phone" then the phone gets into download mode and shows "Downloading" on the screen! and i have to reboot my phone! What do i do now? any help??

Disconnect your phone.
Reinstall the drivers.
Toggle USB Debug mode, reboot your phone and connect it.

If that doesn't work, try putting your phone into Download Mode manually.

Yes i tried putting my phone into downlaod mode manually...but it didnt help either....my kies cannot connect to the phone while it is in download mode....it says "connecting..." all the time! is there anything more i can do??

@SaujanyaAcharya You could try backing up your SD storage and then formatting it, Kies has/had a bug where it failed if you had files with long extensions.  You could also try Kies Mini if it's available for your device.


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Can I store contacts on my SD card? How?
I have 400mb of internal storage on my HTC, 100 of which is consumed by my (extensive) contacts. I am constantly low on storage--is there any way to store my contacts on my SD card?
I looked in the application options and the option to move data to SD is grayed out.
Are there other smart ways to manage the size of my contacts list? I can't figure out how to create groups in Google contacts--i don't need to sync my entire addressbook to my phone but I do want to keep the full list. I also don't need to store photos for each contact, but Google seems to add those automatically.

If you don't like photos in your Contacts, you could try the GO Contacts EX app. It has an option to hide the photos.

Do either of these links help at all?
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/628/how-can-i-store-android-apps-on-my-sd-card
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/2065/what-can-i-do-to-manage-my-phones-internal-storage

100MB of contacts? Wow!  Doesn't sound possible!

As far as I know, all contacts in Android stored in a SQLite database inside the private folder of the "Contact Storage" app. The location is at /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts.db
So if you have root access to your device, it is theoretically fesible to either bind a folder on your SD card to the above location, or it is possible to make the above folder a symbol link (soft link) to a location on your SD card.
However, this is not recommended because the stability and performance of your device can be affected. For example, if you connect your phone to PC and mount it as drive, the SD card is temporarily unmounted on the phone.  Another risky situations is when you boot your mobile phone and before the SD card is mounted. The Contact Storage app may try to access the contact list (maybe for caching some of the favorite contacts, or maybe someone call you) during this period, all these may not be expected by the Contact Storage app and could result in unpredictable result (e.g. a dirty state of the app which make your contact inaccessible).

Don't know about forcing contacts onto your SD card, but here are some good approaches to minimizing the volume of contacts that you sync to your phone:

Sync only Gmail "My Contacts" group on android 2.3
How do I sync only "My Contacts" from Google on Samsung Galaxy S?

Both refer only to managing how the phone displays contacts. The contacts are all still synced and take up device memory.

You can Backup your contacts to sd-card : Open Contacts app and press menu button. Click on 'Back up Contacts'. Select 'Memory card'.
Creating Groups in Google Contacts : open https://www.google.com/contacts and sign in with your Google account. There is an option to create groups(The last but one option on Left column) click it and name the group. New group is now created under 'My Cantacts'. You can add contacts in it.
Filtering Contacts : You can filter contacts from particular group. To do this, Click on menu button and select 'Filter' option. Click on your Google account(Last option with email id). Uncheck the groups you want to filter out and click OK.

I believe filtering applies only on how contacts are displayed, but all contacts are still synced and thus take up space on the device.


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How can I install vanilla Android on the Kindle Fire?
I just received my Amazon Kindle Fire and since I am not located within the USA I can't use most of services provided Amazon. So I think the best thing for me would be to install a vanilla (custom) Android ROM.
How can I install vanilla Android on the Kindle Fire?

The most stable option at this point is to use CyanogenMod. You can get it onto your Fire by doing the following:
Root and Custom Recovery
On Windows, you can use the Kindle Fire Utility to root the Kindle Fire and install Team Win's recovery (TWRP). It's extremely straightforward, and should even set up the Google drivers for you. The whole process is done via a command-line numeric menu.
On non-Windows OSes (of if you just prefer it) you can manually root with BurritoRoot. It's also fairly painless. You'll then need to set up adb on your OS, and install TWRP, which can be done by following this guide on RootzWiki. The gist of it is that you need to reboot into fastboot and then flash the recovery image, which should be:
user@linux ~ $ adb shell
$ su
# idme bootmode 4002
# reboot
user@linux ~ $ fastboot -i 0x1949 boot path-to-twrp.img
user@linux ~ $ fastboot oem idme bootmode 4000  <-- After auto-reboot
user@linux ~ $ fastboot reboot

Or something along those lines.
Flashing CyanogenMod
This works just like any other recovery system, really. Just grab CyanogenMod  and put it onto your /sdcard partition. Reboot into TWRP by powering off the device, then pressing/holding the power button at the FIREFIREFIRE bootloader (installed with the TWRP image), and use TWRP to select and flash the CM zip.
Cyanongenmod for Kindle Fire

CM10 / Jelly Bean
Ice Cream Sandwich

@Flow I know that you accepted the answer, but can you confirm that you actually did this and it worked with no problems?

Do you know if the Kindle Fire will support Android 5? Or even 6? And if the method is still the same?

@Mawg The first gen Kindle Fire? I would doubt it, but I have no idea.

The latest generation.

@Mawg These instructions probably won't have any relevance on the latest generation; they were written for the first gen version. You'll most likely need to find new instructions for that device (or post a new question).


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Is it possible to get multi-user support on Android with help from the boot manager?
I know that a common problem with Android tablets is that they lack multi-user support. I wonder if there isn't already a solution that allows me to select the user on boot by linking/moving/changing the data partition.
There are boot managers that allow the selection of the (custom) ROM to be loaded, just like Windows/Linux dual-boot. Are there any Apps that allows me to select the data partition/user on boot? Or let me switch the user data on-the-fly without rebooting?

you can use SwitchMe if you have root, which I believe does all you ask

While SwitchMe does not act as boot manager, does the job very well.

Dont know exactly if you are satisfied with this, but in the near future VmWare will release one version for Android.
This adds a little bit of multi user support, because you can start another android system like any other apps.
Video Link to a little demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HRSilifLYT4

Sorry, but this is my best answer:
You could have a system where you mount an sdcard partiton as data etc for the other user, unfortunately, there is no project in development for this THAT I KNOW OF.
However, this would work, unfortunately, you would need to reboot, so it isn't really what you wanted.

data2sd can do that.

Titanium Backup has a 'multi user data profiles' feature that can be used to have a per app multi user like functionality: It has some restrictions like 'doesnt work with apps that have services', etc.
http://www.titaniumtrack.com/kb/titanium-backup-kb/titanium-backup-howtos.html#multi-user-data-profiles


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Windows 7 complains that Nexus S driver is missing
When I connected my Nexus S to my PC running Windows 7 Professional (32-bit) via USB cable, the system installed a handful of drivers before complaining that the Nexus S driver wasn't installed.
I can see the USB storage as a drive letter. And I can use MyPhoneExplorer to browse all of the memory.
I'm just concerned that if I go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Devices and Printers, the Nexus S icon is there with a warning symbol on it because the driver wasn't loaded.
If I try to let Windows fix the problem, it searches and fails to find the driver and suggests I take it up with the manufacturer.
If I select Properties for the Nexus S, I see the drive letter listed plus "USB Composite Device" and "USB Mass Storage Device", but sitting at the top of the list is "Nexus S" with a warning sign.
Should I be worried? Does anyone else have this?
I have previously had a different Android phone connected and that was OK once I got the drivers for that...

This is a common problem among Android phones. Sometimes Windows might try to install drivers for your phone which might not necessarily be complete.
Like Matthew said in the answer above me, you could use the Android SDK package which usually includes drivers for Nexus devices but in the event it doesn't work:
You need to get the usb drivers from the manufacturer. Following the instructions in this link might help:
http://nexusshacks.com/nexus-s-hacks/how-to-install-nexus-s-windows-usb-drivers/

There's absolutely no reason to be worried.  You can install the drivers from the Android SDK and that should fix the issue, though.

How exactly would one install drivers from Android SDK? Can you please elaborate?


text:
Asus Transformer video playback
I have an Asus Transformer tablet with the dock extesion and I am trying to play a video file recorded in MOV format. I had recorded the video on my Powershot ELPH 310HS camera in 1080p setting and it is saved in h264 format.
I tried putting the SD card into the dock and playg back the video but the playback is very slow and I think it i sbeing done in software.I installed the MX video player app to play back the video.
My question is if there is any way to do playback using a HW  video decoder? I thik that I've read that the tegra 2 has this bultin but I don't know enough about video formats to know whether this is a hardware limitation or whether it could be solved with a diffferent app.

Mobo Player. Singlehandedly the best video player app on Android. Its the 'VLC' of Android. Plays nearly every format flawlessly.
Download the app, click the button to download a 2MB codec pack (so it can play different video formats) and you are good to go. If you have any problem with the playback, just go into the settings and force software rendering.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.clov4r.android.nil&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5jbG92NHIuYW5kcm9pZC5uaWwiXQ..

I installed it, then the the codec.  And now when I launch it, I get sent to the Market app, showing the Mobo app, with Open and uninstall.  So open takes me back to the Market app.  Very odd.


text:
Note taking app with a hand guard/hand recognition feature?
I have an Asus Transformer Eee Pad. I recently purchased a stylus that allows for pen-precise writing and wanted to utilize my tablet as a note taking device.
I have found several apps for this purpose, but none of them allow for recognition of my hand, which confuses the screen. If I rest my hand on the edges of the tablet I am fine, but that only works if I am writing on the outer edges of the "sheet", and I would ideally like to utilize the whole page for notes.
Does anyone know if there is an app for Android tablets out there that is capable of this functionality?
My friend's iPad had an app that allowed him to designate a "dead" area of his screen so he could rest his hand on it and the iPad ignored input from that area, allowing him to take notes with ease and I admit I was pretty jealous. I'm hoping there is some similar app out there for Android. Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

Side note: what stylus have you bought that allows for pen-precise writing? I'm trying to find one for months... @chris

@RafaelS.Calsaverini though it's been a year since you left your comment, I just got an adonit jot pro that works very well: http://adonit.net

The general rule is to make sure you touch your device with your stylus first then rest your palm, it helps big time. Unfortunately, I have not seen an app with a dead area, but that means its not the "whole page".
Samsung are the leaders for true stylus technology on android with their new Galaxy Note phone/tablet which may be the best choice for this kind of thing.
May I ask what stylus you purchased? I have not seen any with pen-precise writing, it does not seem possible with the capacitive touch screen when you compare it to Samsung's stylus tech with pressure sensitivity and separate Wacom sensor.

At the moment (2019) there are still a couple of Android brands including a Touch Screen Digitizer on their phone. As far as I know just Samsung Notes and LG Stylus. Without a Digitizer handwriting has not quality and text recognition became to complicated


text:
Phone keeps downloading data with no user activity, where's the leak?
I've got a strange problem. My HTC Incredible running MIUI has a data leak of some sort.
It downloaded over 4 GB's of data last month and I can't seem to figure out where it's coming from.
I've installed Onavo and My Data Manager to track what's using the data and in Onavo i get 'Market Downloader' and in My Data Manager i get 'Download Manager'
I have barely installed any apps and certainly haven't downloaded 4GB of data, video streaming/downloading, or music. This never used to be the case and I've tried to delete as many of the apps as I could think of that might be doing this, but still nothing.
How can I pinpoint what's downloading this data?

One of the three Incredibles we own had the same problem. It too was running MIUI.
I found this thread on the MIUI forums. After changing the build.prop file as indicated in that thread the problem went away.
Edit to add the following information:

http://androidforums.com/incredible-all-things-root/447517-stop-update-notification.html
Changed these lines to this:
Do not try to parse ro.build.description or .fingerprint ro.build.description=3.26.605.1 CL264707 release-keys
  ro.build.fingerprint=verizon_wwe/inc/inc/inc:2.3.4/GRJ22/222219:user/release-keys
   end build properties
It's really just the "build fingerprint" that matters as you can see.

If the MIUI is referencing an older version of Android then the carrier will keep trying to download the latest Android update. That's where the data download is coming from.

So, when the link no longer functions, what use is this answer?

Summarizing the link would be great :)

Having two monitoring programs point to the same nondescript process is frustrating. Just to verify, does MIUI's built in Traffic Monitor ("Monitor" icon on your homescreen) show the same thing Onavo and My Data Manager?
In the likely event that it does, the most simple (and time consuming) answer is to systematically disable every single app until you identify the culprit. You would need to make sure to disable only one at a time then monitor traffic over a set period of time to look for a change. For most ROMs this means completely uninstalling apps to disable them, but MIUI's Monitor app also includes Firewall settings that allow you to disable data to specific apps on the fly (including system resources like Android System and Download Manager). I suggest working through the entire list even if you find a result earlier on.
You might also consider connecting to a WiFi router and monitoring your phone's traffic using the router's firmware or other network software. If you can identify where all this traffic is going it might give you a clue as to which app is requesting it all.

This might be of some help. Because I had a similar problem on my 3G.
There must definitely be a feature called as "Background Data" somewhere in your Accounts and Sync Settings. Make sure it is disabled.
What this does is gives access to your apps to contact their servers and download data in the background, without your permission. This reduced my 3G usage considerably.
Second thing you might want to try is, Disable automatic update of all your apps in your phone. This is even worse and uses a lot of data.
Third and the most safest of all, turn your wifi or 3G OFF when you are not using it.

note that Background Data is only advisory, it is up to individual applications to whether or not to honour the setting.


text:
Install custom ROM from Linux on a LG GT540
I'd like to install a custom ROM on my LG GT540.
It looks like that in order to enable fastboot and make the whole process a lot easier, a custom ROM must be installed the first time with a program called KDZ. This program seems to work on windows only.
Is it possible to enable fastboot and/or install a custom ROM using Linux?

You should retitle your question - it seems like all the answers assume you have a fastboot-capable bootloader.

I also have that phone and it had fastboot disabled. To quickly answer your question, I haven't found a method to install a fastboot ROM from Ubuntu but it is possible to flash a custom ROM from it.
Assuming there is fastboot ROM installed, you should first boot it into fastboot mode (if you have ADB running, just use adb reboot bootloader):

turn the phone off
hold the camera button and then the power on button
keep pressing the camera button until you see the LG logo

The phone will be in fastboot mode when you see a blank screen (just the back light will be on). After that, you should be able to use Ubuntu to flash a custom ROM. All you have to do is open a terminal in the folder containing the extracted files and type:
sudo -s
fastboot -w #this wipes user data! don't forget to backup :)
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot flash system system.img
fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
fastboot reboot

This process should take about 10 minutes to complete.
Just for the record, I downloaded fastboot binary from here and Swiftdroid 2.0 from here, but I believe you can use any fastboot-ready ROM (in other words, ROMs with boot.img and system.img). If you don't have a fastboot-enabled ROM installed already, you can do it using the KDZ Updater as described here, but you have to use Windows and the fastboot ROM.
Reference thread and post

I think you might be a little confused. Android is based off of Linux and everything that can be done for Android on Windows can be done much easier on Linux. :)
To answer your question. Unlike other phones LG makes, they did not disable fastboot on your phone. It is enabled by default afaik. Fastboot is just a binary that allows the user to send commands remotely to the phone from the desktop. You just need to be in fastboot mode on your phone for the commands to be recognized. On linux, you dont need special programs like KDZ, you just need the Android SDK and a few commands in terminal.
The XDA dev forums are your best friends when it comes to android development and custom ROMs. This page(especially the 1st link on the page concerning Ubuntu) should get you started:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1032744
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=773

1st link is the sticky with what is needed to get you started and the 2nd link is just the links to the other sections in the GT540 forum which is provided for convenience.

I already checked XDA forums and many other places and guides over the internet. Got fastboot already installed on my system (as well as ADB, which is working), but I can't find any way to boot my LG GT540 on fastboot mode. Holding power+camera while booting the device doesn't do anything, and everyone on the web says that in order to enable fastboot mode a special ROM with fastboot enabled must be installed; and it must be installed with KDZ since fastboot isn't there yet.

Huh....I guess they truly did disable fastboot by default. You might be forced to dualboot the machine temporarily with Windows to get this working. Sorry I have worked and developed for Samsung, HTC and Motorola phones and havent encountered such a problem.

Probably LG didn't disable fastboot on newer phones, but on LG GT540 it is disabled! I'm an owner of one such device :)

Is it possible to enable fastboot and/or install a custom ROM using Linux?

Sad to say, but no, you can't yet enable fastboot using Linux easily. You need to find someone with Windows (was best option for me) or deal with virtual machines.
p.s.
Lucky you need it only once, I found someone with Windows just to enable fastboot, now can flash ROM using fastboot tool on Linux.

No. There isn't. Io owned this device for a long time, and you need the KDZ Updater to install a fastboot ROM. Once that is done, you can shun Windows forever.

Sorry this is in Spanish (the link), but I have found a toolkit for flashing KDZ under linux (i.e.: debian, suse, archlinux, ubuntu, etc)
http://www.todomovillg.es/elforodehomero/(p990)-rom-mod-y-hack/optimus-toolkit-6-in-1-linux-by-homero/


text:
How to take a screen shot of my text messges?
I know how to take screenshots on my Droid Charge but everytime I go to take a picture of a text message it always goes to the page before and takes the picture. It is very frustrating. If you know any way to help please reply.

You're doing it via Back + Home, right?

For my US Cellular Galaxy S running gingerbread, I had the same problem. When trying to screen capture the text conversation by holding the "back" and "power/standby" buttons, it backs up a screen and takes a screen shot of the message board. I found a work-around. Pull up the message thread you wish to capture. Press and hold the back button. Tap the power/standby button (I know, it will capture the message board). While still holding the back button, tap the message thread you wish to capture. The message thread should now pull up. Press the power/standby button again, and *click", you have your screen capture! This is the only way I have found to do this.

If you have root, use the app ShootMe. You just shake it and it takes a screenshot.
If you have a custom ROM that runs off of CyanogenMod (CM) or is based off of CM, then hold down the power button and select the screenshot option.

If you have access to a computer when you're trying to take the screenshots, you could do it the old fashioned way -- through the Android SDK. These instructions are for Windows, but it will be similar for other OSes--just download the appropriate packages.
When I did this, I had to install the "platform tools" package through the SDK package manager, because a necessary package (adb) was not installed by default.

Just hold the home button and the + button down (not too long, though).

What is "the + button"? Do you mean the volume up button or some such? I've never seen an Android device with a "+ button".


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How can I fix Error -101 in the Market?
I added a second Google account to my Dell Streak 5 running 2.2 and when I attempt to download an app (either paid or free) through the Market I get this error:

<App Name> could not be downloaded due to an error. (-101)

Downloading apps through the primary account on the device works just fine.  I've tried downloading over both data and Wi-Fi as well as removing and re-adding the secondary account and clearing the Market data, with no luck.  I'm using the 3.4.4 Market though this also occurs with the 3.1.3 Market.  Also of note is that the device doesn't show up in the web Market — it only lists my Vibrant.
How can I fix this?

I think you'd get a chuckle from this post: Unable to install or update apps via market

Have you tried removing and adding both account? Or adding secondary account as primary account. Making secondary account primary may not be what you want but its worth a try.

A wipe and re-adding the accounts in the same way worked.  Guess I'll never know what happened.  Accepting since yours was first and would solve the problem.

have you tried erasing all user data on your device, then re-adding both accounts? To do this, go to Settings - Security - Wipe Data.

A wipe and re-adding the accounts in the same way worked.  Guess I'll never know what happened.  Bountying since your answer is more direct.

Just had the same issue on my Asus Transformer Prime tablet. Fixed by updating the timezone to the proper one, Settings -> Date & time.

Interesting. I don't know whether the timezone was correct for me but I'll test this out.


text:
Using Multiple Devices With the Play Store
I've been using a Droid (original model) for a while and recently I bought an Archos 7 Home Tablet at Office Depot (I think it was on clearance, but I don't remember why it was marked down).  I registered the Archos tablet online, then tried to download some apps so I could start using it.
The selection was small, so I went to the Play Store and logged in with my Google ID.  When I tried to download apps, it told me they would not work on my phone -- but I was using a tablet.
This tablet is not the easiest to type on (which shouldn't be a big issue for what I have planned for it), and that's making it frustrating trying to enter data for forms or to deal with anything.  At this point, my understanding is that Archos seems to have their own app store that I was using when I registered my tablet.
But now I want to use the Play Store I linked to above, but when I go there, it always tries to download to my phone, not to my tablet.
How do I tell the Play Store that I have multiple devices and tell it to download apps for the device I'm using?  I tried setting up another Google account, but it wants my email address and when I give it, then Google says it's used by another account.
How can I use the Play Store with both devices?

Do you have "Market" in your list of applications in your tablet? Also the model of your table would be helpful.

Please don't call Android Market "App Store", sounds too Apple-ish... Also, it can be confused with the third-party app stores (such as Amazon's).

Related: How can I add the market to my device?.

Until I read @Gautham C.'s answer below, I assumed there were certain standards to any Android device, but now I realize that's wrong.  This device has Android 1.5, is using the smart phone version, and cannot access the Android Market.  I found this out by reading reviews, so I guess even though it was cheap, it wasn't a good buy.  But at least I can still probably use it with the carputer I'm working on.

The first thing you need to do is to check your tablet version. My suspicion is that it isn't running Honeycomb (Android 3.0+ or the tablet version of Android) but actually a heavily modded phone version of Android (i.e Android 2.1-2.3).
Go to settings -> about phone (or something similar. each manufacturer changes how you access this)
If it is indeed running the version of Android meant for phones, then the market might be complaining to your tablet because you might be trying to download apps meant for honeycomb.
The online market automatically updates to include additional devices when you activate them (i.e when you initially do the android setup and sign in to your google account). Make sure you select the drop down and check if there is another option. Also make sure you activated both devices under the same account.
-I know I should have made this a comment but its too long of an answer for one. :P

I don't see a version of Android, I see a Kernel Version number that looks more like a Linux kernel version.  It's 2.6.25 and there's a build number.  Added: I finally Googled for reviews.  It's running Android 1.5 and one review mentions from the start that it can't use the Android market.

I believe you need Android 2.2+ in order to use the latest version of the Android Market app which ties into the Android Market site. Here's a full list of supported devices from Google: http://support.google.com/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1727131&topic=1100168&ctx=topic

Ouch, Android 1.5.  That version is nearly obsolete now. I would check XDA Forums and see if there are any custom roms you can flash to it that would bump it up to a newer version of Android.


text:
DCS Service on HTC Desire Z
I installed My Data Manager to see how much data traffic my phone generates and I noticed that there's some "DCS Service" using on average 180MB (!) per month.
DCS Service is not something I installed. It is listed under apps but I cannot uninstall it.
Anyone got an idea what it is and how I can stop it from producing all that data traffic?

Solved it by replacing the HTC software by the Cyaogenmod rom.

I asked htc what it is about and they responded with:

The DCS Utility services and components are the programs on your
  telephone that allow connection to the internet provided by your
  mobile carrier. It stands for Data Connection Service.

A little vague. It also cannot be removed, they told me. And as the sense ui was constantly crashing I decided to install cyaogenmod. Best decision ever: not only is my data usage halved, the user interface is stable as a rock.


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Where does "battery usage" app collect its data from?
The Battery Usage screen gives nice stats about which application has consumed how much battery. The stats are based on the time each process has kept the phone awake, the CPU time, etc. etc.
There are times that I want to get more details that possibly exist, but not shown in the UI. That's why I want to look at the source of the info, or possibly write an app to collect better stats. (maybe some files in the /proc file system?)
Originally, this is because I didn't get any answer on this question:
How can I find out what causes "Android OS" to consume battery?

Take a look at BetterBatteryStats or CPU Spy.  BetterBatteryStats can tell you what is keeping a wakelock on your phone, CPU Spy will tell you whether or not your phone is going into deep sleep.

@BryanDenny Thanks, helpful. Actually I found the "BetterBatteryStats" after posting this question, but haven't tried it yet.

BBS is also free if you download it from XDA http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

I think you found a solution to your source problem. However your question went unanswered.
The information in the Battery Usage screen is found in
/data/system/batterystats.bin
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105051985738280261832/posts/FV3LVtdVxPT


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External SD card now says "SD card blank or has unsupported file system"

"External SD card now says "SD card blank or has unsupported file system"

after I attempted to backup on my computer. It is a Samsung Galaxy "Vibrant" running Froyo (2.2) I mounted the card upon plugging into my computer, opened explorer and attempted to copy files for backup. Now I don't see data on my computer, mostly photos and videos I'm concerned with. Can the data on the external SD card be retrieved? If so, how. Thanks!

Steps for data recovery are described here: Corrupted 16GB Samsung micro SD card


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Launcher without home screen?
Is there a launcher software for my Android device (in this case Galaxy S2) that doesn't have a home screen, but only the App drawer?
If I can give example it would be an iOS; you unlock and you are instantly on applications. The reason for this is I don't really use widgets at all, and I don't see the point in having a home screen only for apps shortcuts if I would have only menu (app draw).

Espier Launcher might be the closest thing you can get to an "iOS experience".
I gave it a test run, it does not have an app drawer...  It's pretty much exactly like iOS.
Note: Espier Launcher is no longer available in Play Store since 2013.

My just-released TinyLaunch is a tiny PalmOS-style launcher that just shows a (categorizable) list of apps.

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


text:
Are PIN lock and lock screen widgets incompatible in ICS?
My wife has a Bionic and I've got a Galaxy Nexus. So she has the older Android version and I've got ICS. We both use PIN locks.
On her phone, she first has to swipe-unlock to get to the PIN screen, which means her first screen has lock widgets on it.
On my phone, I only see the PIN screen. This means I don't have any lock widgets, which is disappointing. I have to unlock my phone in order to mess with music that is playing.
My question is: is this an ICS issue or is there a setting I missed that lets me see the lock screen (with widgets) before the PIN screen?

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

(Click image to enlarge)

That's great for the Music app. What about all the others that have lock screen widgets (like taking a quick pic with the camera)? Perhaps they need to update their code for ICS, hmm.. Anyway, my question was about the two screens vs. one. On pre-ICS the lock screen appears before the PIN screen. On post-ICS there is no separate lock screen. Is this configurable?

Al: thanks for moving the image to imgur!  I only just today learned that that was possible.


text:
How can I distinguish important calls?
I'm a freelancer and have a somewhat erratic work schedule, so it is rather difficult for me to tell people at which times I'm available, which means that occasionally people call me while I'm at a client's site.
I'd rather not blanket reject or ignore calls as occasionally there is something urgent that needs my attention.
Now I'd like to have my phone on silent while I'm at the customer site, but ring when the same person calls another time within five minutes of being ignored.
Is there an app that can do this already, or can it be done as an app within the normal permission framework?

Harass Me by Samuel Tardieu available from Google Play Store does what you want:

Tired of missing extra-urgent calls because you forgot to switch your phone off silent mode?
This application will turn the volume on if the same number tries to call you 3 times in 3 minutes (configurable).

Looks good, have to test whether it works.

I was able to set up a pair of tasker profiles that raises the volume to a particular level when a second call comes in from the same number within a five minute interval.  It's fairly specific (it only acts if the second call is from the same number as the most recent missed call, doesn't reset the volume after the call, etc.), but it could be a starting point.
First profile: Context: state=missed call
Tasks:  Set variable Missedcallnumber to called number // wait 5 minutes // clear variable Missedcallnumber

Second profile: Context: phone ringing & caller = %Missedcallnumber
Tasks: Set ringer volume to 14

I would investigate Llama and see if it can do what you want. I don't think that it can do directly what you want with the current version(1.2011.12.29.1124), but the developer is pretty responsive if you email him, and this is exactly the kind of thing that would work well with what it does.
And an app that has an average rating of 4.72/5 on 3,256 reviews is pretty good.


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Do all android phones have to reload their home screen?
I have had my EVO 4G for coming on 2 years.
Lately it has developed this ever so annoying habit of reloading the home screen for 60 seconds any time I return from a memory intensive app such as the Amazon Market or Dolphin Browser, or after I clean up memory.
I have tried cache cleaners, app killers, and periodic rebooting, but it just keeps happening.
The EVO 4G is pretty light on RAM, and I am wondering if I upgrade to a bigger Android device (considering an Epic or Photon), if that will cure the problem?
Anyone have experience with this?
Thanks, Victor

I used to see this on my Droid. A factory reset and being more judicious with what apps I loaded helped for a while. Ultimately, though, I just lived with it until I upgraded my phone.

Using what home screen app? Have you checked to see if other launchers like Holo launcher or the open-source ADW.launcher have the same problem?

No not every android phone does this but it is done in many HTC phones. The reason is simple: memory usage.
Here is the breakdown:
When the system is running out of memory, the inbuilt task killer of the system automatically kicks in and checks to see if it can stop an application and recover some RAM. HTC Sense devices employ a launcher that is "heavy" and often uses up a lot of memory so when the task killer sees you are not using your launcher and knows it needs the RAM for another app, it kills the launcher. Thus, when you hit the home button or quit the app, the launcher has to re-initialize.
Tips:
DO NOT use a task-killer if you dont have a low end device. Android already has a built-in one that kills apps and does it safely. Using apps such as "Advanced Taskkiller" actually mess with the way the system kills apps and actually can cause more Force Closes and system instability in the long run.
Additionally, the more RAM the system has, the more the launcher uses to cache stuff it needs. This is good because the launcher becomes more responsive and fast as its using a cached copy instead of grabbing it all over again. If you clear the cache constantly, it needs to re-cache the items and so it will be less responsive.
Use a lighter launcher. Sense might be good but there are more rock solid and light launchers such as Launcher Pro that wont experience this problem. You dont need a new phone with more RAM. Trust me, 1GB of RAM is more than enough with the right system. :)

Brilliant - I had no idea about Launcher Pro - I love it, it rotates to landscape when I rotate the device - I have been wishing for that ever since I bought the phone! Also, I uninstalled advance task killer, bought a few bytes! Thanks so much for the ideas.

No problem. There are also other launchers like Zeam that are minimalistic launchers designed for performance. Don't believe these store reps that tell you to add task killer apps. They have no idea of the inner workings of android. Google during the making of 2.2 actually added extra code to discourage task killers. Only low memory devices with no RAM to handle multiple applications in a stable manner (usually running firmware not designed for them) need third party task killers.

This would explain why this behavior stopped when I switched to "GO Launcher EX".  +1!

This story had a very happy ending - bought an Epic SII; memory problems solved!


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Modify framwork-res with same signature?
According to this post, you can modify the framework-res.apk to remove carrierIQ software from the phone. Unfortunately a lower post, and others, suggest that this doesn't work, causes infinite boot loop, since recompiling it will make a different signature. If true, is there a better way to do this?

The core android framework, the UI and lockscreen are all compiled into the framework-res.apk. So naturally messing with it and improperly modifying this will result in infinite boot loops, strange overall bugs and "wonkyness."
If you have the ability to flash new framework-res.apk, it means that you have a custom recovery and root access. So just flash ROMs that don't have Carrier IQ. These are usually builds built from AOSP and CM as both of these code bases are given straight from Google and are clean of any third party proprietary software like Carrier IQ.

and replace the entire OS with one from the internet, just to remove CarrierIQ? These instructions seem easier and safer... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1333203&page=8


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Android Desk Phone Tablet
I have been using VoIP for my landline for years, with an analog telephone connected to internet via an ATA.
Recently, this Grandstream GXV3175 PoE video phone sparked my interest in upgrading and getting rid of the analog phone and ATA, but now I wish to upgrade to an Android system with camera and market.
It could then also serve as a simple always-on portable PC for quick lookups or web browsing, and basic organiser/games/multimedia…
There already are several ideas for using Android systems as a desktop phone:
  - Android desk phones with Power-over-Ethernet
  - Android desk phone tablet+dock, for landlines with xDSL
Budget/specs-wise I like the Archos 80 G9 tablet. And ideally, there would be a Telpad-like dock but with PoE, but since that is not available for the moment, I was thinking about just connecting an external handset to the tablet in order to have proper microphone quality. Here I see 2 possibilities:
  1. via an USB port, e.g. Tiptel or Digitus
  2. via an earphone port, e.g. iPego or Moshi Moshi
However, if I read up correctly, none of the above seems to be supported on Android tablets?!
  - Does the OS (3.x/4?) actually support the USB handsets or are there drivers readily available?
  - Are there Android tablets that have a 4-band or 4-pole earphone port with support for an external headset/handset with microphone?  (Above-mentioned iPego or Moshi Moshi handsets are for iPhone/iPad only…)
How can I do this? Any suggestions/alternatives?
PS: sorry, new users can only post a maximum of two hyperlinks :/

For external headsets you would be better looking at the incredible range of bluetooth enabled headsets for mobiles. I doubt that there will be any support for the current desktop usb based ones anytime soon as its not the focus of Android atm. A hardware vendor would have to write the drivers for them, or an opensource effort.
I was just playing with the new native sip voip on Android 4 and its now deeply integrated. I was using the voip account that my home phone uses so my when someone call my house my mobile also rings and uses the wifi, very cool I wonder if this will pick off.

Indeed, I expect no problems with the voip/sip part (in fact, my Android 2.3 mobile can also ring with my current home phone, given the same account settings and internet) but I just want to connect and use a wired telephone horn with the tablet… In fact, I wish to be able to turn all radios off when it is in use as a desktop voip phone, even if that means using e.g. a USB adapter for Ethernet (available) but now I'm diverging :]

My Android mobile came with a wired headset with microphone, to plug into the earphone port. I would expect the same to be possible with Android tablets with an earphone port but they seem to lack the microphone support there – note: found the TRRS term now (tip ring ring sleeve).

Ah ok I don't see why no radios is more intuitive :) I did not know about the TRRS term specifically either, the problem again is that tablets are not designed to be phones and that looks like a spec designed for phones and may be skipped when designing tablets.


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revert back to android 2.1 in samsung galaxy 5 aka europa from cyanogenmod 7 gingerbread 2.3
I have installed android 2.3 gingerbread in my galaxy 5 europa GT-I5500 following this post
Now want to go back to 2.1, any dictation how to do that? Thanks for your help.

Is there something wrong with Cyanogenmod?
What you want is the stock version of android Samsung put on the phone, there is no revert as it was deleted when you put cyanogen. As you dont seem to have a copy I would go to Samsung support site or you will have to trust another source on the net and download it there. This would be another great community resource for your phone http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1156

If he had a nandroid backup of the previous rom, that would work too right?

Yes many things are not working properly. 1. Bluetooth 2. When radio on bluetooth becomes on. 3. EDGE disconnect now and then 4. Consequent video file download in opera mini replaces the previous file etc etc. Thank you for the community link. But can you please dictate me what I need to do specifically to get 2.1 in my device?

The problems you have described here sound fixable, cyanogen is a high quality and widely used rom with many advantages over the stock roms samsung makes, try downloading the latest one for your model and installing it again. If your problems are still there address them one by one, otherwise like i said you will have to research where to get the stock rom again most likely there is a samsung support that can help you.

Yess!! Back to 2.2 and its working fine.. here is the solution link http://www.madteam.co/2011/10/11/flash-samsung-stock-rom-over-cm-guide/#comment-1985 . And thanks for your help it gave me hope. Even lost the swype which i like very much in CM. Still I am noob in the CM world. I will learn and try step by step. For now back to safety.

@Power-Inside: I am also wondering!!

@newcomer Good for you I hope this fixes your problems, since you probably still have clockwork recovery on there you should look into nandroid backup, it creates a file on the sd card that you can backup and restore from if you come into problems again.


text:
How do I use my front facing camera on my Galaxy S?

Possible Duplicate:
My Samsung Galaxy S front-facing camera doesn't work in camera app, Gtalk or Skype — How can I use it?

It gives me the options of: single shot, beauty, smile shot, contiuous, panorama, vintage, add me, action shot, and cartoon. I can not find a way to use it. HELP???

there is an button
click it to change.

Which camera application are you using?
If you use the stock camera, unfortunately for Samsung Galaxy S there's no such button or option to toggle between front/back camera, the front lens is used only for video chat. Maybe you should try other camera app on market or wait for the next update of the stock camera app (hopefully)


text:
Android crashes after update unless I put another memory card
I have HTC Desire HD and installed an official update of the system: Android 2.3.5, HTC Sense 3.0, system 3.12.405.1.
After the update my phone runs very slowly and reboots every 2 minutes. If I remove the memory card it runs well. If I change the memory card to another empty one then everything is also good.
But I have a lot of apps and other data on that card and I don't want to format it.
I looked at a log, there are a lot of mistakes like this:
W/ResourceType(13907): Failure getting entry for 0x7f0200df (t=1 e=223) in package 0 (error -2147483647)
Link to the beginning of the log (250kb):
http://pastebin.com/P3zq0k5x
Full log (3.3Mb, phone rebooted several times while writting this log) is here:
http://file.karelia.ru/9kjwqz/
I don't understand anything in programming or Android. Can you help me? Maybe I should just remove one of the apps and problem would be solved?

I have the same problem.

I had a similar issue and resolved it easily enough by carefully reading the short messages that were regularly popping up on my screen informing me just what apps were causing my phone to "force close." In my case the culprit was the Volume+ app. As soon as I uninstalled Volume+ the phone was right as rain.

Unfourtunately I didn't get any messages on my screen...

Sorry to hear your hassles however it is actually good news that your phone works well without the problem sd card. Since your phone runs like crap and reboots you may be forced to use a computer sd card reader to salvage what you can.
I hope someone can make sense of those log files, otherwise maybe mounting your sd card on a desktop pc and running scandisk for errors (depending on your platform). But I would backup all the data I could from it as soon as I could to your computer hd.
This is one of those times we hate computers and they remind us to back everything up 3 or four times ;) You can use apps like http://www.appbrain.com/ to make an online version of your apps. As for your data you could sync with a dropbox app or some other kind of sync app I use sftp on my linux desktop or cygwin ssh on windows with https://market.android.com/details?id=dk.tacit.android.foldersync.lite&feature=search_result
Good luck

may be some apps is running from your SD card.
instead of internal memory. some of your application is stored in your memory card that's the reason.
apps like:
/mnt/asec/com.threebanana.notes-1/pkg.apk
/mnt/asec/com.mobillness.shakytower.full-1/pkg.apk
/mnt/asec/kr.sira.measure-2/pkg.apk
/mnt/asec/com.droidhen.irunner-1/pkg.apk

.
.
.

I understand it. But what apps?

check this edited ans...

I've deleted all these 4 apps, but the problem is still here :(

I mentioned .... not only this 4 there are many under this "/asec/" folder, delete this folder once and check  it. if problem exist send once again the error log files.

I haven't micro SD adapter to put it on card reader unf. So I can't remove that folder to HD to recover it later. I can only delete all those apps that are installed to the card. But as I said in my first post, I don't want to lose all apps installed to the card, their settings and their data. Is there another way to determine tjose apps that causes the problem?

I found micro SD adapter and removed folder .android _secure from memory card to HD. After that the problem disappeared. But now I can't use my apps that were installed to the card. What now?


text:
Open source flashlight app?
On my new phone, for security reasons I decided to stick to Open Source apps as much as possible.
Is there an Open Source flashlight app?
The most popular flashlight apps (1,2) are asking for crazy permissions: GPS, camera, Internet, GPS, SD card...
If no Open Source is available, at least one I would be happy with a very simple one, such as this one (white screen, brightness 100%, lock screen) which for some reason is not available for my new phone.

Are you running the stock ROM on your handset?  The flashlight app that's built into CyanogenMod 7.x is most definitely open source, but it will only work with CM7 installed.  http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1001132

Search Light is open source, has no unnecessary permissions, and has a nice set of operating modes.

Very nice! Too bad my phone does not have a camera flash, I really should have mentioned this. Accepting though, because your answer is correct.

I just submitted it to the F-Droid repository: http://f-droid.org/forums/topic/search-light/

OI Flashlight is Open Source, it can use both camera flash and bright screen.

Kevin's answer is great, but just some new info:
The Flashlight app, which was popular since very early on, has been released as Open Source:
https://github.com/devesh/Flashlight


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Using Amazon Instant Video from Amazon Prime on Non-Kindle device
I have an Asus EEE Transformer, and am contemplating an Amazon Prime membership.  One of the nice features is streaming video.  You can play it on computer, TV/DVD/BluRay that support it, or Kindle.
Is there anyway to play on plain Android, like my Transformer?

Yes, you can play Amazon Prime videos using flash in the browser. See this thread.
Per the thread, you may have to remove the stock Flash and install Adobe's official version from the market, as well as the Dolphin HD browser.
You can rent movies from Amazon, which presumably use the same framework as Prime videos. It would probably be advisable to rent a movie to verify it works before investing in a Prime membership.

Poifect!  Thank you!  That is what I wanted to know.

As of very recently, this no longer is possible. Flash for Android is no longer supported, upgraded or offered by Adobe.
There are hacks available for installing older versions of Flash, but given the security holes this opens up, installing an expired version of Flash is probably a really bad idea.

Yep, that's what I said. Amazon wants Apple owners, all the rest can buy the Kindle Fire, despite the Android derivation, they have no interest in releasing the Amazon Instant Video app for use on anything but their own device. Lots of Android based phone users can just go elsewhere, I guess. Hulu Plus, NetFlix, etc. Hopefully they'll get to work on HTML5 video streaming soon, maybe that's their plan.


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ADB status offline when trying to root Kindle Fire
I'm trying to root Kindle Fire but it always show "ADB status: Offline" when I start "run.bat". Could you help me out of this problem? :(
I tried to plug, unplug, connect, disconnect the Kindle many times but nothing changes. I'm using Windows 7 x86.

Do you have the drivers installed? KFU comes with a file named install_drivers.bat that can do this for you.

I had the same problem with Kindle Fire Utility, and I actually figured this out.
The install_drivers.bat replaces the driver, which is not what you want! You need both drivers in place, the regular Amazon Kindle one, and the ADB driver. To get it to work:

Uninstall the Android ADB driver in Device Manager (right click to do this)
In Device Manager, right click the Kindle device and select "Update Driver Software", then point it to the included Kindle Fire Utility folder that has the driver /drivers/kindle

Then, it finally worked -- both drivers were in place -- then ADB showed up as online and I could get root, and do all the other stuff with KFU.

For those who tried many attempts in re-installing and rebooting but to no avail. This may be an alternative you can consider. This applies to those who ran install_drivers.bat and saw an error message regarding "./android/adb_usb".
This error is caused by our user name in windows which has one or more spacing (e.g. "Home User"). This one or more spacing breaks the batch file written to assist you in installing the relevant drivers.
Solution is simple, edit the install_drivers.bat and include double quotations (" ") to all file paths which has %userprofile% (line 9 & 10)
if not EXIST "%userprofile%\.android\" ( mkdir "%userprofile%\.android\" )
copy drivers\kindle\adb_usb.ini "%userprofile%\.android\adb_usb.ini"

Before re-installing your drivers, kindly ensure you removed the existing drivers via Device Manager -> Android Phone -> "Android ADB Interface" (or) "Android Composite ADB Interface"
Re-run install_drivers.bat and then run run.bat
Your kindle should be ready for rooting :)

IF you have run the install_drivers.bat file, and still have this.. Few things to do :
1) Reboot computer/Kindle
2) Re-install drivers through KFU
3) Re-install drivers manually.

and make sure it is "Android Composite ADB Interface", it won't work if it's "Android ADB Interface".


text:
How can I remove the battery from my Samsung P1000?
My P1000 tablet needs rebooting but will not respond to any input commands.
If I remove the battery I believe this will force the tablet to reboot.
How do I get to the battery?

I don't think the Galaxy Tabs are really designed for the battery to be removed. Not without a fair amount of work, anyway. Here's a teardown for the 7" Tab, for example.

This isn't an Android question, it is a hardware question.  You need to talk to the manufacturer or the retailer.

Does the tablet not have a way to hard reset the device? For example, on my xoom, It's a combination of VOL UP + Power button that will restart the tablet.

@Logos It's specific to an Android device, which makes it an Android question.

Last time I looked at the question, the bits about not responding to input commands weren't very clear.  Looks like Eldareathis cleaned it up.

Like it was pointed out, the Galaxy Tab wasn't designed in a way for it's battery to be easily removed. Here's a video on removing the case and exploring what's inside. Hope this helps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urGUKerJOhg


text:
Accidently wiped out all data. Now I can't restore it.
I accidently wiped out all data on the device (no backup). Now I'm in TWRP and when I select "Restore", there is no package to choose.

Well, I haven't had this issue, and I'm not experienced much.
If you plugged it into your computer, opened KFU (not sure if it'd detect it), you can download the latest stock ROM. Then maybe all you'd have to do is push it onto the SDcard through ADB? and then reload TWRP (or something to refresh the list) and it'd appear, and then you could flash it?
Not sure if that'd work. Again, not an experienced person with this, but maybe you can figure something out with my idea. :P

I did it!!!!!!!!! :D I'm so scared it becomes a brick. :)) Now everything's ok. I understood how TWRP works!
http://www.jayceooi.com/2011/12/28/how-to-restore-stock-software-on-kindle-fire-video/

Next time, take a quick back up before moving forward. Even then, if you were to brick your Kindle, there are a few known methods of unbricking it.


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Stream music on Android to Desktop speakers
The canonical location for my music collection is the Android phone (synced from Mac at work), and I have a Windows PC at home connected to the speaker system. Is it possible to play the music on Android, but stream (via bluetooth, wifi or USB) the audio to these speakers (via the PC)?

Yes, you can. No additional soft or hardware is required. On Android 4.4.2 and Windows XP:

Enable Bluetooth on both devices
Make sure under Windows' Bluetooth Configuration -> Local Services you have the 'Headset' service set to 'Automatic startup'
Connect the devices (using a pass-phrase if required)
Check on Android that 'Media audio' is enabled for the connected PC
Play some music, enjoy!

Get a male-to-male 3.5 mm audio cable. Connect one end to your phone's audio jack and the other one to your PC's microphone jack.
Now here comes the tricky part:

In the notification area, right-click the speaker icon. Click "Playback Devices".

In the Dialogue Box, right-click "Speakers -> Set as Default Device". If there is already a green tick on the speaker icon, move to step 3.

If you have a laptop then (A), or a desktop then (B) :
(A) Remove the cable you just connected. Now click on the "Recording" tab. See, there's a Mic which has a green tick. Don't interfere with this thing. Now the second one is a mic which is disconnected and has a red mark. Now connect the cable. It will show ready. Now double-click it. In the popup, click the "Listen" tab. Check the "Listen to this Device". In the "Playback through this device dropdown, select Speakers. Now click Apply. Your computer might now start producing awkward sounds, to adjust, click the "Levels" tab. Now adjust the Microphone volume and Microphone boost to the desired amount to remove any sort of noise.
(B) If you have a desktop, all the steps are the same as a laptop except the microphone selection. In the recording devices menu, only one microphone should be there. So it is easy to find that. Do all the next steps as a laptop.
NOTE: If you can't see your device, right-click and tick "Show disabled devices" and "Show disconnected devices". If your device is disabled, enable it first.

Now, play any audio of your choice on the phone to get the desired output.
P.S.: Any device with a 3.5 mm audio output can be used as a source.

Yes, you can do this in Windows XP and 7. It will stream all audio from the phone- apps, games, etc. You do not need any additional software, just Bluetooth connectivity on the PC.
AirDroid lets you access your device, including streaming music, over WiFi via a web browser.
You could also just plug your phone into a USB to your PC, and play the music on the PC with MusicBee or any other media player.

Please consider adding details as to how.

In case you haven't found a solution yet, I would recommend an app called Soundwire

AFAIK this only goes the other way around (i.e. from PC to android).

I think AllStream does this.


text:
Is is possible two tablets of the same model has different functionalities?
I've bought a Huawei IDEOS S7 up front (there isn't a monthly fee) for SGD 885 (682 USD) before realizing that it costs only:

SGD 468 (USD 360)
SGD 549 (USD423)
SGD 488 (USD 376)
(SGD 324) USD 250

My tablet supports GSM voice communication and I can make phone calls with it. I was basically wondering is it true that all Huawei IDEOS S7 can be used to make phone calls,
Or is it true that some Huawei IDEOS S7 have support for GSM voice communication (mine) while others do not have support for it (those cheaper ones shown in the list above)?
Or did I just lost $385?

It is possible. But, most notably they would tell you if there was a Voice version, and a non-voice Version.
Just like some tablets have 3G connection, and some only have Wi-Fi. They'd tell you.
However, you also have to be careful sometimes. Some sites that sell these really cheap, are like Chinese Wholesale sites, and they make counterfeit versions of these, but sell them off as the real deal.


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Android has a MIDI synthesizer?
I was searching about playing MIDI in the mobile, but I not found much information. So, Android has a MIDI synthesizer? Varies according to the model?

Searching the Market for "Midi" shows quite a few apps that have some level of midi functionality.   If you're looking for a full-fledged midi app such as you'd find on a PC or Mac, you will probably be disappointed due to the small screen and limited hardware interfacing capability of most Android devices, but if you are looking to experiment with midi functionality, one or more of these apps should do the job.