text:
Local web proxy à la Privoxy?
I'd like to filter some web sites I visit by running a local web proxy like Privoxy to get rid of the ads and simplify the layout.
Does someone know of a good web proxy for Android?

As ce4 pointed out, Privoxy just seems have to left the playstore within the last month. At the moment, the probably only candidate left seems to be FilterProxy.
On the other hand, if you have your device rooted, there are some additional possibilities working by manipulating the device's local hosts file. A quite good candidate in that case would be AdAway, with the alternative of using AdFree and several other candidates.

Thanks for the infos. I'd rather stay with the standard Samsung firmware for the time being. I'll check FilterProxy.

@Gulbahar: rooting the device does not necessarily mean using a non-standard firmware, (though in practice it may be more or less difficult depending on the model).

There has been a port of Privoxy for Android, it was available in the Play Store but has been deleted: Old and broken Google Play link.
The author's site has a page still here but no downloadalbe .apk.
You might have luck by asking him for an .apk. I don't know of any other port, alas.


text:
Side-loaded Face-Unlock not working
I downloaded and installed facelock.apk on my Motorola Android tablet (running 4.0.3) but it fails with "Face unlock couldn't start.".
What's the reason? What can I do to get it working?

See Goo.im. They have a collection of Google Apps as installable .zip files.
There is an explanation for which packages belongs to what Android version on top.
However there's currently only one separate package for Facelock.

thanks for your attention.
I installed it, but it is setup locker using face.
I wanna screen locker using face.

The Facelock.apk may not be compatible or rather, clearly, missing some dependency with the Motorola's version of the framework.
It could well be modified to exclude the facelock application as well. To each and their own, each manufacturer are free to modify, add, subtract from the Google Android source to suit themselves.
It might help to obtain the logcat using the application aLogcat (found on Google Play Store) and run that in the background and capture the output from the logcat whilst running facelock to see what is the underlying reason for the point of failure.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to set Home country for Google Now?
I'm living in UK and all my apps understand it. All except Google Now. It keeps showing me cards about the rate between $ and £ or time in US (supposed to be time at home).
I checked all my settings and UK is set every where even for my Google account. I've got a Nexus S running Jelly Bean that I bought in UK.
How to make Google now understand that I live in UK? Am I missing something?

Have you set a home address in latitude?

Works! Thank you! Set it as an answer and I'll give you reward!

To direct a message to a specific user, use '@' before the user's name. @RichardBorcsik will ensure that this gets to its inbox. :) ps: this message should already have alerted Richard to come here.

Thanks @Zuul but I already got notified :) I only recently noticied the actual pattern of how notifications work. If you're the only commenter and the owner of the question adds a comment after you, you're notified. But this is a special case.

@RichardBorcsik Nice, didn't know about that detail, tks :)

Google Now by default will think that you're in the USA.
The app pulls your home address from Google Latitude. This is also how it knows when you're home and it is the basics for traffic info.
To change this go into:
Maps ->  Location History (tab)

Here you can set both your home and work address.

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


text:
Camera app is missing from my Galaxy Nexus
I ran bigxie's 4.1 jellybean for a while, worked great, switched to the same brand but 4.1.1 instead (I always do a full wipe) and since then I have issues with my camera. I think the installation of Camera 360 might have done something to cause my regular camera and Gallery app to have problems (both of them simply crash upon start).
I just installed the latest AOKP (4.1.1) and tried two separate gapps, the most popular one from somewhere in april that some forums claim fix this issue, and also the absolutely newest one. Both give me the same issue as the 4.1.1 bigxie ROM.
Is it possible that Camera 360 did this? What can I do to troubleshoot this? When I go to "manage apps" and then "all" I can't even find an app called "Camera", and also nothing called "com.android.camera". Are system apps even included in gapps? Can I find the system app "Camera" from somewhere and just install it to fix this issue?
Thank you in advance.

This issue was resolved by reinstalling bigxie's 4.1.1 ROM from scratch (with a full wipe). I suspect that fiddling around with TitaniumBackup caused me to remove the system camera app, and for some reason this was not put in when I installed AOKP + gapps.
Please note! Full wipe and complete reinstall of a ROM that is missing the Camera app will not help. Therefore, choose a stock ROM or a ROM close to stock that you know include the Camera system app.
If this does not help, try reseting the phone completely to locked bootloader, unrooted stock ROM and so on as you will probably want to return it anyway if the Camera app is still gone in the stock installation :)


text:
Duplicate calendar entries presumably caused by Google's calendar sync
I have a subscribed calendar in my Google account.
Events from this calendar get synced to my phone as you would expect. However, whenever it syncs it creates a completely new event instead of updating the existing one, or taking no action.
How can I fix this?
Samsung Galaxy S running Gingerbread 2.3.6

I ended up disabling the linked calendar, and adding it manually using the ICalSync app in the market.


text:
How do I end a voicemail call?
Apologies if this is an elementary question.
I have called up the voicemail service and I listen to the first message; I'm then invited to press a key to save, delete, and so forth, but the screen has gone blank and there is no key to press. How do I recover the keyboard so that I can select an option?
A second problem then presented itself; that not only is there no key to select an option, there is no key to end the call either. The only way I could do this was to take the battery out of the back.
This can't be what the designer intended, but there is no guidance given any of the manuals I have been able to find.
Can anyone give me a pointer to an idiot's guide?
Edit: It is a Samsung Galaxy (can't say what model number), and it has no protective devices attached to it.

Welcome to http://android.stackexchange.com. Can you specify the device you have (brand and model)?

"The only way I could do this was to take the battery out" - do you not even have a power button?

Do you have a screen protector on your phone?

@Zuul, thank you. I've added the make to the question.

@w3d, no, it is mother-naked. It is just that I am being asked to press buttons on a blank screen.

@BrianHooper Has this always been the case since you had the phone, or is this recent?

@Zuul, I don't believe I've ever called the voicemail with it before; I got a text saying "you have bazillions of messages" and thought I'd better do something about it.

@BrianHooper Do you use any special app to call the voicemail? or do your just dial the voicemail like a regular call?

It sounds like your screen simply turned off (possibly due to the proximity sensor) - pressing the power button typically turns it back on.

@Zuul, no, I just call it as a normal call. That's why I was somewhat surprised by the difficulties I'm having.

@eldarerathis Answered just that. Don't believe to be anything else...

@eldarerathis, that might be it. I'll try it.

By what you describe, this is more likely to be related with the proximity sensor.
It is located at the top right corner of your screen, outside of the touch area.
If anything is blocking that sensor, the screen goes black. This happens to prevent the users face from touching anything on the screen during a call.
What works for me, is either using the home button or the power button to bring the screen back on.

Righto. I do this, and the front screen comes up with all the usual app buttons, and the voicemail call burbling along in the background. So I guess I need to reconnect to that call somehow. I'll go away and try to work that one out. Thank you.


text:
Download stuck in Gmail
I had started downloading a attached file from GMail app, suddenly it hang. When it resumed, notification bar was showing download process but it was not being downloaded in the app. i retried and downloaded it. Its been 3 days but notification bar still shows the file is being downloaded. I have tried switching off the phone but doesn't work. Can anyone tell me what I should do. Thanks for the help.

You might need to clear the cache of the Download Manager. Go into:
Settings -> Apps -> All (tab) -> Download Manager

Here tap Clear cache and for good measure Clear data


text:
Leave ear-speaker active when using headset (cable/bt)
Is it possible to just use a headset's mic but keep the phone's ear-speaker active?

Welcome to android.stackexchange.com. Usually the jack tells the phone to direct the sound to it only. Can you specify the device you have (brand and model)?

Thanks zuul. The phone is a Samsung Galaxy Nexus but i hope there is a OS-dependent solution, rather than phone-specific hacks.

You can refer to this recent answer to a similar issue. Basically: If a wired headset is plugged into the phone, it replaces the phone's built-in earpiece.

After some further research I think it's not possible.
At least on a level where one is not modifying the OS.

Definitely not possible, the audio routing is something of a mutually exclusive/flip-flop principle.
If the headset is plugged in, the routing goes to the headset and is taken away from the in-built ear-piece. Vice-versa, if no headset is plugged in, the in-built-ear piece is used.
Likewise, for when during in-call without headset, audio routing goes to both ear-piece and mouth-piece, no other mp3/music cannot be played. For vice-versa, when no calls are happening, audio is routed to the speakers...
That shows what is actually involved in, what is known as "Audio routing" and is very complicated process hence the emphasis on mutual exclusivity/flip-flip operations of the audio fundamentals.


text:
Back up sdcard to cloud
Problem: I have an internal flash drive (/sdcard) with "stuff I don't like losing". Due to a bug in ClockworkMod Recovery, it got wiped the other day. I had been manually backing up my entire card to my local computer every so often, but it was a manual process.
I have a Box.com account. I have a Dropbox account. I have a Google Drive account. I want to automate uploading everything to one of those services (preferably Box, as I got in on the 50GB promo they did). I'm assuming this exists as a free or one-time purchase app, but all I can find are "back up services" that require a subscription.  I use Titanium Backup to back up my apps, I take full images of my phone via CWM every so often, but I can't pass all that data to the cloud (well, TiBu will upload to Box/Dropbox, but that's not everything).
Dropbox has a built-in image backup that will automatically upload any pictures I take to my account. Google+ can do the same to my G+ account. However, that's still only a portion of what exists on my internal storage.  I want something that will grab everything else. Ideas?

BTW, if this is a dupe, could someone pretty please point me at an answer? I searched, but all I found were phone data (app) backups and image backups.

Well there're questions dealing with cloud sync, but most of those are specifically about Dropbox.

If your device is rooted, you might want to take a look at Titanium Backup, which has built-in support for Dropbox, Box and Google drive.
As for your "special folder", I'd say you will probably like FTPSyncX -- which allows you automatically sync with Dropbox as well as with your local PC via SSH, FTP, and others. The latter can happen automatically all xx Minutes when your Wifi is in reach, or when any Wifi is in reach, or generally... And the App is well supported. Alternatively, there is FolderSync, additionally offering support for SkyDrive, SugarSync, Ubuntu One, Box.net, LiveDrive, Google Drive, Google Docs, HiDrive, NetDocuments, Amazon S3 and WebDAV.
FTPSyncX:

FolderSync:

Ha! Busted! You didn't read the question did you? "I use Titanium Backup to back up my apps" :)

Ouch -- right, missed that part. But that was not the main part of my answer, but rather a "you might also like..." -- as the focus was on syncing the OPs "special folder on internal SD" -- which I don't think is a task TB does care for. So far, you won't bust me as being OT, will you? ;)

Of course I won't. There's even a smiley at the end of my comment. I just find it funny when someone post something as an answer that was in the question :) Happened to me too.

I've installed the trial version of FTPsyncX and the lite version of FolderSync, so we'll see how those go. Both look interesting. Thanks for the suggestions!

@NDGeek You're welcome! I'm using FTPSyncX for quite a while now. Though the design is not that nice-looking as FolderSync's, it works fine for me.

@Izzy I ended up ruling FTPSyncX out because it doesn't support Box. FolderSync seems to be working pretty well though. I also discovered that the TiBu people make an app that does this, but again, it only  sends to Dropbox at the moment...so FolderSync it is!

Right, Joel has Titanium Media Sync in the wild. I skipped that in my post as I thought it not close enough to your needs -- and as I can see I was right ;) Glad you found your solution in my answer.

I would recommend you to use SanDisk Memory Zone available from Google Play Store.
Once you have installed the app, run it and it will scan your entire SD card and the internal memory of your device.
After that, choose a cloud storage provider where you would want to backup all the data.

This is close, but I'd prefer something that works on a  file/folder level. It also doesn't agree with my system on which storage is internal and which is external. Thanks, though!

I know this comes a little late, but for the sake of others like myself who stumbled upon this question (in my case, it matches word for word my needs, it's spooky) I found something that suits me well.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.kowalczuk.rsync4android
It's rsync over SSH and works very well - provided you're already familiar with both.

Link is broken.


text:
View WordPress images in Android Gallery
With my Android tablet, the Gallery shows images from an old Blogger blog that I used to use (the blog belongs to my Google account, obviously).
I currently have a WordPress blog hosted on my own web space, and I would really like to have the same functionality--some way to have the images that are hosted on my WordPress blog show up in my Gallery.
Is there any way to do this currently?

No.
The blogger images showed up because they're hosted in Picasa which is integrated into the Android gallery.
But as a workaround you could host your images on Picasa and link to them from your blog.

Well you can allways make an app that pulls the pictures from an rss feed or php webservice from the site and then shows them up


text:
Customizing the formatting of phone numbers
Mobile operators in Brazil have added a leading digit, but only for São Paulo numbers. Now, both landline numbers (in São Paulo and otherwise) and mobile numbers from other states have 8 digits, while São Paulo mobile numbers have 9 (in addition to the optional area code that's 2 digits).
I'd like 8-digit numbers to be formatted like 1234-5678 and 9-digit numbers formatted like 123-456-789. Is this possible?
I've read the answers to following questions and none of them anwers this question:

Is it somehow possible to change the format of a telephone number being displayed?
The Way Numbers Are Displayed/Broken Up

What I will do with the same problem :

export Google Gmail contacts as a CSV file from https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#contacts
using sed to edit the file with some REGEX
importing contacts again

I use MyPhoneExplorer to do tasks like this.  It will download contacts to the PC, where you can use the tool to edit the contacts and write them back.  But it's only one at a time.
I find it much easier to use this to tidy up all my contacts, periodically.
Screenshot of this feature from their website.  I am not associated with it any way, just been using it for forever.

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


text:
Unable to update Samsung S3
I am new to this community.
I bought a new S3 android phone. Well, I gotta configure couple of my email accounts.
1. personal - gmail, 2. official - exchange mail.
When I look for update, it says that device is encrypted and unable to update.

Do I need to decrypt to update every time?
Is there a way to convert my PIN screen-lock to pattern screen-lock without deleting my existing credentials?

Looking forward a simple solution, thanks!


text:
Is there an app/tool/setting for reading tiny websites?
I hate visiting websites that lack mobile views. Two examples are Phoronix and Gamasutra. They have huge amounts of navigation/advertising on the sides, and the actual article text is ridiculously small. Even zooming in does not help.
Is there something on Android similar to iPhone's reader feature? I'd like to strip a site's bad layout and read just the main text (larger font, wrap-around based on my screen width, etc.).
For what it's worth, I'm on a Galaxy S III.

The best I have for now is the app Readability available from Google Play Store:

Readability turns any Web page into a clean view for reading now or later on your computer or Android device. With the Readability app, you can catch up reading you've saved with the free Readability add-on for your Web browser. Already a favorite on Kindle e-readers, now you can enjoy the benefits of Readability on your Android devices.


text:
Strange/troubling behavior when putting phone in car dock
I have a Galaxy Nexus (rooted, running stock Jellybean).  When I place it in the car dock, my screen gets flooded with notifications for "shell granted superuser access," and after a few minutes something attempts to send an email, which I know because it raises the "Select an application to continue" dialog box with choices between Gmail and Email; if I allow it to continue, it simply provides me with a bug reporting email message with no pre-filled recipient, a screen shot of my lock screen, and a 4.7MB(!) textfile.
When I check the superuser log, all of the last 200 events are for "shell," all within a second of each other, which tells me that the actual count of superuser accesses is far higher than that.  Consulting the log indicates that the su process is being used to run a bunch of different diagnostics (one for lsof, one per running process, one per sqlite database, and so on).  So this tells me that it's actually the bug reporting process that is causing the "shell granted superuser access" messages to pop up.  Also, the su instance being used is not the third-party root one but /system/xbin/su - and this process is terminating with exit code 127.
I have never seen this behavior occur anywhere else - it is only when I dock the phone to the car dock when plugged into my car (plugging it into a USB AC adapter doesn't cause this behavior, which is especially strange).  I have written a small application that uses UiModeManager to artificially enter car mode, but doing that does not cause the issue to occur; aLogcat doesn't show anything interesting while the issue is actually happening.
I am running Apex Launcher instead of the default, but these notifications occur regardless of what's in the foreground (the first time it happened, Maps was running in navigation mode), and whether I have a Car Home-specific shell installed or not.

If you can't get it to happen with the UiModeManager, you might want to try doing a startActivity with the appropriate intent (if I read the docs right, you might use ACTIVITY_MAIN with CATEGORY_CAR_DOCK). That might trigger differently. (I was looking at http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Intent.html)

It's a built-in bug report feature.
http://rootzwiki.com/topic/16019-keeps-asking-me-to-email-bug-report/#entry410481

This is built into Android. It is a debugging tool that lets you send a bug report. It
  sends to you because you manually triggered it.
It is very easy to trigger it, even accidentally. If you press both volume buttons and the power button at the same time, it will vibrate once. Then it takes nearly a full minute before the phone vibrates three times and the bug report pops up. It also doesn't seem to keep processing when the phone is asleep, so if you accidentally do it when say checking the time or something, it will not show up until the next time you unlock your phone. It is easy to trigger and I have done it by accident quite a few times when either checking the time or taking a screenshot (it is pretty easy to press both volume keys accidentally when taking a screenshot).
You can disable the bug report function by going to /system/bin/ and deleting or renaming bugreport and bugmailer.sh, but I am not sure if this will affect the ability to send bug reports for other system apps. Then it won't happen anymore. It can also be disabled in the ROM code by the developer.

That makes perfect sense! The overly-tight design of the car dock is such that it's very easy to accidentally press the various side buttons in weird combinations, and maybe something about the way I sit in my car when I put it in the dock (vs. at my desk) makes the two-button trigger happen more readily.

Have you tried setting superuser to always prompt, then stick the phone into the dock? That's the first thing I'd try, because then Superuser at least should be asking you questions before allowing anything to happen, which should allow you to get a hint as to what's going on.

I will try that next, yes. The thing is that 'shell' is not granted blanket permissions to begin with, so I'm not sure how much of a difference that will make.

I'm hoping that by having superuser prompt for everything, you'll gain more clues.


text:
Problem connecting Nexus 7 as mass storage device on Windows 7
I have an Asus Nexus 7 tablet, and was trying to connecting it in MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) mode to my Samsung Series 5 laptop running Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium Edition. I have a bunch of Android development tools installed also, and typically have my devices connected using the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) driver.
When I first attempted to connect my Nexus 7 to my laptop to use in MTP mode, it simply refused to show up in Windows Explorer. Finally, I figured out that I had to uninstall the ADB device ("Android Phone") from Device Manager and then it would work correctly in MTP mode.
Any ideas why this is? Is MTP mode trumped by the ADB USB Driver?
Note: I always had USB Debugging disabled on the Nexus 7, so it wasn't that.

Although I'm surprised it didn't work in Windows 7 out of the box (it worked on my PC) there is a way to fix it.
Please open C:\Windows\inf\wpdmtp.inf in Notepad and add following
; Nexus 7
%GenericMTP.DeviceDesc%=MTP, USB\MS_COMP_MTP
%GenericMTP.DeviceDesc%=MTP, USB\VID_18D1&PID_4E42&MI_00

In two places - at the end of sections [Generic.NTx86] and [Generic.NTamd64]
This method will also work on Windows 7 after installing Windows Media Player 11.

your answer really helped me to resolve the MTP issue. It did not work at the beginning, because my PID was sligtly different, it is 4E41 and I had to remove the > &MI_00 from the end. Now my nexus works like a charm :P

I've had some trouble myself hooking up my nexus 7 with a windows 7 computer, even though I'd figure the device is new, Windows would be able to locate and download drivers itself.
Its probably some conflict between the two, have you tried first installing the ADB driver after installing the nexus 7 as an MTP device?


text:
Connect JUST as charging
With ICS my phone now ALWAYS mounts my SD card as an external drive when I plug it into a computer. Sometimes I just want power, especially if I am trying to play a game that's on my SD card.
Under the previous version I had the option to connect JUST for charging, without talking to the computer at all. Is there a way to get this functionality back w/ an ICS device?

That is highly dependent on the kernel and the type of battery driver that is used.

Answer
With Android 4.0 ICS, charge only mode is no longer available.
Unfortunately there's no app to deal with this issue AFAIK.
You can try, but I believe that this isn't possible with your phone, but for future readers, placing the phone in "media transfer mode", allows access to SD cards on both phone and computer.

Further into this matter
One can always disable the "automount" feature from the host OS:
Windows 7

Click "start";
At the search box type "autoplay";
Select "AutoPlay" from the search results list, should be under "Control Panel";
Find the "Mixed content" option and select "take no action" from the selectbox.
This will effectively disable Automount for devices like mobile phones. By my tests, the phone doesn't ask to "turn on USB storage" either.

Ubuntu

Using GUI:

Access the "Software Center";
Search for "dconf editor";
Install and after, open it;
Navigate to "org" -> "gnome" -> "desktop" -> "media-handling";
Un-tick "automount" and "automount-open".

Using Command Line:

Open the terminal;
Type gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.media-handling automount false.
Use true to enable it again.

You can plug the phone in and charge it using a powered USB hub that's not connected to a computer, this will just charge without mounting drives.
It sounds like something you probably won't have handy, but have a look at your PC's screen. Many modern screens have powered USB sockets, but aren't actually connected to the PC (unless you plug a second USB A->B cable between the screen and PC which many people never do).
I charge my phone at work this way by plugging it into the screen, as we're not allowed to plug un-approved USB devices into our PCs (and if we do they're actively blocked).

From your home screen go to your settings. Depending on the phone ( I have the HTC EVO Design 4G for Boost Mobile) you should see an option for "Connect to PC". Select this option and you should see two things. The first is "Default Connection Type" and the second is "Ask me". Ask me will have a box beside that you would check. Once checked and you exit back tothe home screen any time you connect to your PC itwill bring up the prompt again.

AFAIK, that configuration is only available on HTC Sense devices.


text:
Connect to laptop's localhost websites
is it possible for me to connect to http://localhost websites on my laptop from my phone without any internet connection?
Phone is Samsung Galaxy W. Laptop Acer with Windows 7.
The server I'm using on the laptop is XAMPP at the moment, but this can be changed if another program is easier.
Basically, I want to connect to my laptop server from the phone without router or internet connection.
I know the phone is supposed to have hotspot functionality, does this work without internet (just bought it so I don't know much about it yet)?

One solution to your problem probably is Reverse Tether:

Other than your hotspot functionality (which lets you use your phones Internet connection with other devices via Wifi), this allows you to use your computers network via USB, as the screenshots imply. Thus your phone gets a (configurable) IP address (pic1: "Desired IP") matching your computers (pic1: "Gateway IP"; it is important that both are part of the same subnet), and then you can access your computers web services from your Android device as described before (using the computer's IP).
Drawback: This solution requires your device to be rooted. I will check further, maybe I find a similar solution not requiring root, and then will update my answer with that new information.
UPDATE:
If your computer is equipped with Wifi, an "adhoc connection" could also provide a solution. You might want to take a look at the question How to connect android wifi to adhoc wifi? for details on this. And there is a brand new article just published today at PC Advisor: Connect Android phone to Ad Hoc network, which might be even more helpful to you.

That adhoc network thing looks just like what I was looking for. Will look into it thanks alot.

Glad I was able to help! Would be nice if you also could add your results on adhoc here, once your reached them ;)

Assuming the phone and your laptop are on the same network AND the web server is listening on the right ports, you should be able to just use the local IP of your laptop.
http://192.168.1.100/ (or whatever the IP address happens to be)

Okay, I don't need a router for them to be on the same network right?

Well, I expect you would. My answer assumes that you're using the phone on your home wifi network. If not, you'll need to punch holes in your firewall to access your laptop from the Internet.

If the OP requires access to http://localhost/ (as the special service is bound to localhost -- i.e. 127.0.0.1), another IP address won't help. @hustlerinc, maybe you give some more details on what you want to achieve: What kind of localhost service etc., and if you can only reach it on http://localhost or also on your computers other IP address (execute ipconfig on a command prompt to find out your IP addresses).

@Izzy It looks like the OP is running a webserver on their laptop, which they wish to access from another machine (a phone) on their LAN. In this case, accessing http://laptop-ip/ should be sufficient; if firewalls permit. Although, it might be questionable whether they actually have a LAN set up?

Yeah, w3d assumed right, only that I'm not using router or LAN. I would like to setup this connection on the run, wherever I am (to be able to test my browser games on the phone without downloading). And I added some info in the post.

@hustlerinc OK, got it. You will find my answer in a few minutes.

@hustlerinc: You don't need a router to access the laptop, as long as you laptop have an IP address that is accessible by the phone and you have configured your web server to serve correct virtual host and your software firewall are not refusing externally initiated connection to that port.

Can be done through a bluetooth PAN network using the internet sharing feature on smartphone. As soon as both belong in same PAN network, smartphone can navigate host's web server.


text:
How can I undo the "Do Not Ask Again" for bluetooth contacts?
When I first connected my phone (Samsung Galaxy S II) to a bluetooth device, I was prompted that the device wanted to access my contacts.
I mistakenly clicked Do Not Ask Again but I want to undo that. Is there a way to do this?
I'm running ice cream sandwich.

I'm not sure as I have no BT devices in use -- but most likely you should find something in the settings at "Wireless & Networking -> Bluetooth-Settings". At the end of that screen there's a section named "Bluetooth devices" -- here your other BT-Device should be listed. As a last resort, you could simply remove it from the list -- which will require you to repeat the pairing process.

Izzy, I did try that, unfortunately with no luck. I'm thinking I might have set that to be a permanent setting for all devices. I'll try again though - maybe I didn't fully remove it. Thanks!

Jeff, I doubt such a global setting exists (to make that default for all devices), as that would be too dangerous from a security standpoint. But check all items in that menu, it's the first place to look for -- and it shouldn't require a factory reset ;). If I happen to find a second possible place, I'll try to update it here.

Try putting the device in discovery mode before you sync it on your phone. I ran into the same issue and that is how I resolve it.

Another way is, go to

Settings -> Apps
slide to "All" category and choose "Bluetooth Share"
scroll down a bit, click "clear defaults"

This way you can reset any "do not ask me again" or "use this as default" of any app.


text:
Do some running apps not show in Task Manager?
I was using the Navigator app and I was still hearing voice directions even though Task Manager showed no apps running. How can Task Manager show no apps and there could be an app still running?

Not sure which task manager you are using -- but some devices/Android versions distinguish running apps from services. On my Droid2 running Gingerbread, I find running apps at Apps->Apps in the "Running" Tab, while services show up at Apps->Active Services. Parts of Google Maps (which is the navigation app you probably refer to) are implemented as services, as e.g. the "location service" which keeps checking your GPS or Wifi based location in the background. I never used navigation itself, but I imagine this is handled similarly.

I am using the Task Manager which comes with the Galaxy Note

So the above should apply (I don't have a Galaxy Note to check, but I guess it is the stock TM there as well, not a 3rd party one). Did you check and find that second place for services, and does that answer your question?

I found the services area.


text:
Use Android Phone like an iPod Touch (without SIM)
I'm using a Motorola Atrix 2 for testing at work, don't want to use my SIM with it.
When I startup the phone I get an emergency calls only page and I can't get past it.
I have had a look at this very related question:
Can I use a Motorola Atrix without a SIM card?
but I seem to have a different experience than the suggested solution says I should.
When I try to boot with the volume down button pressed down and then press the volume down button again, I never end up seeing "Boot Android (NO BP)". The top of my screen only ever says "AP Fastboot Flash Mode (S)". Any suggestions?

I don't have a Motorola Atrix 2 at hand, but as far my memory goes, you can go past the
"No SIM/Emergency Dial Only" screen if you boot the phone while holding the camera button pressed.


text:
USB synchronization security issues
I've got an Android phone. I have just reset it to its factory default settings and set a password for unlocking the phone. However, even when it is locked and the screen displays a text box with a text entry keyboard, hooking the phone via USB to Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS out of the box causes a popup to show up above the password request screen, which allows you to confirm the mounting of the phone's SD Card onto the filesystem in location /mount/328D-1EEE . Of course, the SD card could be removed from the phone and read using a card reader anyways, so perhaps this isn't as much of a security concern.
On the other hand, is it possible to read and transfer files to and from the phone's "internal, rather than external, memory", and to and from that little bit of space that is present on the phone's SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card? If yes, then is this possible by mounting the internal memory or SIM card onto the Linux /media directory? I don't see these ones automount when I connect the USB cable, so I'm wondering if there is a way to do it manually.

What memory is offered on USB-Plug differs between devices. Most of them offer the external SD-Card (if present), some the internal eMMC card. Some even seem to offer a virtual CDRom drive (probably containing some device-specific stuff like drivers). But I've never heard of any giving access to the SIM this way, or even to system ressources. Of course, at least the latter is possible using 3rd party utilities (see Zuul's answer for an example). But access to the SIM should be almost impossible this way.
This all applies to Android up to Gingerbread. Starting with ICS (4.x), things become a bit different as UMS (USB mass storage) support was swapped in favour of MTP (Media transfer protocol). But basically, above said should still be true as to what is possible to access and what is not.

ICS still supports UMS. The determining factor for UMS vs MTP is the design of the device, not the OS: http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/11/18/impromptu-qa-session-with-android-engineer-dan-morrill-brings-to-light-reasons-behind-galaxy-nexus-lack-of-usb-mass-storage/

Thanks a lot for the link, @eldarerathis -- I'm off now for reading... ;)

FTPServer
It's available from Google Play Store free of charge. I'm able to connect to my phone from Windows, Linux and MAC, visualize my entire device contents performing download and upload operations. The best part is, you don't need to use USB.
Just set the mount point (default dir) to / and you're good to go.
Note: Some operations require ROOT as to fully manipulate files, like system files.

Features:

UTF-8 support
Restrict connections to selected wireless networks
Access while on 3G (if supported by the mobile network)
Restrict access to specific folder
Verbose log output to trace connections/access and help in error solving
Remote shutdown with custom ("SITE SHUTDOWN" command)

Screen Shots:


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Is there a way to log into and root my device without using ADB?
With the Android SDK it is possible to run the "adb shell" command to shell into an Android device plugged in via USB. I would like to know:

Is there another way to log into an Android device and gain root access
to all its files and folders without having to install the Android SDK,
for instance using Putty somehow once the device is connected via Wi-Fi
to a router on a common network?
On Unix there is a program called "last" allowing you to see the most
recent logins and the associated times. Is there a similar utility
that can be run on Android once root access is gained that would
allow you to view the most recent times when the device was used
or unlocked?

These seem to be rather unrelated questions. You may want to consider separating them into separate posts. Also note that your rooting options are very much dependent on the device you own and its currently installed firmware (although for the particular scenario you seem to be describing I believe the answer is "No", there are other ways that don't require ADB).

@JohnGoche I answered your first question below. As eldarerathis already suggested, so do I: Please separate your second question.

regarding the 2nd question: This is most probably up to the app only. There's no virtual tty you use or anything as it's a phone/tablet OS where all is stripped down.

There are several ways to achieve root access on an Android device -- and they differ a lot, depending on manufacturer, device, Android version, and even Linux kernel version running. Unfortunately, devices don't ship with "root" accounts (as we are used to from our desktops and laptops) -- but there's no common way to "root" them.
Rooting is mostly done via Exploits. Some require ADB installed and an USB-Session established. Others do not require ADB. And again others ship as a single .apk to be copied to the device and started there (so-called "one click root"). And again another method might involve a custom recovery being flashed...
So many methods. But to explain them all in detail, this is not the right place -- while your question should be answered already, as it required only a "yes" or "no" :)


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Reduce message textbox size
I have ICS on my Samsung Galaxy S2 using the stock messaging app. When unlocking the phone after getting a new message, I'm taken straight to the message itself. This is good. However, it seems to go straight to "reply-mode", in that the text box and keypad take up most of the screen and I can't actually read the message itself, maybe just the last 2 lines of it.
Is there anyway to not go straight to "reply-mode", just to "read the message mode"? Or at least reduce the size of the textbox back to 1 line like it was in Gingerbread?


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Can I set a default address in the "To:" header for outgoing mails in the EMail app?
On my phone I mostly send emails to myself and I'd like to save the few clicks from selecting a recipient.
Is there a way to prepopulate the "To:" field with my address?
Or any other email client which supports this? It has to support Hotmail.

If you ever tear yourself away from Hotmail and start using Gmail, the "note to self" voice command does this.

You could create a shortcut on your home screen to your Contact info.
First make sure you've got an entry for yourself in your Contacts with your email address (not the "Me" Contact, but an extra one).
Then go into your Applications screen, tap the Widgets tab at the top, find either the 4x1 or 1x1 "Contact" widget and add that to an empty spot on your Home screen, when prompted find your Contact in the list.
Now when you want to create a new email just tap your Contact icon on the Home screen, tap the EMail icon and it should open up a new email, with your email pre-populated in the To box.

I know it's a workaround, but I frequently use SelfMail, which adds itself to the pretty-much-universal "Share" action. As an example, open a picture, select Share, and pick it from the list.

You could just save drafts (with GMail), no need to send the massage at all.

or

You do not need to use the "To:" header to send yourself mail at all but instead can send email to a `default-BCC field and leave the "To:" empty.

K9 allows this:

+1 for saving as drafts.  As soon as the message is saved, it immediately becomes available on all GMail clients (web, Android, etc.)  Works great with attachments as well.


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Show battery percentage on Nexus 7 (Jelly Bean)
Is there a (preferably built-in) way to show the remaining battery percentage in the status bar on the Nexus 7 (4.1.1)?

Jelly Bean
Unfortunately, there is no setting that you can enable to show battery percentage on the system icons tray. Without using an app, all you have is:

Battery indicator on the top right corner of your screen.
Access to the battery settings, level and usage details:
Go to: Settings > Device > Battery

App
Using the Battery app by MacroPinch available from Google Play Store, you are able to get the percentage on your status bar:


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Headphone Volume buttons do not work
I have the V-Moda Crossfade LP headphones, which have convenient volume buttons. They work great on my iPhone, but on my Nexus 7 they seem to have no effect. They even work on Windows XP, 7, and Mac. How can I make them work on Android too?

Short answer
Unfortunately, the answer is that you can't make it work. (at least, not without modding your Nexus 7)
Long answer
As jeff says in his comment:

I can confirm unlike some other android devices I have used standard volume control headphones that work with iPhones and many other mobile devices, including android do not work on the Nexus 7. This is a hardware issue as far as I can tell

According to the Crossfade LP product page, the volume controls are only for apple devices:

Universal Compatibility and Microphone Communication
  LP comes with 2 cables for universal compatibility with all modern mobile and audio devices. The 3-Button remote microphone cable is designed for the latest Apple devices, including iPhone®,iPad®, iPod®, and Macbook series. The long audio-only cable and 1/4" adapter is universally compatible with all audio devices and professional equipment. (Emphasis mine)

In order to understand how these headphone volume controls work, I asked about this over on Electrical Engineering stack exchange, and it appears that this relies on the switches presenting a fixed resistance between the ground and the microphone input. Thus this technique requires (at a minimum) a 4 pole (TRRS) jack, rather than a standard 3 pole (TRS) jack as is used in the Nexus 7.
Note while that the Asus Nexus 7 spec suggests that it has a Headset Jack (i.e. headphone and microphone), Google have confirmed to at least one person that this is incorrect, and the Nexus 7 only has a headphone jack.
As such, the volume controls are not intended to work with ordinary headphone sockets such as the one on the Nexus 7.
I'm not sure how you got it to work with Windows XP/7 unless the headphone socket on your windows machine was also a headset jack and also supported this volume control technology (or you are running them virtualised on a Macbook, in which case OS-X will be taking care of it for you).

I'm pretty sure I had it working on my old XP desktop. However I threw it out so can't test now...

I can confirm unlike some other android devices I have used standard volume control headphones that work with iPhones and many other mobile devices, including android do not work on the Nexus 7. This is a hardware issue as far as I can tell

I'm having this issue with my Nexus 5. Is this the same cause? I'm surprised a modern phone line Nexus 5 can't use this.

@Frantumn Almost certainly a different issue. The volume buttons require a mic signal from a headset jack, the Nexus 7 (2012) only has a headphone jack (TRS). It would be crazy for the Nexus 5 not to have a headset jack (TRRS) as it's a phone.

It works with the mic, my headphones have a mic as well, but the volume buttons do nothing. Only the action button works to change songs etc.

As I say @Frantumn you have a different issue, yours is nothing to do with this issue.


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How to I upgrade my Galaxy Fit from 2.2 to 2.3 using Ubuntu?

Possible Duplicate:
How do I upgrade firmware on my Samsung Galaxy S without using windows?
How do I update the OS on my device?

I have a Samsung Galaxy Fit (GT-S5670) running Android 2.2.1. I'm trying to upgrade it to 2.3 on an Ubuntu machine.
I tried to run Samsung Kies using Wine, and below is the output I got:
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"thillaiselvan" (nil) 0x32c264 (nil) 0x32c268 0x32c25c - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"thillaiselvan" 0x1449b8 0x32c264 0x14d270 0x32c268 0x32c25c - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"thillaiselvan" (nil) 0x32c264 (nil) 0x32c268 0x32c25c - stub
fixme:advapi:LookupAccountNameW (null) L"thillaiselvan" 0x152638 0x32c264 0x150b18 0x32c268 0x32c25c - stub

Then Kies stopped. What is the problem here?

I would recommend running Kies on a Windows machine, it's buggy enough as is, running it on Wine is going to be VERY painful.

The process is explained pretty well on Samsung's official page, found here. Just download Kies, install it, plug in your phone, wait for it to be recognized and upgrade.

hi once downloaded the kies, will it be automatically get installed or any manual works are there

Just run the installer, it will install Kies and should install the drivers too. Then run Kies and plug your phone in, it should be recognized automatically.


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How to partial sync Dropbox contents to my device?
Is it possible to sync only some folders of Dropbox?
I have 5GB+ files on Dropbox cloud, but only want a few folders to be synced to my Galaxy Tab 7.7.

When were you able to do full sync with official Dropbox app??

Like Sachin implied: as far as I know, the Dropbox app doesn't automatically sync the contents of any files except those that you mark as being a "favorite".

Yes there's a way. It's called Foldersync. It allows you to set up folder pairs to sync and the full version even allows you to sync on changes. It also supports several other cloud services.

You could use a different account for the phone, and just share the folders you want to sync to the phone account.
15 Oct
Saw a down-vote, so perhaps it was not clear.
It is quite easy to share files between Dropbox accounts.
Of course this is only relevant if you use a DropBox app that doesn't allow selective syncing.
(There are many DropBox apps)

I have a Galaxy Tablet (GT-N8013). In the dropbox application, you can 'star' specific files or folders to download to your device. This is useful if your tablet will be offline (no wifi) for a period of time. Changes that you make to the document on the tablet will be saved to your dropbox folder,and when you re-connect to the internet will become available almost immediately.
If you are going to be somewhere that has wifi, the dropbox folder allows you to open the documents from dropbox, use them, make changes or notes, and save back to dropbox. This makes it very easy to take documents to meetings via the tablet using the dropbox folder.

In the Dropbox app, you can press and hold a file, then choose "Favorite". This will store it locally and make it available for offline access.
The option is not available for folders, so if you want access to a new file you'll need to sync, then mark each new file for download.
Jeepers, though, they didn't make this easy to find!!


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How do I semi-automatically guess Wifi passwords?
In some travel destinations, free wireless APs with simple WEP or WPA PSK passwords are common place. Every hotel, cafe, and so on has one. However, language barriers can make it difficult to communicate the password. Common mistakes include "A" vs. "a", "y" vs. "i", "c" vs. "z", "1" vs. "7", "O" (letter) vs. "0" (number). Frequently, you'll find travellers guessing and discussing passwords. Is there are more efficient solution than manual trial-and-error?
I'm looking for an app or other solution, that

saves the hassle of retyping the same password and variations thereof by remembering previous guesses,
gives faster, better feedback if the connection with the current password fails (weak signal or wrong password?),
can efficiently try a number of passwords (variations of the password I entered or default passwords from a dictionary).

I'm not interested in cracking a network with strong security. I want to  get connected quickly if the waiter tells me "It's just oh, one, two, a, be, zee" while he's on his way to the next table. An efficient WEP or WPA2 cracker would get the job done, but for this purpose it's not required to crack strong passwords.

Please note that questions asking "is there an app that does X" are not a good fit for this site. Please review the [FAQ]. However, if you can transform this question into a "how do I do X" it has a much better chance of staying around.

What's wrong with just asking the staff to write it down?

EDIT:
There's now a project that got monitor mode working on the Galaxy S2 and the Google Nexus One.
See http://bcmon.blogspot.de/
As far as I know there's currently no WEP/WPA cracking app. The fact Android is open and Linux based would allow this basically, however most (all?) wifi chipset drivers don't allow the necessary monitor mode and solutions would be tied to single makes/models with supported chipsets. Using known working USB wifi adapters with OTG ready devices would allow to circumvent this restriction but there has not been a project to do so yet. Update: There's  some effort by the author of Kismet.
This is not covering your question but is somewhat related:
You might however have luck using these 2 tools (root required):
Element53 and ProxyDroid
Background:
Many paid access points allow DNS resolution. Element53 is a TCP-over-DNS tunnel app (DNS has port 53, hence the name) to exploit this. The free version has 10MB traffic limit, here's the explanation from the Google Play:

Element53, the DNS tunnel for Android.
Element53 is a ready-to-use DNS-tunnel for Android. It can be used for
  penetration testing (other uses are not supported).

This sounds like a nice tool to steel Wifi from paid APs requiring login/payment via s captive portal (HTTP intersecting proxy). However, it does not answer my question.

@Jan Your question is essentially the same as "How can I crack a WiFi Ap? "  Efficiently try to number of passwords = brute forcing.


text:
Where can I check how much Internet bandwidth did my HTC Desire use?
A newb question, as I just received my wife's HTC Desire: Where can I check how much bandwidth it uses (or used during certain time period)? Her contract only includes 500MB a month, so she needs to be able to monitor this.

For what it's worth, this is built into Android 4.x.

@AlEverett, I was surprised I couldn't find it in the older version of the system. Seems really basic functionality with current cost/availability of unlimited data contracts.

If I recall, there were some carrier/manufacturer customizations that did include something similar, but very few. After all, it's in the carrier's best interest if you go over your limit.

Mentioned 3G Watchdog probably is the best choice. Alternatively, you might want to take a look at...

NetCounter
Traffic Counter Extended
Mobile Counter
Net Traffic Counter

...which also cover your needs. Might be you like one of them more :)
Talking about more, I obviously missed...

Traffic Monitor
Traffic Monitor (same name -- other app; this one goes as deep as on per-app stats)

Have a look at 3G Watchdog. You can add a homescreen widget, and even disable 3G once you get to a predefined limit.

Seconded. very nice app.

Really surprised this wasn't posted already, but check out My Data Manager.
I am very happy with it! It has a notification view of data used on both network and wifi that only shows when you expand the bar (so it's not annoying).
It has support for how much data your plan is for, when your bill comes, and has great graphs of each application's usage, and even time running!

Onavo has generally been well received, both on iOS and Android. It has widgets and some fairly nicely drawn bar graphs to make the data easier to digest.
You can also pair it with their other offering, Onavo Extend, which will compress your requests and route them through a proxy server in order to save bandwidth (similar concept as Opera Mini). It's worth noting, though, that if you're truly concerned about privacy issues then you may want to steer clear of Extend, as all of your data will pass through Onavo's servers (though they say they don't monitor/collect it, of course). They claim up to 5x compression rates.

Reto Meier did a talk during last Google I/O where he spoke about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwC1OlJo5VM
Watch around 25 minutes.
He suggested:

Logcat logging
ARO tool from AT&T
Network Statistics in DDMS

Right. Anything that's feasible for an average user? Even I wouldn't use any of these.

I am looking for some software that would automate these...


text:
Unable to view videos - Message: "sorry, video cannot be played"
I have a strange issue. I have downloaded some WMV files on my Android to watch them while offline. I watched some of them and now all of a sudden I see "sorry, video cannot be played". None of the videos work any more, not even the ones I watched.
How can I fix this? Please don't suggest WMV players. It worked, now it no longer works and I want to fix it. Reboot didn't help either.
Any clues?
(HTC Wildfire S)

Have you installed an OS upgrade recently?  Downloaded any new video apps?

No, as far as I know nothing changed

Though you say "nothing changed", maybe your video player app got a "silent update" (can happen if you have your playstore app configured to allow auto-updates, so you might not have noticed). So it might be worth checking with a different app which explicitly states WMV support -- at least you then can tell whether its the app's fault, or your files "got broken".

You could try to clear the app data of the videoplayer app and see if this works. Although you don't want suggestions for other players: Is this problem tied only to the default player or do other apps also have problems with those wmv files?

This happened to me a month or so ago. I gave up and used a 3rd party player instead but it would be a real treat if there's actually a fix for this.

Sometimes, it because you are not downloaded the full video file.The video is 4:15, your done downloaded just 2:45 so it will displayed "sorry,this video cannot being played" at the end of 2:45.
Another cause is the type of your videos sometime are not supported or you have a corrupted video file.Did you have try send the video to another phone and pc and try to view the videos on your pc?

I had this problem with videos that used to play and then simply don't anymore.  It's not your video player or the video format, its something screwy with Android's file system.
Solution:
Download Rescan Media app from Google Play store.  Install and run, but do not enable the auto-close feature; just run it then minimize.  Your files should play now.

! discovered MP4 videos from an external sources sometimes have too high of resolution.  You need a converter (many free versions on-line) to reduce the size to an acceptable size.

Wait for the next update, or download VLC Player in the meantime.


text:
Disable 4.1.1 camera slide effect
I've noticed since the 4.1.1 update that every time a photo is taken there's this very distracting slide effect that transitions the photo you've just snapped off the screen, replacing it with the live view.
Is there any way to disable this?

The new animation added to Jelly Bean camera app when photos are being taken, acts as a visual hint at a new swipe gesture that's been added.
The idea is to make the user aware that swiping to the left at any time, they are able to scroll through all the photos taken:

When taking a photo, a new animation sweeps your photo off the screen. There is now a new paging animation when swiping between photos.

Android 4.1, Jelly Bean - Camera and Gallery (scroll down till this title)
From that location, the user can rotate, crop, share, just like in the gallery app.
As already mentioned by jlehenbauer, it's a feature and cannot be removed.

Here a YouTube video about this: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Camera app

I believe this is a "feature" of the new Jelly Bean camera. You probably won't be able to change it without resorting to using another camera app (like Camera Zoom FX) or installing a custom ROM.


text:
How can I root my Samsung Galaxy S3? Should I defer the system update?
I pre-ordered a Verizon SGS3, and it shipped to me before it was even available in stores. Since then I have not updated any programs that were Verizon-related.
If at some point I want to root my phone, does it then make sense to not update these programs? I have heard that in the past, certain over-the-air updates have closed holes which are used to root. Is this the case so far with this phone?

Hi Jaidi. Welcome to Android.SE. Perhaps, you can have a look at other questions related to your S3 rooting issue

Update: Verizon's Galaxy S3 is locked and cannot as of now be rooted or updated to a custom firmware. See this XDA thread.
As far as I know there are no current pending security holes that can be exploited by circulating rooting apps at the moment.
Samsung does however not lock its phones if you buy them directly from them, i.e. you are free to install aftermarket firmware or modify the existing firmware via Odin quite easily (without having to hack/exploit/etc. anything). Some carriers, including Verizon however do indeed lock it.
If you have an unlocked S3 or as soon there's an exploit for the locked booloader:
CF-Root by Chainfire supports rooting stock firmwares of the S3 models GT-I9300 and GT-I9300T so far in a very easy way. It does not depend on an root exploit but rather modifies the system partition in another way that cannot be closed by a firmware OTA update. Just see the above referred blog post and the linked XDA forum thread  in there for more info.

I would recommend Heimdall over Odin.

I have also always used heimdall. CF-root requires Odin though, that's why I didn't include it here.

I think I read that the Verizon flavor of the SGS3 has a locked bootloader -- is that the same "lock" that you are referring to?

Yes, wasn't sure about that. If this is true: Sad.

So, in this instance, I might need some sort of "root exploit" to achieve root?

Seems like you're out of luck with Verizon's S3, according to XDA it's locked and that will not change. There's no exploit yet.

Step 1

Hold down Volume Down, Home Center, and Power buttons together for about 20 seconds until your phone resets and shows you an option to get into download mode.

Step 2

Next hit Volume Up button to enter download mode.

Step 3

Once in Download mode, you can connect your micro-USB cable from your Galaxy S3 to your computer.

Step 4

Next, download GalaxyS3Root.zip and unzip

Step 5

Next, make sure you have drivers installed, you should see “Samsung Mobile USB CDC Composite Device” in Device Manager.  If you don’t, simply download Samsung Kies and install it.  (Then unplug, plug the micro-USB cable.)

Step 6

Double-click on odin3 v1.85.exe file to start ODIN.  You should see a yellow highlighted box with a COM number.  The number doesn’t matter just so long as you see a yellow box.  If you don’t see yellow box, your drivers are not installed correctly OR try killing Kies in Task Manager as sometimes it can interfere.

Step 7

Choose “PDA” and choose “CF-Root-SGS3-v6.1.tar” file in GalaxyS3Root folder.  Then hit “Start”.

Step 8

In about 10 seconds, your phone will reboot and give you ClockworkMod Recovery and full root.

Step 9

You will get a “PASS!” if everything went correctly.

Step 10

Your phone will automatically reboot into ClockworkMod Recovery and install root/Superuser files.

Step 11

Once your phone reboots, you will find “SuperSU” app, which is the Superuser app.

Step 12

You can verify you have root by running a rooted app such as Titanium Backup app, you will see Superuser request window pop up.  Hit “Grant” everytime you see this.

Step 13

You can now get into ClockworkMod Recovery anytime by holding down Volume Up, Center Home, and Power button together for 20 seconds.

NOTE:I'm not responsible if you mess up your phone. Make sure you know what you are doing before following any instructions. Go here .Just read it.


text:
How do I avoid the server-specified security policies for my work e-mail?
When I signed into my e-mail for work (we're on Microsoft Exchange) there were a number of server-specified security policies (See below) How do I avoid these?:

I just received a Nexus 7 and signed into my work's exchange server. When I did so I told me that the server was requiring some security settings. I don't really like those. Especially the one (not really mentioned in the image) which disables NFC which I wish to use for Google Wallet.

So my question could be answered by:

A non-rooting method to disable these settings;
A different app which would allow me to still connect to the server but not enforce these security settings;
Anything else which I may be missing.

I remember I found a modified email APK file, or at least the instructions to build it yourself. I just need to find it again!

It is good to find workarounds to these problems, but it may also be a violation of company policies. So, exercise caution. At the worst case, it may warrant dismissal, especially if confidential data gets into the wrong hands.

The message says that various settings can be controlled, not that they necessarily are. Most admins hopefully wouldn't be so power-hungry to bother disabling NFC or Bluetooth, so you prob would find that they would continue to work anyway.

And for those who come here through Google and won't balk at the rooting option, here it is

A co-worker said he found a work-around with this app: Moxier Mail. I'm using the trial right now and I like it a lot. I really like that it lets me separate my work from the rest of my tablet. It also doesn't fall under the security requirements. It does require a pin for the app itself and there are useful widgets. All-in-all it seems even better than the built-in E-mail app. The full version's expensive, but my co-worker says it's worth it.

As of 5/27/2015, the link to the app is broken

First off, talk to your Exchange administrators.  See if they deliberately are setting the mobile device security settings so tightly.  I would have a discussion with them to see if they can loosen up the security settings.
If you only want email you could try K-9 from the app store.  It uses IMAP to get the mail from the server so your exchange server will have to have that turned on.

I highly recommend MailWise. It has an Exchange override that allows you to turn off the server's influence over your device. Use it at your own risk (your employer may get whiny about it) but I can say it does work very well.
In order to use the Exchange Security Bypass, you'll need to go to MailWise's FAQ and follow the instructions. You basically just select the override option in a settings menu, enter in a code (supplied on the FAQ) and re-enter your Exchange mail information. Don't bother making a work account in MailWise until you do this, as doing it deletes the old account and requires you to make a new one.
Once this is done, you have total control again and your work admin can't force certain security measures on YOUR device.

Here it is the modified Email.apk. (This is for Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.1 Only! )
This tool bypasses security restrictions (the client claims it will enforce the hard reset policies but it won't in fact).
Please use it with extreme caution. There is a specific reason why an administrator configures such a policy, and I would recommend it to everyone. If your phone gets stolen nobody will be able to read your company's email, which is a secret. Lots of industrial accidents occurred because employees lost their mobile devices (laptops included) with sensitive data not protected enough.
If you fear that a misconfiguration will someday format your device, backup is your best option!

Note that this Email.apk is only for a specific version of the OS on a specific device, and will not work for all devices.

I know of three alternative mail/calendar/contacts apps that can get you around the Exchange security policies assuming that you cannot have the policies turned off and you do not have IMAP/SMTP access:

Microsoft Outlook for iOS/Android (free) - I personally use this for all of my email accounts now and love it. It has cloud storage support (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). It even makes contact groups in the official contacts system! This way you can still have people show up as contacts in other apps even when you're not using the built-in system for contact accounts. It's not that advanced as far as functionality goes, but it's fantastic for the money (free) and battery life.
Boxer (free for 1 non-Exchange account, pay for multiple accounts and Exchange support) - I have some friends that have this and adore it. They constantly want me to switch to it. The calendar is in a separate companion app that is definitely appealing. This does not bypass the security policies.
TouchDown (trial, paid) - I tried this one until the trial ran out. It's very feature-rich, but it was a little slow for me and looks kind of old. I didn't end up buying it.
Mail Wise (free) - I didn't like this one because of its privacy policy. It also didn't bypass the Exchange policies at the time, but it looks like that have that feature now.
CloudMagic (free) - I tried this one a while ago, but I forget what I didn't like about it.

You can set up an Inbox Rule to redirect or forward you messages in the form of an MMS message to get notifications and then look at the full message later in OWA from the mobile browser. I did not like the "send a text message" Inbox Rule because it would cut off the message and not show all of the data about it, so I set it to forward the message to my phone number's email address. This depends on your carrier (i.e. 5551234567@tmomail.net for T-Mobile or 5551234567@vtext.com for Verizion).

How do You do it in Outlook?

Outlook doesn't require the same permissions as the native app anymore (it used to), so using the official Outlook app worked for me.  It took me to my organization's sign-on portal.

I wouldn't bet a non-root procedure exists to bypass Android server-enforced security policies. Even for rooted phones the procedure involves patching or directly replacing the existing email client (Email.apk), which isn't anything one could do without root privileges.
Anyway, extreme care must be taken as bypassing security checks you may not just be turning your device more vulnerable and yet most important, likely compromising the data it stores, but may as well be violating your working contract/Code of Conduct by doing so.

You might want to try TouchDown (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nitrodesk.honey.nitroid&hl=en) It is not a free app, but it does work perfectly with my work email and calendar (ActiveSync) without enforcing those extremely restrictive security settings.

I use this app, but it still requires security policy. May I ask how you set it so that TouchDown does not set a security policy?

What I meant is that it does not enforce the security settings on the device. Password requirements etc. still apply for the TouchDown app itself.

(Pardon the extremely late comment...) Touchdown is great IMO because it enforces the security policies on itself. A remote wipe will wipe all the data touchdown has, but leave your phone intact. Which is really how it should be, IMO.

Although this question was asked 8 years ago, the problem still exists, and none of the answers given above still work properly (at least for me they didn't).
I've been using TouchDown and MailWise for quite some time in the past, but then they started glitching and I didn't get notified of new emails correctly, and access to my inbox would take several minutes of loading screen. I also tried the Exchained app, but that almost grilled my Pixel 5.
By now I've switched to Nine app, which complies with the admin security requirements just on app level and not on device level (I mainly don't want to change my device security settings, and I absolutely don't want to give the IT morons from my company the power to wipe my phone).
The drawback is you have to enter a 4 digit pin each time you open the app, but the upside is that apart from that small inconvenience it works really well.
It took me several hours and going through multiple apps to find this, so I thought I'd share it here if anyone else still has that problem.

I had some luck with Enhanced Email. It does exactly what you are looking for - it lets you override the security setting enforced by your admin. It worked with exchange 2003, but I haven't tested with exchange 2010 or 2013. I got the application for free from the Amazon app store a while ago and it is been working fine on my GS3 phone.

I cant see this option in enhanced mail. Can you ellaborate?

Another option is to use the Exchained app. This allows you to keep using Android native mail clients, including gmail, bypassing exchange policies and working from Android 4 to Android 7.1

It would be helpful to link to the application.

Unfortunately, it requires an unsecured local connection. Meaning that if another app you have runs and grabs the port you configured for it first, it would be able to harvest your Exchange password.

I can't suggest Nine Mail enough. It won't let you bypass your exchange security policies completely, but it sandboxes your email so that you don't have to give your exchange administrator complete control of your device. i.e. PIN is only enforced on the email app, they can only wipe your email app not the entire device, etc... It is packed full of features and has a great UI.
No affiliation to application at all. Just someone who has used Enhanced Email, hacked apks, and everything else to prevent my work exchange admins from having total control of my device. This is the best solution I've found.
Google Play Link
Nine Website

I found best option to be gmail, add your account as exchange. In addition to mails, you get contacts integration too

As of Nougat 7.0 on 29 Nov 2016, Gmail requires the same remote access (remote wipe, for example) as Microsoft Outlook when adding as an Exchange account. Add as an "other" account instead to just use IMAP.


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Migrating SMSes from Windows Mobile to Android phone
I want to migrate all my SMSs from WinMo to Android.
I currently use PIM Backup to make a backup in case WinMo gets hard resetted, and it works fine. I have complete history of received and sent messages. I tried SMS Exporter but it looked like the XML file doesn't contain sent SMS (bad!!)
I tried Sprite Backup: it generates a good EXE file with possibly all the messages it in, but I couldn't restore it by copying the generated files into Android SD card and opening Sprite Backup for Android, since it listed no backup file available in SD.
I also read about Sprite Migrate from a 2010 blog post, but I see no more traces of it.
What can I do to migrate SMSs? Contacts are no problem: I'll use LocalSync for Windows

I guess this article was made for you: Import/Export/Move SMS Messages from Windows Mobile to Android. It mentions several tools to export your SMS from WinMo to an XML file, which then can be imported on your Android device without involving 3rd party tools. It also links to more useful articles on this topic.
EDIT:
As the OP commented, he was successfully using the Piemaster.NET guide mentioned on the page I originally linked. As suggested, I add it here in case the originally linked page is unreachable some day.

Tried on my tablet (ok, a tablet is not supposed to support SMSes), it seemed to work and import all 493 messages. I'll try to install Android on my phone and make final test :) Upvote for now

I followed this guide: http://piemaster.net/tools/winmo-android-sms-converter/

Yepp, that guide was mentioned there. Looks like you are successful -- glad to read!

May I suggest that you add the actual guide to your answer. In the future if the linked site goes down, your answer will still prove useful.

@Zuul Good point -- though the OP mentioned the complete link in his comment, I added it to my answer to make it easier to find. Thank you for the hint!

My suggesting is related to a popular conception that concerns the answer contents: Today the link is useful, a year from now you may get downvotes because the site doesn't exist and your answer without the link doesn't solve the problem of the future reader.


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How can I establish an AD-HOC Wi-Fi connection on my tablet?
I'm not an expert in this kind of subject. I'm reading that I need to root my tablet.
What does root mean? All the instructions are really difficult.
How can I make this AD-HOC Wi-Fi connection in my Sony S tablet?
I'm running Android 4.0

Could you add some information on the other device involved? Especially, what OS is it running?

To answer your first question: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/236/what-does-to-root-a-phone-mean For your implied second question, see: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/1184/how-do-i-root-my-device

There is also this: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/16657/does-any-version-of-android-support-ad-hoc-connections

There are two other Q&As here which might help you (in fact, there are several more, but most of them -- as you wrote -- are a bit "techy" or, as you put it, "really difficult"):

Does any version of Android support ad-hoc connections? could be used ith the second device involved is running Windows, and seems not to involve rooting your device
Connect android phones through adhoc wifi network is just "slightly techy", but requires root, and the Android SDK on a computer

If rooting your device is no problem for you, the second approach should be possible also without the SDK -- if you have a terminal emulator such as Android Terminal Emulator installed on your Android device. You could then execute the commands quoted there within the terminal emulator, but probably need to prefix them with the su command (to have them run by root):
su ifconfig wlan0 up
su iwconfig mode auto;iwconfig wlan0 essid "your SSID" channel 11 mode auto
su ifconfig wlan0 10.0.0.x netmask 255.255.255.0

As explained,

your SSID should be replaced with the name of your Adhoc network, and 10.0.0.x is a different IP you give each device.

I didn't test/verify that, but from my Linux knowledge, it sounds quite reasonable. Drawback is, you would need to execute those commands each time you need to establish the ad-hoc connection -- but here some other app could kick in, once you verified the steps are working. One I found is Script Manager - SManager -- but there were some easier ones I just cannot remember at the moment. If this is an acceptable approach to you, I can update my answer and add a few more tools to compensate.
EDIT:
Here's the one I had in mind to make the script-running easier: Scripter


text:
How do I get my Android phone to speak text in the navigation voice?
I know my phone is capable of text to speech because it speaks in Google Navigate.  Can I get this same voice to say other things?

There are several apps with TTS (Text-To-Speech) support, which enables them to "talk to you" -- so that's what you should look for on the Playstore: TTS. So a Playstore-Search for TTS will result in a bunch off apps ("At least 1000 results") matching your request.
Now you can close in by redefining "other things" to something more specific. Add that "more specific" term to your query by prefixing it with a "+" sign -- so e.g. a search on "tts +ebook" will give you ebook reader apps with TTS support (plus some self-reading books as it looks like), "tts +translation" some language translator apps (you say it in your language -- and they speak back in a foreign language; very useful when travelling in a foreign country, as long as they take the answer from the natives as well to translate it back).
Now you should have got the idea, and can continue with other examples :)

Download a text-to-speech app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svox.classic&hl=en


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Unable to boot Android in a multiboot PC configuration
I installed "android x86 4.0 rc1 asus_laptop iso" on /sda3 (NTFS partition created in Windows 7) of my Advent Verona recently. I already run Windows 7 and Linux Mint 11 so was dual booting with GRUB.
When I installed Android it took over the Mint bootloader and would not show Mint in its bootloader, but I was able to correct the problem, thereby getting the Mint loader back, through this site.
However, this caused Android to disappear from the bootloader. I tried to get it to appear so I could load it from there and was able to do so using this information.
I've been able to edit the file that makes you see all the OS on the laptop and I see all the three OSes now. I can load into Windows 7 and Linux Mint without problems but when I try to boot Android I get these errors on a black page:
[numbers] VFS: could not find a valid V7 on sda3
[numbers] kernel panic - not syncing: vfs: unable to mount root fs on unknown block (8.3)
[numbers] Pid. 1 comm: swapper not Tainted 3.0.8 android x86 asus_laptop

Then it reboots after a few seconds. What am I not doing right?

think this question is more of a fit for superuser as its governing bootloader and grub....

I'm inclined to say that this is alright here for now. Although Super User would likely take it as well, this is probably a pretty standard procedure for anyone who wants to install Android x86 in a multiboot configuration. The answer may well lie in the GRUB config, but I think that just creates overlap with SU here and doesn't necessarily make this off-topic for us.

There's this: http://www.webupd8.org/2012/03/how-to-dual-boot-android-x86-and-ubuntu.html

The one thing that sticks out from your question is that /sda3 is NTFS-formatted

on /sda3 (NTFS partition created in Windows 7)

and thus the Android's Linux kernel panic's due to not understanding NTFS.

I have a similar issue and excluded the posibility that NTFS is the problem since I tried everything on a FAT32 partition.
I think it has something to do with the drive geometry not being aligned properly thus the errors. (in my situation, everything else (OSes) work fine)

This should be comment rather than an answer.


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Huge "system data" file on SD card
I am running out of space in my SD card on Android ICS and I noticed that a huge file "System data" is taking up to 500MB. Is this normal? How can I reduce its size?

Could you quote the exact error message? And no, I wouldn't consider it normal, be it just for the question "What do system data have do do on the SD card?" In case "System data" doesn't stand for a file name: Did you possibly install some "big app" on your SD card? (Could be meaning App2SD-related stuff then)

Furthermore, what is the precise file path to that file?
Odds are, you can just delete it, since no real system data is actually saved in /sdcard/  --
Its probably just a poor translation....

is the folder "/sdcard/android/"? That is the folder that is the recommended path for applications to store additional data to the sdcard.

I have never seen such a file on ICS.
You could simply try to move the file to your PC and see if everything works. I think it's pretty safe to do so, because critical system files are usually not placed on the SD card.

Old question, but here is new solution:
Just dial *#9900# on the phone and then select from delete dumpstate/logcat.
This method worked for me. This started to happen on my new 128gb sd card.
It is a cheap Chinese one, so that might be a reason.
But every time I delete bigger files, I have to wait a bit, issue this command, and that gives me back my space. Retro feel, but it works, and it was 1/4th the price of a Kingston card, so could not care less.
Taken from here: http://androidforums.com/threads/low-on-space-system-data-huge.278837/
Thanks for downvoting a method that actually works. Just StackExchange things, I guess.

Note that this MMI code doesn't work on some phones like the LG G3 and G4. Not sure how to get around this.

I don't think it's normal> I had a similar issue on my Samsung S2.
Some people have reported that this was created by the generation of log files (alog_*) ; others from anr_history.txt.
If you can root your device, you can safely delete these files.
If you cannot root your device, then you need to factory restet the phone in order to wipe all the data.

It could be ".android_secure"folder. Is it where apps were "moved to SD card"?  It's Wierd because some apps don't find this folder, I only figures it out using root apps.

That's the reason behind it: Without root, you cannot access /data/data/* either, where the app originally resides. So Android is keeping you from it as well when you've moved it to SD card. You only can browse its contents with root powers – or with a card reader attached to your computer :)

This looks like this problem.
https://androidforums.com/threads/low-on-space-system-data-huge.278837/
The *#9900# solution works for many people, but not all.
If you can root I think you can delete the log files. Otherwise, you could try a factory reset.

Welcome to Android Enthusiasts! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. Otherwise, your answer becomes useless in case the link dies. For further hints, please see: How do I write a good answer.


text:
GPS stopped working after update
I recently asked a question on this site about how to stop my USB transfers from being so slow on my rooted Galaxy S2. It was suggested to me that I update my kernel and/or ROM. That seemed reasonable, so I did. I now have the latest kernel version and latest ROM.
And now, after doing so, my GPS is completely unresponsive.
So now I'm playing feature-whack-a-mole again. Something I was doing a while back when I could either have my compass or my WiFi, but not both.
How do I get out of this? How do I get my GPS back and not be juggling every other feature on my phone?
(... and I'm not even sure my USB problems are solved...)

Sorry to see you struggling with issues. Have you seen the app called "GPS Aids" in Google Play Store? I stumbled on this app once and I believe this is the one for Samsung phones which has GPS related issues. Have try, with a pinch of salt ;-)

I also stumbled on an app in play store, that explains the issue. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fatdroid.android.gpscontrols2ad&hl=en

The GPS was fixed by downloading a "tweak" script, whatever that is, from here. I originally found it on this thread on XDA-Developers.


text:
Periodic Nexus 7 touch responsiveness issue
Occasionally my Nexus 7 will exhibit poor touch responsiveness. This manifests as a need to drag my finger for an inch or so before scrolling happens, and a need for a firm touch in order to register a tap, and even then it's sporadic.
I'm trying to determine if this is software or hardware. My guess is software: exiting the current app sometimes seems to resolve the issue. Putting it to sleep and re-awakening it often seems to resolve it.
This happens maybe once every day or two, and only tends to last for a few minutes when it happens. (I'm still uncertain if things I do fix it or if it abates on its own...)
As this is my first Android device, I don't have anything to compare it to. Has anybody else experienced this? Any good techniques to determine if it's hardware or software?
EDIT 30-OCT-2012:
I haven't experienced the problem since upgrading to 4.1.2, so I'm inclined to think it was a software problem that's been fixed.

You can try to diagnose the problem yourself, or at least get a little more info by turning on a couple of developer diagnostics.

In Settings, scroll down to Developer Options.
Under the "Input" section, check "Show touches".  This will cause a small (white) circle to show on the screen where ever you touch it.  If you don't see the circle (which might be under your finger, so look carefully), you know it didn't register your touch.  If you see the circle lagging, then you know it registered your touch and is just being slow for other reasons.
Under "Monitoring", you may want to turn on "Show CPU Usage" and "Strict mode enabled."

"Show CPU usage" will show you what is running as a little overlay in the top right of the screen.  The top line of the display shows the system cpu load.  See this excellent write up of what the load numbers mean.  If the load is high, your little Nexus-7
"Strict mode enabled" will "Flash screen when apps do long operations on the main thread."  If your screen flashes, then you know something is hogging the CPU.

Thanks; those are good diagnostic tips. It's pretty sporadic, so I'm not sure if I can abide the more invasive options (like flashing the screen) for long, but at least the CPU monitor would be good to keep on for a bit.

Its hard to tell if it's infact hardware or software. Since it's happening at certain intervals my guess is hardware. If it's happening with a certain 3rd party application you should have nothing to worry about. Also, have you upgraded the latest version of Jelly Bean? If so and the problem is still persisting I would recommend returning it and getting a replacement as I have never encountered any issue with touch sensitivity.
The nexus 7's capacitive touch screen is supposed to be incredible sensitive as just by meerely touching it should register a tap.

I have upgraded to 4.1.1 (from day 1), so the problem has happened on the latest version. Normally the touch responsiveness is quite good; it's just on the rare occasion that there's a problem. Thanks for the data point; my main goal is to figure out if it's a hardware problem before the warranty period is up.

I've had that problem too. I've just power cycled the device, which always fixes it, which leads me to believe it is software. I have it set to show touches, and it would either not show the touches, or they would show up after a delay.
To determine if it is software, look to see if it happens at roughly the same time everyday, or after running specific software, then it is most likely software related. I've turned on "Show CPU Usage", which is only mildly invasive, and should be sufficient to show if CPU utilization spikes when responsiveness issues come up.

Mine started the same way until one day the touch screen would not respond at all. The buttons worked but that was it! I could not do a thing. I believe one of my pets ( a heavy cat) who to my horror loves to lie on top of warm things may have done something to the sensors.
That is just my speculation. Since it was only 4 months old, I was able to get an RMA from ASUS and got it back with all it's software and data intact in 3/4 weeks. The only thing is that they make you pay for the shipping which I find a bit cheesy but it wasn't much.
I hope yours is still under the one year warranty.
If not I would open it up (there are videos on youtube) and try to see if something came loose.
Good luck.

This isn't really a solid answer, and the OP says that the problem has been fixed by a software update.


text:
On it's own, my Verizon Droid Razr (recently with ICS), went into debug mode. How do I get it out of debug mode?
This evening I took my phone out of my pocket and the screen was on and it was in debug mode.  I assume it is debug mode - there is a column of text right justified near the top of the screen that changes with time.  When my finger touches the screen a vertical and horizontal line appear and track my finger movement and there is a trail left showing where I moved my finger. Along the top of the screen there are fields which display info about the finger movement.  I am not a developer, but I assume this is debug mode.
My question is:  How can I get it out of debug mode?  HELP!!!

As you tagged your question usb-debugging: Did you check that option? It is usually found in your system settings with the devloper specific stuff in the apps section.

Do you have "{} Developer options" under Settings menu? If yes, go to Settings->Developer Options and uncheck the boxes under "Input", "Drawing" "Monitoring" sections.
I presume these should be not available with standard ROMs (i.e. produced by carrier/that come with phone).  In that sense, I am bit surprised on why you have it, unless you have CM's or other similar ROM.

You got it. I did have a developer menu and somehow while it was turned on in my pocket the following options got turned ok: pointer location, show touches, show screen updates, show CPU usage and force GPU rendering.

I absolutely have the standard Verizon Droid Razr. I bought it on the day it became available, 11/11/2011, and I was automatically upgraded to ICS several weeks ago, over the air on, I think, the first day Verizon released it. I have never tried to root it or change ROMs or anything?

Should I leave Force GPU rendering ON? That sounds like it would be faster. Is it safe and well tested?

I am sorry FrankH, I am not certainly clear enough to recommend, though I too have it set to ON ;-)

Regarding Force GPU rendering, you might want to read this: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/17731/force-gpu-rendering-in-ics-how-does-this-affect-system-performance in short, it's not an option you want to be turned on, unless you're debugging an app.


text:
Why did my phone lose the ringtone configuration?
I've assigned a default ringtone and one other ringtone to my wife. She called me two days ago and the phone played the Galaxy SII ringtone. Next day, somebody else called me, and the same happened.
So, I assigned the ringtones again, but I was wondering if this happens often, does it happen to others, is there a reason it happened to me (did I do something wrong)...
Probably it's a bug. Last night, the OS updated itself, and the ringtones were not affected.

I had similar issues when ringtones assign by themselves on 2 different HTC phones. I couldn't figure out the cause. So it might be a bug in the system.

@slybloty me too! My Evo3d started weeks ago to "slightly change" ringtones and alarm sounds. And I have the last LEEDroid ROM.

I don't know if it could be your case, but if your phone is connected to your computer with UMS (USB Mass Storage) enabled along having a custom ringtone stored on your SD card (/ringtones folder) instead of MTP this will give you this kind of problem.
The phone will use a default ringtone since it cannot access the SD card files, because the UMS mode requires exclusive access to the mass storage.

When the phone rang, it wasn't connected, but I did connect some time before that (if I recall correctly).

Yesterday someone called me and I was connected with UMS, and the phone did play the Galaxy SII tone, so, you're right there.


text:
SD Card fills up with GPS/*.txt files
My Galaxy ACE SD card fills up with .txt files in the GPS folder when the GPS is on. I often run out of space. This doesn't happen with my other Android phones.
How can I diagnose and fix this?

What information is found in these text files? How big is your sd card? Did you download an offline copy of the maps, or have you viewed and zoomed in all the way and explored a lot of places? These are the factors I can think of that could be causing this.

Also, it will be helpful if you (@Jake) can list any GPS related apps that has been installed by you or pre installed. To me, this appears some faulty app logs some details.

Since they are txt files, I would inspect them too to find the offender's name

It's most probably a buggy 3rd party app (preinstalled by Samsung or by you).
To find the offender I'd install Permissions and narrow the problem down to apps with precise GPS location permissions.
If this list is huge you can also cross-check with running apps (Task Killer or QuiteTaskmanager, the latter lists more but is not available in Google Play).
If you're rooted you could also run 'lsof | grep sdcard' to see which processes have these gps/txt files open and subsequently delete the offending app, here's a sample output:
1|root@android:/ # lsof | grep sdcard
com.googl  2635    [...] /storage/sdcard0/Android/data/com.google.android.apps.maps/[...]
com.fsck. 16308    [...] /storage/sdcard0/Android/data/com.fsck.k9/[...]


text:
Is there a way  to compare networks in terms of internet connection?
I want to compare two different networks and choose the "better one". Better could be that I want to find out if the one I want to switch to would handle VoIP applications, like a Skype call in particular.
Is there any way for me to compare two networks like this? I have two SIM cards and and an Android phone with CyanogenMod 7.2

You can always perform a speed test and check for packet loss( Speedtest.net, pingtest)
Alternatively, you can try calling the skype Voice Testing Service which should be in your contacts from before, and if it isnt there the username is echo123 i belive.

I was thinking more of something that would do more tests for me. If there is nothing else I will end up doing what you suggested.

I doubt there is an application that asks you to insert a SIM, make the test, then ask for the other one and perform the same tests.. what you can do is use the applications i suggested above and write down the results and compare them that way.. unless I have misunderstood what you meant by 'testing' ie. speed or link quality

Well quite often one can save test results. What I want to compare is speed, latency, link quality ...

The speedtest test speed, and pink
While the pingtest tests Jitter, Packetloss and overall link quality.. so i think these are the 2 applications you are looking for.. im not entirely sure if the pingtest app. is available on the play store

I got average of 13 tests download 50kbps and average upload 164kbps where max is 288 and min 10. Is that even possible that upload speed is higher than download speed? I always thought that it was the opposite way.

Speedtest.net got native android application by the way ;-)

@Radek , in some cases yes, although it is highly unlikely, especially since you are probably using a consumer package for 3G. Some factors to consider if you think you are getting low speeds are; try the speedtest out side, and also check the protocol on which your mobile is connecting with, as far as I know 3G's fastest is HSDPA which can support speeds up to 21mbps if im not mistaken. The speeds you posted are somewhat worrying even for 2g(GSM) standards. Make sure no other application is using the internet aswell.

I was more pointing out the fact that upload is higher than download. I think that the download was "OK" considering all circumstances.


text:
Failed to find init.goldfish.rc
adb shows that I have  init.goldfish.rc present in the emulator device. I guess this file must exist somewhere in PC.  However I could not find the file in the PC. Why it is so?

AFAIK, init.x are initialization routines that a kernel depends on - Obvious isn't it? :) I am wondering why you have to look for those in your PC, unless you mean your PC runs Linux? Pardon, if that is the case...

I think you need to clarify what you're looking for on your PC. If you're looking for the file from the emulator's filesystem then it's not going to be stored as a flat file on your PC - the emulator uses filesystem images.

Do an adb pull /init.goldfish.rc and the file will be on your PC :-)

This answer. I like it. To go into a bit more detail, the file (and all other files in the virtual device) is stored inside the image that the emulator uses - not as an individual file on the PC.