text:
Disable a specific WiFi network from automatically connecting to in Android
I have several WiFi networks setup on my android device. I want most of them to automatically connect, but one specifically I don't want to automatically connect to. I want to manually connect to it only.
I don't want to forget it because I don't want to lose the settings for it.

Android automatically connects to all WiFi networks it has configured. So basically, if you do not want that to happen, you could either turn WiFi off (which would also disable to connect to the other WiFi networks, which is not what you want) -- or delete the configuration for the network you don't want to connect to automatically (which would make you lose its settings, on the first glance).
The first option is not in your interest -- but the second can be helpful, even if you don't see this immediately. You could use an app like WiFi QR Share first to convert that networks settings into a QR code, then print out this generated QR code. Store it in a safe place (e.g. laminate it, cut it down to credit-card size, and put it in your briefcase). Now delete this WiFi networks configuration -- it will no longer auto-connect.
If you want to connect it manually, that does not mean to enter all the configuration again: Simply open your QR Code reader (Barcode Scanner should do fine), scan the QR, and connect. Don't forget to delete the configuration again afterwards.
Unfortunately, there's no way to mark a network "manual only", so this seems the easiest way to me.

@Izzzy taht link is 404 now. Do you have an aleternative? I have a single network to which I never want to connect - not auto, not manual.

If I'd be forced to keep all my 10-year-old answers up-to-date, I must stop answering :D But luckily, meanwhile there's my Android website which didn't yet exist back then. There might be some alternatives [on this page](WLAN Automatiken), I'd start with the "WiFi Priority" section. (note: that link hopefully won't go 404 anytime soon :))

Thanks, Izzy, That made me laugh. And helped me

Great – both goals achieved :D

If you are a programmer, check out this site: WifiManager Documentation - disableNetwork.
The disabled network is saved in your phone, but you have to manually choose it from your WiFi list to connect to it.
If you have already rooted your phone, find wpa_supplicant.conf in the folder /data/misc/wifi, find the network with the WiFi name, and add this code disabled=1 in this particular network. I think this will solve your problem.

This won't work on Android.

You can use the Locale app to disable your wifi whenever that SSID is in range.  You will need the wifi plugin for this to work.  Reenabling the wifi can be triggered by different events.  I chose to use the Movement condition to determine when I am leaving.  You could also use location or time events to turn on the wifi.

This seems to be built into Android 9.0+. Some manufacturers added it earlier.
On my Sony, the setting is in:
System Settings -> Network and Internet -> WiFi -> WiFi Preferences (at the bottom of the list of possible access points) -> Advanced -> Auto-Connect.
In there is a list of all your saved access points and a check box to mark whether each can auto connect.
Other manufacturers put the auto connect setting directly in the access point preferences (the same place you set password and IP settings).
Here's some screenshots from my Sony

Lucky you - I also have Android 9 (OnePlus 5) but do not have that exact setting. At least it's good to know it's the fault of OnePlus in my case. This feature has been for a while even in fruit company's phones but surprisingly it's still not a standard in Android. Shame.

The fragmentation on Android is really frustrating.

If you have root access you can try to create a widget with Tasker that will manipulate the text file where the wifi passwords are stored. Then all you have to do is tap that widget (or run the task in tasker manually) and toggle to be (dis)connected to that network.
The approach: find out where your wifi password are saved on your device using a Root browser. Most of the times it's in /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf.
Make two copies of this file and name it with_network.txt and without_network.txt. In the without_network.txt remove the SSID corresponding to your preferred network.
Now you can make a task in Tasker or any other automatisation app to rename the with_network.txt to wpa_supplicant.conf and when clicked/run again to reverse it back to with_network.txt and rename without_network.txt to wpa_supplicant.conf on command.

This is not solution but workaround. Every network has a priority parameter. If I don't want to connect to this network I setup lowest possible priority for that network. Greater value is greater priority. This will be work when network that you wan't to connect automatically coexist in same place with other network that has greater priority.

Inside every saved Network there is option to connect automatically. Disable the option. Tested in commute networks I do not want to use wifi as it is slow

As of Android 10, this feature is not supported natively (on a Pixel 3). I filed the following issue
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/160453528

This app "WiFi connection manager" can do it if you use it to manage your WiFi connections, you just tap the connection and then choose "Disable this connection", I'm positive other similar apps must be able to do it as well:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.roamingsoft.manager


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I want to remove credit card information from Play Store
Please let me know how can I change my credit card information that I entered when I set up the Play Store.

Go to payments.google.com, sign in with the same account you used to set up the Play Store, select Payment Methods, click the Edit or Remove link next to the card you want to edit/delete
For more info, refer to the Google Payments Help Center

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Is it possible to keep track when my Android phone is startup and when it is shutdown?
Where can I get the information about when and what time my Android phone is being shut down and also being start up. (shut down / start up - meaning that someone press the Power button to cause it to shut down / start up OR a program that cause it to start it or shut it.)
Information should look something similar like the following:

=========================================================
| Date          |  Time       |  Operation |   By       |
=========================================================
| 12 Dec 2012   |  11:59 PM   | Shutdown   |   User     |
| 13 Dec 2012   |  10:00 AM   | Startup    |   User     |
| 13 Dec 2012   |  10:59 AM   | Shutdown   |   Program  |
| 13 Dec 2012   |  02:16 PM   | Startup    |   User     |
=========================================================

If the shut down or start up is caused by a Program, it would be better to display the program name that cause it to shutdown.
Prefer method that does not require rooting and for Android version below 4.

Just to be sure, are you asking about the phone completely shutting down and starting up (ie a reboot)? Or do you rather mean the screen turning off and turning back on (ie sleep mode)?

Also, without root, any non-system app should be unable to shutdown the phone. So the only time a phone would shut down or reboot is if the user specifically said so (excluding hardware events like a battery dying).

You say. I saw phones suddenly rebooting on a system crash (something messed up in the Dalvik Cache probably). So that was surely not a user-initiated shutdown :)

My standard recommendation again here: Tasker, the most complete automation solution available for Android. Tasker can react on different events and perform tasks when they occur. So you could setup two profiles:

Profile "Startup":

Condition: Device Boot (this is boot_completed))
Task: Write File (with your information specified in the parameters)

Profile "Shutdown":

Condition: Device Shutdown
Task: Write File (with your information specified in the parameters)

For the text you can use Variables like e.g. %DATE. Only difficulty will be to determine whether the shutdown was caused by the user or a program -- no easy recipe here, especially not for un-rooted devices. This information might be extracted from the system logs somehow; but starting with JellyBean, this would require root permissions.

Was wondering on the following if there are any free Apps with just this function only. (I like your recommendation but Tasker have too many useful functions that I felt I am being overwhelmed). At least I know that I should not upgrade to JellyBean cause it seems that JellyBean need the user to root the phone in order to get basic features. (Was wondering why not the JellyBean phone is rooted in the first place, would not it be much better?)

Sure, every 2nd answer I give mentions Tasker :) It's what I use as it's most flexible. There are many free similar apps, but I cannot tell you whether/which supports this. As for root: ALL phones should come rooted if you ask me -- like all *nix come with root and Windows with handles (oh, oops... the other Windows with "Administrator")...

I tried Tasker but found could not get the variable which shows the shutdown or startup is caused by the user or a program. I also could not find something like SHUTDOWN_BY that can tell me which program / user caused shutdown. Any ways to find this information?

That would be a bit more tricky: you probably will have to parse the system logs for that. There is no Tasker Variable telling you what caused the shutdown. If your device is rooted, the commands dmesg and logcat might prove useful -- but I've got no complete recipe ready.

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


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Emergency Firmware Recovery
I tried a to update my samsung galaxy note with a new leaked operating system of jelly bean using odin3.
but at the time of adding files for phone and ccs i miss arranged them so the update got failed when i tried to reset the thing and upgrade it once again nothing would happen and then in my cell there is notification came that firmware upgrade encountered an issue.Please select recovery mode in kies and try again.
On conneting my cell phone to kies it wont detect my cell phone so i need an emergency firmaware recovery code so that i can recover my cellphone again.
please help


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Can we connect a normal earphone / headphone to a Android device?
Can we connect a normal earphone / headphone (those that we connect to the Desktop PC) to the Android phone or devices?
This is because I notice that the one on the left (the original one that come with the phone) have 4 connector but the one we use on Desktop PC have 3 connector.
Was wondering if it will short-circuit and damage the phone or the port itself.

The typical audio only jack has 3 rings, usually call Tip, Ring, Sleeve (TRS). These typically map to Left, Right, and Ground. Phone manufactures wanted to make this jack work with existing headphone so they used a connector with 4 rings, called Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve (TRRS). These map to Left, Right, and Ground just like the 3 ring, but the final connector maps to a microphone. This makes it so that if you plug an audio only cable into it, the microphone input gets connected to ground so nothing is hurt. It also means that if a headset with microphone is connected to an audio only device, the microphone is connected to ground, also hurting nothing.

Sources:

What protocol does a headphone jack use?
Leads Direct: Jack Plugs & Sockets

Yes, a "regular" set of headphones will work just fine, in much the same way that a single-channel earphone works in a stereo headphone jack. The other bits are for the microphone and the controls, but since your headphones won't have those it won't matter.
I have had occasion to use 1st generation iPod earbuds as well as some generic earbuds in my Galaxy Nexus. My daughter uses a pair of headphones I had lying around (that are probably ten years old) in her phone when she's at home listening to music. At worst you may find a channel doesn't work (no sound in one ear) but you don't need to worry about shorting out or damaging anything.
Wikipedia has more information than you could possibly want to know about 3.5mm connectors.


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LG Optimus Logic Transferring apps to Micro SD instead of internal memory
I recently purchased an LG Optimus Logic Net10 phone which runs Android 2.3.6. The phone was advertised as having 1GB internal Memory and also came with a 4GB Micro SD.
When I download apps, they seem to not be using the memory properly. I tried to move apps to the SD Card, but the only option to move is "move to internal memory". "Move to SD" is not an option. When I select "move to internal memory" the apps go to the 1GB Internal Memory as I would expect. The option for memory management then changes to "Move to Phone".
I mounted a 32GB micro SD, so what I really want to do is move the apps from the 1 GB internal memory to the micro SD, but there is no option to do so. Is there a way to get the apps onto the SD card?
Thanks much!

Trouble is that the "standard App2SD" seems able only to switch between 2 storages. So as soon as there's an internal storage (as it is in your case), the sd card no longer is an option. I'm not sure whether one of the "extended App2SD apps" on the playstore can solve this, as I never used App2SD (I've got 6GB internal storage, so I never needed this) -- but it's certainly worth a try.

Go to app settings and click the apps that you want. When you click it, it should show its information and move to internal memory (aka MicroSD card).

In fact I'm doing this on my logic its a good phone i recommend

The internal memory on a LG Logic is NOT the SD card.  There are 3 storages on the phone.  System storage, Internal storage 1 gb and the SD card that came with it.  4 gb.  Without software, you can't move any app to the SD card.


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Block calls and SMS based on pattern
I use Callblocker currently, but the unwanted calls come from different numbers each with the same first 5 digits. Is there a way to block them based on this pattern, preferably free apps?

We prefer questions that are looking for a solution to a problem, not just "is there an app that does X". You've already selected your solution (an app) when there may be other ways to achieve the solution you need. Please have a look at the [FAQ].

Further, have you looked in the Play Store?

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


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Can SIP be restricted to certain Networks?
The default android telephony app allows the configuration of SIP accounts. At home, I want to use my android phone as a softphone with my local router (an AVM fritzbox). However I frequently use other Wifi networks. As far as I understand, with a SIP account setup to accept incoming calls, the phone will now try to connect to my home router whatever network it is connected to, even using mobile internet services, using up bandwidth. I know that this can be restricted using dedicated SIP apps (like the one AVM provides itself). But it is it also possible to only search for the SIP server when connected to a given network using just the native telephony app?

You didn't specify the Android version of your device. With 4.0+, you might want to check with your data monitor whether you can find the native app, and if so, set the background data limit to 0 for it. That should prevent it from looking for the SIP server at least when running on mobile data.


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Losing network connections when using GPS
I'm having the same kind of problem as described in these threads, using a rooted HTC One S with Dark Jelly S rom:
Thread on XDA-Developers
Thead on CyanogenMod Forum
When activating GPS while using either WiFi or 3G, after a couple of seconds I'm losing GPS fix and mobile data connection. WiFi stays active.
I also get a notifaction "Restricted access changed".
I only have 1 APN in my settings, this happens on both the CM10 rom and Dark Jelly S rom.
Further information:
VLE PVT SHIP S-ON RL
HBOOT-1.09.0000
RADIO-0.16.314018.17_2
OpenDSP-v25.1.0.32.0405
eMMC-boot
Apr 2 2012,21:08:24

How can I solve this?

Did you try updating your phone software and/or clearing your cache?

I've tried several full-wipes, after which the problem seems to be gone, but after a while it reoccures again.

How about software updates?

What updates do you mean with that?

What I meant was system updates. NOT software. Sorry about that.

Well, I do have the latest version of the ROM, I've also tried the three radio's that applied to my location (the EU versions).

let us continue this discussion in chat


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Which will work better on t-mobile: Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-i9300 or GT-i9305?

Possible Duplicate:
Can I use my device on a different carrier?

Both are international models, and I'm looking to buy an unlocked one off of Amazon. However, I'm not too sure if they're compatible with T-Mobile.
I currently have a prepaid standard SIM Card, and although I only have unlimited text and call at the moment, I may get a 4G Data Plan in the near future.
Which one of these models is compatible with T-Mobile's 4G service? I've read that the i9300 isn't, but I couldn't obtain any information about the i9305 (which is the 4G LTE version).

Welcome to Android Enthusiasts StackExchange. :) Shopping questions or recommendations are off-topic, please see the [FAQ]. It would be wiser to actually go into a T-Mobile shop and ask in there :)

While this is sort of a "shopping" question, it is also a question about if these phones will work on t-mobile's network.
T-Mobile does not (currently) have LTE. So if the device has LTE, you will not use the LTE chip.
Will the devices work on T-Mobile? Yes. Will you get the T-Mobile 4G speeds? Well that depends on what bands (or frequencies) the device supports.
T-Mobile has support for the following bands for their 4G netowork:

1700 MHz | UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+
1900 MHz | UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+
1700 MHz | LTE (this is the band they will use when they roll out LTE)

According to the Spec Sheet on Amazon of the i9300:

3G Network | HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100

AFAIK, internationally, HSPA+ is not considered 4G, so based on this, yes this phone will give you T-Mobile 4G

The i9305 on the other had, according to Amazon, does not appear to have the bands available for T-Mobile:

4G Network: LTE 800 / 1800 / 2600
3G: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 2100

Now, what I am actually making here is just an assumption, because it supports the bands that T-Mobile supports. I cannot say with 100% certainty that it will operate with their 4G speeds.


text:
Setting Tasker app to disable one finger touch after opening a specific app?
I need to disable one finger touch (2 or more fingers touch is still allowed) after opening an app. Can I use Tasker app to do it ?

I doubt it. But you might check the Tasker User Guide to prove otherwise.


text:
Is it "safe" to provide users with the apk file?
I was wondering, if I have an app that is available on the Play Store, is it "safe" to provide a direct download of the apk file to someone (either signed with the proper keys, or just debug-version)?
"safe" in the sense of does the marketplace do anything special to the apk to protect the source code, signing keys, etc.?
Reason I ask is a user of my app has said that their Marketplace/Play Store is no longer working and therefore can not upgrade the app - so asked me to email them the apk file.
The app is a free app, so on the surface I can't see any issues - though just wanted to double check.
Although this raises the question - the apks of the apps you download from the marketplace (paid and unpaid) are on your phone. Are these apks (on the phone) somehow unique to the phone/google account? Otherwise, what stops one from buying an app and passing that apk on to others?

Is this a development question? Development questions are off topic here sorry!

@LiamW It isn't. At least there's no programming involved here.

@Power-Inside However, it is talking about Google Play and APK's from a developer perspective.

Yes, I wasn't quite sure where to ask the question, here or stackoverflow. But since there was no code, and is very Android specific decided to ask here :)

Protip Do not upload debug apks - that's a moth to a flame - people will know exactly what is going on with the source and will rip you off and pass it off as their own work. Use proguard, but since this is android enthusiasts stack exchange, head over to the sister site StackOverflow to find out! :)

Signed or not, someone can always decompile the application(.apk), that's why it is very important to use Proguard.

There is nothing dangerous about it, and this is done occasionally when the store isn't accessible.
In response to your second question, apks are not unique - and can be easily transferred to another device, or the internet. This is the base of android app piracy.
When you upload the APK to Google Play, GPlay does nothing to it. It is up to the developer to obfuscate the code, to prevent decompilation.

As Liam already pointed out, there's no danger involved for the developer. If one wants to grab the .apk for distribution, that's easily possible using apps like AppMonster, which can back up the .apk file to SD card. No extra protection from Google's side -- except users might feel more safe installing it from a "trusted source" (and they are right about that at least when it comes to unknown/new devs, as the Google Bouncer adds a protection layer against malware, see Android and Security).
In fact many developers hold their apps .apk files available on their project site for good reasons. One you already mentioned in your question: Playstore might have (temporary) problems. Moreover, not all devices are able to access the Playstore (and thus could not use your app if it would be available only there). Another good reason would be to provide "Beta versions" this way, so as a dev you can get early feedback without running the risk of negative feedback on the Playstore.
To sum up: At least for free apps, I'd even recommend to keep a direct download link to the .apk available, if possible.


text:
Image instant uploading isn't working
Ever since I upgraded my Google+ app on Friday (3.3.0.40049528) one of my favorite features, Image Instant Upload, is not working.
One of the big changes in this release was that instant upload could now upload full size images, rather than limiting them to 2048px.

I have plenty of available storage (4GB out of 5GB available)
I have force stopped the Google+ app as well as cleared the data at least once
The phone (Verizon Galaxy Nexus) has been restarted a couple of times
I am using the stock camera app for my testing
The settings were not changed when I updated Google+, but I have confirmed that Instant Upload is set to allow photo uploads on wifi as well as mobile data. I do not have "upload only when charging" turned on, and there is plenty of battery available.

Any ideas? Have I got a bug that needs an update?

In Settings->Accounts and Sync->Your Google Account make sure Google Photos is selected
This is in Settings->Google in 4.x.
EDIT: I just checked, and reinstalling the Google+ all fixed this. Uninstall the app, then install it again.
You then need to go into the settings menu and enable instant upload.

Google Photos was already checked for syncing.

You should also have an Instant Upload option for syncing. If you do not, like I did not, you should reinstall the app and it will show.

I do, and it's checked.

Things seem to be working now, although I'm not sure exactly why. I didn't uninstall the app updates, but I believe that that would have solved my problem. I don't know exactly what did, but your answer makes the most sense to me, which is why I've accepted it.

What I ended up doing was selecting the "Upload all" option under the Google+ settings for Instant Upload. This uploaded some photos that hadn't already been uploaded and seems to have kick-started the process.


text:
How can I verify that a widget updates only when it's visible?
I've installed a task manager widget that shows me the amount of free memory I currently have in the icon of the widget. When I look at it it updates every ~3 seconds, so it definitely drains some battery and consumes some memory when it's active and updating.
I want to make sure it doesn't update when the widget is invisible:

When screen is turned off.
When another app is running.
When widget is placed on another (invisible) home screen tab.

How can I check whether the widget updates only when it's visible or even when it's invisible?

Closely related: Do widgets run if not on current home screen?

It doesn't update only when it's visible. Because all widgets are drawn by the host (i.e. the home screen or lock screen), there's no way for the widget provider to tell whether the widget is visible or not.
It would be possible for the service that keeps changing the widget to find out when the screen is turned off. In recent Android versions, you could verify that using the Battery screen in Settings. Add the widget to your home screen, then (while the phone/tablet isn't plugged in) leave the screen turned off for some time. Turn it back on, and see if your task manager app is listed on the Battery screen.
Regardless of the result, your task manager app is probably doing more harm than good. Android isn't like Windows: it's designed to keep as much memory in use as it can, and only frees memory when it has to. See Do I really need to install a task manager? for more info.


text:
Why is there such a difference in the amount of internal memory?
So first, when I go to Settings -> Apps this is what is shown:

(Click image to enlarge)
After some time ~20 seconds, the amount of space left is this:

(Click image to enlarge)
Why does this happen? What does this mean? And when installing any Android app I always get the insufficient storage space error. Why?  When determining the amount of space that is free, which of the two screenshots' storage space  does the Android OS consider? Anyhow, in both the cases the minimum that I had was 40MB and the app that I wanted to install was 12MB, yet I got the error.  I am running on HTC Legend, Android 4.1  Please clear this confusion. Thanks!

Your confusion is most likely caused by the way the Playstore handles installs/updates. They are first downloaded and stored in internal storage (not on sdcard, but /data/local), then the app is to be installed on the same partition (/data/data/app.package.name) -- only after that the download can be deleted.
In your case, this would mean a 12M download, which then needs to be unpacked (at least another 12M, or rather more) -- which could sum up to 30M or more. A safety margin needs to be kept to keep the device from crashing -- so you get the "insufficient storage" error.
See also: Package Install via Market sometimes fails and gives seemingly random error message

There is a difference for multiple reasons:

The app settings menu takes a few seconds to update the amount of storage an app takes up [AND]
Apps sometimes delete/add data to their data folders. This causes the amount of storage to change often.

You may get the insufficient storage space if an app expands and extracts needed libs and data when it is installed - this can cause the insufficient storage error.

@Downvoter Reason please?


text:
Samsung Galaxy Note will not Turn On after Android 4.1.1 Upgrade
I have downloaded Jelly Bean 4.1.1 for my Galaxy Note N7000.
While updating through the phone, it shut down and now it is not working.I cannot turn it on.
The battery was about 40%. I guess it is because of the battery level. What can I do to sort this out?

Please provide more details. Are you rooted? What do you mean by updating through the phone? Is it an OTA update?

I pressed power butten, volume key up and home key buttens simultaniousl. Then, I applied to the update in internal SD card. Then, It started updating. After that, when 20 % of the update was done, the phone shouted down. As the result it is now not working.

Some other tablets have two levels of shutdown, and the lower one requires holding the power button down until it turns on (about 20 seconds on my Asus Eee Pad).

I even held it for 1 mins :) it didnt help


text:
What are the Android 4.0.x Ice Cream Sandwich Easter Eggs?
I heard that there are some Easter eggs hidden in ice cream sandwich version.
How can I view the Easter eggs hidden in my android device and how can I view them? I'm using Android 4 ICS.

Go to Settings->About Phone (this is the last menu item in the settings menu) and find the version number menu item in the menu.

1. Find the android
Quickly tap the android version number several times and an android will appear on your screen:

2. Find the nyan-droid
Press and hold the android n the screen and it will grow. Keep holding it and at the end a set of androids wearing ice cream sandwiches will fly across your screen, like so:

Enjoy!!

Hey! This works in JB too, except that the stuff is Jellybean themed :D

Did not know about the second one, very nice! :)

@ChinmayKanchi I think it works with every version!


text:
Samsung Galaxy Tab frozen on update via Kies and no longer working
I connected my Samsung galaxy tab and was updating it using the Kies software. It then got onto a section about emergency recovery. I selected the device and then nothing really happened.
So I went back to Kies to try and use the tab and now it has frozen on a black screen showing the phone and PC connection with a yellow warning triangle in the middle!
Cant do hard re-set and isn't able to be recognized on computer!This is the first Android/Samsung I've ever had so step by step advice would be great!


text:
I lost all my contacts on Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000
Yesterday I lost all the contacts on my GT-I9000. Nothing strange happened, there was no warning, suddenly they were just.. gone. This is the second time this happens. Is there any method to get the lost contacts back?

See my answer on a similar SMS question here. In short: It might have been due to bad flash cells on your device. To mitigate this in the future: Use Google's contact sync service to avoid such situations. It's automatic and you can forget about single point of failures (phone stolen/broken, buggy software) from then on.

Cheers! I'm not phone/computer savvy so I've no idea what bad flash cells are. Not even when I read your answer to the SMS question.
Thank the gods I have a backup file, although it's couple of months old. Going to installa that SMS Backup + now, thank you so much for help!

Good to know you got at least partial data back! I meant the storage of your phone with flash cells, this type of storage doesn't last forever and parts of it may die after it has been written a number of times (10k or so). So do backups or sync your address book with google.

Now how do I do that sync with google? I've tried but don't seem to able to accomplish anything..

It seems like we don't have a question of the type "How can I sync my contacts with google?". @KyöstiKantee Feel free to ask this question. Contacts sync is a nice feature of Google enabled Android phones, although it comes with the familiar privacy concerns.

Do you have contacts on your Google account? If yes, re-login, and load from Google.


text:
Hide contacts with only email address
When clicking on Phone -> Logs, I have hundreds of contacts presumably from Gmail.  Is there a way to hide all google contacts, and only show ones I've manually entered (SIM or other storage)? I'd like to only see contacts with phone numbers when using the Phone.
My phone is a S2 (Tmobile), if it matters.

What Android version are you on? Have you seen this question?

You have not mentioned your Android version, if it is Android 4.0+, I fear you cannot do this. There's no option to show contacts with phone numbers only in People app that is included in 4.0+.
If you are on GingerBread or earlier versions, you have a setting something like this:
Contacts app - > Menu -> Display Options -> Only contacts with phone numbers

I am talking about stock Android apps, your manufacturer / ROM builder may have a tweak depending on what ROM are you running. I don't see a chance, but still a possibility.
See this similar question.


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can't open recovery menu after installing recovery clockworkmod 5.0.2.6 galaxy ace fix
I have installed clockworkmod-5.0.2.6-galacyace-fix.zip on Samsung galaxy ace s5830.
When I had rebooted it and pressed Home+Power button, it is not showing me a recovery menu. When I press Home+VolumeUp+Power, it is showing me only logo of "Samsung" and on left hand side corner showing me "ramdump" arm mode 9.
I don't know now what to do? I want to update it. I have tried Jelly bean but it is only showing the Samsung logo after rebooting it. Others downloads like GingerBread and all are aborted while installing. My phone still can not be started.
What can I do?

Have you tried wiping after flashing?

You mean after installing a new os, i need to wipe out whole data of phone once again! Right now there is no os installed on my phone and i have tried to install clockwork recovery, after that my recovery menu can't open! When I press Home+Power button then only samsung logo appears.That means there is something problem in booting loop. Thanks for any help.

Yes - a boot loop is normally solved by a data wipe.

right now my problem is that i can't open recovery menu. So how can i wipe out data? Can you tell me an alternative for opening a recovery menu?

Try run from console reboot recovery or from PC: adb reboot recovery. Is recovery starting?

thanks..i had given my phone to samsung shop!they told me there was a problem in my chip! So they have installed a new circuit!


text:
Why did /sdcard/ turn into /sdcard/0/ with 4.2?
I've never seen this before so I'm assuming that it happened when I upgraded to 4.2: I'm fairly certain that /sdcard/ used to take me straight to my sdcard, but now when I go to that path (in CWM recovery for example) I need to go to /sdcard/0, there's also /sdcard/legacy knocking about suddenly.
What are these folders and why have they appeared?

That has to do with the Multi-User feature enabled with JellyBean 4.2 (not 4.1). In order to handle separate accounts, parts of the directory structure had to be changed. /sdcard/legacy e.g. always points to the currently logged-in user's sd card directory.
I currently cannot find the document where I read the details, so I cannot link any source. But with the above in mind, it's easy to guess that /sdcard/0 will most-likely be the device owners (or "first users" -- the "first user" always becomed the "device owner", only this user can create additional accounts) sd card, and so on. I will add a link to a source as soon as I can find it.
EDIT: One of the pages I got that idea from is AndroidNext. 1droid gives a different explanation when it comes to sd card:

With Android 4.2, Google introduced multiple users as a new feature. In order to accommodate multiple users, Google is now giving each user a their own folder for storage. If you upgraded to 4.2 from 4.1, then the 4.2 ROM will look for a certain file in /data to determine whether it needs to migrate all of your files to the new multi-user data structure. By default, 4.2 migrates all of /data/media to /data/media/0.
A problem arose though with custom recoveries. A custom recovery retains the /data/media folder during a factory reset. When you factory reset and then boot a 4.2 ROM again, the 4.2 ROM will migrate everything in /data/media again. It will migrate your files every time you factory reset. This multiple migration is what resulted in some people having their files moved to /sdcard/0 or even /sdcard/0/0 etc.

So it has in fact to do with the new Multi-User feature -- one way or the other.

You are a gentleman and a scholar, great answer. Your theory about 0 being the first user also makes sense since I only have one user, and /sdcard/0 is the only "number directory" that exists.

Also relevant to this is Dan Morrill's explanation of why Android moved from USB Mass Storage to MTP access for the internal storage, which touches on the "fake" /sdcard/ fodler issue 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/

Though I strongly disagree with him on the "file picker" question (I already bookmarked that article a while ago). We're not at Cupertino here, nor we Gnomish. We don't have to hide things, and tell the user what he really wants (though he "might not know yet"). I prefer the options, whatever defaults are set. Make it a general switch in the config: "Yes, I'm a mature user" / "No, I rather like other people deciding for me"... Apart from that: Good point :)

In Android6 (Marshmallo), /storage/emulated/legacy turns empty (at least on Nexus devices), where before upgrading to Marshmallow it contained the same as /storage/emulated/0


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How to select content language on Google Play Movies
I'm in Germany and I want to download movies in English from the Google Play store to watch my Android tablet, however I can only get movies in German. How can I get the English versions?

Contents are selected based on your location, and (maybe) your device's language settings. If the latter is a criterium you could check by setting your device's language to English. I'm not 100% sure if this works, but it's worth a try.

Unfortunately device language does not influence movies language. Tried on my device.

I'learning German and I wanted exactly the opposite.

I confirm what @Filippo Mazza said. All my settings are to German, mobile device and all Google accounts, but because I live in the Netherlands I get the movies in English.

You can edit the build.prop settings on a rooted phone with something like ro.com.google.clientidbase.ms=android-uscellular-us i think or maybe ro.product.locale.region=US

At least in new Google Movies app (mine is V3.8.8) you can find Audio Language preference in Settings: it allows to Play videos in video's original language or US English when available.
Hope it helps.

what does when available mean.  Every movie i check is only in german

I mean that not every movie has a US English audio version or there are other restrictions (that I however ignore). I am in France and most French movies do not provide an English version... :/ (so the option is of course not available )


text:
My external sd card keeps losing files
I have a 16gb card which I have transferred a few videos and books onto, but after a few days on my Galaxy tab the files have disappeared. I have tried three different cards, using different types of files, but after a few days they are always gone. Any ideas?

Sounds like an OS error or a misbehaving app.

Did you try formatting the card? And do you use any apps etc. for your file transfers?

I have not formatted the card. I don't know what that is or how to do it. No apps used, just connected tab to pc and copied files over.

Is this a SD card that you have used for a long time on other devices? Do you, or have you, done a lot of writing to it?
SD cards have a limited lifespan, so the less amount of writing you can do to it, the better. You might want to do a chkdsk on it to see if it finds any bad sectors. If you find any, that would be your culprit.
I've had SD cards last for about a year and then files start disappearing, etc. That's when I would use it for everything - as the main SD card (swapping it), which means a lot of writing as apps save their data, backing up nightly with Titanium Backup, saving photos, caching, etc.
Once I learned about the limited lifespan of SD cards, I finally retrained myself to not use it as the main SD card. Now, I do weekly backups, once a week and I only store my music on the SD card, and photos that I take with the camera. The latest SD card I have has now lasted over a year which is longer than the others before it.
Also, quality of SD cards is a given. Don't go for the cheaper, off-name brands. They don't last long. It's better to shell out a few extra bucks and get a name brand.

This happened to me both with my Samsung Galaxy S4 and with my Galaxy Note tablet several times. Samsung products in particular are very specific about which MicroSD cards they can work with. The general advice for this situation is to buy a Samsung brand memory card for the phone, as there should be less issues with it.
Before you try that, make sure to format your current card on your tablet. Formatting it on your PC will result in a slightly different memory format that may not be as compatible with your Tab. Here are instructions on how to format your card: http://eguides.sprint.com/support/eguides/samsunggalaxytab3/index.html#samsung_galaxy_tab_3_ug/format_a_memory_card.html
This will delete all data on the card, so make sure to back up your important files (if any still remain) before you format the card. Best of luck to you!


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I lost my Android smartphone. Play Store tells me that someone has inserted a SIM card. How can I find out the phone number?
I lost my Samsung Galaxy S, which was signed into Google Play.
Now, Play Store has identified that someone has inserted another SIM card with a different service provider.
Is there anyway I can find out the phone number of the inserted SIM?

I think you need to install Plan B. This will help you track it down.

Related: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/18644/my-phone-was-just-stolen-an-hour-or-so-ago-are-there-any-options-for-tracking

@Sid You're wrong. Plan B doesn't require Mobile number just the Google account intact.

Sorry to see you losing your phone. Have you seen the question "Can I remotely launch an app on my android phone?" in which @jlehenbauer has answered mentioning an app called AndroidLost.  You can try this if you are sure you have your lost phone still uses your Google Account.

Sounds like a stolen phone (theft of mislaid property). Report it to the police. In the US, if you have the esn/meid they can compel the carrier to give them all the info about who's using the phone.  I'm not sure how these things work in other countries.

If you don't have the IMEI you can probably get it from your carrier, just ask them for it.


text:
How to test multi-user feature of 4.2 JellyBean on Nexus 7 tablet emulator?
I know multi-user functionality is available in Android 4.2 JellyBean:
I have gone through THIS and THIS.
But I want to test this feature on my emulator and not on the actual device.
My Questions:

Is it possible to test multi-user feature on an emulator?
If yes, how it can be?

Highly dubious that this is possible at the moment right now, best to wait and see what Google does, perhaps in the next release of their SDK, there will be an emulator by then, wait and see....

The Android emulator doesn't currently support this, unfortunately. There is a configuration file in the build system that determines whether or not to enable the user accounts feature, and it is disabled in the emulator images distributed by Google. You can star this issue on the bug tracker in the meantime.
However there are two alternatives you can look at:

You can alter the configuration file and build a new emulator image from the AOSP source and use that in place of the system image that the AVD uses by default. The file in question is in /frameworks/base/core/res/res/values/config.xml within the Android source. There should be an option named config_multiuserMaximumUsers which needs to be set to a value greater than 1.
You can try the Jar of Beans emulator package. It has experimental support for multiple user accounts. Note, however, that this is an x86 emulator, not an ARM one.

Thanks for your Support. but i could not able to find the "/frameworks/base/core/res/res/values/config.xml" path in my ubantu 11.10 could you help me?

@Bhavesh: Do you have all of the source code synced to your computer? What steps did you use to set it up?

which source code i should have for it? could you please give me link for it?

@Bhavesh: You need the full Android source. It's pretty large, but the instructions for setting it up start here if you'd like to try it: http://source.android.com/source/initializing.html


text:
Transfer data from desktop to an emulator
I have some items in my ubuntu 12.04 desktop. I want to transfer them into the Sdcard of one of the avds in my android emulator (android-sdk-linux) which I have installed on the same system.
Like to know how to do the above.

It would certainly help if you could describe the type of your "items" a bit closer: are you talking about files, or other elements? Not everything visible on the Ubuntu desktop can be transfered to Android (well, except in a screenshot ;)

Those are files.

1. Using command line: Here's how you can copy files to an SD card image.
You have to use adb push to copy files from Desktop to Emulator and adb pull for the reverse. Here's the syntax to copy files to or from an Emulator/Device Instance:
Copy from desktop to emulator:
adb push <local> <remote>

Copy from emulator to desktop:
adb pull <remote> <local>

Here <local> is path of file / folder on your desktop and <remote> is path of file / folder on your emulator.
Here is an example:
adb push foo.txt /sdcard/foo.txt

foo.txt will be pushed (copied) to the emulator.

2. Using DDMS UI: Here's how to work with emulator's file system using DDMS.

In the Devices tab, select the emulator that you want to view the file system for.
To copy a file from the device, locate the file in the File Explorer and click the Pull file button.
To copy a file to the device, click the Push file button on the File Explorer tab.

I personally prefer the adb pull and adb push commands as you can copy multiple files (in a single directory) with just one line command, using DDMS you can copy only one file at a time (no directory).

To transfer data from desktop to an emulator's SdCard on Linux do this:

Create the SD Card:

Let's create a 64MB sd card for our Android emulator. From a terminal do this:
# cd ~/android-sdk-linux/tools
# ./mksdcard 64M ~/Desktop/sdcard.iso

Now you can use the 'Eclipse Android SDK and AVD Manager' to create a new Android virtual device that can use the path to the sd card you created.
Write Data to the SD Card:

From a terminal:
# cd ~/android-sdk-linux/tools
# ./ddms

This will start the Dalvik Debug Monitor Server. Then:

Launch your AVD with SD card from Eclipse that you created earlier
From DDMS, go to 'Device -> File Explorer'
Select the 'sdcard' folder
Click the 'push file onto device' button
Find your file and click open
That's it!

Now from inside your code you can get to the sd card's path with:
Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()

More you can read here.

You can also upload the file to your online drive of choice and share it to anyone with the link, copy and paste the link into the browser of the emulator and download it that way.

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


text:
How to create a newline on keyboard
I would like to know how to create a newline on the current android keyboard (for example in a sms).
And if it could be entered - would it be displayed?
Edit:
If you've got Android 4.1.
It is just below the delete button.
Edit2 :
For Android 2.X it still is the question, where to find it.

Can you please clarify what version of Android are you running? 2.3? 4.0+? What is your phone? Is it running a manufacturer keyboard or stock Android?

Simply press the enter/return button in your key board. It is located at the right botton corner of your keyboard.
In some cases, this button sends the SMS (or submit applications, in cases of forms in websites) If your device does that, simply hit enter/return button while holding the shift  button or the upside arrow

Hope this helps.

What about single touch devices?

Good question. As far as I know, single touch devices does not face this problem. please try and let everybody know if you have one.

And what about Android 2.X devices? (I updated my question).

There is no SHIFT in GB? Please check again. There IS

I finally found a solution. So I was facing the problem in WhatsApp and my new line button was replaced by the enter key,  so I went to the setting and I turned off the option " send messages with enter key" and voila, my new line button is here.

Yes I was looking for that, thank you +1

+1. Also was looking for that. I thought it is because of Android or Samsung keyboard. Couldn't even imagine that it can be in Whatsapp. Thanks.

Press the shift key or the key to change letters from lovercase to uppercase and the Emoji button should change to a Return key.

My dear friends,
this is an old question but there is still no answer, since I have connected 2 bluetooth keyboards to my Android smartphone running Shell Terminal Emulator
and none of the above, suggested solutions, entered a new line
I will try https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apedroid.hwkeyboardhelperdemo
since keyboard mappings can be edited and customized
My search for a ready solution, called: mapping MS Windows keyboard for use in Linux Shell failed to give results.
follow-up 1
I got it.
Installed another Shell Emulator
and Enter key started to work as Send + NewLine from bluetooth keyboard for iPad by Logitech, called Ultrathin Keyboard Cover.
Another, mini keyboard, supporting bluetooth, failed to work, mismatching the keys pressed vs. characters seen on display in Shell Terminal


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How can I transfer photos to my Android Jelly Bean device while preserving the original timestamp?
I recently bought a Nexus 4 and I would like to transfer my photos of my previous device to it. My previous Android phone used the standard USB mass storage which gave 0 problems to copy back and forth stuff, but the Nexus 4, like many other modern Android phones I suppose, uses MTP instead, which has the interesting feature of refusing to copy the original dates/timestamps of the files, using instead the date at which the files are being copied.
This is obviously a huge bummer when it comes to photos; not only because one cannot check the original date at which the picture was taken while browsing on the phone, but also because they end up completely unsorted.
Is there a way to transfer photos to a Jelly Bean Android phone that doesn't support USB mass storage preserving the original timestamps?
Things I've tried so far:

Transferring via USB MTP
ADB push (both full folders and individual files)
Transferring via SSH (using SSHDroid + WinSCP)
Uploading and downloading from Dropbox
Transferring a ZIP file via MTP and uncompress the file on the phone
Transferring from the other phone via bluetooth
QuickPic "fix date" function
Local Sync
Photo Date Correction
FTPSyncX
Smoke signals
Yelling at the phone

None of them preserved the timestamp, and this is driving me insane.
(Also, I am not rooted yet, but if the only viable way requires root I would welcome that answer as well.)

Does Android support untaring .tar files? If so, maybe you could copy a .tar file of the pictures.  I don't know if the untaring would change the timestamp of the individual files or not.

@Chance tried that before but didn't help either; the issue is nothing has privileges to write the timestamp by default, so there's nothing one can do but rooting right now.

You can't, this is a current permission problem (bugreport here) of Android 4.0+'s /sdcard folder if it's not using FAT32 (but FUSE).
Reason: There's a transition away from FAT32 to unified user storage for both apps and media data (using ext4) on a single file system.

We got tired of seeing OEMs include many GB of internal storage for music, while users were still running out of space for apps and data. This approach lets us merge everything on one volume, which is way better.
-- Dan Morrill, Android engineer at Google

The old FAT32 properties are emulated using a FUSE layer to be compatible with existing apps. Also: /data/ and /sdcard on Google devices starting with the Nexus 7 use a single partition only (/data/media represents the "sdcard" content and is exposed using the FUSE layer to apps).
Here's CyanogenMod's implementation of the FUSE driver if you're interested in seeing the source. Looks like setting timestamp attributes is implemented, though.
EDIT: It only works with root.
Exact reason: All files are owned by root.sdcard_rw (see here).
A caller withouth uid=0 can't call the utimensat() syscall, it fails in the VFS layer already (EPERM) for timestamps other than current:

the caller's effective user ID must match the owner of the file; or
the caller must have appropriate privileges.

To make any change other than setting both timestamps to the current
  time (i.e., times is not NULL, and both tv_nsec fields are not
  UTIME_NOW and both tv_nsec fields are not UTIME_OMIT), either condition
  2 or 3 above must apply.

Thanks for the info, let's hope this is something google can and would be willing to address, because as far as I can tell the problem is not the fuse layer or the mtp protocol, but the strict privileges that were set there, which by the way appear to be pretty recent (4.2.1?) since the Photo Date Correction app posted below did seem to work with older, 4.0 fuse/mtp based devices such as the galaxy nexus.

Update for future readers: this remains unfixed in 4.2.2.

Update for even more future readers: unfixed in 6.0 marshmallow.

I recently came across this issue on a Nexus 5 and tried most the solutions listed here with no luck. In my case, it looks to be caused by a recognized bug with stock Android (source).
My solution was as follows - I used Windows 8.1, but no reason this wouldn't work on OSX/Linux (root is required on device however).

On your PC, create a .tar.gz archive of all the files you wish to transfer.

I used 7zip for this - It's worth mentioning on Windows, you'll need to create the .tar archive first, then apply the .gz compression.

Transfer the archive to the device using FTP, ensuring the MFMT command is used.

FTP Server  supports MFMT on the device side. Just install and enable, no extra configuration needed.
On the PC, I used Filezilla - you do need to ensure Transfer > Preserve timestamps of transferred files is checked.

On the device, extract the archive in a shell as root.

Using Terminal Emulator, first ensure you have root access by using the su command. You may need to grant access if SuperSU pops up.
Navigate to the directory now containing the .tar.gz archive with the cd command e.g: cd /sdcard/
Extract the archive using the following: tar -xvf ARCHIVE_NAME_HERE.tar.gz
Note: For some reason, when I extracted directly to the DCIM/Camera directory, the pictures would not show up at all in the stock gallery app. If this happens to you, I suggest you extract to a different directory and then move (not copy) the files to your camera directory. I suspect this is caused by a permissions issue. You can use the terminal or your file manager of choice to move the files.

Reboot for good measure.

This allowed all the files 'date modified' attributes to remain intact, and left all photos in the correct order when viewed in the gallery app.

They show not up in the gallery because of the media index. It does not recognize your terminal operation but if you use a file manager app it reports the new moved files to the index and now they are found again. Are you sure that the ftp part is really needed? I wonder because the ftp can not change the files that are inside the tar, so why should this be important?

@mgutt I guess you're right about the FTP part not being required. I was piecing together pieces of information from other suggestion solutions and this was what ended up working for me!

Check the EXIF data and see if there's a timestamp there.
If there is, Photo Date Correction will allow you to overwrite the botched file timestamp with the EXIF one, giving you back your proper sorting.

Nothing. The EXIF data is there, and the app reported to successfully have changed the timestamps when I used it, but they stayed the same; I rebooted and deleted the cache of the gallery aswell, but that didn't help. Does the app require root? It seems as if there were some sort of write protection on the timestamps that nothing is able to overcome.

This is a question which really trouble me a lot when come across with devices which only have MTP but not the Mass storage mode. I also have concerns about it with exactly the same reasons with Mahn.
After some testing, I have find a temp solution which maybe able to preserve the timestamp.
It makes use of the excternal sdcard / OTG card reader and also the cp command with -a
the timestamp will be able to preserve. But the requirement is the phone need to be rooted.

First copy the data to SDcard.
Read it with memory card slot / OTG card reader
use adb shell and acquire root permission (su)
cp -a * the data from card to internal memory.

As mentioned in another answer, on devices that use FUSE for SD card emulation (such as modern Nexus devices), only root can change timestamps of files in /sdcard.  Since things like MTP and ADB don't run as root, you can't preserve the timestamps with these methods.  However, if your device is rooted, you can fix the timestamps with a separate step afterward.
While restoring a full backup of /sdcard from a Linux PC to my tablet, I used this command to fix all the timestamps after uploading the files with adb push:
find . | while read file; do timestamp_stat=$(stat -c "%y" "$file"); timestamp=$(date +"%Y%m%d.%H%M%S" -d "$timestamp_stat"); echo "$timestamp: $file"; adb shell su -c "touch -t $timestamp \"/sdcard/$file\""; done

This should be run from the root of the directory on the PC that corresponds to /sdcard on the device.  (Or, if you uploaded something other than a full /sdcard backup, change the path in the touch command near the end.  But you should run this from whatever directory on the PC corresponds to the directory in the touch command.)
The way it works is that it goes through all the files on the PC side, gets the timestamp of each, and runs a touch command as root on the device to set the timestamp of the corresponding file there.
Note that this will run a separate su command for each individual file.  If you have logging enabled in your root program (e.g. SuperSU), you may want to disable that to avoid producing large numbers of log entries.  And if you have your device configured to prompt for confirmation on every su request, you'll probably want to change that temporarily.  (It may be possible to come up with a variation that pipes a stream of touch commands into a single root shell on the device, but the straightforward way of doing that didn't work when I tried it, and I didn't want to spend much time on it.)
I've used this with success on a Nexus 10 running Android 5.1.

I have the exact same issue. It seems that it's being blocked by fuse on the Nexus 4 running Stock JellyBean 4.2.1.
SYMLINKS:
/sdcard -> /storage/emulated/legacy
/storage/emulated/legacy -> /mnt/shell/emulated/0

MOUNT POINT:
/mnt/shell /dev/fuse /mnt/shell/emulated fuse \
    rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=****,group_id=****,default_permissions,allow_other 0 0

That info was taken via an adb shell session; I presume that fuse will be in the mix for all app-level accounts.
TL;DR
From the looks of it, it can't be done without rooting the phone.

My "solution" for the time being is to upload pictures from past phones one at a time in chronological order, with pauses in-between, in a different directory.
Here's the Linux shell script I'm using:
[old_pictures]$ for f in $(ls -1 * | sort -t _ -k 2); do   adb push $f /storage/sdcard0/DCIM/Past/;   sleep 3; done;
If you go this route, do a test upload first to be sure you're satisfied. Also, disable Google+ Instant Upload while you're at it so you don't get "double uploads".

Thanks, that helps; as your for script: both mtp via windows and adb push drop the connection for me after the first thousand files or so in my case, plus some files randomly end up corrupted, are you seeing the same? basically as this issue describes here: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=35185 (perhaps I should make a separate question, since this is not directly related with the timestamps themselves. Gotta love mtp though)

If you use the Google Photo app and you want your file to be listed in the right order there's a solution.
The background of the issue
This is an Android Bug.
It does not allow non-root user to change the modification date of files (https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=18624 since the introduction of multi-user / sandbox with FUSE filesystem).
And does not preserve the timestamp when copying files with MTP protocol (https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=92635).
The workaround for Google Photo users
Photos are ordered using the EXIF information if available, so you can just use any manners of setting the right EXIF data to them. Any camera should set this automatically for you, just make sure the date/time is correct in them.
For videos or if you do not want to set the EXIF data just go to https://photos.google.com/ and upload your video / photos from there. It preserve the modification timestamp you have on your computer and since it is synced with your device you'll see the photo in the app, correctly sorted, as soon as you are done with the upload.

Use a synchronization tool like e.g. FolderSync, which should take care for timestamps accordingly. Synchronization tools should be specialized in handling all aspects of really maintaining synchronous copies -- including time stamps, of course.

I tried a couple of sync tools, but none synced the timestamp, because I guess there is some sort of protection. Thanks for the answer though.

Did you try FTPSyncX Trial? Not the most sophisticated look maybe (the dev is no designer). But I use the Pro for about a year already, and it syncs timestamps fine via SFTP/SSH (the only protocol I use -- the app can handle more).

I'll check it, but considering SSHDroid didn't work for me I guess I won't get the timestamps with it either.

I almost bet it will. I still remember how hard that part was for the dev -- we sat hours on Skype discussing the issue :) There was that ugly time problem on Windows, which sometimes reported things wrongly... Oh, getting OT :) Simply try it, cannot hurt, right? And let us know how it worked out...

Nothing. FTPSyncX Trial as a client on the phone, freeSSHd as a server on my laptop, I'm able to connect and sync files via STP/SSH, but the timestamp of pictures transferred to the phone is still getting overwritten to the current date.

Gosh. Then it must have to do with changes due to Android 4.x/MTP. Sorry for that, I have no 4.x device to check -- but it still was worth a try.

Np, I appreciate the help. I guess I'll have to give up for now, already wasted too much time on this.

Yepp. That's one of the reasons I'd never buy a device without a removable storage (here: Android device w/o sdcard slot). If the device becomes unresponding, you cannot even take your data to another. For me an absolute no-go.

FolderSync preserves the timestamp only for uploaded files and only if you use FTP or SMB:  http://www.tacit.dk/foldersync/faq#Q26 If you download them f.e. to a new phone the timestamp is lost. Because of that I'm having a complete backup of all my media files on my nas with correct timestamps, but I'm not able to move them to the new phone without loosing that :(

In the worst case, one can always restore timestamps for photos from their Exif data. Tools for that exist for most platforms. But granted, I wasn't aware that FolderSync keeps them one-way only as I rarely sync from PC to Android (usually just the other way around). My photos are kept on the external SD card, so I can simply replace that ;)

PRESERVING DATE MODIFIED ON NEXUS DEVICE
--- NO ROOT NEEDED ---

From Android to PC: Use MTP
From PC to Android: Use Droid Explorer

cheers.. :)
it preserve Date Modified.
I dont know how Droid Explorer does it.
but it just works.
make sure USB Debuging checked before use Droid Explorer.
um.. there's one limitation though..
Droid Explorer only can transfer files, not folders.

with Droid Explorer, copy files into android phone on some specific folder
then with file manager inside android, move those files into folder we want, do not use copy because copy will alter date modified while cut doesn't.

Droid Explorer requires ROOT, doesn't it?

@AntonK Yes Droid Explorer needs Root to preserve the timestamp. If Root is not available it will overwrite the date: https://www.maxrev.de/android-bilder-videos-verlieren-beim-kopieren-datum-zeitstempel-t368672,start,20.htm#4463149

Use PTP instead of MTP when connecting your phone by USB.
It works for me, I use a Samsung Note 4 connected to Ubuntu 14.04 machine.
However, connecting as PTP only allows copying of pictures/images.
All other methods od copying files (bluetooth, WIFI, file manager) into an external drive will change the date.

I tested that with Windows 10 and a Note 3 using CM 12.1 (Android 5.1.1). I moved the files (the only way windows allows preserving) but it did not preserve the timestamps. :(

You can use adb

Enable Developer mode on mobile.

Enable USG debugging on mobile.

Install ADB on your laptop.

Connect your mobile to your laptop using USB.

Open your laptop terminal and login to your mobile using below
commands
adb devices
adb shell

Find the exact path where you want to put your files.

Exit adb shell using the command exit.

Use below command to push files to from your laptop to mobile without any metadata (created/modified time) being affected
adb push source_path target_mobile_path

You can push folders and multiple files using the adb push command in one go.
You can use the same procedure and command adb pull source_mobile_path target_laptop_path to copy files from mobile to laptop without affecting dates.

I have a Nexus 4 and had the same issue with time-stamp and photos (indeed all the files).
Here are the command lines (with a rooted phone) I used, thanks to a post on Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb

(on Ubuntu if Android SDK is not installed)
adb devices
cd /media/my_backup_folder_where_i_put_a_folder_with_all_my_data_named_"savandroid"_in_it

In order to go in my folder "backup" which contains the folder "savandroid"
adb root
adb push savandroid /sdcard

All files and folder that are in "saveandroid" are sent to SD card worked nicely with all time-stamps correct!
Note: On Cyanogenmod I had to select root for "apps and adb" in developers menu. By default it's only set on apps.

My solution to preserve modification date during file copy on Android device with MTP:
Tested on LG G2 stock (without root), Andorid 4.4.2 and HTC one M7, Andorid 4.4.2:

Network share of the folder to copy on the computer (Win 8)
Use SyncMe Wireless to copy files from computer to device

As far as I can see, the modification dates are fully preserved!

Backup solution using "SanDisk Memory Zone" to preserve timestamp date. copy/moving files from Android device to external SDCard - Tested on Samsung Note 2, Note 3 and Mini SIII
Just backup your photo files to SDCard and move the card to other Android, PC, Apple or other device - if not used to backup your photo files, follow this simple 8 steeps instructions"

Search on Google Play and install "SanDisk Memory Zone".
Start the App and wait for index file to finish.
Select Backup/Restore and change or mark settings.
Select Memory Card destination and what to backup (contacts, sms, photos, music, etc).
Verify required and available capacity, and go on CONTINUE botton.
Wait for the backup to complet.
Now you have a copy of the files in your SDCard on ".memoryzone_backup/files/1"
Now you can move your SD Card files like photos to your Windows, Linux or other Android device preserving original Timestamp.

copying files to external SD-cards doesn't cause the problem with the modification timestamp

Quick and easy solution: simply use a PC or Mac to copy the files from the old SD Card (or PC) to the new SD Card.
Use a PC/Mac with an SD Card reader/writer (there are USB-to-SD Card converters) which sees the card as a FAT32 USB storage.
When you're done copying, re-insert the new card in your phone and reboot.

I moved to a Moto X 2014 and I had this problem.
I tried many things as well, a solution seemed to be "Motorola Migrate" to synchronize with WiFi two phones (an old gingerbread backflip). In the gallery, the situation was good (even in details), but strangely in file manager the date was changed, and after few hours even the gallery also shown the transfer date.
The workaround, if the files are not too many, could be manually copy one by one, changing each time the date and hour on the phone.

I will add my solution that worked on Ubuntu
First install simple-mtpfs and install fuse
cd ~
mkdir myphone
simple-mtpfs ~/myphone

Now you have your phone folders mounted on this directory, you can use rsync -t , or cp -p to copy the pictures and the created/modified/accessed times will not be changed.
Work for me :)

In the terminal, while mounted with simple-mtpfs, timestamps appear as preserved. But when accessing the files in the phone, the timestamps seem to be all reset.

To copy files from your Android to your PC keeping timestamps:
adb shell tar c -C /storage/emulated/0/XXX . | tar xv

To restore them back to the Android:
tar c . | adb shell tar xv -C  /storage/emulated/0/XXX

This works by creating a tar file within the device, that is immediately extracted on your host, and viceversa.
The "v" lets you see the name of the file being copied.
Of course this assumes that you have "adb" installed, that the phone has USB debugging enabled, and that you already validated the debugging certificate.
sudo apt install adb

Try app "Bluetooth File Transfer" it preserves the modified date with move. And I believe with copy too but try with one file/ folder first to make sure. It can also explore the other device via bluebooth.

Providing a link to apps that you recommend would make this a more useful answer.

Use SyncMe Wireless and network share. The timestamps are preserved and the sync is quick. I was able to back up without a computer to SD Card in Kingston MobileLite Wireless in 20 minutes, re-sync instant.

Can you link this app?

I could only find the link for SyncMe Wireless, but not "Network share", unless you actually meant it is a single app. Also provide the short summary of the app and the steps to do it if possible.


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Error Connecting Nexus 7 to Ubuntu 12.10
I have a 32 GB Nexus 7 (idVendor = 18d1, idProduct = 4e41, if that helps...), and my laptop runs Ubuntu 12.10, and have tried connecting using K.K. Patel's answer here, to almost no avail.  What happens is that the "GalaxyNexus" folder is created, and then when I try to navigate to it, it has two sub-folders "Playlists", and "Internal Storage" (I cannot add a file or folder here, which is the first point of concern).
When I navigate to "Playlists", the folder opens to a nice blank screen and I guess that's to be expected (I haven't been able to put music onto it yet).
When I try to open the "Internal Storage" folder, it opens a new window that is the same as the first ("Playlists", "Internal Storage").
So I tried going in through the terminal to a similar fate.  Anyone experienced this problem and/or know what to do to fix it?  I really just want to be able to transfer files to the device.

Jelly Bean devices do not use USB Mass Storage to mount themselves on PCs. They use the more secure MTP method, and Ubuntu does not natively support MTP.
The method you have linked to is the only official way to do what you want.
I own a Nexus 7, but I am using a custom ROM, and as such, USB Mass Storage is hacked into my build. However, I believe on the stock ROM, if you check in Storage and you press Menu, you should have an option to set the USB connection type, and there is a Picture Transfer mode. It won't let you see all of the files on your Nexus, but it will allow you to copy and it shouldn't need any extra help inside Ubuntu.
For an extremely detailed explanation on MTP and why it exists, and why on the stock ROM you will never be able to use it as a flash drive, I highly recommend you check this StackExchange question:
How can I use my Galaxy Nexus as an external USB storage drive?


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Auto sync only when connected to a specific wifi network
I am getting rather low battery life when using auto-sync on 3G. I have wifi in college and at home, so I'm looking for a way to enable auto sync only when connected to those 2 specific wifi networks.

See also http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/63987/how-to-block-apps-on-tablet-from-accessing-the-internet-while-on-tethering

That's easily accomplished using Tasker. If you don't know, Tasker is the most complete automation solution for Android. It doesn't come for free (5 Euro -- but you can get a free trial on their homepage), but is definitly worth the price. Just take a look at the Tasker UserGuide for a full description.
Tasker combines conditions and tasks to profiles. In your case, the Task would be something like:
Task AutoSync:

Auto-Sync: On

You will have two Conditions, one for each profile (Tasker always connects conditions by AND, so you need two different profiles:

Profile Home:

Condition: Wifi Connected (add your home network's details)
Task: AutoSync

Profile College:

Condition: Wifi Connected (add your college's network's details)
Task: AutoSync

Now, when you're not connected to any of these networks, switch off AutoSync manually once (you won't have to repeat this). Next time you connect to one of the two networks, Tasker turns AutoSync on -- and resets it to the previous state (off) as soon as you are disconnected.
If Tasker is too heavy for you, I'm pretty sure there are other automating tools which can accomplish this simple task (Llama - Location Profiles for example). But now that you've got the idea, you will find the related app fitting you.

Tasker looks like a really powerful app, but Llama looks like it'll serve my purpose (just this one) and is free. Thanks!

Exactly why I mentioned both: I use Tasker, so here I was sure about how it works -- and Llama being a free alternative which most likely can do the same for this case. Enjoy :)

authors: ʀᴇᴅ_ᴅᴇᴠɪʟ226


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Touchscreen falsly registering multiple taps on single tap
Half of the times my phone's capacitive touchscreen works fine, but the other half it registers multiple taps on a normal tap or on a long-press.
This malfunction happens much more often when the phone is operated while laying flat on the table (i.e. not hand-held).
When a human body part, like the palm of a hand in a normal operation scenario, is resting firmly against the back of the device the problems usually goes away.
I'd think this somehow has to do with the so called "parasitic capacitive coupling problem".
Is this something characteristic of capacitive touchscreens in general?
Can it possible be fixed by tweaking some timing parameters in the touchscreen driver settings?

I got a similar problem, but I cannot see a pattern for the working and not working status. In fact the problem started appearing very seldom and now the problem is there most of times and seldom I get a few 10 seconds of proper functioning.
I agree that the problem should be something related to parasitic capacity, bad grounding of some parts in the phone, RF coupling, or similar. I am using a k-touch W808 Wistler. By the way it is a piece of crap.
Using a touchscreen testing utility I can see that the long press gets interrupted every 200ms approximately when moving around my finger.

A common fix for this kind of problem is usually buying a case for your phone.
I also have this problem in Galaxy Mini, but ever since I bought a thick silicon case, my problem is solved. But this did not get rid of the misbehaving touchscreen while charging problem, which is probably caused by the flux of electricity messing with the capacitive display.


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Lock screen stuck in landscape mode on Galaxy Tab 10.1
I rooted and upgraded my Galaxy Tab 10.1 to Jelly Bean 4.1.2.
One mild annoyance is that the pattern lock screen is stuck in landscape mode. I can't find any option to rotate it to portrait mode.
How can I stop the pattern lock screen from being always in landscape?
If possible, can I force the pattern lock screen to always be in portrait mode?

Upgraded to Android 5.0, and now this issue has been fixed.

This is due to the fact that the lockscreen recognises that the device is a tablet, and therefore makes it stay in landscape mode.
There is an easy way to counteract this, however it does require the use of a third party application called set orientation, which allows you to force apps into any orientation you wish.
Just open up the app, and set the drop down to 'Automatic'. The screen will then rotate when you rotate the device.

Thanks for responding. I'm not sure that I believe this is just default for all tablets, though. I've had different versions of Android before this and all have been able to show the lock screen in portrait mode.


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How to create an update.zip file that can copy & rename a file?
Here's exactly what I'm looking for - I need an 'update.zip' file that can copy a file (example):
/system/framework/file-to-copy.apk
to another folder:
/system/
and then it would rename the 'file-to-copy.apk' in the 'system' folder to:
renamed-file.apk
and copy it back to:
/system/framework/
It would have to overwrite an already existing 'renamed-file.apk' in 'system/framework' folder.
Note: The permissions can NOT change.
Is it even possible to do this?
Any help would be appreciated!

To tell the truth, I just need the correct commands and syntax for update-script or updater-script.

Actually you can do that by using the run_program syntax in updater-script to execute a shell script that moves/copies/pastes files while in recovery. But of course, you must extract the files that are to be pasted in somewhere (/tmp for instance).
Part of the updater-script:
package_extract_dir("stuff", "/tmp/stuff");
set_perm(0, 0, 0755, "/tmp/stuff/movefiles.sh");
run_program("/tmp/stuff/movefiles.sh");

The sample shell script can be like this (named movefiles.sh in this case):
#!/sbin/sh
# Backup files
cp /system/framwork/something.apk /path/you/want

# Paste files
cp /tmp/somethingssss.apk /system/framework/something.apk

# Set back permissions (the copied file has the same permissons, but the new ones does not)
chmod 644 /system/framework/something.apk

But remember, the EOL of updater-script and the shell script must be the same, in UNIX format, or else it won't work.

Copy a file (-p preserves permissions and ownership):
run_program("/sbin/cp", "-p", "/system/framework/file-to-copy.apk", "/system/file-to-copy.apk");

Rename a file (-f forces overwriting the existing file):
run_program("/sbin/mv", "-f", "/system/file-to-copy.apk", "/system/renamed-file.apk");

For reference, the syntax for Edify scripts (that's what they're called)  is here: Edify syntax

I know this is a couple years old but I wanted to comment on @bmaupin above. The run_program method works great, but the rename method doesn't seem to be recognized by Edify. I can't find any other sources which specify that this method exists. I don't know if it did 2-3 years ago, but if you are looking to do this now, use the run_program.

Good catch! I've been doing most of my work on Motorola devices, and apparently rename is specific to Motorola. I'll update my answer to reflect that.

You cannot execute zip files.
You can move/delete/rename a file in /system/ via adb but you must remount /system/ as writable.

Actually, you can 'execute' .zip files via the recovery mode. I cannot use ADB because my device is half-bricked and the USB debugging isn't enabled.


text:
Android phones with native SIP client?
I've heard from various sources that Android does have SIP support built in starting around version 2.3 Gingerbread, but I yet to see a single phone actually having it in its setup menus.
Just returned from a B&M store having played with a few recent phones from HTC and Samsung (all of them ICS, earlier I've checked a few Android 2.* phones) - and NONE displayed any traces of SIP support whatsoever.
I understand that carrier bundled phones may have SIP disabled on purpose, but why disable SIP in the unbundled phones retailing for $400-600?
Is there out there some sort of an official list of Android phone models having SIP support available off the shelf?

Where did you check for the SIP support? It's to be found in the system settings (telephony settings, at the very end: Internet calls).

Hint: On some devices the SIP settings simply have been "hidden", see: Where did the SIP settings go to on my LG Optimus 4X?

SIP comes directly with the Android system, as you said, starting with Gingerbread. You find it in the system settings: Call Settings, at the very end: Internet Call Settings:

For more details, you can also check with the page Android SIP Client Configuration and Review, which explains you all the details.
As it comes with the Android System itself, all devices with Gingerbread or higher should have it.

Be aware that in some ICS/JB ROMs, it's in Dialer->Menu->Settings->Internet Call Settings

Oh... Thanks. Not having any 4.x device, I wasn't aware of that. But right: every producer does his customizing -- just to confuse us, as it sometimes seems... Tnx for the hint!

No worries @Izzy. It's the default location since ICS, and all call settings are also located in the dialer settings menu since ICS.

without chatting via comments, because 1: Your rep is high enough and 2: I tried but I'm on my phone and my internet is being stupid ;)

Now that I have a 4.0 device (LG Optimus 4X), I was looking for it. Couldn't find the SIP settings anywhere. So either I have to "unlock the bootloader" (as Ryan described in his answer), or LG removed that code completely :(

I have an HTC One, and even though I cannot deduce why, my settings menu did not display options for SIP setup until AFTER I unlocked the bootloader.  I will clarify that ALL I did was unlock the bootloader, I did NOT flash a new ROM.  Again, this makes absolutely no sense, but it worked for me.

I have had Google Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ for a while, and it does have Internet Calling, which is one of the reasons why I was interested in the phone in the first place.
Long story short, it's the most horrible SIP client I've ever seen, with the most inflexible settings, doesn't actually work properly, and has all sorts of quality issues that do not manifest when using a third-party client instead.  (To give you an actual example of what I'm talking about, I've somehow had this very strange multi-dozen-second delays in voice, which I have no explanation for, other than a terribly broken buffering logic, as SIP calls go through UDP, which would never do retransmission, hence no clue why someone thought that multi-dozen-second buffering was ever a good idea.)
If you cannot find the native Internet Calling in your phone, you aren't missing much.  (I've long as disabled the said native client, and have been using a third-party client instead.)


text:
sluggish performance due to mmcqd CPU usage
I have an older Droid Incredible running Cyanogenmod 7.2.  Recently, I've noticed some sluggishness on the phone that doesn't seem limited to a single app.  The CPU Usage Plus app (which I think just runs top) often reports that the mmcqd\2 process is using up a lot of CPU (sometimes 50-60%).  Googling around, it seems that this process is somehow related to SD card access.
Is there any way for me to diagnose in more detail what exactly is causing this process to use so much CPU, e.g., by seeing what other process is accessing the SD card?  Could re-formatting the SD card help?  Or could CPU Usage Plus be leading me astray?  I have some apps installed on the SD card, and I could try moving them all back to the phone, but it would be nice to figure out a more detailed diagnosis before trying random solutions.

Do you happen to be running A2SD on your phone? I had a similar experience on my HTC Desire some time ago, and it was due to having moved both app-data and Dalvik cache to sd-ext. I tried different configurations and moving app-data back to where it was seem to give the best performance for me. There are sources that say otherwise though: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/20255/what-will-be-faster-when-moving-to-sd-ext-via-a2sd-data-or-dalvik-cache-or-ca

Hey, not running A2SD; I'm pretty sure both Dalvik cache and app-data are on internal storage.  I ended up formatting my SD card (after a backup), and things seem to be happier now (I don't have any apps on my SD card now).  But, I'm still hoping someone will know a more principled way to diagnose the exact problem.

Yes, when you see mmcqd on the top-3 processes most of the time you can assure there is a bottleneck created on any storage/flash. You can check that fact easily at the developer options in Android (how to get it), by enabling view CPU usage, the blue color represents I/O operations (more info).
My scenario was more general than the one of the original question: the tablet was already cleared factory-reset, no new apps at-all except chrome and netflix, even re-flashed the stock image but it still was desperately laggy (FYI - Nexus 7 model 2012 with 5.1.1). This is specially true when connected to WiFi or CellData, so before proceeding it's better to enable plane mode for a faster operation.
I found the following fixes to be sufficient:

[optional but recommended] IF you are root OR have custom
recovery (any), you can manually trim the storage for a boost of
performance (how to). This is specially true since the last
time it was used years ago apparently worked well but apps or reflash might have filled space without a chance to trim (more info).
[optional but recommended] The newer versions of the Google Play
store include more services and functions (even API and sync), which I found
specially heavy for those older flash storage. Uninstall unused new Google Play items (such as music, books, news, films) and then go ahead to the sync
menu and disable most of the items (how to). You will surely
find there an item in error, but anyway it's better to clear most of them.
All these are background I/O (instead of foreground I/O) lagging
your device as soon as you connect to network (WiFi/cell).
[optional but recommended] On the above mentioned developer options menu, scroll down at the bottom to find limit background process and select no process for a radical approach. That will eliminate background apps I/O adding up.

These general actions totally solved the I/O issue of the old Android (constant mmcqd). However obviously it is not perfect and there might still be other additional problems, because still modern apps take a small lag to react (for CPU and disk read), and first-boot-up of the system needs some patience (all this is expected). Newer apps and google services do expect newer devices speed.

So I seem to have addressed this issue, but basically by trial and error.  I tried formatting the SD card, but that didn't fix the problem.  Finally, I gave up and re-flashed the phone with a full wipe, and then re-installed my apps one by one.  Eventually, I found that the Amazon Appstore app was a cause of the problem.  Without Amazon Appstore, my phone is much snappier, and I haven't seen mmcqd popping up in CPU usage.  (I haven't re-installed every single app I had before, so there could have been other troublemakers.)  So, problem fixed for now, but I would hope there is a better way to figure out these types of issues.

One way of diagnosing the offending CPU hog application is to open your application manager while your CPU Usage bars are overlayed.  One by one open each potential suspect (Start with your list of downloaded apps from the app store) and select 'Force Stop' while watching the CPU usage bar.  If you get a significant drop then you have found the (or one of the) problems.  Remove that app.  Note that i could be an app that you have had installed for a long time and so you 'trust' it, however a recent update may have changed its usage profile (sending constant checks/polling/whatever to check for status/notifications/updates/etc from whatever site the app is associated with is a typical app abuse symptom.


text:
Will wiping an Android device wipe the system or only personal files?
I am unable to use my phone. It will hold a charge and die quickly. I will be receiving a new phone tomorrow. However, I want to wipe my phone for my personal benefit.
Will it wipe the system or just my personal files?

dban wipes everything.

@jikag - dban is designed for hard drives.  Wiping flash behind a controller is a more difficult proposition as the physical blocks on the chip don't have a 1:1 mapping with the virtual blocks everything on the other side of the controller sees.

This weekend I did a factory reset on my Droid Incredible, asking it to wipe everything.  (The phone had been slowly turning into a brick and this was the solution.)  After it finished, there was still a lot of my personal information on it, not just in the memory card, but also in the main memory of the phone.  I had it expected it all to be gone.
If I were going to sell or give a phone away, I would first do the factory reset then hook it to my PC, change the USB connection type to disk drive, scour for personal info, overwriting and rming everything I could find.

What was left behind on the main memory (and where)?  That shouldn't happen except perhaps on the "internal SD" partition.

Sorry, I didn't keep track since my objective was to restore the phone and it is possible I mistook stuff on the memory card as being in main memory.  But it sure looked to me like there was stuff left.


text:
Gmail - one notification for all new messages
I use the new Gmail app on my Galaxy s2.
One notification for each new message s very annoying.
I want the new mail notification to act like on my desktop - a notification on the toolbar that indicates that there is an unread mail.
Can you thing on a way to do that?

Within Gmail while at the inbox screen if you click Menu and then Label Settings you should then be able to check notify once and then you should get notified for every new messages as a group.

Isn't this backwards? You should check notify once if you want only one notification for all new messages. The OP is asking for a universal notification, not a notification for each message individually.

This is the reverse of what the original poster was asking for.


text:
Can the Kindle app scroll mobi files vertically?
The Kindle Android app makes the mobi files scroll horizontally. This poses a problem if a certain portion of the text is in the previous page and I need to keep scrolling left and right. Instead can it let me scroll selectively from top to bottom? How?


text:
Allwinner tablets factory resetting for no reason
I'm selling a lot of low cost A10 Allwinner tablets (Android 4.0.4). Some of my customers say that their tablet has been factory resetting (like anyone can do using the volume up/power buttons trick).
When a factory reset is automatically applied? Can a high battery drain cause the reset?

Battery drain shouldn't cause a factory reset, but it's hard to say what the tablet might be doing under those conditions.  A factory reset ough to never happen without being manually triggered except perhaps in the case of some security feature (e.g., after failed attempts to password unlock it).

Thanks for editing my question. Yes I expect that no factory reset is applied without the user's confirm. So you're saying that Android will never do it in any case. I found someone else have the same problem: http://androidforums.com/sprint-hero-all-things-root/373144-automatic-factory-reset-when-battery-drains-completely.html Thanks for your comment.

A factory reset can be applied to Android phones using the USSD attack. It's not my case, just for your knowledge.

Another case. Someone claims the problems is in the Android build installed in the tablet: http://androidqueries.com/unexpected-factory-reset-now-i-cant-change-my-sound-settings-605.html

@Seraphim'shost Possible to let us know what tablets you are selling?

Very hard to say... No brand. I know there's Allwinner a10 inside.


text:
Problem rooting kindle with 6.3.1
I'm rooting a kindle fire for a friend, I installed the driver through the SDK manager and ran KFU, but now that KFU has rebooted the kindle, it is stuck at the bootscreen. Any help?

Sounds like you might simply be stuck in the wrong bootmode. Have you tried Kindle Fire Unbrick Utility? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1428428


text:
Schedule Auto Shutdown on Android
I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and was wondering if it's possible (like on Blackberry) to setup a schedule for automatic device shutdown.
For example, on my previous phone, I could indicate for the phone to auto shutdown at 12AM and auto turn on at 7AM.
Is it possible on Android without download third-party app?

As far as I know, that's not possible in general. There may be exceptions though: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/20392/alarm-which-could-ring-even-when-device-is-off?lq=1

Well, let's say it's only half possible: shutdown is easily accomplished via Tasker. For the "turn on" part you need an external tool pressing the button, sorry...

When the phone is off, it's off. There's no way to wake it up (short of the power button) because it's not asleep. It's for this reason that alarms don't work when the phone is off, which has caused some consternation 1 2 3 to people used to dumber phones.

Natively, there is no way to schedule shutdowns and boot ups of the Android system. If you do decide to root there are applications in the Play store that can shedule a shutdown (you may even be able to make your own busybox script instead). However booting up will never be possible the way Android handles shut downs because when Android shuts down, it is not running.And so, there is nothing in memory to initiate any sort of startup process.

Flo files uploaded at following address one of the file consists of scheduled power off , you need rooted phone and Automate app from play store
https://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-automate-t2870633/post80126909#post80126909

I have Samsung Galaxy Pro Duos (Ginger Bread) in which there is no feature like this, but my wife have Xolo A700(ICS OS) in which there is simmilar kind of feature by which phone can be switch off and on in scheduled time. I found Xolo Phones are more value for money in compare to Samsung. BTW 'Phone Schedule' Apps available in Play Store which can turn on/off Airplane mode as per the Schedule time given. but not found something which can Turn off or On completely


text:
How to mark messages from Field Trip as read?
Maybe it's just me, but how does one mark messages as being read in Field Trip?  I was using it today and they same landmark popped up multiple times through out the day.  I can't seem to find a way to mark it as being read so that it'll no longer pop up as I pass it.


text:
sd card keeps getting unmounted when htc sensation is being charged
i have an htc sensation and it keeps saying that the sd card has been removed when its still in the phone. it will also say that the sd card has unmounted when it is charging  What is going on?

Are you charging it through the computer? Or through a power outlet?

Does this happen only when on charging or at random? Please edit the question with more details also mention Android version / ROM that you are running so that folks will be able to help you better.

When you first plug into a computer you are often given a choice about how to connect to the computer. Charge only, mount as storage, etc.. You then also often have a choice of making your choice the default from then on. So the behavior you describe can occur when you have chose to mount the phone as storage for the computer by default whenever it is plugged in. You can change these settings in the phone settings.


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Redirecting incoming calls to different numbers depending on WiFi connectivity
Can we have an android application which will direct any incoming call to:

The cell number in case WiFi is disabled
Office extension number through Jabber client in case WiFi is connected (when I am in office, I want to receive calls on my extension instead of cell).

Is there any Jabber client is available which has such settings, or I need to develop an Android application (In java) which can achieve this?

This is a very particular case because not everybody which has a WiFi connection is necessarily in an office, so I think currently there is no app to achieve this. I might be wrong but I guess you'll have to develop that one.

Will Xabber be the suitable Jabber client for this?

Try with Xabber, because is highly rated by users, although you should check out Cisco Jabber too.


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Tried hack to force 4.2 update, result is a broken play store. Theories?
So I'm on a Galaxy Nexus.  Still on 4.1.  I tried the 'hack' where you clear data on the Google Services Framework, then check update, but no luck.  I shrugged and got on with my day.
Now I'm noticing that I have several updates in the play store.  And if I choose "update" all I get is an instant "Update for [app name] could not be downloaded".  Repeatedly.
I've tried clearing data for the play store, rebooting, but nothing.
Yay. Any theories?

Remove and add again your Google (main) user account. This should do the trick.

Thank you good sir. I knew I'd done it before and that there was some easy fix, that's the one.