text:
How to find out the variant of my Galaxy Nexus?
There have been some Jelly Bean updates for Galaxy Nexus, but most of these are specific to a certain variant of the Nexus. How can I easily find out which variant I have?

Where did you get it?

There used to be an app that did just this, but it's been pulled for some reason. You could also download a "system info" type app, but these often come with ads and other bloatware.
The easiest way is to download a terminal app such as Android Terminal Emulator, open it and run the command getprop ro.product.name and you'll get the variant.
Here's an example what the run looks like:
u0_a109@android:/ $ export PATH=/data/local/bin:$PATH
u0_a109@android:/ $ getprop ro.product.name
takju
u0_a109@android:/ $

... and there you have it, takju!
Another way would be to open adb shell and running getprop ro.product.name from there. This is more useful if you already have ADB installed. Otherwise, it's faster to just download the app.

Check the firmware version of your device:

Open your favourite File Manager;
Access the /system folder;
Locate and open a file called build.prop;
Find the line that starts with ro.product.name.

Whatever comes after the equals sign =, that's the firmware you have.

The different variants and their meaning:
Below there's an updated list of the known firmware variants for the Galaxy Nexus and what models they shipped on:
GSM/HSPA+ Models
┌──────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Firmware Variant │  Model it relates to                               │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ takju            │ USA region and carrier-independent firmware        │
│                  │ released on models sold in the USA through the     │
│                  │ Google Play Store                                  │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakju            │ International region and carrier-independent       │
│                  │ released on models sold throughout                 │
│                  │ western Europe                                     │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjudv          │ Variant for Australia                              │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjujp          │ Variant for the Middle East                        │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjukr          │ Variant for South Korea                            │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjusc          │ Variant for Japan                                  │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjuux          │ Variant for Canada                                 │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjuvs          │ Variant for Brazil                                 │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjuxe          │ Variant for Russia and the former Eastern Bloc     │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjuxw          │ Variant for certain carriers in Western Europe     │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ yakjuzs          │ Variant for China and Hong Kong                    │
└──────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

CDMA/LTE Models
┌──────────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Firmware Variant │  Model it relates to                               │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  mysid           │ Variant for Verizon in the USA                     │
├──────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  mysidspr        │ Variant for Sprint in the USA                      │
└──────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Source:
XDA-Developers Forum Thread: [GUIDE] Galaxy Nexus Firmware Guide: Variations, Who Updates What, etc. explains very vividly how to get the firmware from your device (model variant), what it means and its origins.
I'll leave a resume of the current thread here just in case the link goes dead:

WHAT IS ALL THIS TALK ABOUT FIRMWARE VARIATIONS?
With every Nexus phone, there has been a "master" firmware, plus other localized firmware variants for certain regions or carriers. Sometimes these variants will contain language packs, additional ringtones, slightly different baseband (radio) firmware to make it work better for a particular carrier's network, etc.
In the case of the Nexus S, Google maintained the master and all the local variants. On the Nexus One and the Xoom, Google only maintained the master firmware while carriers and/or OEMs maintained the local variants. In the case of the Galaxy Nexus, there are three Google-maintained master firmware variants, and many more Samsung-maintained local variants.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT VARIANTS AND WHAT DO THEY MEAN?
Below is a definitive list of all known firmware variants for the Galaxy Nexus, and what models they shipped on:

GSM/HSPA+ Models

takju - USA region- and carrier-independent firmware released on models sold in the USA through the Google Play Store
yakju - International region- and carrier-independent firmware released on models sold throughout western Europe.
yakjudv - Variant for Australia
yakjujp - Variant for the Middle East
yakjukr - Variant for South Korea
yakjusc - Variant for Japan
yakjuux - Variant for Canada
yakjuvs - Variant for Brazil
yakjuxe - Variant for Russia and the former Eastern Bloc
yakjuxw - Variant for certain carriers in Western Europe
yakjuzs - Variant for China and Hong Kong

CDMA/LTE Models

mysid - Variant for Verizon in the USA
mysidspr - Variant for Sprint in the USA

HOW CAN I TELL WHICH FIRMWARE I HAVE ON MY DEVICE?
Using any file manager app, go into your /system folder and open the file called "build.prop". Find the line that starts with ro.product.name. Whatever comes after the equals sign (=), that's the firmware you have.
WHICH FIRMWARE IS UPDATED BY GOOGLE AS OPPOSED TO SAMSUNG?
Google updates the following firmware variants:

takju
yakju
mysid

Every other variant is updated and maintained by Samsung.

Thank you for a great answer! By the way, if you're using ADB, you can also do this through a little command line request: adb shell getprop | grep -e ro.product.device -e ro.product.name.


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How to update my Vodafone 858 Smart?
I have a Vodafone 858 Smart, a branded Huawei U8160 running Android 2.2 Froyo.
If possible, how can I update its firmware to Android 2.3?

See also: Where can I find stock or custom ROMs for my Android device?

From my favorite forum xda-developers, a step by step guide to apply the port of Cyanogen 7.2.0-RC1 (based on Android Gingerbread 2.3.7) for the Vodafone Smart VF858 (Huawei U8160).
This is not to take lightly, read and understand everything before proceeding. So please read the introduction from the famous question:

How do I root my device?

Assuming that you've read it and took note about VOIDING YOUR WARRANTY FROM BOTH THE CARRIER AND THE MANUFACTURER, and that you did understood and have read the contents provided by the first links!! Then, lets continue:

First, backup all your data

How to backup an Android device?

Pre-requisites:

You will need the ROM Manager by ClockworkMod:

Must have app for any root user. Make backups, flash ROMs, and own your device.

Also the GooManager Beta by Snipanet Apps:

Getting started with ROM Manager & ClockworkMod
Is your backup done? Apps, contacts favorites, pictures, etc? Yes, then continue.

Rooting your phone

Go to Settings -> Applications -> Development. Enable the option USB debugging, and wait for the debugging drivers to be automatically installed onto your PC.
On your PC, download the latest release of super1click:

Read about it and take note of special considerations at this XDA thread:
[APP]SuperOneClick v2.3.3 - Motorola Exploit Added!.
Access to the download at http://shortfuse.org/]5.

Run super1click and click the Root button. Follow all of the prompts given by the application, but make sure that you choose yes to the prompt on whether to install busybox.
Continue to the next part when your phone is successfully rooted.

Installing ROM Manager & ClockworkMod

Install ROM Manager from the Google Play store.
Backup your current ROM, select "Backup current ROM". More details at eldarerathis♦ answer.
Open the ROM Manager application. Choose the option Flash ClockworkMod Recovery, and confirm the phone model as Huawei U8160.
After downloading the recovery image, a Superuser prompt will ask you for permission for the application to have root access. You should Allow this action.
ClockworkMod should now be flashed to your phone.

Installation (first time/new users):

Open the GooManager application.
Navigate to psyke83 -> roms -> u8160.
Click on the build you wish to install from the list.
If needed, click the Download Gapps button to download the Google Apps package. The most recent (and most suitable) version will always be selected for you automatically.
Click on the Download button to download the rom.
Once the download(s) are complete, reboot into recovery and install the update package, followed by the Google Apps package.
Important: if you are updating from a stock or custom ROM, choose the data wipe option before rebooting.

Before anything else, read:

What to do before root and flash my phone?
The Always Up-To-Date Guide to Rooting the Most Popular Android Phones
How to backup an Android device?
Are there any risks to rooting a device?

Ps:
Sorry about the redundancy on some information, but one must be sure that readers understand the risks and are taking measures as to prevent data loss by performing a backup of personal data as well as the current ROM in use.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Can't create folder on device using mac Android File Transfer app
When trying to create folder on Samsung Galaxy TAB 2 using the Android File Transfer app from my mac computer, I get an error alert:

Could not connect to device. Try reconnecting or restarting your device".

What could be the reason of this problem?

I had the same symptoms. Neither reconnecting nor restarting my device helped. It turns out that there was already a folder with the same name as the one I was trying to create, and I just hadn't noticed it. So, Android File Transfer was giving me an incorrect error message.

I had the same problem and a reboot did the trick for me.

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

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


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What is internal and external storage?
My phone said that the Golf 2 app is moved to the SD card.
In the app info section I have the following choices:

Force stop
Uninstall
Move to internal storage

Is internal storage the SD?

Your phone's internal storage is not the SD card, it's the internal partition where all apps and app data goes to. There's an automatic decision to put excessive data somewhere else (the SD card) if an app is too big. Your app was already installed to the SD card and you therefore have an option to move it back to the internal storage.
There are mainly the following sections:

/system - The firmware sits here. Write protected.
/data - all apps and app data goes here.
/mnt/sdcard - This is your external sdcard. Also referred to as external storage
There are some other but the above 3 are the most important/interesting ones

If free space in the internal section (/data) is low, Android allows to move certain apps/data from /there to the SD card to free space.


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Can I convert my Xoom 3G firmware to Xoom WiFi or otherwise use the WiFi version of Jelly Bean?
So I have a Xoom 3G and I only use Wi-Fi. Jelly Bean is coming out for the WiFi-only version and of course Verizon is going to make sure that the 3G/4G version doesn't get Jelly Bean till Key Lime Pie is out. So my questions are: Would the WiFi version work on my Xoom? If so, can I somehow spoof it to think it's a WiFi version to get the update and/or can I manually update to the WiFi Jelly Bean?

I have an answer in my inbox but I don't see it here? The response shows as "Well you can install it manually, but you won't have 3G/4G data."  Does that sound legit?  If so, where do I learn how to do that?

Yes, you should be able to install a wifi only rom manually, I`ve just gone to ICS with 3g and its great.
found these links useful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfHwd2Nxw1U
http://www.icsforums.com/forum/showthread/6398
http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/Motorola_Xoom
hope this helps

Thanks...now the 3g should have already had the OTA ICS, right?  (BTW, wow, you JUST posted this and I just checked for the first time this morning.)

One last question...if I install my own ROM am I forever off the automated OTA upgrades?  I'd like when the official Xoom 3g Jelly Bean comes out to be on it.

@GeeksOnHugs: generally yes, you will no longer be able to OTA unless you reflash back to stock version.

@LieRyan thanks :-)  The wifi version is soak testing now :-)


text:
Can I flash CyanogenMod without unlocking bootloader?
With a locked bootloader on an SE ST17i running the rooted Stock Xperia Gingerbread 2.3.4, can I flash the CyanogenMod 9 onto it? Or do I really need my bootloader unlocked? I also have ClockWorkMod installed and as far as I know that shouldn't have been possible with a locked bootloader so I'm rather confused. I'm not at all experienced with rooting and I'd consider myself on just the "beginnner" stage.
I'm not too keen on the thought of unlocking my phone's bootloader as that wil most certainly void my warranty.

Just be cautious of flashing Sony handsets - bootloader and recovery are on the one partition thus making it difficult to upgrade! Just don't ask me why they made that awful decision! You can re-lock the bootloader again after - FYI!

Basically, this could be possible. I've got CM7.2 on my Motorola Droid2, which also has its bootloader locked. Being at work, I cannot access all ressources (firewall restricts me) -- but just in case, there seems to be a youtube tutorial on Unlock any Sony Ericsson Xperia in 5 minutes, just in case you want to unlock first (which should make things easier).
According to XDA your device should be supported by CM9. However, I could not figure out whether CM by default uses 2nd init on the XPeria devices (which is what must be done when the bootloader is locked -- and how it works e.g. on the Motorola Milestone 2; but obviously this is not done for the ST17i). So if you want to try with your bootloader locked, you should check with the instructions coming with your CM9 build to make sure: Some sources I've found (not sure which XPeria the ST17i is, so they might apply or not), as e.g. How to pgrade Xperia X8 to Android 4.0 ICS / How to Upgrade Xperia X8 to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and especially Android Forums - View Single Post - All Xperia mini (un)rooting,un(re)locking bootloader,flashing CM,kernels,CWM,ROM's,tweaks etc (which explicitly applies to your ST17i), mention an unlocked bootloader as pre-condition for flashing CM9.
So the answer is probably NO, though it would theoretically be possible.

You definitely need to unlock the bootloader - am afraid! That is a precursor to enable flashing custom ROMs. No buts, no ifs! Just a PITA in having to do that stage but then again the principle of locked bootloader is not just for warranty, its also for when the handset gets stolen and some savvy person can unlock the bootloader which factory resets everything so contacts/messages etc are wiped clean!

@t0mm13b as I wrote above: My Moto Droid 2 still has its bootloader locked -- but at the same time runs CyanogenMod. There is a way around it, using "2nd init", but this approach is only used if unlocking the bootloader is not possible (see RootzWiki), and so far seems to be used with Motorola devices only.

Its motorola specific - that 2nd init yeah? Well it worked for you but the OP is talking about Sony....

Exactly -- and I mentioned this in my answer :) I was just addressing your generic "[unlocking] is a precursor to enable flashing custom ROMs. No buts, no ifs!" :P

It's not necessary. If your Xperia's bootloader is locked you can't install a custom kernel but you can install a custom ROM. I have MIUI with a stock 4.0.4 based kernel on my Xperia S.


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Extract boot.img
I have pulled boot.img from my phone's CWM backup. How do I extract it? I tried split_bootimg.pl. But throws an error -
Android Magic not found in boot.img. Giving up.

What kind of phone is it from?

@eldarerathis Sony Xperia P

Hm, okay. I've seen cases where some devices from smaller manufacturers use non-standard headers on their boot images, but I wouldn't expect that from Sony. I'd try the unpack-bootimg.pl script from here, maybe (instructions are covered in detail on this wiki page). Perhaps that one will be able to correctly unpack it.

anirudh@Kat ~/Downloads/mkboot $ ./unpack-bootimg.pl /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img
kernel written to /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-kernel.gz
ramdisk written to /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz
gzip: ..//home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz: No such file or directory
cpio: premature end of archive
extracted ramdisk contents to directory /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-ramdisk/

Related question: How to unpack and edit boot.img for ROM porting?

After reading the comment, I spotted the error...

anirudh@Kat ~/Downloads/mkboot $ ./unpack-bootimg.pl
  /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img kernel
  written to
  /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-kernel.gz
  ramdisk written to
  /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz
  gzip:
  ..//home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz:
  No such file or directory cpio: premature end of archive extracted
  ramdisk contents to directory
  /home/anirudh/Downloads/boot.img-tools/source_img/boot.img-ramdisk/

For the boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz - this needs special handling... try this:
gzip -dc boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz | cpio -i

The way to do it is after unpacking the boot.img, create a directory called something like ramdisk, go into that directory and use gzip -dc ../boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz | cpio -i, the reason is, to organize the structure and files with minimum clutter.
gzip decompresses the ramdisk archive to stdout, pipe it into cpio with the -i switch to read from stdin and it will correctly extract the data.
To do the reverse, say after making a change here and there within the ramdisk directory:
mkbootfs ramdisk/ | gzip > my_new_ramdisk.gz

it gives me -dc: No such file or directory


text:
Package file is invalid

Possible Duplicate:
Package Install via Market sometimes fails and gives seemingly random error message

Whenever I try and download an app from the Google Play Store, or update an existing app, I get the following error message appear:

Package file is invalid

Which is this, and what can I do to resolve the issue?

Whenever I have an android issue (as rare as it is) I find it helps to locate the nearest iPhone and smash the crap out of it. Then I have a clear mind in order to do some vital Google searching. Hope that helps ;) Also, I would be very interested in finding the solution to this too

Does this happen for apps that you do not have a previous version installed on? Can you try with an apk that doesn't come from the market? (i.e. ZXing)? And lastly this may sound strange but is the date on your device set manually or auto? and if manual is it set far into the future or past or inline with the current date?

How much free space do you have (on each partition)?  Have you tried clearing the data for the Play Store app?

Just take a look at the question Package Install via Market sometimes fails and gives seemingly random error message -- your question is covered there as well.

@Izzy Thanks for finding that, if it solves Curt's problem I think we will close as duplicate.

@MatthewRead was not hard to find: just take a look at the "Related" section to the right :)

@Izzy Thanks for your reply. While waiting for answers from this question I did some more research online, which led me to delete my Google Play Store application, and now I can't reinstall it :/ http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/26310/ive-deleted-google-play-store-how-can-i-reinstall-it

@Curt that was a really bad idea -- and I could think of nothing where that could have helped. But that's a complete new question then; go ahead and create a new one, include information on how you deleted the app, and whether your device is rooted (I assume it is, or you would not have been able to delete it).

I'm going to close this as a duplicate for now, largely for the benefit of future readers, since the answer in the linked question does address the error you're seeing. If you can get the Play Store re-installed and find that the duplicate is not useful then we can certainly take another look at re-opening this as a separate question.


text:
Latest Cyanogenmod doesn't want to be rooted?
I just saw that if I need to install the latest Cyanogenmod on my tab (Galaxy Tab 2 7 (GT-P3113)) I don't need to root it. Is this true? Any one have more information on this? So will it be easy to restore to the original rom?

could you provide a reference to where you read this? And which version of Cyanogenmod you're referring to? (CM9 is their latest stable, CM10 builds are their latest, but not necessarily stable)

Technically, you don't need root if you have an unlocked bootloader. Even if it is locked, you don't need root, you just need an exploit to change the recovery to install CM9/CM10. Usually, the first thing that people do when an exploit is identified is "root" the device but flashing a different recovery and flashing a different ROM is also possible. Root happens first because there are little or no modifications that have to be made except put the su binaries on the device.
The Galaxy devices, from my experience is actually pretty easy to "Restore to Stock" if you so choose. It does require a little research to find the stock rom files and the use of ODIN (or hemidall). Once you have the stock files that can be used with ODIN, it is rather simple to restore to "stock"
With CM9 and later, you do not have to have root enabled. On top of that, you can change that when ever you want. You can also specify if you only want to allow apps to have root access, only adb, or both.


text:
Can't access Recovery Menu Milestone a853
I'm trying to flash a Cyanogenmod 7.1.5 on my Motorola Milstone A853. I can access the Bootloader (version 90.74) and started RSDLite 5.7 and used a base sbf file, which flashes normally.
When I reboot the device I can access recovery mode by pressing Camera, but when I access the recovery mode by pressing Volume UP and then press Camera the recovery menu does not open.
I see videos on YouTube, read a lot of tutotials, but I don't know what to do. Is there another way to do this?

I'm not entirely clear on what the issue is that you're seeing. Are you saying that you can't navigate the recovery menu? Typically the Power button selects things, not the camera one. These instructions also seem to indicate that you should use the keyboard's navigation pad. Or are you having trouble getting into recovery to begin with? You first seem to say that you can access it, but then you seem to say that you cannot.

Sorry I want write recovery mode, but write recovery menu.
I can´t navigate because I can´t see Recovery menu, it does not show, Volume up + Camera doees not do anything on my phone.

but you said that you can access it by holding camera. What is different about accessing recovery mode from VolUp+Camera and just Camera?

Pressing Camera button and then press power start recovery mode, with a /!\ on the screen, but there is a step to open the menu, this step is Volume up + Camera, but menu does not show on screen.

Power on the Milestone:
Press the power button and X button and when a triangle appears, press volume up key and camera buttion.


text:
Why has my Samsung Galaxy S2 become a data hog?
My father has a Samsung Galaxy S2 with the stock GB and un-rooted. The phone has been working flawlessly, but lately (since about 2-3 days) it began to use a crazy amount of data.
He normally uses about 300 MB per month, but now the phone is using about 20-30 MB per hour during phone standby!.
Also he notices is that the battery is lasting about half of the previous time, which is evident in case of a long running process.
He didn't install/update anything lately and all the settings are set for minimal data use. (Like no Sync..etc). He also has all the known data-hog apps kept disabled.
He has installed an app call “my data manager” and the app says that all the data is being used by OS services but there is no detailed information.
Just for clarification, he doesn’t have too much applications installed. Just: Whatsapp,  Viber, Facebook and Twitter. But as I said before, he has all the auto sync off, and all these apps where installed months ago.
My question is: Is there a program that can help us to find out what is going on? Something like a “on the fly” (real-time) data analysis?
Any other ideas on what could be happening here?
Thanks!
Edgar

It's possible that the phone is trying to download an over-the-air update to recently released Android 4.0 (ICS).  Check in Settings -> About phone -> System updates to see if there's an update available, and download it over Wi-Fi instead.

Thanks! but that's not the case... :(

Maybe it's a forced update due to the recent court order in the case against apple?

Check Facebook, Google + Photos settings to see whether photo upload / sync is enabled. The phone might be trying to get images from Picasa.

Also check Market settings to see if apps are updating themselves automatically.

Sparx, all the syncs are off. I will check about the updating in the market, and thanks for the grammar correction! English is my second language!

After reading the comments, there's not much else to suggest for you to check on your phone.
So, here's two free APPs to help you out:
My Data Manager
Main features:
  • Simple to setup and simple to use.
  • Know what apps are using data with automatic monitoring of your app data usage.
  • Set usage alarms to avoid overage charges and “bill shock”.
  • Track historical app time and app usage using easy to understand visualizations.
  • Ensure you are using your ideal data plan and maximize how you use your data.
  • Save money by using your plans more effectively.

3G Watchdog
Main features:
  • monitors your Mobile Internet (4G/3G/Edge/GPRS) data usage.
  • shows a status icon (green/orange/red) in the notification bar.
  • has a detailed report page.

My Data Manager is a free app. There is an outrageously priced paid version that isn't necessary.

@Zooks64 Tks for the heads-up, I was initially looking at the My Data Manager Update version that in fact one needs to pay.

Thanks for the suggestions! I just realize that in my original post I write My Data Monitor, but I mean my data manager.
I will try 3g watchdog now.

Your father has exactly the same problem as me. It is caused by the email exchange services. I will suggest to download a data monitor app called HiNet (The app is chinese). Using this app I found out that the email exchange service was consuming a lot of data. Now I wonder  why this email exchange service suddenly went 'crazy' (There were no issues for 5 months).

Please don't ask questions in answers. You can always ask a new question.


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No calendar notifications after gingerbread on galaxy s 4G
I updated my Galaxy S 4G to Gingerbread, followed by a factory reset. Now I don't get any calendar notifications even though the appropriate boxes have been selected in the Settings menu for the calendar app (no  pop-ups, no notifications in bar, no sound or vibrate). Google calendar, syncs perfectly.


text:
Google Maps disable prefetcher service
I have a Motorola Cliq, running Cyanogenmod 7.2. I've cached my local area as an offline map and would like to disable or stop the PrefetcherService that sol runs all the time on wifi. I can't find an option to do this in Google maps.

I'd love an answer to this question. My Pos^W phone has so little memory that foreground apps are constantly being killed and I miss incoming calls because the system slows down to such a crawl that the call has gone to voicemail by the time Phone has clawed its way back into memory, yet somehow this entirely useless service is always running every time I check, despite the ram shortage.


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Android PandaBoard: Linux terminal output for debugging?
My research team is currently considering investing in a PandaBoard for Android b/c we are developing a custom kernel/sys-image and would like Linux terminal output.
Does the Pandaboard give me booting information?  Such as printing kernel messages to the Linux terminal as the board loads up the system image?  So for example, if the phone crashes, I can at least see how far the phone made it in the boot process.

Is this related to this: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/26123/android-boot-up-messages-for-debugging ?

Yes, I am trying to find some sure way of getting console output of the boot process.  It seems that everything that I've tried so far relies on the phone booting successfully, which means there's no developing options available to non-Android developers when the phone doesn't make it to a stable state.  I want to see what's going on inside the phone, but don't want to engage in hardware destroying practices such as soldering.
We're trying to weigh the different options available.  This one would cost money though, so we want to know what the PandaBoard can do.

It might be best to check out the google newsgroups specifically related to android-kernel and android-building, there is a lot of similar types of questions relating to pandaboard like what you're asking for... it might be helpful and worth your while to check as I feel the pandaboard related matters is a bit too localized for this forum.. :)

See this link for the general idea.
For verification, do the following steps:

Connect DB9 to your host (PC) <------> Panda board (target). You need to connect with minicom and mini USB for adb shell.
pc$ sudo minicom
You should have adb shell for the Android SDK.
pc$ export PATH=$PATH://android-sdk-linux/platform-tools
Reboot the panda board.
pc$ adb devices # to check the device is connected or not
pc$ adb reboot   # to reboot

On minicom terminal, you will get logs of the reboot. At the end, it will ask you to hit a key to stop auto boot. This will tell you if the device is getting the image or not. If you want to boot manuually by using U-Boot terminal, press key so you will get U-Boot terminal.
 hardware_name# bootm

This will help you a little bit.


text:
Up and down arrows in adb shell
I have an HTC Desire HD. When I connect to it with adb shell from Windows, the up and down arrow keys work fine and I get command history. But when I connect to it from Mac OS, the up and down arrows show up as ^[[A and ^[[B.
Is there a way to fix the mac OS terminal to work like the DOS one?
Thank you very much!

related https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4478231/working-with-the-android-shell-under-linux

What shell is running on the phone? - You can find out with ps
I seem to remember having this issue a while ago (but haven't run in to it recently on my current phone) when logging in to plain sh, executing bash or ash immediately after connecting was a simple workaround

Thank you! This worked. There is no bash but there is ash.

I'm not a MAC user per say, but here's a solution reported working:
Type in terminal:
adb shell telnetd &
adb forward tcp:9999 tcp:23
telnet localhost 9999

Credits to the user alapapa @ xda-developers forum.
See the entire thread here.


text:
How can I customize what notifications show up on my notifications bar (RAZR MAXX running ICS)?
I want to customize what I see in the notifications bar/shade. (eg. I don't want notifications for facebook messages, I don't want to see my weather app in the notification bar).
I looked in the apps' setup areas, but didn't see any way to change this, specifically for the weather channel app.
Thanks!

In ICS, it's up to the application. You will have to check the settings for each individual app and see if they allow you to control what shows up in your Notification bar. Unfortunately, there is no way to control this through Android itself...
However, note that in Jelly Bean, the ability to monitor and control which apps display notifications is integrated into the app settings options. See below:


text:
Apps I never installed appear in web store under "Other apps in my library"
TL;DR version--do you have apps in your Google Play "Other apps in my library" that you know you've never installed?
In my Google Play account, under the section labeled "Other apps in my library", I'm shown 240 apps that I've installed, alphabetically sorted from A-Z. I test a lot of apps for work and I've had this account since Day 1 with my ADP1(G1), so this list only makes it to the G's before it's full.
When I activated my Nexus 7 this week, I went into this list to start installing some of my favorite apps and I noticed a bunch of apps that I know I never installed. I know, you're thinking "how do you know, you say you install a bunch of apps".  Well, I know I would never install some of these, even if it were part of my job.  Not porn or anything, just not my style. For example, the controller for a nabaztag. I don't own one, so I've never needed the app. Out of those 240 listings, I can count at least 15 that I've not deliberately installed.
Partial listing here: http://twitpic.com/a9sw74 (900x4000px PNG)
So, immediate panic that someone compromised my Play account, but the question became, "why would they install a bunch of stupid apps that didn't cost anything when they could install apps that have monetary impact". I let my son and daughter mess with my phone or tablet in the restaurant, but they know not to install apps and none of those apps would appeal to a 14 or 9 year old.  Regardless, I changed my password and revoked every device except the 3 I'm currently using.
I went into the "My Account" listing of all my purchases, which also includes free apps. Not one of these 15 apps that I've found show up in that list.  Which makes me wonder if this is a glitch in Google Play as opposed to someone accessing my account incorrectly.  Has anyone else experienced strangeness in this list?

You might be underestimating your kids' mobile phone skills. Maybe they figured out how to do that, or did it by mistake, and a nabaztag app, for example, sounds pretty exciting to a kid not knowing that they require the actual nabaztag device to use it.

You can call Google and ask them when the app is downloaded. That can give you a better idea maybe.

I just had a look and found several apps that I'd never installed because they were pre-installed on one of my devices. I think that these may be apps that came with one device or another, but that you never noticed or made use of. In my 'other apps', I can see several pre-installed apps that I've disabled on my Acer Tablet. I suspect you're seeing the same thing, but that you paid even less attention to the pre-installed stuff than I did.

None of these are preloads. I know this, because all the preloads for all of our phones go through one of my peers. The thing that bugs me is it's in that list of 240, but not in my play store history.


text:
Can I manually download my wifi settings to my Android device from my Google account?
I just purchased my fourth ever Android device - An HSPA+ Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone.
When I purchased my second and third devices (Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and an Asus Transformer Pad TF300T), I found that after I logged into my Google account during my device setup, my devices downloaded all my known wifi hotspots and the network passwords to them, and could immediately connect to any private wifi network that had been saved on my first Android device (An HTC Nexus One).
However, for some reason, this didn't happen on my Galaxy Nexus when I set it up. In fact, when I set up my Transformer Pad, not only did it download my wifi settings, but it also automatically downloaded the apps I had installed on my other devices. My new Galaxy Nexus didn't do that either. I know I checked the box to 'restore backup from Google account' when I set up the device. I did have some trouble logging in at first, so maybe that's the reason?
I'd really like to get my wifi network settings downloaded to this device. I have dozens of hotspots from friend's houses, client's offices, etc, that I don't want to have to re-enter the information for. Is there some way to manually restore this information to my Galaxy Nexus since it wasn't restored during my initial setup? I tried removing my Google account from the device and re-adding it, but that didn't work. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

I found this page on Google's support site which states the following about restoring your phone's settings during the initial setup:
"Important: If you want to restore your settings, you must do that now during setup. You can’t restore data after setup is complete."
Based on this, I'm guessing there's no way to restore my account data at this point, short of doing a factory reset on the phone and starting over (undesirable at this point). I'd love to be wrong though.

This answers my question "Can I manually recover all my apps installed in another phone with Google account login?". I think the answer is No. But it really annoy, I skip the login period and I cannot restore all my settings.

It is possible to recover Android settings through bmgr.
List your sets using bmgr list sets
Example output:
36df6csd30288e33 : phone
3c559c36e65a9b49 : tablet

Now you can restore com.android.providers.settings with the set you want:
adb shell bmgr restore 36636c7730288e33 com.android.providers.settings

If your previous device was setup to backup your personal data such as WiFi passwords, Browser bookmarks, User dictionary, a list of installed Market applications and other customized settings, all is backed up to Google's servers.
The Automatic restore feature must be Enabled to allow your phone to contact Google's servers an retrieve the previous backup data.
So, carefully, access the settings panel by:

Stating at your home screen, select Apps;
Select Settings;
Go to PERSONAL section, select Backup & reset;
From the BACKUP & RESTORE section configure what you need:
Ensure the appropriate account is selected from the Backup account field before attempting any configuration settings.
Some important considerations:

A setting is Enabled when a check mark is present.
If data back up is disabled, existing backups are deleted from Google's servers.

Useful and related reading:

Backup and Restore Service: Android
Google Backup and Restore Options - Galaxy Nexus by Samsung

Thanks. Unfortunately the screens you point to still don't allow manual restore of backed up data. I do have the backup/automatic restore options checked. Based on what I'm seeing at http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1091391&topic=1088495&answer=168906 , I'm guessing manual restore isn't possible. Also the T-Mobile support page you linked to indicated that there is apparently a known issue with restore at the moment, which may be why my apps and settings didn't restore properly.

Backup and Restore Service: Android needs registration in t-mobile.com :-(.

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


text:
Stream media from Play Store on Android To PC
I was just wondering whether it is possible to stream play store content from android to your PC. I know there are ways to stream movies that are stored on the actual device, but I want to be able to stream movies that I might buy on the Google Play Store to my PC for watching when I'm at home.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

"Watch them instantly on the web or your Android phone and tablet." - This is from the Play Movies home page. Is that not answering what you're asking? Is there a relation to Android or are you just trying to stream from the website to your PC?

Thanks I had no idea you could watch them on the web I thought it was only on an android device. The only thing though on the web it is not in HD its only 420p whereas on android it would be hd. I'm guessing hd isn't available on the web then. But is it possible to stream the hd version from the phone/tablet onto the PC so that it is in high quality.

You can play movies straight from Google Play after you've bought them; Music, go to music.google.com and you can stream and download your music. If you want to get the HD versions, you can download on your phone/tablet and then pull it, I think. Never actually tried it with movies, but I've done it with music before.

It doesn't look as if you can download movies as they are only rented for a certain period of time. That's why I was wondering whether the streaming would work. Although, now thanks to @eldarerathis I know you can watch them online but its only in standard quality not HD which seems a bit strange to me

Oh, whoops - I forgot, you can only download them if you bought them, not rented them, and that's only available for certain movies, like Transformers, which came with my Nexus 7. My bad. :)

The last time I rented a movie from the Play Store it had a "Download and watch offline" option (a pin, I think) that expired after a viewing. So it was at one time possible to temporarily download a rented movie.


text:
Is there a way to block permissions for other applications on Jelly Bean?
I use LBE Privacy Guard with great pleasure to grant and withdraw permissions to access my contacts, the internet, etc. for each individual application installed in Ice-Cream Sandwich on my Galaxy Nexus. However, it is not compatible with Jelly Bean yet (causes rebooting cycle without fixing, and even then it can only block network access). Considering that the last update was in March of this year, this may take a while.
Is there another application that can do this and that is compatible with Jelly Bean? Applications like Droidwall and Permission Denied and others also don't seem to work on JB. This question asks a similar question, but that was a year ago, and I believe none of those application works on Jelly Bean.

On the forum of XDA Developers, an unofficial version of LBE is available. It works very well on 4.1.1 and 4.1.1, at least on my Galaxy Nexus, and people on the forum are enthusiastic about it too. Many people are using it. I appears to be the Chinese version, which is still under active development and up to date, but translated by volunteers on XDA. Highly recommended.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1422479


text:
Droid2 Fastboot
How to get the droid 2 to enter fastboot?
Running rooted phone, CM7 nightly 239
Power + x gets me recovery
Power + Up gets me bootloader

The Droid 2 doesn't have fastboot mode; Its bootloader is locked. Fastboot mode is really just the bootloader mode in other phones, like Nexus phones. Out of curiosity, where exactly did you hear that the D2 had a fastboot mode, and why do you want to access it?

Ah okay. I remember there being a white screen with the android guys which seems to be described as fastboot. It may have been on one of the other phones that I had rooted though. I'm just checking through my possible recovery options before I flash a new rom (last time I had to SBF the phone, root, and reinstall CWM so i just want to make sure everythings still working ok before I mess it up :) )

Okay, cool! Glad I was able to help.


text:
Which version of clockwork recovery creates backups as a tar files?
I have used several versions of CWM recovery on my Motorola Droid 2.
One of them was able to back up into a .tar (cache.ext3.tar, data.ext3.tar nandroid.md5, recovery.img, system.ext3.tar) as opposed to the .img files that I am getting now.
Now I can't seem to find that version anymore; can someone tell me which version was able to do that?
(Currently running v5.0.2.0 from http://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager)

There is no incompatibility for backups/restores between CWM versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x. Both the filenames and the contents of the backup files will be the same.
With the CWM version 5.x:

It can read and restore the backup files created by all the older versions of CWM.
If you create a backup with 5.x, an try to restore it in one of the older CWM versions, two issues come up:

File formats:
The contents of /data and /sdcard/.android_secure are now in tar files instead of the old yaffs2 image files.
Filenames:
The backup filenames have changed from partition_name.img to partition_name.fstype.ext.

To answer your question:
Since you have files like the partition_name.fstype.ext, they refer to a backup from the CWM version 5.x.
e.g., your file system.ext3.tar is from the partition system, using file system ext3 and backed up within a .tar file.

Yeah, i have 5.0.2.0 so I should expect it to be backed up as .tar then? I'm still getting .img

@arcyqwerty There's a method to allow 5.x performing backups using the old file name and format. Have you altered any configuration for CWM related to backups?

I don't think so?
I'll look into it. I just reflashed so perhaps putting CWM on again will fix it :)

it is "CWM-Lotus V6.0.4.7"
have a nice day :)

Welcome to [android.se]. Thank you for your contribution, but could you provide official reference, if it exists?

authors: Мартин Зафироски


text:
I think my kid's Eee Pad has malware. How do I get rid of it?
As you might expect from a 11 year old, she keeps filling it with games and girly-pop songs. Today, I noticed a strange "pseudo-Market" icon on its home screen:

When you click on it, you get the screen below. Looks like spam to install more games. Lots of these show up in the notification area too, but this "pseudo-Market" icon is a first.
Is there a good scanner to get rid of all this nagware?

That doesn't look like a pseudo market but the new updated play store.

@RichardBorcsik Why would Play Store have Market as the shortcut text and an old icon like that? This definitely is not the new Play Store.

@RichardBorcsik I think OP is referring to the icon below the play store.

Thanks guys  just noticed that one. He said market and when I saw the Play Store icon I stopped looking.

Actually there's plenty Android Anti-Malware solutions.
Here's a list ordered by the best results according to AV-TEST - The Independent IT-Security Institute and the latest test results performed during February and March 2012, where were reviewed 41 different solutions.
Detection rates of 90% and above:

avast! Free Mobile Security
Dr.Web anti-virus Light
F-Secure Mobile Security
IKARUS mobile.security LITE
Kaspersky Mobile Security
Lookout Security & Antivirus
McAfee Mobile Security
MYAndroid Protection
NQ Mobile Security
Zoner AntiVirus Free

To quote:

The best products in our tests (with detection rates of 90% and above) come from the following top 10 companies, listed in alphabetic order: Avast, Dr. Web, F-Secure, Ikarus, Kaspersky, Lookout, McAfee, MYAndroid Protection, NQ Mobile and Zoner. Users of products made by these companies can be assured that they are protected against malware.


text:
Internal memory decreased even if no apps is installed
I have an Alcatel 918N Glory X with internal memory of around 320MB (160 of which goes to RAM) I have been installing quite a few apps and moved them to SD card and I notice that the internal memory free space has decreased even if I move it to SD card, is it normal? For the real problem, I have downloaded an app around ~40MB in size from Google Play (with ~50MB free internal memory). However, the app was not installed due to "insufficient memory". I decided to ignore it, but when I checked my internal memory's space, it was reduced to just ~8MB only, without even the installed app. I have set my default install location to SD card using ADB before I downloaded the said app. Can you tell me what happened here? Is it that the downloaded app resides in internal memory and I have to delete it? if so, please teach me how.

internal memory != storage space... just saying :)

This happens to me when I install big apps ,a tip you can find the file in the /cache/download/ directory

@MohamedEssam That location depends on many things.

@RichardBorcsik i mean for me

When you move an application not everything is moved. Namely the application's data stays on the internal memory.
As for your issue, go into
settings -> applications -> all

and select clear cache for the listings: "Play Store"  and "Download Provider".
Than reboot.

That's because normal move to SD card doesn't move every thing there.
If you want to move apps completely to your SD card you'll have to root your phone (I'm not responsible for doing something wrong to your phone, although it's rare to brick a phone during rooting).
Rooting (Android OS)-Wikipedia
How To Root Your Android Phone With SuperOneClick
After rooting your phone you'll have to partition your SD card (as you need) to make it two partitions.
SD card partitioning - XDA-Developers
then you'll have to obtain one of the following apps to move apps completely to SD card.

S2E (simple2ext)
Link2SD

Although i use Link2SD many people prefer simple2ext.

OPTIONAL:
if you are going to use Link2SD some problems may occur,sometimes it tells you on first to choose your ext partition to create mount scripts so it could mount your ext partition on startup then it tells you to restart your phone and then it tells you the same message.the reason is that mount scripts are not compatible.
SOLUTION:you must mount it manually using Terminal Emulator by typing these commands:
su
mount -t ext* /dev/block/mmcblk0p2 /data/sdext*

note : replace (*) with the number of your SD ext partition
then you should quick restart from Link2SD by pressing the hardware menu key then more then at the end of the list choose quick restart and then confirm.you're DONE.

When you download an app, it is downloaded into a cache on the internal SD card.  So the 40MB app you downloaded is already taking up 40MB of space on your internal storage :(
There are a couple things you can do:

Sideload the app.  Download just the APK to your external SD card, and install it from there (there is a Chrome extension you can use to download APKs to your computer, which you can then transfer to your phone - I've done this, works like a charm).  You don't need to be rooted or anything for this to work - you just need to go into Settings and allow app installation from other than the Play Store.
Delete the caches for your system (and possibly some apps) to clear up more space on your internal storage.  If you're not comfortable finding and deleting the caches manually, such as /cache/download, there are many cache cleaning apps you can download from the Play store to do this for you.  You will probably need to be rooted for this to be effective, depending on your phone.


text:
Nexus 7 screen is flickering
My 16 GB Nexus 7 arrived a few days ago. It's my first mobile device, believe it or not, and I've already found it to be incredibly useful. It has performed flawlessly, but there is one small issue that's an annoyance, nothing more. The screen flickers.
It happens in dimmer light, and only for a second or two at a time. I suspect, though I can't prove this, that it occurs during WiFi transmissions. Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a fix for this, even if it has to be some sort of warranty thing?

flickers a color? flickers on and off? lighter or darker? can you elaborate any one what you mean by flickers?

Lighter and darker: brightness. It's a similar effect to a lightbulb with a loose filament.

Does the flickering occur regardless of what you're doing? I notice something like this but only when using Google Play.

I've seen it across several apps including Chrome, Google Play, Currents, Google+, etc. I do think it happens when there's WiFi transmissions. It's pretty subtle. (Certainly not a deal-breaker.)

There just was a Blog on Land of Droid covering this issue. The author summed up a few conditions under which this "flicker" occurs:

back-light is dimmed under 30%
a weak WiFi signal
the device is accessing the net

According to that report, these 3 things are "AND-connected" (i.e. the flicker occurs when all of the 3 conditions are met). He's also hoping for a fix to come soon.
You might as well want to read the comments there, some seem to indicate possible solutions (including flashing a new stock ROM), but so far none of them are yet confirmed.

+1 Thanks for contributing this (even after I already accepted an answer, at least temporarily). Since the issue appears to be ongoing, perhaps we can keep this question updated until a more permanent solution is found.

Exactly my intention -- though I don't even have a Nexus device ;) The mentioned post just caught my eye on the RSS feed this morning, and I immediately remembered the question here...

Sounds like this is one of two things to me.
Either a faulty screen / hardware. OR depending on the severity of this flicker it may be that the device has a light sensor that is trying to change the screen brightness based on the ambient light surrounding the device.
You could rule out the second option by going to your screen brightness in the settings and make sure that it is set to a static amount and that "Automatic brightness" is turned off. If after you do this you still notice the flickers I would lean more towards faulty hardware.
I have seen on some devices (don't have Nexus 7 so never on that) that the automatic brightness feature will sometimes cause the brightness of the screen to flicker somewhat wildly from all the way low to all the way high within a few seconds.

I hope it's just the auto-brightness. I'll turn it off for a while, see if it still flickers, and report back.

Unfortunately, it appears to flicker even with auto-brightness disabled (esp. in low light; I have yet to try it with full brightness).

So, I notice the flickering extraordinarily less when the brightness is at least 50% with auto-brightness off. Do you think this is a software or hardware issue? (ie. Should I wait for an update or see about replacement?)

I wouldn't know unfortunately =/. If you've searched around online and not seen anyone else reporting similar problems though I'd lean towards trying for a replacement.

It looks like it's a somewhat common issue, and it's really not even a big deal (I'm just picky about new toys) -- I still love the device. I'm going to accept this answer since turning off auto-brightness does seem to help considerably, esp. if I turn the brightness level up above 50%.

Turning off auto brightness worked for me.

As a recent (Christmas time) buyer with a new device, I can acknowledge this issue with Android 4.2. As per the bug report and the user tests here (under brightness heading), it looks to be a hardware problem rather than software.

New devices even after warranty and replacement have shown the same issue (4 out of 4 replacements)
Disabling wifi optimization/keeping brightness above 30% is seen to fix it only temporarily which is disappointing.
As per report update, 4.2 made it worse which could also mean that a software patch can fix this for good in future. But on the other side, there are users who never faced this issue with a fresh buy and 4.2 update.
New nexus 7 users may be better off with 4.1 until there is a fix.


text:
TLS required but not supported by server
I recently upgraded my phone to ICS and now when I try to access my email I get the error message:
"TLS required but not supported by server"
What can I do to fix this?

Which email app are you using? The default one?

So turns out some of the email settings got munged and it was simply a matter of deleting the account info from the phone and then adding it in again.


text:
How to connect a different phone to the "Nexus One Desktop Dock"
The original HTC/Google Nexus One Desktop Dock is a bluetooth device and has audio line out. I would love to still be able to use this with my new phone. Anyone know how to connect this with a Galaxy Nexus?

Did you try to just turn bluetooth on on both your "new phone" (details could be helpful here) and the dock, and then discover the dock on your phone and pair it? Some basic functionality should be available at least, it may e.g. register with some audio profile.

@izzy the dock only accepts connection for the second a n1 phone is inserted. and then they exchange the password via the wired connection. It's not as trivial. and as vulnerable to Bluetooth scanners as any connection (pass still goes over the air). It's just annoying.

against common sense, Google and htc decided that the dock and n1 phone would use a proprietary method to set up the Bluetooth connection. but if you can work around that annoyance, it's still a simple Bluetooth connection.
here are the steps http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=43401809&postcount=25
(I won't copy here because I'm on mobile. anyone feel free to edit it)
It involves using the Linux shell on your n1phone. sorry if you can't do that I doubt there's a solution. (I may write an app if a see myself doing that often tho :)
as a final lesson, don't buy stuff from those companies again if you want standards, convenience and interoperability.


text:
How To Track My Stolen Phone Without Usin Wifi

Possible Duplicate:
My phone was just stolen an hour or so ago. Are there any options for tracking?

My Phone Is Stolen I Need To Know How To Use It

There are a number of similar questions already:

Is there a way to block access to or wipe my Google data for a lost/stolen phone
My android phone was stolen. How worried should I be with all my google data inside the phone?
My phone was just stolen an hour or so ago. Are there any options for tracking?
Is there any way to erase personal information from my phone that has already been stolen?
Can I locate my android phone?


text:
How can I make the Galaxy S3 detect media on my sdcard?
I have transferred some mp3s onto my sdcard using samba but the operating system doesn't seem to automatically detect them as it would if you copied it using MTP or whatever.  How can I force it to detect them?

do they show up after a reboot? If so you probably just need to get the media scanner to run. See the answer to this question: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/9449/how-do-i-play-mp3s-from-my-dropbox/9451#9451

My S4 wouldn't recognize music on my external SD-card. You can fix this on your S3 by going to settings> more > storage > remove SD-card. Wait till it says 'You can now safely remove your SD-Card' then remove the card out your phone. Clean your RAM and then put it back in again. Wait a few seconds till it's succesfully installed and your card will be visible. I.E for music open your music player and it'll all be there. Make sure the files aren't in too many subfolders or your phone will not find it and show it in your music player.
Have a nice day,

Run the following shell script on the command line, either via SSH or adb.
#!/system/bin/sh<br/>

export ANDROID_ASSETS=/system/app
export ANDROID_CACHE=/cache
export ANDROID_DATA=/data
export ASEC_MOUNTPOINT=/mnt/asec
export ANDROID_ROOT=/system
export BOOTCLASSPATH=/system/framework/core.jar:/system/framework/core-junit.jar:/system/framework/bouncycastle.jar:/system/framework/ext.jar:/system/framework/framework.jar:/system/framework/android.policy.jar:/system/framework/services.jar:/system/framework/apache-xml.jar:/system/framework/filterfw.jar
export EXTERNAL_STORAGE=/mnt/sdcard
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/vendor/lib:/system/lib

am broadcast -a android.intent.action.MEDIA_MOUNTED -d file:///mnt/sdcard

Source: Can I trigger a media scan via the command line?
Alternatively if you prefer a UI I find Force Media Scan ideal. You do not have to reboot your device for these.


text:
A more comprehensive list of Voice Actions keywords?
The formal Voice Actions web page lists a small number of Voice Actions keywords:

send text to
navigate to
call
map of
note to self
listen to
send email to
go to
{anything else} fires Google Search?

But when I use certain applications which use Android's built-in speech recognition, the recognizer won't respond to certain other keywords as well. Instead, it will wait until a second word will be spoken before acknowledging "end of speech" and returning with a result (often the wrong one, because it's always the 1st word plus the 2nd word).
The fact that the returned result always includes the 1st word tells me that Google's recognizer heard it, but decided to ignore it for some reason. So the only explanation I can think of for now is that these must be "reserved keywords".
For example, two common such keywords I found to be exhibiting this behavior are: open and exit .
Have you experienced this too?
If so, with which words?
Update: I just observed that some phones are more prone to this problem than others. What does this mean?


text:
Disable ads in applications?

Possible Duplicate:
Is it possible to block ads in Android applications?

Is there a way to disable in-app ads (on a rooted CM7 phone)?
I am NOT talking about the ads in browser.
Blocking ads is legal where I live.

As mentioned in the comments, the question Is it possible to block ads in Android applications? already covers this. There are some ad-blocking apps available on the market, but they usually require root-access on the divice -- a condition you meet, as you state in your question. So you may want to take a look at:

AdAway
AD Blocker & Data Toggle Trial
Ad Detector Pro
AdFree Android
AndGuard for Root

Just to mention a few examples. Another good option is to buy the app (if there is a payable version), to honour the developers work; he also needs to make a living.


text:
Phone interrupted during update
I was updating my phone using Kies and the download was interrupted. My phone now has a black screen with a little phone, a yellow triangle with an exclamation point, and a computer on it. I cannot put the phone into recovery mode, and the Kies application has a little icon on it that says "emergency recovery" but when I click on it I then get a message that says

TODO: has stopped working.  A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program.

I called Samsung, but they were no help at all. Their representative didn't even know what icon I was talking about. She just suggested that I take the battery out or try to put my phone in recovery mode, even though I kept explaining I already tried those things.

what phone is it?

What phone you have is important, you may be able to use Odin to fix this.  Sometimes Samsung phones do get "stuck" in Download Mode however, so I would try a combination of battery pulls with the device plugged into USB or not, while holding various buttons, etc. (basically as many combinations as you can think of).  Leaving the battery out for a couple hours before trying again might also help.

Make sure the battery is fully charged at least 90% charged... why was the download interrupted? Kies is notorious for this, if running something else, it throws Kies off during the update process... just saying, really, Kies is a terrible terrible piece of kit for this, you run into more risks of soft-bricking (did experience a hard-brick myself) in comparison to using Odin or Multitool flasher...

You can try taking it to third-party repair shop. It might work better than Samsung as they do not care if you voided your warranty or not.


text:
Dialling with favorites
With My old phone as soon as I hit my favorites button, the phone would automatically dial the number that I set as a default.  With this phone, when I hit an entry on my favorites list, it brings me to a list of numbers and I have to choose a number.  HOw can I program  the phone to automatically dial a favorite number? I tried setting a number as a default and it doesn't work.

which Android version?

in ICS, if you use the Favorites tab in the People app, then it will behave like you mentioned; however if you use the Favorites tab in the Phone app, then it will directly call the number you set as default number for the contact.


text:
Motorola Razr MTP error
When I connect my Razr it says the device driver software not successfully installed. Under device manager it says device cannot start error code 10.
How can I fix this?

A variety of issues can cause Windows to report This device cannot start (Code 10).
The first thing to check is to go to Windows Update and install any relevant updates for your computer. You may also need to select any optional updates which aren't yet installed.
Once the computer is up to date, try reinstalling the device driver provided by the phone manufacturer. You can find these for the Motorola DROID RAZR at Motorola's web site (choose Handset USB driver for Windows 32-bit or 64-bit depending on which version of Windows you have). You can also use the Motorola Device Manager to install the drivers.


text:
SMS thread retrieval

Possible Duplicate:
Is there a way to recover a deleted sms?

I hope I am able to get this resolved as this is very important.  Eventually, I have a Samsung Galaxy S and I have been keeping all the texts that my x and I have been exchanging and I accidentally deleted the whole thread.  Is there anyway to recover that one thread of the texts?

This is a trick matter, since it depends on where are your SMS being saved. If you have saved the information on your mobile phone SD card, its possible to recover them since the files on every SD Card don't get erased immediately.
When a file gets deleted from an SD Card, the space occupied by that file get marked as vacant so allow subsequent files are written on that spot. So, unless the space already been overwritten by new data, your deleted SMS thread is still there and can be retrieved.
Lets go step by step:
Requirements:
You will need an SD card Reader and an SD card Data Recovery software.

Memory card Reader

A memory card reader is a device, typically having a USB interface, for accessing the data on a memory card such as a CompactFlash (CF), Secure Digital (SD) or MultiMediaCard (MMC). Most card readers also offer write capability, and together with the card, this can function as a pen drive.

SD card Data Recovery

Card Data Recovery is professional digital photo recovery software to recover deleted files.
  The software has two versions: Card Data Recovery for Windows and Card Data Recovery for Mac.

It was intended to recover photos and other file types, but actually, you can use it to recovery any deleted file.
Download the trial version and install it.

Recovering:

Remove the SD Card from your phone.
Put the SD Card in Card Reader and connect it to the USB port of your computer.
Run Card Data Recovery:
The SD Card will appear on the drives list, under "Removable media".

Select by clicking it. Once selected and orange arrow will appear.
At the right side, you see a big button labelled "ALL", press it (a green tick will be present on the upper right corner of the button).
At the bottom, press the gray Scan button to start the scanning process on your SD Card.

A message saying "Scanning, please wait..." will appear, wait until it finish.

When the scanning is completed, the program presents you with the recovered files:

select what you need to recover.
Press Recover to start the recovering process.

If your SMS's are there, buy the application ($24.95) in order to finish the recovery process.

Other recovery applications

DiskInternals Uneraser
iCare Data Recovery

Recomendations
Perform a regular backup of your phone contents to your computer. It comes handy when having to restore deleted stuff from your phone.

Android SMS Backup: Export Android SMS to Computer


text:
Can Android be installed on the new Win8-Intel Ultrabooks slated to come out late-12 early-13

Possible Duplicate:
Which .iso to download to install Android on my home PC?
Can I install Android on my non-Android device?

I am going to buy a new computer in the next 3-4 months and I am thinking about getting a high quality 13.1 inch Windows 8 Ultrabook. I am going to dual boot both Windows8 (for work stuff) and Ubuntu (so I can have something that will actually work). I am looking into getting one of the new touch screen enabled ultra books with folding down displays to form a tablet as well. I was wondering if I could also boot Android 4 or if Android was limited to ARM devices.

Until the devices are actually released, I don't think that we can do anything but speculate. If you're planning your purchase based on Android alone then you'll probably be best served waiting it out. In the meantime, the two duplicates provide a good collection of information regarding how Android can be installed on non-Android devices (ARM or x86).

Answering your Question
According to Mike Bell that runs Intel's mobile group:

Windows 8 on tablets, Android on smartphones. Right now, I have as many people working on Windows 8 tablets as I have on Android phones. If someone came to us with a compelling business case for x86 Windows Phone 8, we’d go work with Microsoft. But the way for us to succeed is to focus — through close collaboration with Google on Android, and Microsoft on Windows 8.

Read the entire interview at:

ExtremeTech - Intel dismisses ‘x86 tax’, sees no future for ARM or any of its competitors

Simply put, you can have Android on the yet to come Cove Point, but it will have a poor performance compared to Windows 8. (see why bellow)

Elaborating this
Intel performed tests with the Android operating System, and concluded that it has a poor implementation of threading technology. According to Bell, Android's thread scheduler simply isn't ready for multicore processors.

Bell told The Inquirer that even the latest version of Android, 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) suffers from problems with threading scheduling that limits the benefits dual core ARM processors bring to Android phones. Intel uses a competing technology, Atom, in its mobile processor.

Read the entire article at:

PCWord - Dual Core Processors Wasted on Android, Intel Claims

Supporting Mike Bell's Claim

Smartphones
Intel powered smartphones available in the market are running Android:

San Diego from Orange (available in UK and France)
Lenovo K800 (available in china)
Xolo X900 (available in India)

One can keep track of this from at Smartphones with Intel Inside webpage.
Quoting from the Intel page:

A powerful phone meets a powerful OS
Smartphones with Intel Inside® run on the Android OS, giving you access to hundreds of thousands of apps available to download in the Android Market.

Tablets
Microsoft launched the Windows 8 Consumer preview, and Intel decided to show off their new Cove Point with it at IDF 2012 in Beijing:

Intel Shows Off Ultrabook-Tablet Hybrid Running Windows 8

There's no confirmed Intel Cove Point price or release date. What's confirmed is that it will reach the market with Windows 8 already installed natively on the system, thanks to the special x86 architecture used.

Related reading

CNET News - Meet the Intel man who's out to beat ARM in smartphones

Mike Bell runs Intel's mobile group and he's convinced that Intel's Atom chips are better for Android than ARM's ubiquitous processors.

Claims by Intel that Android doesn't play nice with multi-core ARM processors seem like they should be taken with a massive grain of salt, as they are attempting to compete directly with ARM. Do you have any links to sources that corroborate this claim? Has Intel published any research or studies? Have they explained why Android OEMs continue to use multi-core processors in spite of this?

@eldarerathis At the top part of my answer: "Simply put, you can have Android on the yet to come Cove Point, but it will have a poor performance compared to Windows 8.".

@eldarerathis I too believe that may have been words of war, but a simple Google search shows this claim everywhere.

@eldarerathis About the extensive answer, since we're talking about a device yet to come, with a still rather unclear future, I've opted to provide some clarification on what the GM of Intel's Mobile division is saying, as to clarify future readers that Intel does use Android, but on matters regarding tablets, they are looking towards Win8.

@eldarerathis This answer answers the question and provides useful reading material (information supported by links). If you believe that this answer isn't useful to this question, please let me know, I'll remove or improve it.

I don't get the "Supporting Mike Bell's Claim" section. What is it exactly that supports it?

I think my question was kind of the same as @RichardBorcsik's. I can see that you stated that you should be able to run Android with "poor performance", but I don't really see information that supports that theory (other than claims from Intel). I'm simply curious if there is any data from another party or if this is basically all statements from Intel interviews. The search you linked to in your comment has a lot of hits, but it all appears to just be articles referencing the one Intel interview (amended my previous comment to make this more obvious).

@eldarerathis I did read on Intel's website some vague information regarding their interaction with Android on this subject, but no hard statements like "This will not work". I'm basing the "poor performance" assessment by the interview yes. should I rephrase the answer due to the lack of concrete support for this assessment, or even delete it?

I think you can really do whatever you want with the answer. Whether or not people find it convincing is what the voting system is for, after all, but I wouldn't consider it a "bad" answer. That's basically the only reason I was curious to know if there are other data points - I'm a little skeptical of Intel's claims. You're certainly not obligated to provide such data, but I thought I would ask if you knew of any since it was related.


text:
Slide to answer is not working on HTC Wildfire S
When trying to answer an incoming call, the slide up to answer never works! It moves, but doesn't actually pick up the call. Is there any way to change this??

At android 2.3.3 you have to slide up/down the bar trying to move out of the screen.

If you update the phone to Android 2.3.5 given by HTC the lock screen changes to

were you have to move the green/red phone in the down grey ring, which may solve your problem.

I don't know why should this happen, but I guess it is a problem with your dial-launcher. You can try some other apps with dialing function, and see if the problem still exists. I need further information to help you.:)


text:
Installing Android Market/Google Play on non-rooted Kindle Fire
Is there a way to install either the Android Market or Google Play on a Kindle Fire (Android 2.3 and Kindle version 6.3.1) without first rooting it?  I have access to a Windows 7 computer with Admin privileges, but no USB cable (I do have ES File Explorer running an FTP server, so I can easily send and receive files via FileZilla on the computer).

I don't think that will work. Android has elevated permissions for system apps and I guess that Google Play needs them, so you need to install it to /system and that requires root.

You don't need to root your Kindle Fire for this -- as long as the following source is still valid: Install Android Marketplace and Google Apps on Amazon Kindle Fire. As that howto speaks about "Android Marketplace" (and not "Google Play"), it may not be up-to-date -- but I doubt the change of the name affected the procedure of installation.
A more up-to-date tutorial is Install Android Play Store on Amazon Kindle Fire - The Easiest Way, but that involves rooting the device. Maybe it has to do with the framework and a newer Android version, which makes rooting a necessary step.
EDIT: You may also want to take a look at these video tutorials: How To Install Google Music / Play On Your Kindle Fire! and GApps on Kindle Fire Without Rooting. Looks like you can still have Google Play installed this way without rooting.

The link you gave explains that you have to root the Kindle Fire to install "Android Market."

Which link? I gave 4, and one of them even explicitly states: GApps on Kindle Fire Without Rooting (Play Store is part of Google Apps/GApps). The other links are for completeness; if you use a Google Search on the topic you will find approx. 90% of the answers insist you need root. So in case the one telling otherwise does not work, the questioner can check-up the alternatives and see if they may be acceptable.

The first link. Anyway, none of the Google Apps require root, but the Play Store (it is not considered one of the Google Apps) does.

You may be right about that: I just read about the Legacy Play Store, and even that (a patched older Market-App) must be placed in the system partition, which cannot be done without root. Strange, I did not remember having my Archos rooted when I side-loaded market etc. In this case my apologies. @KevinOrr If you consider my answer inappropriate and not helpful to you, I can have it removed -- just say so. Or we can leave it stay if you think you might consider these alternatives...

@Izzy No it's good -- I just wanted to know if "there is a way", and there isn't (not without root, anyway).  So +1 to both answers but I'm accepting yours for more info.

The necessary .apk files for Google Play Store, Services Framework, etc., must be installed in /system/app and doing so requires root access. So, you must root the Kindle Fire in order to do so.
However, you don't have to leave the Kindle Fire rooted. After you've installed it, you can always unroot the device (though I'm not sure why you'd want to do that).

IIRC you need to root the kindle fire. More information can be found at http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/17338/how-can-i-get-the-android-market-installed-on-my-kindle-fire


text:
How do I check if Tasker is the application in focus using a Tasker profile?
I want to execute a few tasks whenever I am active on Tasker (e.g. editing profiles, viewing settings, etc). However, the problem is I can't see it on the list of applications that's usable when creating a profile. Am I missing something?

I figured this wasn't currently possible so I just created a widget that activated whatever profile I want active when Tasker is open then disable the said profile if I go back to the home app.

The developer of Tasker has specifically excluded Tasker itself from showing up in the Applications list.  He cites his reason in the Tasker Why...? section of his website.
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/userguide/en/faqs/faq-why.html#d


text:
All communication apps show "Unfortunately, X has stopped."?
My phone is having a weird problem, whenever I get communication from anywhere (e.g. e-mail and sms), I get greeted with "Unfortunately, X has stopped." with X representing the application that handles the communication. The weird thing is, after showing that pop up, I can still use the application without problem.
Let's say somebody texts me, that error will pop out but when I click on the notification, the SMS opens up without a problem. So far it hasn't affected anything (yet) but you can imagine the annoyance of seeing that pop up every time someone contacts you.
What should I do?

Not sure what the problem really is, but you could try to delete the affected app's cache (via the system's menu apps->manage apps), maybe something got messed up there.


text:
How to see the device list of a given Google account
I have many test Android devices and added my Google account to those device to reuse my application collection.
Recently I often recieve payment notification via gmail for application which I really don't buy. So my need is to see the list of devices which has been added the account to.
This also related to the situation when someone try to use my account on their device and read my email/download my application.
So my question is "How to see the device list of a given Google account"?

Just visit My Android Apps with your browser, and log in with your account. This will list your devices and apps.
Another good place is the Google Dashboard, which is even more detailed in some respects (shows EMEI on GSM handsets for example), less in others (thanx, @ewanm89).

there's also a per device listing for installed apps

Correct (and up-to-date as long one didn't bring a device offline and then removed/side-installed things w/o bringing that device online again ;). And you can uninstall apps from there as well. Somebody told me you can even copy apps between devices from that place -- but I couldn't figure this one out yet.

You google dashboard also gives some information, more detailed in some respects (shows EMEI on GSM handsets for example), less in others: https://www.google.com/dashboard/

@ewanm89 Thank you, didn't think of that -- integrated it with my answer to make it easier to find.

@Izzy I find nothing other than the google search home page when open Google Dashboard. Do you know why?

@NamG.VU no idea -- it works for me. Did you log in with your Google account? Besides: The Dashboard was brought up by ewanm89, maybe he can tell...


text:
Where is the SMS "Drafts" folder on the Xperia Play?
The manual says when typing a text, if you stop to answer a call, whatever you were typing is placed into a "Draft" folder or is saved as a draft. The thing is, that I have never seen or found any "Draft" location other then when I use the browser to go online and goto my email site, and hat isn't where its going.
I was typing a huge text and I am really upset that I will have to re-type the entire thing, knowing it is in my phone somewhere, unless the manual from Sony Ericsson written specifically for this phone is totally wrong. Even though the manual says it is saved, it also is too vague on conveying where this draft folder is.
Can any one help me? This had been am ongoing issue and this "unfinished draft" location must have 400 messages in it by now. I am totally confused. The manual said to goto the "Time Save" app but I don't even think that's correct.

There's no drafts folder per say, when you access your SMS APP, the conversations list appears:

If a draft is present on any conversation thread, you will see "draft" written in red. Tap and you're back on your draft.
If it was an SMS with no conversation thread, it is presented the same way.

Check your Phone's manual, page 39, where it reads:

If you exit a message before sending, it gets saved as a draft. If the message is part of a conversation, the conversation gets tagged with the word Draft.


text:
Documentation for adb shell getevent / sendevent
Is there any documentation on the format of the getevent and sendevent shell commands? specifically the ones for touchevents.
or is this device-dependent?
it is a bit hard to guess what those ids are doing.

There is some documentation on the AOSP site:

getevent

Plus several Howtos like e.g.

Android, writing events low level touch screen automated shell
Turning the output from getevent into something something that can be used
How to emulate key presses
adb shell sendevent, sending touch like events
Android, low level shell click on screen

However, the answer to your question on Google Groups states:

No, this is fairly device-dependent.  getevent prints a summary of all the devices so you know what those are.  The data generated for a device are generally the Linux kernel's event protocol, so you can look there for further help, but there is no guarantee that a particular device will be following those conventions.

Not all of them work... for security reasons, you cannot inject touch events/keyboard events into an activity.. unless the app is system-signed :)

Well -- the question was about "any documentation" -- not whether something works :) But I'd say your commend shall be added to "any documentation", as it's a useful hint!

Seems the url for documentation has changed to https://source.android.com/devices/input/getevent

Thanks, @Ramast, updated (and some of the other URLs, too – unfortunately, some others are gone for good).

That will depend on the factors for the kernel in question:

If it has uinput enabled then that's good...
Touchscreen drivers, some initialize themselves to reside anywhere within /dev/input/eventX
How the kernel handles the input, for the hardware buttons

If this passes the three criteria above, then by reading certain events from /dev/input/eventX where X is a number - this will be determined at boot-time, depending on the ordering of loading the appropriate drivers. This will vary but you can try it out and see:

adb shell cat /dev/input/eventX (where X is a number, you will need to know before hand!)
depending on which event it is then you can see funny things happening on the screen based on the appropriate /dev/input/eventX being outputted.

The values are in encoded form, based on the kernel's input structure - struct input_event which can be found in most kernel sources under include/linux/input.h.
Be careful! Depending on the touchscreen driver used, some, do not actually return the proper coordinates - that's left as an exercise :)
On the Samsung GT-i5500 running Eclair, /dev/input/event2 is the touchscreen and the values are in encoded form, this is not to be taken for granted as that will depend on what touchscreen driver is used. On the Sony ST15i, running ICS, its, surprisingly, the same! But on the Zte Blade, its /dev/input/event1.
Incidentally, I did some work about a year ago, on creating a touchscreen for ClockWorkMod Recovery which can be found over on Modaco.
The real painful part was trying to determine which event was the touchscreen and act on it accordingly which was ported over to Zte Skate, Zte Racer and Samsung GT-i5500.


text:
How can I force Google Contacts to respect "File as" (or "NickName") field for sorting and display?
Let's say one wants Android to display their father not as "FirstName LastName", but simply as "Dad". This seems to be a pretty essential feature; and, as I have heard, it is implemented even in an old systems such as Windows Mobile.
However, while Google Contacts offer the "File As" field (which does what I'm looking for), Android does not seem to respect this field: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5724 , http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8578
The issues are pretty old; did anything changed since then? I cannot find any options to use the "File As" field on my Xperia P with Android 2.3.7 installed.
Are there any alternatives to the default Google "Contacts" application that make use of this field?

It's 2023 and still appears to be an issue. contacts.google.com in browser seems to respect "file as" but "Contacts" on my Android Phone does not. Further, if I do an "@ mention" of someone in Gmail, even in browser, it fills it in with their full name, not "file as". I like to have record of their full names in my contacts, but refer to them by their preferred name (even if it's a nickname) so it's awkward, for instance, when a colleague goes by their initials and it spells out their full name when I "@ mention" them.

It would be better to split your post in an question and an answer part. At the moment the question part is very small which makes it hard to understand what you want to do and why. Please edit your question and answer accordingly.

Hi Mike, this site works differently to others.  It is question and answers.  So, please split your post.

As of 2019, Google contacts respect the "file as" option.
If you have contacts named as "FirstName LastName" and use "fileasname", the display name will be "fileasname". Also, you can search even by "FirstName" or "Lastname" or any of the entries made in google contacts. (Yeah even notes are searchable).

This does not appear to be respected on Android itself however. Google contacts on desktop/Gmail appears to override the name details with the contents of "file as" but the Google contacts app on Android (in my case Samsung Galaxy S10e) doesn't use it, likewise the Samsung variant behaves the same.

Google Contacts WILL default to a 'File As' field as the main Contact name.
You just have to create the Custom field labeled File As. Follow these steps and you can change the names to whatever you'd like, AND keep all the real information in Contact records. Very handy! Thanks
To add a “File As” field to your Google Contacts, you can follow these steps:

Open Google Contacts on your computer.
Click on the contact you want to edit.
Click on the Edit button (pencil icon) in the top right corner of the screen.
Scroll down to the Show More link, click on it.
Select 'Add Custom Field'
Type in what you want to file the contact as, then (MOST IMPORTANTLY) type File As in the Label field.
Click on the Save button to save your changes.

That's it. Now why it's not already a field, nor in the Help section, who knows? But as of November 2023 it still works.


text:
How to workaround "no network => go away" in programs?
When neither Wi-Fi nor Mobile data connectin is turned on, the programs often tell "No network" and refusing to work (not even trying) although networking can still be available (Wifi in "hotspot" mode, USB reverse-tethered, some virtual network, etc.).
How to explicitly tell Android "There is network, I configured it myself" to make programs that rely on Android API to go?

Email the app developer, their app is buggy as they're checking for the wrong condition. Applications are able to check for mobile connection vs normal network so they can adapt to use less aggressive syncing strategy or avoid large downloads when on Mobile network which usually incur higher cost than Wifi.

The app just relies on Android API to detect network presense. Android tells "Neither Wi-Fi nor data nor any known network present" and the program doesn't even try to use sockets/etc. It is more then one program, most notably Google Play Store and friends. The solution will be to make it report fake Wi-Fi or fake Mobile connection (not backed by Linux-level things) just to makes these apps happy.


text:
Does Swype have custom auto replace?
I love how Swype works but there are a few rather long phrases that I need to enter quite often, and wish I could enter faster, such as my email. I know the user dictionary will let me add custom entries, but that still requires me to Swype out all the characters.
I'm looking for a way to have a user defined phrase pop up as a suggestion when another, shorter, user defined phrase is entered. For example, I could then Swype E to M, and have my  email as a suggestion I can tap.
Is this possible?

You can tap for those words, Swype's autocompletion will use your personal dictionary to finish the rest.

Useful trick, thank you. however for my email it needs half the letters tapped out for the entirety to pop up.

@Ampersand: I don't know if Swype's autocomplete would, like some other keyboards, "learn" your frequency of word usage and over time rank your email address higher. If it doesn't then it's definitely something Swype should add IMO.

I think more a matter of my email not being obscure enough, with too many possible words on the way to it. it would be a good feature to add though.


text:
Is the kernel flashed automatically from CWM?
By this, I mean, while flashing a firmware (update.zip) from ClockworkMod recovery, is boot.img also flashed or do I need to use fastboot separately?

What does the developer say?
Seriously every single rom that I've ever seen contained detailed instructions and more often than not a faq of some sorts for this reason exactly.
Anyway, if the zip file contains a boot.img file than it's safe to assume that it will be flashed. The updater-script that handles the copying of files is generated automatically when the rom is compiled so unless someone removes it, the kernel will be flashed.

I just checked the updater-script and it doesn’t seem to handle the kernel (no lines concerning boot.img or anything)

Hence the question at the top of the answer: What does the developer say? Did you just look at it or used grep/etc? In current rom it's package_extract_file("boot.img", "tmp/boot.img");write_raw_image("/tmp/boot.img", "boot"). The first part extract it, the second writes it to the boot partition.


text:
How can I answer a call using the HOME button in CyanogenMod 9?
Just flashed CyanogenMod 9 RC2 on my Galaxy S2.
While I appreciate the enhanced customization and loads of options as well as the removal of some bundled Samsung bloatware apps, I do miss certain functionality - the ability to answer a call by pressing the physical HOME button.
Is there any way this functionality can be added via some setting that I've missed or via some 3rd party app?

Go to Settings > Accessibility > Answer calls with home button.

Are you certain this was available in CM9. I know it was a feature in CM10.


text:
Words are not clear on my Samsung Galaxy Y phone?
I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy Y phone and I noticed that text is a little blurry in the phone. I compared it with my Samsung Galaxy Ace phone and the difference is quite clear. The displayed text on the Y is ugly.
I have also attached an image of the phone below.

Why is text displayed blurry on the screen of my Samsung Galaxy Y phone?

The Samsung Galaxy Y is a low spec phone and most importantly this can be observed with its display.
Some common models in comparison (by resolution, pixel per inch, screen size, price):

Galaxy Y: 240x320, 132 PPI, 3.0in, 110EUR
Galaxy Ace: 320x480, 165 PPI, 3.5in, 190EUR
Galaxy Nexus: 720x1280, 316 PPI, 4.65in, 410EUR

The text is blurry because there are much less pixels per inch to allow it to display text beautifully. You most probably can see individual pixels without a magnifying glass in comparison to "HD" displays like the Galaxy Nexus' and such.

Yes. The text is blurry in Samsung Galaxy Phone. If the text is not eligible in any apps you can use zoom option. Or you can buy other costlier smartphones mentioned above.


text:
Upgrading hboot fails: signature verify fail
My Goal
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1762790
Putting jelly bean on nexus one
My Problem
Upgrading hboot
I'm just following everything step by step (link)
$ fastboot flash hboot hboot_jellybean_260-8-168.nb0
sending 'hboot' (512 KB)...
OKAY [  0.095s]
writing 'hboot'...
(bootloader) signature checking...
FAILED (remote: signature verify fail)
finished. total time: 0.219s

What am I overseeing?

The hboot flash region is protected from accidental/unwanted/etc writes.
You need an exploit most probably.
I found this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1486201

The explout worked great!

have fun with jelly bean!


text:
ICS silence on lockscreen
On Gingerbread, there was a nice silence slider on the lockscreen:
How do I get something like that in ICS?

You need to use something like widgetlocker for that.

There's a nice APP full of options, among them, the slide to silence:
Quick Launch - Lock Screen