# Question
Title: Baidu Android Store automatically installed without permission
Android Store (com.baidu.androidstore) is automatically installed on my device without permission. It happens in last 2 weeks. Two months ago, I had installed Baidu Browser (com.baidu.browser.inter) but had uninstalled it 1 month later.

What I did to solve:

* Unknown sources option unchecked
* Uninstall the app
* Reboot the phone

But after few hours it get automatically installed again.

Did anyone here have the same problem? How to solve this?

Device: HTC Sensation XE
OS: ICS 4.0.3
Rooted: Yes

# Answer
> 1 votes
Found the answer.

1. If your device is rooted, install 'Root Browser' from Google Play
2. Now go in the phone directory, and browse to `/data/data/com.baidu.browser.inter`.
3. Select and delete it.
4. Restart phone and you will never be bothered again by Baidu browser again.

Source: Experimented myself on Android tablet.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I did the same thing with my Lenovo K3 Note.

1. Installed Root Browser.
2. Found `com.baidu.browser.inter` in:
    * `/storage/sdcard0/Android/data`
    * `/storage/sdcard1/Android/data`
    * `/storage/emulated/Android/data`
3. Erase it
4. I searched for all Baidu files and deleted them, but I'm not sure how good is to do that. :)

# Answer
> 0 votes
I'm having same issue with Baidu and Du battery installer. They keep coming back.

**A temporary solution** is to disable them. On resetting the device, they automatically install. I was able to locate the files by going in settings\>Apps\>All. There you can see `com.baidu.browser.inter` (Baidu Browser) and `com.dianxinos.optimizer.duplay` (DU Speed Booster) and `com.dianxinos.dxbs` (DU Battery Saver), and can "disable" them (open their entries, tap the button labeled "disable"). *To really delete them, it requires root access on the device.*

<sup>(italic part edited in by Izzy)</sup>

---
Tags: permissions, htc-sensation-xe
---


# Question
Title: Lock Android Phone/Tablet after a certain time
I have my younger brother who spends too much time playing on Android Tablet, he wastes too much time and I've decided to give him only 1 hour a day but he's clever and uses the time in two shifts (30 minutes each), but I can actually tell him to use it once. Anyways, I want an app which will lock the phone after it's used for 30 minutes or 60 minutes automatically or shut down, whichever is possible.

He also uses extra time without me knowing (I can't always keep watching at him), so I want to eliminate everything and get some discipline to him.

It would be good if its linked with some website to track it but if not its fine, what I'm looking is an Android version of CyberCafePro (if possible) or anything that will auto lock the Android device after a certain amount of time and can be unlocked with a password or some sort of combination.

# Answer
I found the excellent app "Kids Place" which acts as a launcher for kids. With this, you can choose what apps they are allowed to start, and how long they are allowed to use the tablet each day.

> An app launcher with parental controls & child lock that protects your personal data and restricts kids to apps you have approved. Kids Place also prevents children from downloading new apps, making phone calls, texting or performing other actions that can cost you money. Includes convenience features for parents such as auto app restart, useful for small kids who accidentally exit launched apps. With Kids Place app, kids gets fun time and parents can get some much needed peace and free time. Trusted by millions of families.No internet connection; no email; no account creation and no payment required for app to work.
>
> Features: ★ Custom home screen displays only apps that parents have authorized ★ Can prevent children from buying or downloading new apps ★ Timer feature to lock Kids Place after specified amount of time. ★ Support Multiple User Profiles. ★ Capable of blocking incoming calls when Kids Place is running ★ Capable of disabling all wireless signals while Kids Place is running ★ Can restarts apps accidentally stopped by small children, allowing parents to stay focused on their own tasks. ★ Add custom wallpaper to customize your child’s experience while in Kids Place ★ Appropriate for children of all ages - babies, toddlers, even teenagers ★ Plugins - Kids Place provides additional parental controls for Website content filtering; Videos and Pictures via plugin based design. Please go to setting \> plugins to access these features.
>
> Premium Features (requires In-App purchase) ★ Run in background mode. Kids Place will not be used as a launcher or home screen. Suitable for older kids or on employees device to be used with stock launcher. ★ Added option to always start on reboot. ★ Ability to block app uninstall. ★ Customize App Title
>
> Home; Back; Search and Call buttons are locked so that kid cannot get out of the Kids Place or make phone calls.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: parental-control
---


title: What does "to root a phone" mean?

text:
# Question
Title: What does "to root a phone" mean?
I heard this phrase or the variants (rooted phone, rooting, etc.) in android forums but I don't know what it means. Can you explain it in simple terms?

# Answer
To 'root' your phone means to gain administrative rights on the file system of your phone (in linux, *root* is the username of the master admin). With root access, you can install and uninstall anything you want on the phone.

Most phones come with limited access regarding what you can and can't do on it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it can keep users from accidentally breaking something they shouldn't mess with on the phone, especially in regards to the operating system. However, many manufacturers limit your rights to things that aren't really so mission critical, too, and rooting the phone gets around this.

If you have a few unnecessary applications (bloatware) pre-installed on your phone that you cannot uninstall, rooting will give you this ability. It will also allow you to upgrade to newer versions of Android before your phone's manufacturer and/or cell provider make the updates available to you. Be warned, though, that rooting may void your warranty.

For more info on what rooting enables you to do with your phone, check out this question.
> 115 votes

# Answer
When you "root" your phone you are unlocking the administrative privileges of the phone which by default are locked by the manufacturer. It's similar to "Jailbreaking" in the iphone world.

Rooting your device allows you to do things like overclock or underclock your CPU, delete those preloaded apps that your phone wont delete like Amazon MP3 or Corp Calendar, install certain apps that require root access, load custom ROMs...

The manufacturers don't want you to have access to these options for a number of reasons including but not limited to:

* They want to control and ensure a specific user experience
* Certain carriers require that certain functions are locked out because they want you to pay for them or because they are incompatible with their network
* If you don't know what you are doing you can "brick" (render useless) your phone or at least cause enough problems where you'll be calling tech support demanding to know why your phone doesn't work.
> 46 votes

# Answer
To gain root (administrator) access to a phone.

'root' is the user with UID 0, which is the equivalent of a full 'System Administration Account'.

It means you have the permission to do anything. Anything includes opening protected ports (for example for WiFi-tethering), update and upgrade the OS and all software, replace the operating system with your own software, full access to every file on the machine, and the ability to delete any file, including the entire operating system.
> 22 votes

# Answer
In short, it means to get administrator access to the phone. To do things that a normal (non-administrator) user of the phone cannot do.
> 22 votes

# Answer
Other answers are already correct, but just for a bit of nerd reference. In all Unix-based systems, there is a "root" user who has access to any and all functions available by the operating system. This is a very powerful (and dangerous) privilege because once you are root, you can do anything, and much of what you can do can completely destroy the system.

This is why when you administer a server, you usually don't do it as root so that you can take advantage of the operating system saying "umm... you don't want to do THAT!" when you accidentally ask it to wipe clean the entire hard drive at 3am.
> 15 votes

# Answer
This is a bit of an amendment to everything. Essencially Rooting is Jailbreaking. You are a user, you don't have administrator access to your own phone. Rooting is the process of getting access to the "root" user. Once you have root, there are some fun things you can do.

* Remove "system" apps like Sprint's Nascar or NFL apps.
* Use tools like Open Tethering to do wifi tethering (for free)
* Underclock or Overclock your processor (underclocking with SetCPU helps keep battery usage up while not really affecting performance when your phone is in idle/etc.)
* Install a custom recovery tool.
    + Nandroid Backup -- A complete dump of your android's internal memory to the SD card which allows you to do a very clean backup and literally roll your android back to that point when needed. Also allows you to swap operating systems in minutes by having 2 backups, 1 of each.

Recently rooting is getting more efficient and with 1-click rooting coming up, it should be a breeze for most people, just set up and let it run for a half an hr.

The only risk is bricking your phone (screwing up some critical software thus making it impossible to start it up or install a fix).
> 15 votes

# Answer
This question is one of the most viewed on this site, yet all answers say the same: "getting admin rights, let's you do stuff like xyz and abc". The latter is not really part of a relevant answer, and indeed there is already a question here: what can a rooted phone do?.

Sure rooting equals getting admin rights, but let's add some more details: how admin rights are *implemented* in Android. Whats happens, on a technical level, when you root a phone? A new program/applet becomes available: **su**. It sits in the /system/xbin/ folder and allows users to switch to a different user ID --including root (aka admin).

Remember that in android applications normally run under their own user ID. So if 1) su exists and 2) an app uses it to change to root, then the app can do anything the root user could do!

Not all rooting methods produce the same change. For example many methods rely on an additional app called superuser.apk that has a custom version of the su binary. This lets the app act as a permission control manager whenever su is invoked by an app.

In addition to su and superuser (or SuperSu), often busybox gets installed as part of the rooting script. These three files (technically busybox is a set of files) are the most common additions when we talk about rooting a phone.

---

It is not trivial to just copy a `su` to the folder yourself, as the /system partition is mounted read only and you need root rights to (re)mount it as writable (and you'd need write permissions if it was).

One 'indirect' way of doing this is using a recovery with extended functionality, it can mount /system as writable and copy files to it. In most cases this means flashing a custom recovery, as many stock recoveries are limited to patching only specific (OEM) files.

A more 'direct' way would be to directly flash a new /system partition (with root files) using some flashing tool. Such tools include:

* odin(PC--Samsung only)
* fastboot(PC--Generic Android)
* flashify(app--Generic Android)

It is relatively easy to copy the /system partition from your phone--or an image file from the web, and flash the root-modified partition back. Lastly you may be able to get a root shell using ADB, if the ROM was compiled to allow it (not common in stock ROMs). Using the root shell it is trivial to remount partitions and copy files anywhere you want--if you know linux commands.

These simple methods work for phones that are unlocked/easy to unlock. When a bootloader is locked the process of rooting can become a convoluted process that may differ between devices, see more specific rooting info here. This is because any custom modifications to important partitions will break the OEM 'signature' and cause the bootloader to refuse loading (bootloop). Or, in some cases the bootloader will just undo any changes.
> 7 votes

---
Tags: rooting
---


# Question
Title: What's the directory location for Newsstand documents?
I saved a few magazine issues using the options available in the Google Play Newsstand app, but can't figure out where the files are stored. Nothing showed up in the `/sdcard/` directories tagged with recent modification dates.

Anyone know where I should be looking? In case it's relevant, my device is ASUS MemoPad 302C.

# Answer
Without root access on the device, probably nowhere. With root, most likely in `/data/data/com.google.android.apps.magazines`. If the app stores data on sdcard, it should be found below `Android/data/com.google.android.apps.magazines`.
> 1 votes

# Answer
It'll probably be in `/data/data/com.google.android.apps.magazines` as **Izzy** says. I want to point something out in here, further improving his answer.

A-) All apps, by default, store their datas in `/data/data/*app's package name*`

B-) Yet, if they have the required permission given by the user, they can use `/sdcard` partition as they wish to store data as well.

A is a default case.

B however, is optional. B is usually preferred when the created data file must be easily accessible by the user (like Whatsapp backups, images etc.) or when the app needs to download additional files to work properly (e.g. game patches)

This applies to **all user apps** therefore the information you try to find is either in somewhere in `/sdcard` or in the related `/data` folder that is `/data/data/com.google.android.apps.magazines`
> 0 votes

---
Tags: google-play-store, internal-storage
---


# Question
Title: Import/Install SSL-certificate without CA-flag
Our team has the following problem:
We are developing a client-application for android and iOS using Unity + UniWebview + HTML. This app includes Ajax-requests to some servers via jQuery. For testing purposes we're using a testing server instead of the live server. This testing server uses a self-signed SSL-certificate. NOTE: We have no access to that server, so changing the SSL-certificate is likely not an option.
When testing the .htm-file locally with the desktop browser we just did import that SSL-certificate to Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. With this approach our HTML-code worked as expected.

Now we wanted to test it in our UniWebview environment on an android device. Intially the app didn't work. As we tested the .htm-file in the mobile chrome browser, the requests were blocked because of the not trusted SSL-certificate. So we went looking for a solution on how to import the certificate to Android.

The most common solution we found, was exporting the certificate in chrome or firefox and copying it to the SD-card drive of the device. Then: Settings \> Security \> Install from USB-Storage, then select the certificate and install it. After the installation we got the message of a successful installation. But when looking for it in the list of user certificates, it doesn't show up. After testing our script again it also still doesn't work. We gave this solution a couple of tries by experimenting with different formats and encodings, but everytime we got the same result.

The second try was using the application CAdroid for importing SSL-certificates to Android. But there we also encountered a problem. At step 4 (checking of the certificate) we got an errormessage that the basic constraints are missing. Therefore there is no CA-flag set, therefore the CA-flag isn't true.

The third try was using the Android-emulator of the Android-SDK. This time we got the same problem as in our first try, when installing the certificate directly to Android.

**TL;DR**
So my quesiton: Is it possible to install this self-signed certificate to Android *without* having a set CA-flag?
If not, is it possible to modify that existing certificate, so it can be installed?
NOTE: Creating a new certificate is NOT a real option.
NOTE: We only have the certificate-files, we exported with chrome and firefox
I found this post: self-signed certificate install claims success, but android acts as if cert isn't there . In the comments there is some discussion about modfying an exisiting certificate, although I am not sure if this is an option for us.

Testing device: Samsung GT-N8010 (Galaxy Note 10.1) Android 4.4.2

Best Regards

# Answer
> Is it possible to install this self-signed certificate to Android without having a set CA-flag?

Android uses OpenSSL (or the fork BoringSSL in later versions) as the underlying SSL stack. OpenSSL will not accept a self-signed certificate unless the CA flag is true, because even a self-signed certificate must have the correct flags so that it can sign itself (i.e. CA flag). So even if you would be able to install the certificate it will not be used as the trust anchor for validation, i.e. the validation will fail.

> If not, is it possible to modify that existing certificate, so it can be installed? NOTE: Creating a new certificate is NOT a real option.

No, you cannot modify an existing certificate. You could probably re-create the certificate if you have access to the original certificate and the private key.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: 4.4-kitkat, https
---


# Question
Title: Camera Firmware not installed on GT-I9515L
## TL;DR

My Rear Camera doesn't work and the Firmware version for it is `null` and I think I need to install it manually. How do I do that in a Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9515L with `PDA I9515LUBU1BOJ1` and `CSC I9515LZTM1BOI1`?

---

Everytime I open my camera app, I get a black screen and some of those times it shows a **Updating Camera Firmware. Please Wait...**

When researching the web, I found the `*#0*#` code that tells me **Data Line Fail** and **Camera Failed** when I hit the **Mega Cam** buttom.

Also, the `*#34971539#` code shows me that I have no firmware installed:

```
Rear Camera (Main)
Cam FW Ver: null
Phone FW Ver: S13F0LAGE10

```

What I tried:

* Factory Reset. After this, the Google Account got in and re-installed every app and restored every data, but I didn't consider this being the problem due to the **Cam FW Ver: null** appearing to state that I have no Camera Firmware currently installed.
* Phone Firmware Update. I found a Firmware on SamMobiles that matches my Country and Carrier dated 2 weeks ago for Android 5.0.1. I know I hadn't gotten this from OTA because although I use `TIM` carrier, my phone had the `Claro` carrier logo, so technically my provider and the firmware didn't match each other. I successfully installed the 5.0.1 firmware and the phone works perfectly, except the camera problem that still persists (no Firmware version).

My guess is that I have to install the camera firmware manually, but I have no idea how to do it. I'd love if somebody could point me to the direction in which I can find the solution.

When opening the app, it gives some freezes, but it's possible to hit the switch camera and use the front camera regularly.

Thank you very much.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Unfortunately, I could not find a *software* solution, so I took it to the warranty and they fixed it by replacing the camera.

---
Tags: samsung-galaxy-s-4, camera
---


title: Error occured while playing videos

text:
# Question
Title: Error occured while playing videos
Please help me.i download the offline videos from you tube successful but when i want to play the video the error occured like there was problem while playing touch to retry.

# Answer
> -2 votes
Did you use tubemate?

Tubemate is incredibly easy to use and i never had any problem playing the videos downloaded using it.

Just google "tubemate apk" and install it and then go to any browser and browse youtube, once you have done selecting a particular video just copy the url of that video and paste it in tubemate url section which is located on a slider on the left and then click the green arrow that appears on the toolbar and voila youre done. :)

---
Tags: updates
---


# Question
Title: XPrivacy - explanation of restriction settings
Maybe it's me but I don't understand XPrivacy's per-permission-settings. The legend sais

* first check box: restrict category or function
* second check box: restrict on demand
* first check box is default value
* : stands for "partly restricted"
* `?`: restrictions will be asked

But what does  (checked) mean? Fully restricted? And what are the meanings of the combinations?

And what is the "default" case for?

Can you explain the following combinations:

`[ ] [ ]` (no restrictions (the only one I truly understand :)))

`[ ] [?]` (?? default: no restrictions but ask otherwise?)

`[ ] [✔]` (?? default: no restrictions but full restrictions otherwise?)

`[ ] [■]` (?? default: no restrictions but partly restricted otherwise?)

`[■] [ ]` (?? default: partly restricted)

`[■] [■]` (?? partly on demand, default is partly?)

`[✔] [ ]` (?? default: fully restricted?)

`[✔] [?]` (?? always restrict but ask otherwise??)

Which ones are missing?

Why isn't there a combination like `[■] [?]` or `[✔] [✔]`?

Please help me out..

# Answer
According to the README file of XPrivacy that can be found here:

> The tri-state check box works this way:
>
> unchecked = no items in the category are restricted
>
> solid square = some items in the category are restricted
>
> check mark = all items in the category are restricted
>
> Note: By default, categories and functions are filtered by permission, so you may not see all of them. The check box state is independent of this.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: settings, xprivacy
---


# Question
Title: Recovering data from oneplus1 after deleting /storage folder and factory reset
**oneplus-one**

**tl;dr:**

Is there a theoretic way to recover data from the phone after: 1. deleting /storage folder 2. and then rooting (which means factory reset?)

If there is a theoretic way to recover it from the bits, is there a way to take a snapshot of the current state of the bit, so I can (in theory) recover the media in the future?

**Long version:**

First of all I know I'm very stupid..

Yesterday I've deleted my /storage folder since in first glance it looked empty.

Then I figured out what did I do, so I tried to recover the information. I've searched the web for an application that does that and I found one that required rooting the phone, so I rooted the phone which means I made factory reset.

Then I tried to recover but it didn't manage to recover the photos and videos.. (it did recover whatsapp photos and some other things but not from the dcim folder).

I tried then several different applications that may not ask for rooting the phone so maybe I made a mistake by doing that (not sure that they wouldn't request for rooting either) but no success with that...

I'm willing to pay money to save that data but do you think it's not recoverable anymore? I also called the 3 biggest recovery companies in my country, 2 of them told me that they don't think it's possible and one agreed to take it to their labs for a small price and then give me an offer. If there is a theoretic way to recover it from the bits, is there a way to take a snapshot of the current state of the bit, so I can (in theory) recover the media in the future?

I'm very desperate and would be very thankful for your help :)

# Answer
> 1 votes
After few weeks of working on that, I didn't make it to recover any of my photos/videos/whatsapp chat history (the things that were most important to me) I tried several stuff, apperently all of the recovery programs that using the adb to directly connect to the phone through the PC doesn't work well enough, as well as the programs that works from the device...

I tried this article: http://www.dflund.se/~jokke/androidfilerecovery/ but it didn't work for some reason...

Then I tried that one : http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-internal-memory-data-recovery-yes-t1994705 I used a centos VM to get a image of the device partiotns the way they suggested (I couldn't make the busybox work). I mapped that file as hard disk I tried to use 'Recuva' it seems like it managed to restore files but something apperantly went wrong and the files wasn't helpful...

I tried to use 'easeus data recovery' it worked better, it found around 20k files.. There were alot of directories and I didn't look up at it so much but it recoverd alot of photos which I think were from the whatsapp media.

Incase someone who made the same mistake by deleting the 'storage' folder, get to this post, I recommend to turn off the phone immidietly and find a way to do that without rooting the device.. (although it might be impossible since as far as I know all of the methods I used were depends on a rooted device, but I didn't look up on this since the first thing I done is to root my device - which might be the mistake)...

---
Tags: data-recovery, oneplus-one
---


# Question
Title: GS6 (Android 5.1.1) lost synchronizaton with Facebook contacts
My Galaxy S6 had my Facebook contacts synchronized within the Contacts application since I acquired the phone in September 2015. I didn't exactly notice when it happened, but now this feature does not seem to work anymore. I have the latest update of the Facebook application.

When going in the Android settings under "Accounts", I can see the Facebook item but it is shown as "disabled". There does not seem to be any way to enable this synchronization. I think I remember there used to be some options on that screen to enable contacts synchronization.

Another detail is that all the contacts that came from Facebook are still listed in the Android Contacts application, however, the contact information is empty and it is shown as a contact stored locally on the device only.

# Answer
> 3 votes
### For what it's worth, Facebook has removed the contacts sync functionality.

---

## Supplementary info

Under the Facebook's Community questions, I found these two:

* Sync Contacts with phone? \- by Justin Reinwand

> My Facebook app for Android no longer has the option to sync contacts with my phone. This was a really nice feature. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app multiple time and it still does not appear. I have a Samsung Galaxy S5 and the latest Facebook app.
* Android 5.0.1 just stopped syncing contacts - did all the usual steps \- by Michele Debois Ray

> \[Android\] 5.01.1 just stopped syncing contacts - reinstalled all - turn off and on - steps to sync - states syncing but nothing when you go to display FB contacts. weird thing. when you go to contacts and you can choose where contact came from like device or gmail etc. FB is not there to choose from.

At the time of writing this answer, both questions were asked about two months ago and about a month ago, both of them received a same reply from Sofia V. of Facebook Help Team

> Unfortunately, this feature is no longer available.

In addition to that, whilst I did not verify the authenticity of the Facebook page Facebook Android Beta, in response to a comment by Devon Jackson

> Facebook contacts are no longer syncing to my s6

the said page replied

> Thanks for checking in, Devon. We have to remove some things and add others in order to test certain features and make sure we address specific bugs. We appreciate your patience during this process. -Kevin

Although the reply was applicable to beta build of Facebook during the month of October, further comments from users and accounting the timing of Sofia's reply, I opine that the changes were swiftly copied in the consumer version of Facebook in the same month.

In short, settle with the fact that the feature has been removed from the app. That's it.

---
Tags: contacts, facebook
---


# Question
Title: Why has my Android phone stop updating calendars, mail etc?
As question says above. It used to update every few minutes, but recently I've had to manually refresh each of the applications to get it to run

Thank you

# Answer
> 6 votes
Go to `Settings -> Accounts and sync`:

1. Ensure **Auto-sync** is checked.
2. Check the relevant accounts to see if sync is enabled for them (click the account and see what's checked off).

# Answer
> 5 votes
Another possible cause: is your phone's memory full? If your phone is low on free memory, it will not sync any new data to it. You'll have to uninstall some apps or move them to the SD card to resolve this.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Try this: Go to settings ==\> apps Find yor mail app Force it to stop Deactivate Reactivate Find your the mail amongst all your other apps and setup your mail account once more. Your gmail settings do not need to be set up again. Add the app to your homescreen again.

I do not know why it stopped working or if there is an easier solution, but this worked for me....:-)

---
Tags: sync, email, calendar
---


# Question
Title: Why does Nexus 5 HCE respond to FELICA select?
I have an NFC reader constantly polling for tags present. I also have a Nexus 5 with a HostApduService activated. When repeatedly tapping the Nexus 5 on the reader, the reader reports a FELICA (JIS: X6319-4) tag found in 9 out of 10 cases. About 1 in 10 it reports an ISO14443-3A device.

The latter is the expected behavior and the one described for Android HCE. I cannot find mention of this FELICA support anywhere. A OnePlus One only shows up as ISO14443-3A, for example.

Why does a Nexus 5 HCE show up as FELICA? And is there a way to disable this behavior?

\[EDIT\]: I have two Nexus 5 phones here, acting differently. This one acts like FELICA: Android 5.1, Build LMY47I. The other does not: Android 5.1.1, Build LMY48M

# Answer
Besides HCE mode, an Android device typically also operates in NFC peer-to-peer mode. Passive peer-to-peer mode (ISO/IEC 18092) is based on the anti-collision and activation protocols from ISO/IEC 14443 (for 106 kbps) and from JIS X 6319-4 (for 212 kbps and 424 kbps). Hence, devices in peer-to-peer mode may be detected as JIS X 6319-4 cards as well as ISO/IEC 14443-3 cards by contactless smartcard readers.

How likely it is to (accidentally) detect an Android phone as "FeliCa" or to (properly) detect it as ISO/IEC 14443 depends on the implementation of the NFC polling/listening loop that the phone uses to cycle between the different active and passive NFC (and NFC-compatible) protocols.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: nfc
---


title: Open Image-link from NFC Tag

text:
# Question
Title: Open Image-link from NFC Tag
I have a NFC-Tag (FeliCa), where I store a URL to an image. (something like `https://www.google.de/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/googlelogo_color_272x92dp.png` for example). This Tag is emulated by a ACR1252U USB NFC-Reader, but for any Android smartphone it behaves like any real physical tag. When I approach my Android 4.4-Smartphone, to the (emulated) tag, it automatically opens my Browser-App, and browses to image-link.

So far so good.

However my goal is, that the Android smartphone does not open the image in the browser, but saves the image to the storage and / or displays it in the image-gallery app of the Android phone. I want to achieve this, with as few steps as possible.

For sure there has to be some prompt for the user "Do you want to save that image" or something. But how can I achieve this? How do I have to store the image-link on the nfc-tag, that the image opens in the gallery instead the browser?

# Answer
> 2 votes
No, there is no such option that you can set on the NFC tag to force Android to immediately store the image or show it in the gallery app. The reason for this is that you only store a URL on the tag. Before actually opening the URL, Android does not even know the data type behind the URL (i.e. "this is an image"). In fact URLs do not have that concept of a data type, they just refer to some storage location. Consequently, Android can only open an app that is registered for that URL (or URLs in general), which is typically a web browser.

What you could do:

1. If you have control over the server side, you might want to try to force the image to be downloaded from the server. You could do this by setting a *Content-Disposition* header when the image is requested from the server:

```
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="googlelogo_color_272x92dp.png"

```
2. If the image fits on your emulated tag, you could try to embed it into a MIME type record instead of passing a URL to the image. On many Android devices, image MIME type records should be opened in the standard Tags app by default (see Read NFC tag without specific application?). However, I've never tested how well this works (or if the image is actually displayed at all). See Picture on nfc tags on how such a MIME type record could be created with Android code.

---
Tags: 4.4-kitkat, nfc
---


title: Why are disabled apps still running?

text:
# Question
Title: Why are disabled apps still running?
I've noticed that apps (such as Google Contacts Sync) that have been disabled using the stock Android (KitKat) app manager still show up as running when using process observer tools. This is true even after the device has been rebooted.

Why are disabled apps still running? Is there an effective (and safe) way to actually disable them?

Solutions requiring root privileges are acceptable.

*(Note that for the specific example above, you can tell Android not to sync your contacts, but it still runs the Google Contacts Sync process. But let's not dwell on that example... it's just an example.)*

# Answer
Your Android need not to have root access for truly disabling an app, if you've version 4.4.x or above. All you need is setup in PC and USB debugging enabled in a non-rooted device, or a terminal emulator app for a rooted device (you can use adb too).

If you check Package Manger's (`pm`) usage, you would see

```
pm block [--user USER_ID] PACKAGE_OR_COMPONENT")
pm unblock [--user USER_ID] PACKAGE_OR_COMPONENT")
```

For Lollipop, it would be

```
pm hide [--user USER_ID] PACKAGE_OR_COMPONENT")
pm unhide [--user USER_ID] PACKAGE_OR_COMPONENT")
```

In order to block or hide a package (it is safe), simply do

```
pm block PACKAGE # for KitKat
pm hide PACKAGE  # for Lollipop

```

To unblock or unhide the package, do

```
pm unblock PACKAGE #for KitKat
pm unhide PACKAGE  # for Lollipop

```

`PACKAGE` → package name of an app. To know the package name of an app:

Append `adb shell` before very command to execute them from PC.

The function behind *hide* has the following comment inside the source code

> Puts the package in a hidden state, which is almost like an uninstalled state, making the package unavailable, but it doesn't remove the data or the actual package file. Application can be unhidden by either resetting the hidden state or by installing it

Similar commenting is done for *block* here.

In order to verify the claim, you can use some system services such as `meminfo`, `procstats` and `activity` using the dumpsys tool or even list all the processes using `ps`. You won't find an active presence of the blocked/hidden app.

The same goes for a lot of system apps disabled using GUI or `pm disable` but not for every app since even a disabled app can receive broadcasts it has registered for, which can only be done if it is loaded into the memory1. Nevertheless, a disabled app cannot act on its own, neither can it be executed by any other app.

I've argued some of the differences between *hide*/*block* and *disable* on my question pm hide VS pm disable -- the identity crisis. It provides only supplementary info to this answer so you may skip it.

**EDIT:**

It appears that the technique doesn't work for all apps on Android KitKat. In that case, simply revoke read permission from app's APK or remove the extension .APK from the file name of the app (latter suggested by Jaskaranbir once), followed by a soft/full reboot. This is same as deleting an app from system, with only difference that all files would remain at their place.

Both of the steps can be executed using any root file manager app. The command line way is:

```
adb shell su -c 'chmod 000 /data/app/PACKAGE*'             # 000 means no read-write-executable permission to user,group and others.
adb shell su -c 'mv /data/app/PACKAGE* /data/app/PACKAGE'  # doing renaming by moving the file
adb reboot

```

---

1: Lacking technical evidence to support the fact
> 7 votes

---
Tags: applications, 4.4-kitkat, task-management, disable-app
---


# Question
Title: Samsung S3 will not get detected by computer
I think my power plug is the problem. How can I make sure? PC's USB is working fine.

# Answer
Download USB Driver and Go to Device Manager-\>right click your device -\>select Update driver-\> Select Browse from my Computer on diaglog-\>Browse the path where your USB Driver downloaded -\> Click ok or Select Browse from online it will take time but suitable driver will be install.
> 0 votes

# Answer
If you think there is a problem with your cable, find a friend with a working cable and phone.

1. Try your friend's working cable with your phone. This should work.
2. Try the suspected bad cable with your friend's phone. This should not work.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: samsung-galaxy-s-3, usb
---


# Question
Title: How does charging battery in normal, speed and trickle affect battery life?
Battery doctor uses different stages of charging:

speed; continuous and trickle (keep charging when the battery is full for some time)

does this really extend battery life?

and can an app change the way the device is being charged anyway?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Proper explanation is fairly technical, so am answering in broad terms (you can skip the links if you don't want to get into nitty gritty)

Charging rate is a measure that governs at what current a battery is charged and discharged. At 1C, a battery rated 1,000mAh charges at a current of 1,000mAh. In an ideal world the battery would be fully charged in 60 minutes. At 1C, the same battery discharges at 1,000mA. Ideal charging rate is accepted to be around 0.5 to ,0.8 C for maximum battery life (battery life is measured in charge/discharge cycles). When you charge a battery at this rate, it goes through three stages of charging (Constant Current Charge,Saturation Charge and Ready No Current). For more information, if you are inclined, battery university has a bunch of informative articles on this.

If you charge your battery with the OEM charger and measure charging rate using 3C Battery Monitor Widget or Ampere, and plot, you will find that the graph fairly resembles to that of the referenced link above of battery university. This would also fairly resemble , the "**continuous**" mode of your app

If you want maximum battery life, it is best to stick with OEM charger or equivalent charger that is equally rated. Device manufacturers have different algorithms built in to regulate current flow at different stages of battery charging mainly to:

a) quickly charge the battery , typically to charge the battery to 50% as you see advertised as a special feature (on a side note, cheap battery chargers do it the hardware way (and a destructive way). See this to get an idea https://electronics.stackexchange.com/). The disadvantage with this and quick or fast charge is that battery is not charged sufficiently in the **saturation charge** stage (it spend less time in that stage) and doesn't deliver the same capacity as with regular charge. It's like drinking a bottle of Coke, when you are hungry, you may feel full but your body hasn't got the nutrients and calories as from a regular meal :-)

b) to prevent battery damage due to excessive charging like in cases of leaving the charger plugged in overnight (by limiting charging current to near zero)

There is **NO way for an app to over ride** the device specific algorithms and it's implementation in the ROM. To change this implementation, app will have to change the system files **after** the system has booted, which is not possible AFAIK, and these apps cannot possibly ship that across the spectrum of devices and different Android Versions. On the other hand, custom kernels(and associated kernel tweaker apps) can permit a) fast charging or quick charging b) increasing or decreasing the charging current provided the ROM and hardware support. Agni kernel, is one such kernel I have used to charge faster when connected to USB. Note that charging at more than 1C can damage battery as shown in Fig.2 here

Charging in "**trickle charge**" of your app is similar to charging your battery for longer period in the last stage of battery charging, which is useful if you want to have the battery at 100% charge when you unplug the charger, but is a bad idea, since battery chemistry dictates battery deterioration at high temperatures due to internal stress.

A variation of this last stage charging is called "**bump** **charging**", wherein the charger is disconnected upon full charge, discharged for a few minutes and again charged. This cycle is repeated a few times. A bad idea for longevity of battery as can bee seen from Fig.2 and Table 2 here.

Both these methods are not recommended for normal usage but may be useful occasionally, when you have a long day ahead and may not be able to charge like travelling, hiking etc.

(Related aspect- you may have noticed that your battery drop is much faster from 100 to 90%, compared to say 80 to 70 %. Which is actually a good thing, because, it is protecting your battery staying at higher internal temperatures. To understand this, have a look at Your battery gauge is lying to you....not a bad thing. Based on this, IMO, it is better to charge the battery when it drops to 30% and stop charging when it reaches 90%. ( I can almost hear one ask, what about battery life which is measured in number of charge/ discharge cycles, won't that be reduced, if I try this? No, it shouldn't matter, because a cycle is not defined by how many times you charge but what is the capacity of charge you used up. To understand this concept better, read what constitutes a discharge cycle)

Charging in "**speed charge (mode of your app)**", is also not recommended as it does not go through fully, all the three stages of battery charging at recommended levels and is not good for battery life

Hence, bottom line is these kind of apps are better not used and stick to OEM rated chargers and OEM recommended charging methods.

PS: Edited your question to add relevant tags

---
Tags: battery, battery-life, charging
---


# Question
Title: Is there any way to password protect application folders?
I have a Galaxy S4 running Android 4.2.2. When I drag an application onto another one a folder is created. I was wondering if there's any way to password protect that folder? Most of the related apps I've found so far don't do that.

# Answer
There is no point in password protecting something if it is not getting encrypted, or in other words, its content not becoming obfuscated to any other program. If you simply password protect a folder using an app, then very likely you can access the folder using another file explorer or perhaps with adb too.

I would recommend encryption in this case. I use ES File Explorer which can encrypt the file. Since it encrypts the file, the file becomes illegible to other capable file reading programs.

You can encrypt a file/folder by long-pressing it and choosing Encrypt. Provide the password (note it down somewhere for future use) and the file will get encrypted eventually.

If you click the file, the file explorer will ask you to provide the password. You can also opt to permanently decrypt the file by long-pressing it and choosing Decrypt.

Hope that helps!
> 1 votes

---
Tags: home-screen-folders, password-protection
---


# Question
Title: Where are the default wallpapers in the upgrade of Android to 4.4.2?
I have a Xolo Q1010 and i upgraded its android version to 4.4.2 Kitkat. After upgrading, i realized that the default wallpapers of Xolo had vanished. I could only now put live wallpapers. Pls tell how to get back those wallpapers?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Wallpapers often comes bundled with the application (inside the APK file), and usually, those apps are launcher apps. It appears that previously your default as well as stock launcher had those wallpapers. Now that the update has been installed, that launcher has been replaced or updated (in any case the APK is new) too, so your best bet is to find the launcher APK which comes with your previous version of Android.

You can locate the APK inside the stock ROM (if you've one, or download it).

---
Tags: 4.4-kitkat
---


# Question
Title: What is the difference between: Rooting, Jailbreaking, ROM, Mod, etc.?
What is the difference between:

* Unlocking the bootloader (prerequisite for doing many, though not all, other things below)
* Rooting
* Jailbreaking
* ROM
* NAND and Nandroid
* Operating System
* Mod (e.g. CyanogenMod)
* Recovery (ClockworkMod, Amon Ra)
* Custom Kernel (e.g. LeshaK's kernel)
* Firmware
* Driver
* Over The Air (OTA) update
* Fastboot
* SIM unlocking
* Flashing
* SPL (Second Program Loader)

(any other often-confused terms that I've missed?)

# Answer
> 149 votes
**Rooting** and **Jailbreaking** are essentially the same things, Jailbreaking is the iPhone users' word for what Android users call Rooting. Rooting is when you gain "Root" access to the phone giving you the power to do anything you want to it (it comes from the Unix Root User, essentially the Unix equivalent to the Windows Administrator account). Normally you're prevented from being Root for your own good, as it's very easy to break your phone once you have root access, and quite hard to break it without.
More info: What does “to root a phone” mean? and I've rooted my phone. Now what? What do I gain from rooting?

A **Nandroid** backup is a backup of your phone that is an exact image of the state of your phone. So you could make an exact copy of your current phone, then do major changes to it, and then restore to your previous backup by **flashing** the backup back to the phone. **Flashing** means to copy or to install.... you are essentially wiping the device and restoring a previous state (a backup) or you are flashing a new ROM (see below). **NAND** is your device's flash storage, which is why copying files there is called "flashing".

The Android **operating system** is the software that manages the hardware in an Android phone such as the screen, data communications, storage, camera and GPS. It provides a common layer that allows applications the use of and access to these resources on a range of different devices without the app having to know anything special about the actual hardware that it is running on. The Android Operating System also includes a number of standard apps and services such as the Contacts, Camera, Photo Gallery and web browser apps and allows the user to do such things as control the screen brightness or connect to wifi networks.

Although the real definitions are different, in the Android world, **ROM**, **Mod**, and **Firmware** are all used as if they mean essentially the same thing. They all refer to a customised version of the Android **operating system** that has been modified to work on a particular brand of phone with a specific set of customisations or changes. This can be done so that an old phone like the G1 can be given a brand new version of Android, such as 2.2 even if the manufacturer has decided not to provide it. Or could be to provide extra functionality not available in the manufacturer's supplied version of Android, or to fix problems in the manufacturer supplied version. More info: What's the difference between an AOSP ROM and a stock ROM?, What are the advantages of a custom ROM?, Why are there so many different Android kernels and Where can I find stock or custom ROMs for my Android device?

A **Driver** is what tells the Android software operating system how to talk to all the different hardware that is in an Android phone. When someone is putting together a ROM for a particular phone model they will need to include of all that phone's drivers inside the ROM (for things like the cellular modem, WiFi access, the particular camera type, the specific processor, etc) otherwise the ROM either won't work on that phone, or will only be able to work certain parts of the phone and, for instance, may not be able to use the front-facing camera, or may not be able to connect to a WiFi network. This is exactly the same as when you plug something new into Windows and it runs the New Hardware Added wizard and goes looking for a new driver before you can use it. Drivers are loaded by the **kernel**, the core of the operating system.

An **Over The Air (OTA)** update is when your phone receives an update to its Android operating system "over the air", ie it is sent the files automatically over the cellular network from either Google or from your phone network without ever needing to be plugged into a PC. This contrasts with the way that, for example, the iPhone was originally updated where it needed to be physically plugged into a computer running iTunes to get its updates.

The **bootloader** controls how the device boots. Google's PC-side tool for getting into the bootloader and other related tasks is called **Fastboot**, and running the bootloader interactively may be called "Fastboot mode". A **locked bootloader** will verify the Android system partition and restore it to stock if it doesn't match, whereas an **unlocked bootloader** doesn't do the same checking, which is why unlocking the bootloader is required to permanently root a device.

The term **recovery** is often used to mean several different things. It could mean a **mode** of operation for the phone. For example, to boot into **recovery** mode on Atrix 4G MB860 olympus, one must:

1. power-off the phone
2. hold PWR and VOL DOWN buttons simultaneously until phone display shows "Fastboot"
3. touch and release VOL DOWN repeatedly (seven times) until "Fastboot" changes to read, "Android Recovery"
4. touch and release VOL UP button to choose this option
5. Finally, when the phone displays a triangle surrounding an exclamation point adjacent to a green android robot, then either:
    * if using Android 2.2 (Froyo), then touch lower-right corner of phone display
    * if using Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), then hold both VOL UP and VOL DOWN buttons simultaneously

to enter Android **Recovery** mode.

This is a mode of operation that allows the user to make major changes to the phone. Or **recovery** could also mean the **recovery** partition on the phone. Or **recovery** could also mean the **image file** (filename.img) that can be flashed to the **recovery** partition. For example, the Atrix 4G MB860 olympus ships with a **stock recovery** image flashed to the **recovery** partition, and booting into **recovery** mode on such a stock phone allows the user to make *some* major changes to the phone:

* reboot system now
* apply sdcard:update.zip
* wipe data/factory reset
* wipe cache partition

It is possible (though this usually requires an **unlocked bootloader**) to replace the code that executes in Android **Recovery** mode by replacing the stock **recovery** image that the manufacturer installed on the **recovery** partition with a custom **recovery** image like **ClockworkMod**. Installing and executing the code in a custom **recovery** image often allows the user to make many more comprehensive changes to the phone and also often allows the user to make **Nandroid** backups and restore these backups to the phone.

The bootloader may also play some part in flashing firmware, though this is usually part of **recovery**. While you normally don't want to mess with the bootloader, advanced users will often flash a custom recovery like **ClockworkMod** (though a locked bootloader may prevent this). This allows one to flash firmware that hasn't been signed by the manufacturer (such as custom ROMs), since stock recovery usually checks for the signature, and do advanced tasks like complete Nandroid backups. Recovery is a bit like the BIOS boot screen on PCs in that you get to it by pressing a special combination of buttons as the phone starts up. Recovery can also do things like run an update file from the phone's SD card, or let you connect from a PC via ADB (Android Debug Bridge) to manage the device from the command line.
More info: What is the relation between ROM Manager, ClockworkMod and Nandroid? Which one(s) do I need?

Many mobile phone networks that sell GSM phones on a contract restrict the phone so that it can only be used on their phone network, this is known as a **SIM lock**, **network lock** or **subsidy lock**. This allows a provider to ensure that a phone that they've subsidised can only be used on a network that will help them them recoup that money. The phone reads the IMSI code of the inserted SIM card and checks that it corresponds with the allowed country or network codes that the phone has been programmed with. **SIM unlocking** removes this restriction from a phone so that any network's SIM card can be inserted and used. This generally involves typing a code into the phone's dialler that removes the lock. There are different ways to get this code depending on your device and network, some networks will give you the unlock code once you reach the end of your contract's term, some manufacturers publish these codes on their websites, some manufacturers embed these codes into their devices in a way that can be extracted by an app and some require use of special PC software to reprogram the phone. The SIM lock is usually implemented in hardware/read-only firmware, so it's generally not possible to unlock your device without a code.
More info: Can I use my device on a different carrier?

---

**Related**: Another question that explains some parts of the Android platform in terms familiar to users of traditional computer systems is:
In normal computer terms, what are the different parts of an Android system?

# Answer
> 30 votes
Rooting and Jailbreaking refers to the same thing. The term Jailbreaking comes from Apple's iPhone community, the preferred term in Android is rooting.

Rooting/Jailbreaking refers to enabling the administrator/superuser/root/user-id-0 user on the phone. In unrooted device, the superuser account is disabled for security purpose. The superuser possess full privilege over the system, including deleting or modifying critical system files.

More about rooting: What does "to root a phone" mean?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Firmware refers to the whole Android Software Stack: Kernel (incl. drivers), Dalvik VM, and the Operating System. However, it does not include applications installed from Market.

Firmware can be official (released by the manufacturer and/or service provider) or it can be unofficial (released by modding community).

# Answer
> 6 votes
CyanogenMod has a good definition of ROM (and a lot of the other terms on that list)

> Read Only Memory. In the context of an Android device, ROM is the internal flash memory where the core operating system resides. It can also refer to a specific version firmware that can be applied to a device through a process usually referred to as flashing. An improperly flashed ROM can often brick the device, rendering it unusable.

# Answer
> 4 votes
This question is already well answered, but one thing I find most non-tech people getting confused about is the difference between rooting/jailbreaking and SIM Unlocking.

This is the simple explanation I use for non-tech people.

A smartphone is essentially 2 things

1. A phone

> Unlocking is relevant to the phone part of the smartphone.
> In some countries (USA typically), the phone part of the smartphone is locked by the carrier so that it cannot be used with other carriers.
2. A computer

> Rooting/Jailbreaking is relevant to the computer part of the smartphone.
> The OS of the phone (Android/IOS/Windows) is locked by the OS writer (Google/Apple/Microsoft) so that you can only access the functionality with the OS and Manufacturer provided interface. You do not have administrator permission on your device (unlike a Windows PC where you can login as an administrator).
> This is done for many reasons
> 1. You have to buy through their appstore etc
> 2. A lot of users aren't technical enough, hence this is done to protect them from doing something stupid.
> Bypassing these measures to get administrator access to your own device is called rooting or jailbreaking.

# Answer
> 4 votes
TL;DR version:

**Unlocking the bootloader**

* The initial program when you boot is the bootloader. If "locked" it may: 1) block attempts at flashing 2) refuse to boot the phone if something unauthorized was flashed. Unlocking it means changing a setting that affects this behaviour.

**Rooting**

**Jailbreaking**

* iphone word for rooting. Jailbreak and rooting are similar but not identical from the perspective of the abstract process. Jailbreaking implies getting around a bootloader (or ignoring Apple's security) and then getting admin privileges, whereas rooting is purely getting the privileges--nothing else is implied. Also the gain in privileges (freedom!) is arguably greater with jailbreaking, as sideloading is already allowed with android

**ROM**

* ROM is an umbrella term for any data you can flash to NAND. In most android contexts flashing ROM = installing mobile operating system. In other contexts it may just mean replacing some files to customize your skin. Etc.
While ROM may be a bit of a misnomer (actually refers to non-volatile memory--not data), most people don't know the difference between a kernel, OS, bootloader and etc. So many modifications just get called ROMs, this avoids confusion and flamewars (like when people call linux an OS instead of saying GNU/linux is an OS or even GNU/linux/X).
See also Why can't they make a generic phone OS?

**NAND**

* A type of solid state storage, another example is NOR memory.

**MMC/SD**

* MMC is/was the the competitor of SD. Both are memory card standards that use NAND memory. Apart from physical form these standards decribe the interface/protocol used to access NAND. This means these memory formats come with a different or additional memory controller.
While the MMC format is older, many devices use eMMC instead of eSD. The "e" stands for embedded and just means the storage is non-removable in the typical sense.
Compared to MMC, SD has more pins, is thicker and supports DRM. It is also slightly more expensive. They both use the SPI protocol to access the NAND.

**Nandroid**

* A system image used for backups. Often does not include the bootloader.

**Operating System**

* Android, Windows, other linux distros, Mac OS X, iOS are all operating systems. In a more technincal sense the kernel can be called the operating system. It is a program that provides an environment for other programs to run safely and use its HAL.

**Mod (e.g. CyanogenMod)**

* 3rd party files that may be flashed to the phone to provide extra/other features. Could be a complete operating system like CM.

**Recovery (ClockworkMod, Amon Ra)**

* Phones can boot into the main OS or Recovery. This is like a mini OS that allows users to perform maintenance actions such as deleting, backing up or installing files.Often resides in the /recovery partition.

**Custom Kernel (e.g. LeshaK's kernel)**

* Part of the operating system that controls the hardware and all the other programs that run. It is the first non-bootloader code loaded. Often resides in the the /boot partition.

**Firmware**

* Software on embedded devices.

**Driver**

* program used by the kernel to communicate with hardware. Typically written by the manufacturers of the hardware. The android source tree comes without kernel and drivers for most devices. THis is why non-google devices have a harder time keeping up-to-date.

**Over The Air (OTA) update**

* Update you can download and install with your phone only (i.e. no cables/USB needed).

**Fastboot**

* PC Program from the ADK produced by google. Allows bootloaders to flash data to the NAND.

**SIM unlocking**

* Certain mobile providers may offer devices as part of a contract. These devices have software restrictions on what SIM cards you can use--to prevent changing provider.

**Flashing**

* Copying/writing to NAND memory. So even moving a file to your sdcard can be called flashing.

**SPL (Second Program Loader)**

# Answer
> 3 votes
Android Kernel refers to the Linux Kernel and the set of drivers that comes with the Linux kernel. The kernel does *not* include Applications that comes with Android nor the Java/Dalvik Virtual Machine.

Costum Kernel refers to community-made modifications to the Linux Kernel. The Kernel provides low-level services, resource management, and security.

The Driver is a part of the kernel which talks directly with the hardware, it provides a standard interface which hides the intricacies of a particular hardware.

Modifications in the Kernel and Driver typically includes hardware-specific bug fix, optimizing resource management, and unlocking hardware features that was disabled in the driver-level.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Over The Air update refers to an **official update** from your device manufacturer and carrier, the update being pushed automatically to your device.

OTA update is basically an official firmware update, as it covers the whole Android stack (drivers, firmware, kernel, VM, applications).

# Answer
> 2 votes
my understanding is that different mod/rom is similar to likes of ubuntu and fedora (different variant of linux) in PC world. Kernel is lower level than this, like both ubuntu 10.10 and fedora 14 are using the same linux kernel 2.6.35

---
Tags: rooting, root-access, custom-roms, kernel
---


title: ADB is not fully backup my device

text:
# Question
Title: ADB is not fully backup my device
I am backing up my device. When I restore it in another device, I see that some settings is not restored. For instance, Google accounts, security settings etc. How can I fix that?

UPDATE:

I used

```
./adb backup -apk -shared -all -f backup_test.ab

```

for backup.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Because ADB doesn't backup anything other than apps. Google accounts are stored with the rest of the web accounts in the device. It is a database file insider your user directory, ultimately, not part of any app.

As for security settings, the settings are scattered amongst `android`, `SettingsProvider` app and some files under `/data/system`. Those two apps do not participate in backup and restore infrastructure of the device, so that explains why they weren't restored.

If you want to check, try taking backup of those packages individually. You would fail everytime, irrespective of device .

---
Tags: backup
---


# Question
Title: Can I flash a custom boot.img to Nexus 5 when "Secure Boot" is enabled?
I have compiled the Android Linux kernel for Nexus 5 with some modifications.

My phone is LG Nexus 5, whose bootloader has been unlocked, but the "Secure Boot" is still enabled.

As I understand, if secure boot is enabled, the bootloader will verify the boot.img when booting.

Obviously, my custom kernel cannot pass the verification.

In such a case, how to correctly flash my own boot.img?

# Answer
> 2 votes
> my custom kernel cannot pass the verification.

This doesn't imply that you cannot boot into the Android with your custom kernel. When the verification would fail, your device would warn you about that and you would be given the choice to continue the boot process or not.

Google mentioned about this here

> RED, indicating the device has failed verification. The bootloader must display a warning to the user before allowing the boot process to continue.

So now, you can flash the kernel in the same manner those having secure boot disabled would do.

---
Tags: rom-flashing, bootloader
---


# Question
Title: Nexus 7 Not Booting; Backlight Turns on while Charging
A friend of mine has a Nexus 7 2012. Although it used to work, it now won't turn on. I would mark this off as a broken battery or screen if it were not for this one oddity: the backlight turns on while the device is charging. I am unable to reach the bootloader or recovery mode. He does not know what Android version it runs, so I can be of no help there. He also says that this happened after he let his Nexus turn off due to low battery. Is there any way I would be able to fix this issue (say jumpstart it and use USB debugging to fix it?), or is the device truly broken?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The problem is that the device was stuck in fastboot. I had to use ADB to get into the bootloader, and change to normal boot from there. Now, everything works. I assume he let the device run out of power while updating, as it completed updating once it was out of fastboot.

Thanks for all the help you gave me. You may not have solved my problem, but I still appreciate it.

# Answer
> 2 votes
My Nexus ran the battery flat and would not restart, although I did not have the backlight issue that you mention.

There are a number of tricks suggested at: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2668668?hl=en which involve powering on and pressing volume buttons. This worked for me and the Nexus now behaves as well as it ever did.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Was having this problem and didn't do anything about it until just now.. But I would plug it into a wall outlet and the back-light would be on along with some flickers of white light

I did the factory reset (power and BOTH volume buttons at the same time for 40 seconds) and let it "charge" for about an hour off of the wall outlet (I couldn't tell if it was charging or not obviously, but I just let it sit there for a while).

I came back, did the factory reset a second time, and plugged it into my computer to discover that it booted right up. This literally just happened as I was typing this... But bottom line it got rid of the issue!

---
Tags: boot, backlight, nexus-7
---


title: Developer Options in Android 5.1.1

text:
# Question
Title: Developer Options in Android 5.1.1
I have turn on my developer option in my Samsung galaxy grand price. how to hide the developer options in android 5.1.1?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Try this :

* Go to Setting.
* Tap on Apps/Application, Navigate to all apps.
* Now, here you have to find Settings app.
* Open the Setting app, There is a button "Clear Data", Press it, Again press OK.
* Your Developer Option get Hidden now.

Hope that helps !!

---
Tags: 5.1-lollipop
---


# Question
Title: Unable to access Play Store after CM12.1 upgrade
Following this week's releases of CyanogenMod, there's finally CM 12 and CM 12.1 releases for the Samsung S4 Mini. Therefore, I upgraded from the latest 11 release to 12.1.

However, after installing, I was unable to access the Play Store, getting "No Connection" and a "Retry" button opening it up. Following instructions from various places, I tried changing the date and resetting it, and then tried removing my Google account from the device. This is where I am now stuck.

Opening the Play Store now, it sits "Checking info...", occasionally telling me "Unfortunately, Google Play services has stopped" (it's been prompting me to upgrade Google Play services ever since I installed CM 12.1, as one would expect, but I've been unable to upgrade it due to lack of access to the Play Store) a variable number of times while doing so. Eventually, I reach a screen telling me:

> Can't establish a reliable connection to the server.
>
> This could be a temporary problem or your Android device may not be provisioned for data services. If it continues, call Customer Care.

However, internet access works fine in Chrome and in all non-Google apps. I can load play.google.com almost instantly in Chrome: there's no internet connectivity issue here.

Trying to add my Google Account from settings leads to the same "Checking info..." sequence of screens.

How can I re-add my Google account and regain access to the Play Store?

# Answer
> 2 votes
When you flashed from CM 11 to CM 12 or 12.1, did you wipe `/data`,`/system`,etc. via recovery? You'd also need GApps for CM 12/12.1 too, as that would include newer Google Play Services that are compatible with 12/12.1.

Generally when you upgrade from a different OS version (CM 11 being Android 4.4, CM 12/12.1 being Android 5.x.x), it is recommended fully wiping everything before flashing to prevent odd issues like you are seeing here.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Using a root explorer app, go to `/system/etc`, open the file called `hosts`in a text editor. In the text editor app, edit the file to add # before the next IP address (for example: from *123.4.567.8* to *#123.4.567.8*). This will comment out a hosts redirection and hence allow you to access the site which was blocked by that hosts redirection.

---
Tags: cyanogenmod, google-play-store, 5.1-lollipop
---


# Question
Title: How to install superuser HD2 rom on SD card
Usually I just install `superuser.zip` through recovery. But now nothing happens. I tried using TWRP both from NAND and from SD (latest version with F2FS support).
I try to root this rom: SLIMLP LP5.1.1 based on CM12.1 for HTC HD2.

Looks like the recovery wants to install superuser on NAND always.

I can install superuser application like apk, but root did not work this way. But with `adb shell` I can get root access. And from screenshots I see in thread people have root. I want to use `superuser` with this ROM. How do I go about doing it?

# Answer
It was easier then I thought. I just need activate Developers options and under Developer section activate root. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knm1kKVkJd8
> 0 votes

---
Tags: cyanogenmod, root-access, superuser
---


# Question
Title: how to get back photo gallery pictures after factory resetting LG phone?
How can you get back erased photo gallery pictures after factory resetting (by Setup Wizard) LG phone ?

# Answer
If you have enabled "auto-backup" in Google Photos you can readily restore it from there.

If not you may try to recover photos that were on your memory card using recovery software (undelete/unerase) from your computer.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: factory-reset, data-recovery, photos, lg
---


# Question
Title: Photos app doesn't show any photos when Internet connectivity is limited
It seems when access to Google's servers is blocked (by a firewall for example) Photos doesn't display my photos. The photos are locally available and can be browsed with a file explorer app. I don't want all my photos stored in the cloud nor do I like the idea that Google is checking something every time I open the Photos app. Is there a workaround to disable this behavior?

Edit: The bounty auto-selected an answer but the answer does not work. This is the main "Assistant" view:  This is the device folders view:

# Answer
Even thought the photos are stored locally, when in the main view of the photos app only the thumbnails or nothing at all (if thumbs are not cached) will be shown when internet is off/blocked/limited.

The only way you can access the local copies while using the photos app is to open the menu on the left and select "Device Folders" and then go into the Camera folder (or wherever it is you are trying to access).

Click Images to enlarge

Unfortunately because the internet is limited you wont have access to the nice new features such as the advanced photo search or the nice date order layout as these are all server-based features.
> 5 votes

# Answer
You can check if the photos are locally stored or not by:
*Photos**Settings* → Uncheck *Show your google drive photos & videos*

If your photos do not show now they were never on your device. To store them on your device download them from Google Photos and also turn off Backup & Sync if you don't want it.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: internet, google-plus-photos
---


# Question
Title: Casting to Chromecast without Google Play Service
I am a long time CyanogenMod user without any Google Play Services installed. It seems like Android Chromecast apps all require Google Play Services. There are some tools (UnifiedNlp, NOGAPPS) replacing parts of Google API, but it does not seem like they are providing necessary API for casting to Chromecast.

Is there any chance to cast to a Chromecast (2015) without installing Google software?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Some initial work has been done in the microG project from Ma-rv-in, but nothing usable so far.

I personally use MultiRom and boot on a ROM which has Play Services installed to use my Chromecast.

---
Tags: google-play-services, chromecast
---


title: Is there an autorun or scheduler?

text:
# Question
Title: Is there an autorun or scheduler?
I have an s3 mini. It has an app called "My Galaxy" - a marketing adware kind of thing. It runs without me launching it. How is that done? Is there a scheduler somewhere that launches this app? Can I make changes to that scheduler?

I don't just want to stop "My Galaxy" (I could uninstall it), I want to know how it gets run automatically.

# Answer
There are many ways in Android of scheduling things to happen later on certain conditions. One of them is the `AlarmManager`, which lets an app run at a predetermined time, or at a given interval between 15 minutes and daily. This is how most recurring tasks work on Android, such as checking email. There's no user-modifiable control for the `AlarmManager`: it's up to the app to expose appropriate settings.

Android apps can also register broadcast receivers to be notified when certain conditions are met or when events happen. For example, the email app might also register a broadcast receiver to be triggered when an internet connection becomes available. That way, if it misses its times for checking email because you were offline, it can check email once you go back online.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Its not about startup or autostart.... You might have some application that is installed on your phone and you would have mistakenly given the right to run... Not an issue... just see the application name in Setting\>Apps\>Running and uninstall/Disable. Or if you want to do another thing just force stop and then clear application data fully. Then application cache will set to defaults. And you have give any right to execute it will ben revoked and your problem is resolved without harming the parent application.

**Another thing is that**, you cannot start an application natively, automatically... But yes there are some few apps in Play store that will automatically launch that application at scheduled event.

**Note**: *The launching of application is not same as that of the application running in background (background service). Background service is meant for some specific task to be done automatically that generally do not need any user input/intervention. You can launch application at scheduled time either by programming or installing third party scheduler app that will meet your needs. But you cannot start application's background service..... And technically its not of worth for you.*
> -1 votes

---
Tags: auto-start
---


title: s4 turns off when on battery

text:
# Question
Title: s4 turns off when on battery
Hi I have a Samsung s4 I9505 running android 5.0.1 stock

The problem I'm having is that if I try to turn on my s4 while running on battery it never passes the Samsung boot logo, it turns off instantly after the boot process finishes

However with the wall charger plugged in it boots up and works perfectly fine but if I turn the plug off it switches off 40 seconds or so after

Another thing I must add is the power button on the faulty s4 seems abit different to my other working s4, the power button on this one doesn't have to go in that much to turn on or off so little pressure can turn it on. Its a bit more clicky on the other s4. But it still boots up fine with the wall charger so may not be because of this.

Also sometime I can see the s4 at 45% battery and after turning it off and back on after 20 minutes its something like 14%

Funnily though I can boot into recovery with just the battery and leave it there for half an hour and it doesn't turn off

What could be wrong?

# Answer
1. First, you might want to see about the battery. See if you can go to your service provider and see if they can swap out your battery for a newer one
2. If step #1 doesn't work, you might want to power it on the way you been using it and go to your battery usage and see what's currently using you battery, then stop or force stop those apps. After that, backup all of your things you want and save them to a microSD Card, anything you prefer is just alright. Then do factory reset then set it back up
3. If steps #1 & #2 didn't work, go to a cell phone shop that you can trust or your cellular provider and see if they can fix it for you. Otherwise, visit amazon.com and look up Galaxy's S4 charger port kits and make sure you pick the right one for your phone and fix it yourself.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: samsung-galaxy-s-4, battery
---


# Question
Title: recevering data from broken screen on micromax yureka having broken screen
MY screen of Micromax Yureka is broken and I can't see anything, Plus my usb debugging is off. Is there any way to recover data?

# Answer
> 1 votes
A non-device specific approach would be to access your device through adb.

This route requires you to have a custom recovery already installed on your device.

Boot your device into recovery mode. Connect to pc, open a terminal, and execute the following...

adb shell mount /data adb shell mount /system

From there you can, if you need to, pull the entire /data partition \[most anyway\] Symlinks and some firmware files may error out.

adb pull /data

and so forth. If you have permission denied when pulling,run the following, adb shell mount -o rw,remount /data

No. You can not do this with a stock recovery though Yureka might be different.

---
Tags: usb-debugging, broken-screen
---


# Question
Title: Insufficient Storage Available when installing Google Play Services
I have rooted my Kindle Fire 7 (4th Generation) and installed Gapps using the Jmz Fire HD7 Tool. Everything went well, but, when I was trying to start Gmail, it asked me to update my Google Play Service. When the installation was nearly finished, a message "Insufficient Storage Available" popped up.

What can I do? I have tried to clear all data and force stop Google Play Service, and it still can't be updated. Any help would be appreciated.

# EDIT

Pasting the result of `df` here... looks no good.

```
Filesystem               Size     Used     Free   Blksize
/dev                   435.9M   288.0K   435.6M   4096
/sys/fs/cgroup         435.9M    12.0K   435.8M   4096
/mnt/asec              435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/mnt/obb               435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/storage/usbotg        435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/storage/emulated      435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/mnt/secure            435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/mnt/asec              435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/mnt/obb               435.9M     0.0K   435.9M   4096
/system                  1.1G     1.1G    23.9M   4096
/cache                 852.4M   483.7M   368.7M   4096
/data                   12.3G     1.3G    11.0G   4096
/mnt/sqfs              124.6M   124.6M     0.0K   32768
/persistbackup          10.8M   184.0K    10.6M   4096
/mnt/shell/emulated     12.3G     1.3G    11.0G   4096

```

# Answer
1. First, turn off power on and off your phone and see if the problem still exist . If so,
2. Go to your storage usage located in your settings and try deleting one unimportant app
3. If steps #1 or #2 didn't work or go through, just simply unmount the SD card the correct way. *Don't just pull it out*. If you have been doing this, it is probably why it's doing that now.
4. If you have done these steps, it should work. If not, go to a little side store that fix phones or the mall. You can also go to your service provider and see if they can fix the problem. Otherwise, go to amazon.com and look up SD card installment kit and you should be able to pick which one you want from them.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: applications, google-play-store
---


# Question
Title: Using camera slows the phone to a crawl, except the camera app
I have a OnePlus Two, flashed with Cyanogen Mod 12.1 nightly. I can use the camera, front or back, no problem in the actual camera app.

If I use a program that wants to open my camera (i.e. Google translate, Google authenticator, barcode scanner, etc), my phone goes so slow, that I need to reboot it by holding the power button until it comes back on. If I don't do it quickly, my phone starts getting very hot in my hand. This does not happen with the default camera app (com.android.camera2).

Is there a possible setting that I can change to make it work properly? I like the phone otherwise, but I may go back to the One, if this can't be resolved.

# Answer
This is a known issue. There are no official builds, just garak's nightly, but it was not updated since November 2.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: cyanogenmod, oneplus-two
---


# Question
Title: Todo app that syncs with Google Tasks and has notification badges?
Coming from an iPhone, one of the things I miss the most is the little red notification badges on my app icons. I don't understand why more Android apps don't have them (not even the phone!?).
I digress.
Is there an app available that both syncs with Google Tasks and uses a notification badge to keep track of the number of uncompleted tasks?

# Answer
Try a different home screen manager. Launcher Pro does this on my phone for email and texts in the app shortcuts in the launcher bar. I don't use Google Tasks, so I can't speak to that one particularly.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Tick tick is the only one I can find but unfortunately their implementation makes it pretty useless (the badge only goes up to 9)
> 1 votes

# Answer
You should try different launchers. Most of them are better than the stock ones. So e.g.: Apex Launcher, Nova Launcher, Launcher Pro, and GO Launcher EX support adding notification badges.

The best todo app I've ever seen is Any.DO To-do List & Task List. Give it a try.
> 0 votes

# Answer
Try SplenDo - To Do List. It shows badge with *Today's task count* \+ *overdue task count* like *(2+3)*
> -1 votes

---
Tags: applications, notifications, to-do-list, google-tasks
---


# Question
Title: What currency does the Google Play Store display in?
So, according to the help desk (on Google), it says the following:

> **Note**: You'll always see the currency you'll be charged in before you complete the transaction.

The only problem... Is, that I'm not seeing any currency changes. No prefixes (ie. A$##.##, S$##.## or U$##.##; for Australian Dollar, Singaporean Dollar or US Dollar) or anything.

I've found instances where people are seeing two different currencies; one before purchase and another after the purchase (in their current country's currency).

For example (Before purchase screen):

(Confirm purchase screen)

---

For me, it however... It does not change, so - I have no clue which currency it is actually showing prices in.

(Before purchase screen)

(Confirm purchase screen)

As for through an actual Android device, it only displays the amount and not the currency.

# tl;dr - The question is:

Looking at all these pictures, will I be charged:

* $2.33AUD? (Currency of credit card)
* $2.33USD? (Assumption that Google is using *its* own currency)
* $2.33SGD? (Currency of location; where I am)

Also, as usual - The above costs does not include processing/conversion fees and charges, and other stuffs and whatnot that goes behind the scenes that ends up getting lumped onto your bill.

# Answer
Okay now I just checked the same app here as you can see:

So it shows the price in my local currency.

I also checked that 4.78 TL is equal to 2.33 AUD, so that **price you see there is in AUD.**
> 4 votes

---
Tags: google-play-store
---


# Question
Title: Restore Google Nexus 5 IMEI that reads 0
I bought a Nexus 5 on Ebay. It came brand new with all the packaging, but having bought a previous Nexus 5 (directly from Google) this packaging seemed a little suspect (I think it might be a very well made imitation, or a modified LG version of the device. Seemed legit on the website though).

Anyhow, when it arrived i put in a local SIM, but it wouldn't connect to the cellular network, or it would connect intermittently (5-10 seconds and it would drop off). I went into the settings and noticed that the IMEI read '0'. It was on Android 4.4.4.

It seems that if the IMEI is 0, the device would fail security checks (either with the MEID or the IMEI zeroed) and thus not register on the network.

After Googling quite a bit, I came across these answers on StackExchange, however they're not entirely clear: Nexus 5, IMEI 0, how to restore IMEI? (Refers to a Russian website, and you need to translate to English ... so it's kind of messy) https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/96397/nexus-5-imei-0-shows-how-to-restore-original-imei

None of these was actually clear and after quite a bit of fumbling about, nothing seems to have worked. So how does one get this fixed?

# Answer
Finally i found this post on XDA which seems to be a better translation from the Russian page above to English: http://forum.xda-developers.com/google-nexus-5/help/imei-0-efs-backup-t2769023/post60421668#post60421668 . All the files necessary are also attached to the post.

However not all of it is useful, i'll copy-paste the useful parts below, and add comments to things that were important:

1. Download all the ZIP archives from the post
2. Install the LG driver
3. Install QPST
4. Copy the entire folder EFS Professional to `C:/` drive (Not sure whether it necessarily has be be the `C:/` drive, or you can just have it in a folder somewhere on your machine)
5. You'll need to root the phone and get shell access through adb.
Either:

* Unpack the archive Nexus5 the root of drive C (this is only necessary if you don’t use WUG);

Or:

* Use WUG Nexus Root Toolkit (*a lot easier*):
        + Make sure you're running stock Android 5.0.1 (Very important, I tried with 5.1.1 and it failed). Depending on which Android version you're on, you can either upgrade normally till 5.0.1, or use WUG to downgrade to 5.0.1
        + Root the device using WUG
        + If necessary, you can reset the IMEI using backups zero IMEI from the archive. To do this, simply make a backup of your EFS in TWRP, then replace in the folder's backup your files on the distribution of similar make and restore EFS. (Mine was already zeroed, so i had no chance of making a backup) *If it is already erased and reads 0, then just skip this step.*
6. Still using WUG, click on the Launch the Advanced utilities:
    * Install boot \[kernel\] 5.0.0\_diag\_BOOT.img from folder "restore\_imei\_files" (Remember that you were on version 5.0.1 ... if you happen to be on 5.1.1, you may end up in a boot loop like i did ---\> So 5.0.1 is very important)
7. Open a command window (Windows prompt) at the location where *adb* and *fastboot* are located (You can do this by navigating to the respective folder, hold "shift" on your keyboard, and right click. In the context menu click "Open command window here").
8. Type:
    * `adb shell`
    * `su`
    * `setprop sys.usb.config diag,adb` (*notice the comma between diag and adb*) This activates the diagnostic mode on the phone and will avail operations with nvram through the com port.
9. Open EFS Professional:
    * (a). Click on Qualcomm NV Tools, Hit connect and go to the Secure Ops tab.
    * (b). Hit Check off IMEI and MEID and hit 'Read' ... if it's zeros then you know you have to enter the IMEI and MEID
    * (c). Remove the SIM card from the phone (Note: If you had already removed the SIM card earlier, then you can skip this step)
    * (d). Enter IMEI and MEID (Note: `MEID` is just the `IMEI` without the last two digits). (Note: I found my IMEI laser-burned on to the SIM-card holder)
    * (e). Hit Write
10. Reboot the phone and check the IMEI by typing \*#06#
11. If the IMEI still reads 0, repeat from 9(b) above again, then Read (note ESN now appears), then Write again (ignore the errors) \> Reboot and check, it should work. This did it for me
> 3 votes

# Answer
Have you ever did any flashing on your previous phones? If you did, try flashing the official factory images from here.
> -1 votes

---
Tags: nexus-5, google, imei
---


# Question
Title: Fire OS 5 mount -o remount,rw fails as root
This is regarding Amazon's port of Lollipop. AFAICT, other similar questions are regarding Jelly Bean and earlier plus non deal with Fire OS.

I'm working with a rooted Amazon Fire TV/2 running Amazon's Fire OS 5, its Lollipop port. I'm unable as root to mount /system as r/w.

mount -o remount,rw /system fails with "mount: Invalid argument"

/dev/block/mmcblk0p13 is linked to /dev/block/platform/mtk-msdc.0/by-name/system

/dev/block/platform/mtk-msdc.0/by-name/system is mounted at /system

Mounting /system r/w (as root) worked fine under JB.

How can I remount /system as r/w under Amazon's Lollipop?

# Answer
You can also try with: mount -o rw,remount /system . For some devices this works fine.

```
root@angler:/ # mount -o rw,remount /system
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ # mount -o remount, rw /system
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ # mount -o rw,remount /system
root@angler:/ #
root@angler:/ # getprop | grep build
[ro.bootimage.build.date]: [Fri May 6 06:19:55 EDT 2016]
[ro.bootimage.build.date.utc]: [1462529995]
[ro.bootimage.build.fingerprint]: [google/nexus_angler/angler:6.0.1/MTC19T/nate05060618:userdebug/test-keys]
[ro.build.characteristics]: [nosdcard]
[ro.build.date]: [Fri May  6 06:18:32 EDT 2016]
[ro.build.date.utc]: [1462529912]
[ro.build.description]: [angler-user 6.0.1 MTC19T 2741993 release-keys]
[ro.build.display.id]: [MTC19T]

```

I just did the test now on my device, Nexus 6P. As you see, both commands are valid and system applies them. Why was my answer down voted?
> -3 votes

---
Tags: 5.0-lollipop, mount
---


title: Unbrick Galaxy S5

text:
# Question
Title: Unbrick Galaxy S5
I tried to install a CWM recovery on my G900F with Odin Mobile (using these instructions). But when the phone restarts, it just shows this:

It says Recovery is not seandroid inforcing, Set Warranty Bit: recovery. It reboots avfter a few seconds, but then the same text is showing again.

First of all, what does it mean?

Second, any idea of what I should do?

By removing the battery and pressing volume down, home and power when returning the battery, I can get it to start in some Download mode, but I don't know if there's anything I can do. It says:

ODIN MODE PRODUCT NAME: SM-G900F

CURRENT BINARY: Samsung Official

SYSTEM STATUS: Custom

REACTIVATION LOCK(KK): OFF

KNOX WARRANTY VOID: 0x1 (2)

QUALCOMM SECUREBOOT: ENABLE (CSB)

RP SWREW: S1, T1, R1, A1,

P1 UOC START

Some forum posts suggest try flashing again, but when I connect the device to my laptop (Mac), it won't show up when i list devices in adb or fastboot.

Is there anything I can do?

(I've done this a few times before, but I still consider myself a beginner ...)

# Answer
> 0 votes
Ok, I solved it at last. What I didn't know, was that with Odin, i can flash a custom recovery to the device, even though it didn't seem to respond to anything. Next time, I'll try Odin directly.

Here's a good guide, if someone else is interested!

---
Tags: clockworkmod-recovery, unbricking, samsung-galaxy-s-5
---


# Question
Title: Decrypt crypt7 without key (phone was factory reset)
I have my whatsapp backup db in crypt7 format. I forgot to backup the crypt key.

Now I want to decrypt the crypt7 file but not sure what to do. I have my device with me on which the file was encrypted, but the device has been factory reset, hence I am unable to get the key from it.

Now my question is, if I reinstall whatsapp, will I be able to get the crypt key and will I be able to decrypt the file which was encrypted before factory reset?

if not, is there any other possible way to decrypt it?

Thanks for any help.

# Answer
As far as i know the whatsapp crypt7 files are not actually encrypted.

There is an app that can encrypt/decrypt/backup the crypt7 files without a key.

Also, over copy-pasting your whatsapp folder will also work, i think i've succesfully tried that already...
> 1 votes

---
Tags: whatsapp-messenger, encryption
---


# Question
Title: Is the external storage size limit hardware or software?
AFAIK, All phones I know have a SD Card size limit. Is this hardware, or software ?

If this is hardware, what changes between, let's say a 32GB card, and a 64GB card ?

If this is software, is this just an arbitrary limit, or the system really won't be able to read it ? Is this changable (Custom ROM, Kernel) ?

# Answer
> 4 votes
As I know, this is a software limit. The communication protocol of a 32GB, 64GB or even 128GB SD card is exactly the same. Only the old non HC or XC cards of 2GB or less uses a different communication protocol. The reason that some devices doesn't support 64GB or bigger is due to the use of the exFAT file system on cards of 64GB and larger. Although, if you reformat this cards to the older FAT32 file system you can use in a device that officially supports up to 32GB cards (only in very rare cases it still doesn't work). My experience is that a 128GB card formatted in FAT32 works without issues in a Samsung Galaxy S2 that officially supports up to 32GB.

---
Tags: external-sd, sd-card, storage
---


# Question
Title: I broke my WiFi Card, Can I use my data antenna to connect to WiFi
I have an old android phone that I want to use to stream music while I am working around the house. Is it possible to make my data antenna work as a WiFi card? I am currently not rooted.

Here are the specs:

OS:Android (2.3.6, 2.3, 2.2)

Hardware

System chip:Qualcomm MSM7627-2

Processor:Single core, 600 MHz

System memory:512 MB RAM / 512 MB ROM

Storage expansion:microSD, microSDHC up to 32 GB

Technology

CDMA:800, 1900 MHz

Data:EV-DO Rev.A

Positioning:GPS

Navigation:Yes

Connectivity

Bluetooth:3.0

Wi-Fi:Yes

USB:Yes

Connector:microUSB

\*Edit I should also mention that the damage was caused by water

# Answer
No, it is not possible to use your data antenna as a WiFi card. These are tuned to different frequencies, and the required processing for each is also different.
> 2 votes

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Tags: wi-fi, 2.3-gingerbread
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