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How to undelete an audio file from Asus fonepad 7 tablet?
A few days back I deleted one audio file accidentally. I created that file by recording using the application Asus sound recorder. That file had the extension of .3gpp or .wav.
I'm working on Android lolipop.
Also, I would prefer a solution that doesn't require rooting my android device.

@eldarerathis I went through the link but couldn't get a solution I was looking for. I commented on that thread. The manual method it has mentioned, I can't use the dd command as my android tablet is mounted via mtp. Can you open this thread please!

@eldarerathis plz update & requesting you to reopen

If you want this to be reopened you're going to need to [edit] this to be much more specific as to what you've tried, where you're stuck, etc. Your situation is entirely generic at the moment, which is why it's a duplicate of another generic question. Did you try the other suggestions from the linked question? Did you look at other questions in the data-reovery tag, such as Recover Lost Voice Recording on EVO 4G or How to Restore Deleted / Formatted Files on HD Micro SD Card?

Further, without being willing to root, you're probably going to be out of luck. Any deep forensics will require block access to the device. You could use dd if you were willing to root, for example, by running it on your device directly.


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Why can't I save apps into my SD-card?
I have a problem with my lenovo S750.
When I want to download something the system says:

Memory Full, Not enough storage space

It's really frustrating since I cannot use the android at all!
My phone is rooted, and I already tried to use Clean Master to move all of my apps to the SD-card, but it only moved 5 apps for me, but other than that, there is no apps on the SD-card, only photos and few videos.
The rest is probably still on the internal memory.

Internal storage is full (1GB)
micro-SD card is half empty(2GB)
phone storage is empty (1.55GB of total 1.64GB free)

Since internal storage is full, no apps will be updated due to lack of storage.
Furthermore, how can I take advantage of the phone storage?

Try this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2083709/android-emulator-sdcard-push-error-read-only-file-system/40449314#40449314

You have to wipe your cache partition. It is the partition where Android stores downloaded .APKs and some other system data and you cannot see it with a file manager.
Step 1
Turn off your Android device. Reboot the phone or tablet into Recovery Mode. The process is specific to the device model. For Lenovo S750:

Press and hold Volume Up and Power Button at the same time.
Release all buttons when the Lenovo S750 screen flickers and in a few seconds the Recovery screen will appear.
When the Android image appears press Power shortly

Step 2
Press the “Volume-down” button to scroll to “Wipe Data/Factory Reset.”, select it.
Step 3
Scroll to and select “Wipe Cache Partition.”
Step 4
Highlight and select “Reboot System Now.” The phone restarts.
DO NOT make "Factory reset". You will loose all your data on phone.

What partition do I to wipe the cache? the internal or the SD-card one? they both have a Download folders

It is NOT a Download folder. It is a system partition in internal flash memory that you CANNOT see.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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CWM recovery can't find the kernel image
I wanted to root and upgrade my Galaxy i9003 to Jelly Bean. I followed this guide and flashed CWM on the phone. But then the phone doesn't boot in normal mode and Samsumg logo keeps flashing forever.
I've put the CM 11 kernel on the external card but when I boot into recovery, CWM can't find it. The list of directories (on the sd card) it shows is not complete and it shows the same directories on the internal card even after I did a factory reset and wiped the caches.
Any way to save the day? Can I flash the CM 11 kernel using Odin?

Did you follow the directions in the order prescribed? Did you use the corrrect version of CWM? Did you select the right files? Did you clear cache and dalvik-cache? Did you select the proper kernel? …It might be a pain, but restart from scratch (also a freshly formatted SD card). It could be a step wasn't followed properly. As to using Odin, you need to figure out where the problem is first.

I did all of that. I'm not sure I'm using the right CWM kernel. In the guide that I linked there are 2 links to the kernel download. One of them seems to be generic and the other one has different downloads for various firmware. I used the generic one. I couldn't find the kernel for my firmware. maybe that's the problem. But I can't remember the firmware name! I just flashed the generic kernel again and the phone is stuck in reboot.

Those 2 files you are talking about are for firmware, not the kernel. You need to search for that. Figure out which firmware that you have then pick from Kernel search page. Then continue with the guide

I can't remember the babseband version and the phone doesn't boot so I can't find it out. I remember I couldn't find a kernel specific for it back then. Is there any way to erase CWM?

Yes you flash a different recovery over the other one. You can flash either CWM or TWRP. But you should use which ever the guide is using.

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


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How to enable the SD card to be written on by all apps [Mrashmallow]
Is there any way without rooting the device? My device is a Sony Xperia C4.

Yes, you can use adaptable storage to do this. This means that your SD card with merge with your internal storage and display itself as one big SD card. This is really nice if you need extra storage, but things can go crazy if you pull your SD card out of your phone as it's used as internal storage.
Just make sure NOT to pull out your SD card from your phone if you decide to enable this.
You can enable it in 2 ways:
ADB:
adb shell sm set-force-adoptable true

From Settings
Go to Settings -> Storage -> SD Card -> Format as internal

I don't see that option in the settings. Would either of these actions delete the files already on the SD card?

@Reza Yes, all contents will be deleted off the SD card.

@Reza Some OEM's remove the Adopted Storage options from the user interface for Marshmallow, but using the ADB method works in most cases. It would be a good idea to update your original question with your make/model of device as that can change the answer.

I enabled debugging and ran the command but I get an error that sm was not found. I don't know how to install it in Ubuntu.

@Reza I don't know, sorry. I have the option in my settings. I just found this command on the internet. Installing Busybox might solve it. (Busybox installer is free on Google Play)


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How to modify app permissions on a rooted device without third party?
Is there any way to modify app permissions on a rooted (running Android 4.3) device "by hand"?
Or maybe I should ask how third party apps (like "access denied" or "Gemini") can block app permissions?

What device and Android version are you on?

It's a Samsung Galaxy note 2014 with Android 4.3.

Try root explorer app search the apk and long press on the app click permission change your permission

That's not really non-third party and I'm talking about installed apps.

You can use adb (Android Debug Bridge) tools.
-Install platform-tools which are included in Android SDK
-Toggle USB Debugging options on your phone.
-Connect to your phone with adb.
Example operation for testfile.txt
Upload your file with 'adb push ' command.
adb push testfile.txt /data/local/tmp/

Get shell with 'adb shell' command.
adb shell

(You will get a prompt like below.)
Become superuser with 'su' command.
shell$ su

Change permissions of testfile.txt to 644 (-rwx--r--r-)
chmod 644 /data/local/tmp/testfile.txt


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How to root samsung Galaxy Note 2014 edition?
I searched the forum but there was no entry for my specific device.
I have an unlocked Galaxy note 10.1, 2014 LTE edition which I'd like to root. Motivations include ability to install a Linux virtual machine and getting rid of the enormous amount of firmware installed (plus remapping the keys, etc).
So I wanted to ask
1-How I can root my device.
I also have a few related questions whose answers I couldn't find by searching the internet:
2-If I root, will I be using the same OS that I have now, just with superuser access, or would I get "vanilla Android"? I saw a video on youtube about rooting the same device but it needed downgrading to a lower version of Android??? Among samsung's firmware I only use those for the S pen, and I'd like to have them available after rooting.
3-It seems that I need special PC programs for rooting my device. Is there any such software for Linux?

Are you sure you invested enough time in searching the internet? I just found this forum and another forum after one search. To answer your other questions:

In short, you will need to use ODIN (a computer-based tool used for writing to your device while in "pre-Android" mode) to flash (a fancy phrase for installing) a custom recovery (ClockworkMod, aka CWM). That custom recovery will allow you to flash a superuser app that will handle granting root access. All files necessary can be found by resorting to the linked forums since SO can't host files.
rooting does not remove your version of Android. In most cases, it will actually wipe all of your data (factory reset), so make sure to backup anything that you need beforehand. Being rooted does leave room for flashing different versions of Android if you wish to do so in the future.
Sadly, I didn't have any luck finding Linux drivers for the Note 10.1. Windows drivers available here.

Thank you very much. I found this guide: http://www.theandroidsoul.com/root-samsung-galaxy-note-10-1-2014-lte-p605-cf-auto-root-tool/  but still don't understand what ROM they use and also wanted to see if anybody here has done this successfully.

From looking at the forum you linked to, there is no ROM that you're flashing. You're simply flashing a root package (as explained in point 1 of my answer). If you want to talk to others who have 'done this successfully', I would recommend that you try other sites, like XDA, or find a walk-through video on YouTube. SO is really meant for questions like "what problem (with your Android device) are you trying to solve?".


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What are the files with a tilde ~ in their names?
I recently see a lot of files and directories with names like "T9XY3G~X" on my android device. I find them in the directories I sync with my PC, even though they are not copied to my PC.
My device is a galaxy note with Android 4.3 and I use SyncMe for syncronization.
So, Is it safe to delete them? Can I prevent such files from appearing in future?

Including a real example (with path) might help to give a final answer. There are at least two possibilities: a) temporary files created by the sync process (should be automatically deleted by the sync app once the sync completes, but may be left in case of a crash), or b) as they are exactly 8 chars, that reminds me of FAT 8.3 aliases for long VFAT names (like "Progra~1" for "Program Files" on Windows). Are all those files on the external SDCard only?

The files are generated by Samba when it encounters file name having invalid windows file name characters like :, \, <, >, | or directories ending with dot. The reason the files appear on your Android device is they were synced back from your PC. You can safely delete the files, but they will mostly likely reappear again, as long as files with invalid characters are created by Android apps.


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64 GB SD card with Samsung s3 mini
I bought a Sandisk Ultra microSDXC card with 64GB to use in my Samsung s3 mini. When I put it in the phone doesn't find it (presumably); going to settings -> storage and scrolling down to the bottom it says
Mount SD card
Insert SD card

but it is greyed out, so nothing happens when I tap it. The SD card seems to work perfecly fine as a storage on my Windows 7 computer.
Googling around it seems I might have to format the SD card to fat32 (I tried first reformatting it with exFat, the default, and also NFTS, to no avail). But that is not an option when using right-click -> format... on windows 7.
So I try Fat32Formatter. When I start it it claims the SD card is in NFTS format (even though it's formatted to exFat). Trying to format it to Fat32 I get the error Failed to determine the drive.
I also tried HP USB disk storage format tool, but when I start it all the options are greyed out and I'm not even able to select a device.
Lastly I tried "MiniTool partition wizard", which indicates that the SD card is (Bad Disk) and doesn't let me format or do anything to it. I try using Partition Recovery Wizard on it, but that doesn't change anything.
Any ideas?

Easy solution for anybody with a card-reader in their pc. (Relaid from: forum.xda-developers.com/)

Place the card in your PC's card reader and determine the drive designation (i.e., G:\, H:\, etc.)
Download the fat32format utility in GUI version from here: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/guiformat.exe. Click on the picture to retrieve the file.
Launch the guiformat.exe.
Choose the drive that corresponds to your SD card.
Choose the size of the SD Card you are formatting.
Check the Quick Format box.
Press Start.

Source: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1773735

Thanks, formatting the card to FAT32 using this tool I got it working! +1 from me.

Thanks for answers!
It turned out to be a hardware issue. I returned the phone and they repaired it, after which other formatting fixes mentioned above worked (I can't remember which one at the moment).

Firstly you are saying there's no option to format the memory card in fat32 on Windows 7. Which version of Windows 7 are you using??? I have windows 7 home premium and ultimate both have the fat32 as default, infact they have four options to format i.e ntfs, fat, fat32(default), and exfat.
And secondly yes you will need to format that memory card in fat32 format for it to work.

The way I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), windows can't format 64GB SD cards to Fat32, only those with less storage (I tried making two partitions with 32GB each, didn't work either).

yes it can format.did you try this guide http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1773735, i tried it, it worked for me. if this doesn't work you can try this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsbk7SKonE8

Thanks! The second method in the first link works for formatting (I already tried the first method as mentioned in OP) but the phone still can't find the card. I guess there is some other issue..

The S3 Mini only supports up to 32GB MicroSD cards.  Link
And for reference, no, Windows does not support FAT32 formatting above 32GB.

I just got my daughter's S3 mini to work with a 64GB card after I followed FearlessCoward's advice and formated it to FAT32.


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How to add a symbolic link to bypass unavailable busybox applet
I have BusyBox version v1.15.3 installed that came with the ROM gingerdx 31b. This busybox version cannot be updated/changed, because if it's being updated, the phone goes into a bootloop on the next reboot, it is said not to update the busybox in the ROM thread too.
The problem is, this busybox version doesn't include the applet pgrep. Whenever pgrep is typed in the shell & executed it gives out a pgrep: not found error. "pgrep" is needed by the "super charger" script to do some tasks.
So, I tried creating a symbolic link to a working pgrep from another busybox version. I stored the busybox file in the /data/ folder, made it chmod 777, then cd to that directory. Then execute the command;

ln -sf "busybox pgrep" "./busybox pgrep"

but even when I execute pgrep, it still gives the same error. How do I make the pgrep command point to a working pgrep, via another busybox or a pgrep file?
Also, how do I make this link permanent, so that it stays that way after a reboot? Should I add this to the .bashrc or do this using a init.d script? Both my knowledge on android & linux commands are limited as well. Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you.

Thinking error. You've created a link named busybox pgrep, linking to a (not existing) other file of the same name. What you probably wanted to achieve is:
ln -sf </path/to/alternative/>busybox </path/to/linkdir/>pgrep

Replace </path/to/alternative/> with the path to the busybox binary featuring pgrep functionality, and </path/to/linkdir/> with the path to a directory contained in your $PATH (best the one where the other symlinks reside).
Busyboxes usually decide their "wanted functionality" by checking where they're called from. So the symlink is simply named pgrep, grep, or whatever, and pointing to the busybox binary.


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MHL with Nexus 4?
I know that the Nexus 4 has Slimport technology, which is very close to MHL but draws little/no power. However, is the Nexus 4 still able to use an MHL to HDMI adapter?

You should edit your question to remove shopping recommendation part. It is off topic here.

Josia: I just did what roxan correctly suggested, to prevent your question from being closed as off-topic. You can re-edit it anytime if you feel something missing/unclear.

The Specs at GSMArena mention TV-out (via MHL A/V link), which suggests it should work.
On the other hand, ExpertsReview states:

The micro USB port also doubles up as a display output, though surprisingly it doesn't use the MHL standard that we've seen on numerous recent devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S3. Instead it supports the new SlimPort standard, which is based upon DisplayPort.

Which suggests the standards are incompatible (other sources I consulted underline this). An even clearer hint you'll find in a review by anandtech:

When I wrote that review it wasn't immediately clear what advantages SlimPort offered over MHL, which has become relatively ubiquitous in the year or so since its introduction. Since then I've acquired the SlimPort microUSB to HDMI 1.4 SP1002 and VGA (D-SUB) SP2002 adapters from Analogix for testing out SlimPort on the Nexus 4.
  ...
  As of this writing, the Analogix SP1002 adapter is available on Amazon for around $30 USD. I haven't seen the SP2002 available online anywhere yet, however.

As this shows, there're SlimPort adapters available which are not that expensive (though not that cheap either), and are probably better fitted for your purpose. As you either yet have to buy the cable, I'd rather go for the right one.

Good luck with it -- glad I could help! Once you have used it, maybe it would be a good idea to mention in another comment how well it worked.

Indeed, that is a pretty good idea.

It seems that MHL is not supported, but its cousin SlimPort is, according to here and explained here.
I have not bought yet, but I guess Chromecast might do the trick anyway for more recent devices.

We have used the chromecast to cast android application and it was not usable. The refresh rate was several seconds. Now I seek for an adapter.


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Why is it that whenever I partition my sd card outside CWM it doesn't get recognized by my phone?
I have a Samsung Galaxy Ace, running on its official CM7 ROM. I have an 8gb sd card and I just want to make a clean install of everthing starting with the sd card's partition.
I've had sd-ext partition troubles when I partitioned my sd card using CWM, so I went and did it using GParted. Currently it has:

6+ Gb FAT32 primary partition
1 Gb EXT4 logical partition

It gets recognized by my laptop, no problem. But my phone won't even detect it. Any ideas why this is happening? Thanks.

I fixed it by creating the sd-ext partition as another primary partition. Works fine now. I hope this helps somebody.


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How to stop web browser offering to sign into Google account
This question seems to be all over various forms, but i haven't yet found an answer.
On my Android phone, the stock web browser offers to sign in to my Google account when i visit Google websites. At the top of the screen appears a yellow pop-up listing all my Google account in a drop-down, and two buttons: "hide" and "sign in". Simply selecting an account and tapping "sign in" gives unchallenged access to my account via the web; no password is required.
This bothers me, since any malicious person who picks up my phone when I'm not looking can access my email, Google Drive, etc without knowing my password.
Let's assume that my screen-lock hasn't had time to kick in.... or we could assume it's easy to circumvent.
Enabling 2-stage sign in wouldn't help, since if someone has unauthorised access to my phone, they's receive the one-time token.
I've tried looking through all phone and browser settings to no avail. I've hunted through Google Dashboard, and cannot see how to disable this. I've signed out, but the yellow pop-up always appears, always giving unchallenged access.
An app-lock app might be an option, but is inconvenient, especially since friends often use each other's mobile browsers.
Installing a different browser may be an option, although again that's inconvenient, and would mean disabling the stock browser, which my come with other issues.
I'd really like to disable the yellow pop-up permanently, but i cannot seem to find out how to do this. Apologies if this has been answered already.
I'm running Android 4.0.4 Cyanogen mod 9.1.0 on a rooted Samsung Galaxy S GT-i9000.

I'm specifically looking for a way to prevent the yellow authentication pop-up in the stock web browser. I'm not bothered about other apps. I'm also not really bothered about why Google has chosen to do this. The lock screen isn't an issue either.
One scenario might be: an acquaintance asks to borrow my phone to use the web browser. Being a little cheeky, they go to Google and sign in, without a password being required. I wish to prevent this. If they were using a web browser on my laptop, they'd need a password. I'm not happy that they don't require it on my phone.
Other apps can be trivially protected by an app-lock. I prefer not to use an app-lock for the web browser. And anyway, unlocking it for a friend to use just leaves the same problem.

This is deliberately done for convenience reasons by Google. And by the way, generally, I don't see the problem here. Your device is already connected to your account (i.e. a working access token is stored on it). If someone wants access to your  Google Drive/Calender/Mail/Contacts/etc. that's all possible without using the browser at all (maybe one has to install additional apps. For max security, enable a lockscreen passphrase (not a numerical PIN or pattern) and also enable full device encryption. PS: It's easy to read a Samsung phone's flash with a custom recovery (flashed via heimdall).

I'm specifically looking for a way to prevent the yellow authentication pop-up in the stock browser. I'm not bothered about why Google has chosen to do this. The lock screen isn't an issue.
One scenario might be: an acquaintance asks to borrow my phone to use the web browser. Being cheeky, they go to Google and sign in, without a password. I wish to prevent this. If they were using a browser on my laptop, they'd need a password. prefer not to use an app-lock for the web browser. And anyway, unlocking it for a friend to use just leaves the same problem.

You can't change it in the app itself. Here's a nice talk on this topic by Hak5.org

Added link to XDA article in my answer...

The only solution I am aware of (besides hacking the code itself) is blocking permissions:

Permissions denied
PDroid privacy extension

Regarding PDroid: Currently, only Gingerbread is supported officially but you may find a working patcher for your CM9.1 firmware on XDA. Its Google Play description says: PDroid allows you to block access to the following private data for any application regardless of its permissions: [...] Account auth tokens, [...]
EDIT:
Tried PDroid and found it to work great.
You need a compatible ROM (CM, AOKP, PA,...) and AutoPatcher (download here) plus either the original PDroid or the PDroid2.0 app (see 1st post/attachment). Note: v2.0 needs JellyBean, use the old one for ICS and below (the original author hasn't updated the app for some time and hasn't ported the original Gingerbread patches. Autopatcher includes both ported original PDroid patches and the v2.0 fork for JellyBean)

Disable "Google Account sign-in prompts," which allow Google to offer a faster way to sign in with your Google Account on supported third-party sites
https://myaccount.google.com/permissions?pli=1

This worked nicely for me on reddit using Edge.

This.  Don't bug me to "Log me in with Google" on sites other than Google's own.

I had the same problem.  I downloaded a separate browser (Skyfire) for "guests" to use and used an app lock to lock my main browser.  The authentication option did not drop down in the second browser.

Change your homepage to www.google.com or similar

I fail to see how this answers the question.

OK.
On my Samsung Galaxy S2, with Android 4.1.2,
I activate the stock browser, go into "settings" + "advanced" & then "Reset to default".Then click browser again: a Google search opens & at top of the screen appears a yellow pop-up to sign in my gmail account in a drop-down, with 2 buttons: "hide" & "sign in", just like Austin had.
The URL on my stock browser is then:
http://www.google.com/webhp?client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-home
Now if I go to browser settings & replace the home page by:
http://www.google.com, then I get no more yellow pop-up.
For me, the problem is solved.

In this case, it is annoying that this website does not reproduce links as I typed them in: the default home page link creating the problem is google.com/webhp?client=ms-android-samsung&source=android-home which I replace by google.com in my homepage to eliminate the problem.

Please add these details to the answer itself, so it's more readable.

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


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Android device can support SD Card of up to 32 GB, so FAT32 is more suitable?
May I assume that there is no point to format your SD Card (assume you have the 32 GB size) to NTFS if the device can support SD Card of up to 32 GB and FAT32 maximum limit is also exactly 32 GB?
The reason for asking such question is that since the device can only support 32 GB, so I can assume that NTFS will likely not be supported by the device, or I cannot assume in this way? And this FAT32 will be more suitable and likely to be accepted by major android devices?

32GB is the limit imposed by the Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) specification, not FAT32.
FAT32 supports 2TB drives, with a standard 512 byte sector (or 16TB with 4.096 byte sectors) which is (coincidentally?) the same as the latest Secure Digital eXtended Capacity (SDXC) specification, so FAT32 should be viable for some time to come.
The biggest restriction with a FAT32 formatted drive is the per file size restriction. Since FAT32 uses 32bit file pointers, which means that no single file can be larger than 4GB (actually 232-1). Most of the time this isn't a problem, but if you want to transport movies or virtual machines which aren't split into multiple smaller files, then this might cause you problems.
As an aside, in an answer like this, I can't help but illustrate it with a favorite picture of mine which compares 8 bytes of magnetic core memory from 1953 with 8GB (8 thousand million bytes) of flash from 2008:

In the same space as those 8 bytes from 1953 you could now fit 8x or 12x 32GB uSD cards (when you take into account thickness too) so who knows where we will be in another 55 years? Probably wondering how we got by with only a couple of terabytes in our phone. *8')

The above answers are correct but I am as of yet not allowed to post comments it seems. Still, I thought it worth pointing out that devices where the manufacturer claimed maximum is 32 GB have in the past often supported 64GB or higher cards as well as long as the user reformatted the cards as FAT32 (or another supported filesystem I imagine). The SDXC standard mandates that the cards are sold formatted as exFAT but the standard also includes backward compatibility with SDHC devices, albeit at slightly lower speeds.

the "32" in FAT32 has nothing to do with the "32" in 32GB!
FAT32 is File Allocation Table in 32 bit and is introduced in 1996, when there wasn't any 32GB sd card.
According to Wikipedia: The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte or 4,294,967,295 (232−1) bytes.
So you can't copy a huge 4GB (or more) single file to a FAT32-formatted sd card.
AFAIK, android OS does support NTFS and you may want to use it, as it has many benefits over old FAT32.


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4K Video Recording with the Camera2 API
In the Android Lollipop, Google released the Camera2 API.
Does this mean in Lollipop, any phone with a 5MP camera would be able to shoot 2K video and any 13MP camera would be able to shoot 4K video, and is there any reason why Google may not choose to include this in the Google Camera for Lollipop later this year - ie would shooting in a higher resolution be a compromise in any way?

Yes. Actually, the Nexus 5, with an 8MP sensor, can shoot video which is almost 4K with this app. However, 3 months on, Google has still not updated their Camera app to the Camera2 API, so the Nexus 5 cannot record in 4K using Google Camera.

No, the camera sensor resolution isn't the only factor that determines whether a phone can shoot high-res video, regardless of the APIs offered by the OS. Phones have special video encode hardware to make a video file from the raw camera data, and the hardware can only encode so many pixels per second. To record 2k or 4k video, the video encode hardware has to be fast enough, and other parts of the system need enough bandwidth/throughput to handle the data rate.
As for Google Camera, there's no point speculating about its future releases. They might choose to focus on a new feature instead, or may wait until more phone hardware supports 4k video. They might even include it in the next Nexus phone but wait another six months or so before releasing the feature more widely.

authors: العمدة العمدة


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Phone disconnects from USB after 5 seconds on Windows
My phone recently underwent continued exposure to water (in my pocket during a heavy storm), and after drying it out, I have a problem with its USB port:

When connecting the phone to a Windows computer, it indicates charging, is detected as a device by the system, but it is not possible to browse its files. But after approximately 5 seconds, it is completely ejected and stops charging.
When connecting to a Linux or Mac computer, it works flawlessly, charging and able to transfer files.

I suspected it could be some sort of short causing an overload and the motherboard shutting down the port, but does not seem to be the case, since when monitoring the current (with an app in the phone, and an USB volt+amp-meter it looks to be well within range of the expected values.
After ruling out overload, I thought that maybe the data bus could be damaged, but upon testing on a Linux, a Mac and another Windows, it worked perfectly, even transmitting big files to check if it would fail at some point succeeded. Seems this is an exclusively Windows-related problem.
It could be the cable, but after testing with a different one, the same behaviour was observed (works on Mac/Linux,  disconnects on Windows).
Any ideas how to fix this? It's a bit annoying since I usually use my Windows machine to charge the phone.

Is the behaviour same on all ISB ports of windows machine? Asking to rule out problem with a particular port

@beeshyams Yes, same behaviour with all USB ports, on both Windows machines.

time to change the USB cable

@SagarV Forgot to add this info: same behaviour with 2 different USB cables, which work with other phones or when connecting to non-Windows.


text:
Unable to turn screen on unless charging
So, my dad recently had his Pocophone F1's USB port replaced, but now we have a very different issue.
When the screen turns off, due to pressing the power button to lock the phone, or waiting for the timeout, the phone is unable to wake up again by pressing the power button. The phone is still powered on, as it can make notification sounds.
If plugged into a charger, then the screen turns back on and the power button works normally, all the apps that were open are still there so the phone was clearly not powered off.
If not plugged into a charger and the screen is off, pressing the power button does nothing. You have to long-press the power button to cause the phone to reboot, then it can be used again until it is locked again.
Is this a hardware issue, or a configuration problem? We already tried sending the phone back but the repair person was unable to fix this behaviour.
OS: MIUI Global Stable 12.0.3 (stock ROM) on Android 10.

Not sure if it's related, but I had a very old Nexus 5 on Lineage OS 14.1, and sometimes the screen completely shut off while sounds were still playing. In the beginning, it was due to faulty screen brightness, thus I could still turn the screen on by blindly swiping down the quick panel and swiping the brightness bar. Later on, it worsened and sometimes the screen just didn't want to turn on even after pressing the power button. I believe both were due to software issues or perhaps related to OS/driver/kernel specifically. Didn't have time to research/fix before the mainboard totally died...

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


text:
Is appgallery.cloud.huawei.com a Huawei site or kind of malware?
I started to receive notifications urging to install the official Huawei app store, kind of alternative to Google Play Store. I would be glad, but the app immediately requires to give about all permissions that ever existed for the phone. Is it malware or just unprofessionally written? Please do not hurry to install the app if you just do not know.
One thing that made me suspicious is the app requires permissions right after start and refuses to do anything if not granted immediately. I would expect well written app to have some functionality available, and permissions box popping out only when the permission is really needed. At least could allow to browse over apps in the store - not any single permission is required for that.

have you ever been asked about Google Play permissions? is this more professional to you?

I assume you're using a Huawei device? Otherwise, it's strange to get such notification. Anyway, the SSL certificate for https://appgallery.cloud.huawei.com was applied by Huawei. Also, while the app requests so many permissions, the APK itself looks safe and it's the same as the one store on APK Mirror (verified by Android Police). Whether it's "unprofessionally written" or not, we can't answer it though...

Huawei device but I am not convinced the proposal comes from Huawei.

https://www.pocket-lint.com/phones/news/huawei/148102-what-does-huawei-s-google-ban-mean-for-your-huawei-or-honor-phone

@alecxs Google Play comes pre-installed so, indeed, I have never been asked.


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Which filesystem does Android attach to the root directory?
I know that Android uses FAT32 for SD cards and mounts them via FUSE. But which FS is attached at /? Some kind of ext? ZFS?

There is no singularly defined "Android" filesystem, so this can vary between devices.  Any FS that the kernel can load drivers for is basically fair game.
By and large, you'll almost certainly find that ext4 is the most common filesystem on modern devices. Older devices may use older ext* versions as well, or other filesystems entirely. Since everything is built on Linux, ext4 a pretty sensible choice, with solid kernel support and a good track record. You can read a bit about why this decision was made in Ars Technica's article about the switch to ext4.
Some devices have also used Samsung's Flash-Friendly File System (f2fs). Notably, several of Motorola's devices, as well as the Nexus 9, use f2fs. The goal of f2fs was to create a file system that was designed specifically with the needs of flash-based storage mediums in mind, in an attempt to maximize performance on devices using NAND chips for their primary storage medium.
This does not mean that these are the only filesystems that Android is capable of running on, however, as I noted above. Given the kernel source and the know-how, it would certainly be possible to include drivers for other filesystems in a kernel image. Android x86 supports installation on NTFS and FAT32 filesystems, for example.

Old Samsung Android phones (early phones with Android 2.1, like the i9000) also used something called RFS, which was basically FAT with UNIX style permissions support.

RFS had a name among most users that had a device that used it... Really Freaking Slow.

But in recent devices like Amazon Fire HD 7, a SD card cannot be formatted to ext4.  Huawei Ascend  P7 allows NTFS in a SD card

@david.perez The question isn't about SD cards, it's about /.

@eldarerathis "Any FS that the kernel can load drivers for is basically fair game" Does his imply that the filesystem is independent of the kernel, at least for Linux?

@Abdul Sort of. Many (maybe all) of the filesystems that Linux supports are implemented as kernel modules, meaning they can be omitted from a build or loaded/unloaded at runtime. They're technically still a portion of the kernel's source code, but not a mandatory part of every build, which is why support can differ between devices a bit; it's dependent on the ROM's kernel actually having the relevant module for a filesystem built and available.

YAFFS (Yet Another Flash File System) was generally used as the default file system for Android versions up to 2.3: http://www.yaffs.net/google-android
ext4 has been used ever since because of multithreading support: https://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page

YAFFS was only used up to version 2.3, ext4 has been used since because of multithreading support.

Ars Technica has an article about the switch away from yaffs to ext4, for anyone interested, which includes some discussion with Android engineers who explain the decision a bit.

I tried with formatting all partitions with f2fs then when I flashed a custom ROM, I could find, the / is formatted with ext4fs, when I checked the batch file which comes with ROM file is the culprit, it actually reformats the f2fs partition with ext4fs.


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Caller ID for forwarded calls
Let's say I have a fixed line phone, say 2xxxxxxx1. I have set this phone to forward all calls to my Moto G, say 9xxxxxxxx2. Now whenever I receive a call that was forwarded, I see two numbers in the caller Id. Say the original caller was 9xxxxxxxx3, then I see the caller id as 9xxxxxxxx32xxxxxxx1, i.e. the actual caller's number, appended by the number that forwarded the call to me.
I understand this can be a great feature to know the actual caller and the forwarder. But, it does not go well with the contacts and apps like True Caller. Also It becomes a pain to quickly save the received call to contacts.
Is there a way I could completely get rid of the forwarder's details from the caller id? Does it happen on all android phones? Is it specific to Moto G, or the OS it is running? Can it be carrier specific? Does anybody know an app that could override the default phone app and provides what I want?
PS: I am having a Moto G Dual Sim in India, running one SIM on Loop carrier, same issue when I tried a Tata carrier. The fixed land line that forwards to my Moto G is run by MTNL

I think it's very likely that this is a carrier-dependent question and you should consult you carrier. I've never seen or heard about this kind of behaviour. Maybe you could test it by inserting the SIM in another phone, maybe even one with a different OS?

Caller Forwarding for the provider here (in US) is through the providers network still. Changing the data on the phone sends the change to the cell tower to be recorded there. When a call was forewarded to a landline, I was still being charged for Mobile minutes on the original Cell call.  It was just assumed that the forewarding was entirely being done on the cell network. In both where  the same company provided the landline, and where it was over cable broadband (using thier voip).  So it very well could be "through the 2 numbers" in the cell networks routing.

@onik Even though the carrier is responsible for providing the caller ID number, there could be a way of working around it using an app on the phone to recognise and strip the forwarding number.

@onik, yes I would be doing that experiment, but thought someone might have done this already. I am kind of sure there must be an app already that does this, not sure how to search it out


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When connecting to PC, App Icons are listed
My boss has a Samsung Galaxy s4 mini and whenever he connects it to his PC via USB to copy pictures he shot, there are also lots of what looks like App-Icons listed in the windows explorer. They return whenever he restarts the phone. Is there something i can do to help him?

Could you be a bit more specific? A screenshot of what you're seeing would help us to see what's going on. Also try to check whether it really is an S4 or something else.

Is he seeing these icons on the phone's screen, or on the PC's screen?


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What is the difference between dual sim active and dual sim stand-by?
I am Using Sony Xperia Tipo Dual, which is Dual Sim Smartphone, but When i use internet from SIM 1 using Network Mode = GSM only or WCDMA/ GSM the another SIM's says NO NETWORK. When i deactivate my Internet i receive message's from my Network operator that you got missed calls from these numbers. GSMArena says My phone is no dual stand-by.

There are actually three types of dual SIM phones.

Dual SIM Standby (DSS): Only one SIM can be used at a time, 1 radio chip. The phone has single IMEI number.
Dual SIM Dual Standby (DSDS): Two SIMs can be used at a time, but if one opens a call or data connection, the other is offline. The phone has two different IMEI numbers.
Dual SIM Active (or sometimes Dual SIM Dual Active) (DSA/DSDA): Two SIMs can be used at a time, 2 radio chips. This enables both SIMs to open calls and/or data connection. The phone has two different IMEI numbers.

Since your phone is mentioned as "No dual standby", it means it's a DSS-phone, which allows only one open connection at a time.

Dual Sim standby : If you are talking in Sim A when someone calls to Sim B then they will hear Sim B is not reachable. You wont get prompted
Dual Sim Active : If you are talking in Sim A when someone calls to Sim B then they will hear your call is on waiting. You will get prompted and you can place the current call in hold and answer the new call.
But you should be able to receive call or make calls on both sim when you use internet.
GSM arena confirms Xperia Tipo is no dual standby meaning when you are using one sim to make phone call/ using data the other sim gets off. However, unlike many dual sim phones, in Xperia Tipo both the sim slot supports 3g sim.

no I able to receive & make call only with the Sim A from this i am using mobile data. When i stop using internet after few seconds the signal of sim B appears.

try swapping the sim and check

i have done this many times. it might be due to single IMEI no. when is type *#06#

No it should work even though you are using internet in one sim.

this is really irritating. because of this i cant even get any urgent calls. Thank god i have Missed call alerts.

Thanks. "But you should be able to receive call or make calls on both sim when you use internet." Do you mean the two SIM cards can't be used for voice calls at the same time, but can be used at the same time for VoIP over data or wifi? Regardless of whicy type of Dual Sim?

I think the selected answer does  a good job of expressing the limitations/advantages of each type of dual sim you might encounter so I instead would like to suggest a work around so you don't miss calls when the one sim is in use and the  other becomes inactive.
If you setup call forwarding for each number when you're unreachable so that number 1 forwards to number 2 and number 2 forwards to number 1. Now setup both numbers with call waiting. You now shouldn't  miss a call when on the other line and you should be alerted when you have incoming calls waiting whether redirected or not.
A downside is that you'll get charged by your carrier for incoming routed calls. It's also worth noting that if one sim is roaming you may be charged at roaming rates for incoming re-routed calls.
What happens when phone is off and therefore both sims are unreachable? I don't know, I'd hope/expect the networks could detect such an occurrence and not allow an infinite redirect. Maybe someone here knows and can chime in?
Hope this helps


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Wipe data in rooted S3
I have a rooted Galaxy S3 GT-i9300 with Android 4.3.
I've rooted it using this method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gYjoW22h7c
Now, I would like to erase all the data, but don't loose the root access.
Originally, I was going to go to Settings and press Factory Reset, as I used to do before I rooted the device. But then I read in androidcentral that that could "bootloop" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKXTD1-fqbc) my device.
In summary, how can I do to securely wipe all the data (the option called "Factory reset" in Settings) on my rooted S3?

First, turn your Galaxy S3 off. Now, press and hold the Volume Up, Power and Home buttons until you see the Samsung screen. Release the Power button but continue to press Home and Volume Up until you are brought to the stock recovery mode on the Galaxy S3. Of course, if you have installed a custom recovery on the S3 you will be brought here instead.
Now select the wipe data option by going to it using volume up and down and press the home button it'll wipe your phone's data. Now just reboot your galaxy s3 .
Happy trails and don't forget to backup!

Don't forget that SU may need to be installed again. You also didn't touch on OP's query of bootloop possibility.


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Shutting down Android phone from PC
The screen of my Android phone sometimes automatically shutdown and cannot reshow again.
Can I shutdown my Android from PC or other ways?

For readers: betters answers are here: How I shutdown Android phone with adb command?

You can do this with adb (Android Debug Bridge).

Enable "USB Debugging" on the phone (Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging)
Type adb reboot in a terminal in the directory where you installed adb platform-tools

Will it slow down the phone? if I enable the usb debugging in my phone.

@lovespring: USB debugging is only active when you plug the USB into a computer and adbd is active (i.e. you started adb in the computer), and in my Samsung Spica, there is no noticeable difference in my Linpack score when USB Debugging is "disabled" and "enabled while running Logcat" and "enabled but not running Logcat". YMMV.

Hold the power button down until it shuts off.
Pull the battery out.

If I pull the battery out, the sdcard file system crashs, all file lost! This is why I ask this question.

That's not at all clear from your question.

@lovespring Notice the order of the steps here. They are very important, and if you follow them completely, you should be safe.

@Kevin The power button just shows a menu. from the menu I can select an item that shuts down the phone.

If you hold the button longer, it will initiate a shutdown.

authors: Матвей Бондарь

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
Where are the SIM Lock settings stored on an Android phone?
After getting more involved with the "aftermarket" community, I have this question that's been on my mind for a while now. Since rooting and flashing a custom ROM on an Android phone doesn't give one SIM unlock that means that the SIM lock settings must be stored somewhere else in the phone's memory.
My theory goes that the SIM lock information is stored in or along with the baseband. Is this true? And if so, are there any "alternative" or "aftermarket" baseband firmware images? And finally, who makes the baseband firmware - the carrier, or the phone manufacturer?

Any idea why this question was voted down?  It's strange this SE site.. I wonder if it's going to actually be successful past the beta with such attitude..

I have no idea why.  Someone liked it, someone else didn't.  There are numerous discussions at meta.SO about downvoting in general but in the end, downvotes part of the system so don't take it personally. If you want to know why something was downvoted, feel free to ask like you did, although I wouldn't hold your breath for a response ;)  If you'd like to discuss the strengths/weaknesses of this site or the SE system you should do so on the meta site where such discussions belong.

I suspect it's because this question would also apply to an iPhone.. eg it is not Android specific in any way

But @Jeff, doesn't the title (and the mention of "an android phone" in the question) imply that I'm interested specifically in android devices? Of course, maybe this is common to all phones but I though that the sim-lock configuration was something stored in the phone's firmware hence android related. Of course, @Matt's answer proves me wrong.

The SIM lock stuff is in a separate ROM chip that is not part of the normal phone storage, AFAIK.  It's manufacturer/device dependent.  Definitely nothing to do with the baseband (and you can certainly flash other basebands).

So my hat is in with the not-Android-specific people, but I think it's ontopic because the average Android user may wonder about this.

Is there any way to display this setting?  Short of installing a SIM card from another carrier, how can one determine whether an Android phone is SIM locked?

Normally there's a code you can punch into the dialer, but it's manufacturer/carrier/handset specific.

I saw a professional in China unlocking HTC handsets via JTAG. A side effect with the unlock was the S-ON.
The SIM lock is stored in the Radio NVRAM, is not changeable, but they did the unlock by flashing a patched HBOOT with S-ON and that will report a different SIM lock status (my unlocked phone still says SIMLOCK in fastboot mode - another proof of that is that the fastboot mode now contains a Chinese URL)

Then your chinese unlocker flashed an hboot that ignores the security bit.

That's what i wanted to say :)

Is HBOOT specific to HTC phones? How can I get SIM lock to be ignored for a Moto E4 (that was on Sprint) which does not even ask for a SIM unlock code?


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Recovering deleted pictures
I recently deleted all of my pictures by mistake from my samsung galaxy s4.
I went into my files and documents and deleted not realising it would delete all my pics!
Is there a way for me to recover them?
My phone is not rooted. I have not taken any pictures since but have received pictures through whatsapp?

possible duplicate of How can I recover a deleted file on Android? Also take a look at our data-recovery tag-wiki for further hints.

Were the photos on a removable card?

Important: You know that writing new photos to the memory with the deleted photos is very dangerous; But it's as dangerous to writa any other data to the same area of memory. That area will be either a memory card, or a part (partition) of some internal flash memory. If you use a separate sd card to save photos, and nothing else is saved there: all good. But if it is on a shared partition or card, like a completely different directory (folder) on some common memory - writing anything there will still overwrite photo data.

Especially for recovering JPEG files, I would strongly propose to try the recovery software PhotoRec. It was originally developed to do exactly that, recover not files, but JPEG photos, on the disk - not even looking at the file system. As long as nothing got overwritten, it should recover a large part I expect.
I did not need it myself yet, but the way it works makes very much sense.
Runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, licensed under GPL v2+
PhotoRec comes in one package with the related software TestDisc - the package file named testdisk-* should contain both programms: TestDisk & PhotoRec Download
Note on recovering other files than photos:
PhotoRec should work well for many other file types, the programm PhotoRec was developed to be good at recovering photos, but was soon extended to work with other file formats with some kind of predictable structure too.

Interestingly, the open source license has a real practical relevance in this case: If the card is not removable, and you can not get an image from it to be used in a PC - you could, theoretically, compile/port it for your phone, to run it there in text mode per ssh connection from a PC.

Try Dumpster - Recycle Bin
it might help you to recovery all your Data (Restore deleted pictures, music files, videos and much more)

Seems like it could be helpful, yes - but... Wow! I took a look at the programm, and stopped reading the description at the fifth line: "No need to backup your data." That's really the most brilliant advice one can give to someone who just lost data...

@VolkerSiegel Well this app helped me many times. so, i recommend this to everyone. If i helped you you can vote my answer up to help others.

Oh, I was just about to edit the comment to say that I did see it may be useful here indeed! ( The cynical part was just more urgent, somehow :) ) Edited the above, only missing some more bold... :)

I started to read a little more on Dumpster; It needs that it was running already when the files were deleted. So it will not help the to solve the problem here, as it was not installed then.

Try it by yourself by deleting some file which you dont want on your phone then try that app.


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How to change android primary google account
During the "in-app purchase" I am unable to switch the Google account I would like to use for "in-app purchase". Currently, in order to change the primary Google account on Android operating system, we have the following ways:

Remove other Google accounts, leave only one Google account.
Perform factory reset on our devices.

If we perform factory reset, we will lose all data that we have not backed up or unable to do backup. And, we have to re-install the applications that we need to use.

If we choose to remove other Google accounts from our systems and leave only one Google account, if there are applications installed from Google Play Store by using the Google account that we want to remove from our systems, then we will not be able to remove the account from the system unless we remove those applications. However, sometimes we may forget which account we used to install an application from Google Play Store.
My question is that is there any other way to switch between the accounts?

Have you checked for existing answers to this question? Switch between accounts in Android 4.2 / How to change the account for Android Market? / Multiple Google Accounts and the Market / How do I change a Google account for Android mobile (Xperia 10)?. The last one mentions Erazzer Free for this (root required).

I believe I had a similar problem.
I just bought the Moto X on Verizon.  I linked 3 Google accounts to this phone (including my wife's to sync our calendars.)
The phone chose my wife's account as the primary so when I sent text messages they would be sent from my wife's Google account.
SOLUTION:
I went into the Google+ account app, logged out of her account and then the phone asked me which one to log into.
Problem solved to change my primary account without factory reset.

Here is a good description, on how to do this. To cite the main facts:
If your phone is NOT rooted

If your device isn’t rooted, the only thing you can do is perform a hard reset on the device. You can normally do this under Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset. Doing this will wipe all data and settings from the device.
Unfortunately, if you really need to change the main Google account, this is the only option unless you gain root access.

If your phone is rooted

Navigate to the /data/system directory.
Tap and hold the accounts.db file, then select Rename.
Rename the file to accounts.db.old to make a backup of the file.
Restart your Android device.
Once the device restarts, open an app that requires a Google account such as Market, Gmail or GTalk. You will be prompted to create a new account or login using an existing account. That’s all there is to it.

Perfect if you got a rooted device

In my case i have to delete (or rename) the folder /data/system/users anyway is a wonderful answer

I used the following procedure:

Uninstall the app
Go to Play Store and switch to the account you want to use to pay from
Using Google Play web version (you may need to login first), find the app and install again
Make your in-app purchase

Source: Change Gmail account to make in-app purchase?

+1, just great solution if you install custom app without app store


text:
What do the lines behind icons mean? How to remove?
On a LG G5, I see that the icons of apps are often shown with some added lined symbols behind  it, which are not part of the icons design itself.
There are squares, triangles, variants of mirrored or rotated Z, H, and others:

I'd be curious of it's meaning.
Is that just on my device, and i must have made an unintended theme change somehow?
If not - how to get rid of the lines!

Can you upload an example image?

Yes, I do use the Apex launcher. This launcher shows the icons without lines.

@beeshyams After switching to the default launcher from LG,  the lines appear in the launcher too.

Also check in developer options , if they're is something related (tap on build number 7 times to reveal developer options). Another thing is long press on any icon to reveal menu and see if changing icon pack from there or other options help


text:
Create .img of current of android setup
I have an android setup (certain apps, wifi settings, backgrounds, etc) that I'd like to get on 20 other devices.  I have physical and root access to all devices.  I have been using a USB burner tool to update the software that a device shipped with to a more recent version of the software that the hardware manufacture released.
My question is, give a current setup of android, how can I create a .img file that I can burn onto other devices using the USB burner tool?

Have you looked into making a Nandroid backup with a tool like Clockworkmod Recovery?

Simply put: Do a Nandroid backup and restore it on all devices. But be aware: You may need to change hostnames, Device IDs etc. as they are included in the backup.


text:
Create burnable image of Android?
I'm using a tool to flash an Android device with a .img file.  The tool is called USB Flash Burner.  What this tool does is you boot the Android device up while pressing a paperclip in the reset button.  Then you point the USB Burner Tool to an .img file and it writes over pretty much everything.  Here are the instructions.

If you want to use the Amlogic USB Burning tools to update, please download the firmware here:
http://pan.baidu.com/s/1mgl3R40
firmware update instruction for update via usb buring tool is here:
http://blog.geekbuying.com/index.php/2014/11/24/how-to-flash-stock-firmware-on-mk808b-plus-quad-core-tv-stick/
  please note, you should use the newest usb burning tool, download it here:
  http://www.mediafire.com/download/zo7b5cy0nzb7o91/Amlogic_USB_Burning_Tool_New_Version.rar
If you want to use SD card to do the update, please download the firmware here:
  http://pan.baidu.com/s/18OSRc
  password: 9qca

Now my questions is how do I make my own .img file that I can use with the USB Burner Tool?  Is the file that I burn using the USB Burner Tool a ROM?  Firmware?  And how do I go about creating the .img file needed?  I need to make my own because I have to make a version that I can flash for other people.  The devices of the other people are all exactly the same.
I already used TWRP to make a backup, and it give me boot.emmc.win, data.ext4.win, data.info, system.ext4.win, and system.info.  This works but I have to insert the sd card in and press a bunch of buttons to make the recovery work.  We deal with a lot of devices and with the USB Burner Tool it is faster and brings the device back if it is really bricked.
Thanks for any help!  Also if you have pointers to help that would be appreciated about where I can look.

What is it you want to install? What would you be making an image of? Your existing system? Another one? What makes you think it would be compatible with your device? What are "other p"? Other people? With different devices? Please [edit] your question and explain what you are trying to do more clearly.

@terdon I have a golden image on one device.  I'm looking to make a complete copy of the system (apps, os, settings, ...everything)  The other devices are exactly the same as the golden device.  We have a bunch of the exact same device we give to people.  Sometime though the devices get bricked and I wipe them and refresh them with an SD card solution.

OK, please [edit] your question to make that clear. All relevant information needs to be in the question itself. And yes, using dd  on the device file should work.


text:
What country is my Motorola MILESTONE from? Can I install a Froyo update from Motorola Droid on it?
I bought it at Amazon.com, and had it delivered to a friend's house in Massachusetts. I flew to the US, visit my friend, did some tourism, and brought the phone back with me to Brazil, where I put in my GSM chip and it works just fine. Here is the phone info:

Model number: Milestone
Firmware version: 2.1-update1
Firmware configuration version: GAS_EMEA_USASHLS00RTINT_P012

The box says: SM,A853,TR,RETAIL,LICBRZ
So, I should be waiting for an update for what? Europe, like it says in this thread? Or Latin America? Or can I get 2.2 safely from somewhere else? The software looks pretty American to me. What if I follow the instructions from this site? Do I risk bricking my phone?

The Motorola update software will recognize the correct origin, so you could always try to get the official Froyo upgrade.
Click around on this page to get instructions: http://www.motorola.com/staticfiles/Support/GB-EN/froyo/milestonenotification.htm

First of all: Motorola Droid and Motorola Milestone are two different phones, although they look the same. The XT720 (aka Motoroi or Sholes Tablet) is another phone from the Milestone family, but without a keyboard.
The Software is NOT compatible, flashing a SBF file for the wrong phone will result in a bricked device. If you flash a custom ROM via an update.zip or nandroid image, you won't get past the Motorola-Logo on boot, but it's still possible to flash the right ROM.

Model number: Milestone Firmware
version: 2.1-update1 Firmware
configuration version: GAS_EMEA_USASHLS00RTINT_P012

The box says: SM,A853,TR,RETAIL,LICBRZ

This is indicating you got the standard Milestone, the A853, with the South-East Asia firmware (RTINT). You can flash every Milestone (A853) RO, but it's possible, that 3G won't work due to different frequencies.
I think, a Brazil ROM (Vivo?!) was leaked some time ago, but there's no official release yet.
Custom ROMs:
Edgard Castro maintains a Brazilian AOSP ROM (http://code.google.com/p/shadowmodbr/) and there is an unofficial version of the CyanogenMod 7 (2.3.3, Gingerbread). More info here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=670


text:
Can I skip CynanogenMod updates
When I install the nightly updates for CyanogenMod, do I need to install every single update or just the last one?

Just the last one. Simple as that.
However, if you do cross-Android-version updates (e.g. CM13 (6.0) to CM14 (7.0, coming soon)), it is strongly recommended to wipe and start over.

Thanks for your answer. Now I know a bit more regarding updates :) @Andy Yan

authors: Александр Паввлов


text:
Nexus 5 won't connect via bluetooth to my alpine radio in my car
I recently bought a nexus 5 phone and tried to connect it via bluetooth to my alpine radio and it won't work.
They are visible to each other and it allows me to try to connect, but then it tells me it failed because the PIN was incorrect.
I don't see how it can be incorrect if 1 - I do not have to type the PIN anywhere and 2 - I verify multiple times before accepting the pair that the password on my phone and my radio are IDENTICAL and it still won't work.
Also, someone mentioned changing my password to 0000 or something easy and similar.. but How do I change 0000 to my default password? It doesn't give me the option to change the password for bluetooth. It generates a new password every time i try to connect
Please HELP!! I need my bluetooth :)

Have you tried to use 0000 for both? It's the most commonly-used password for devices that doesn't ask for password, or also set as the default passwird.

How do I change 0000 to my default password? It doesn't give me the option to change the password for bluetooth. It generates a new password every time i try to connect.


text:
Insufficient storage updating Android app
Every time my Nexus S attempts to update Chrome, It displays an error stating "Insufficient storage available". According to "Manage apps" I have 412MB of internal storage available, which should be more than enough.
Searching Google turns up plenty of people with the same issue, but no definitive answer.
How do I get Chrome to update?

I know it wouldn't be the correct, but did you try to uninstall and install it again?

The app's data size had crept up to over 100MB. Still shouldn't be a problem in my opinion, but apparently that was enough to prevent updating.
I cleared the application data "Manage apps" -> "Chrome" -> "Clear data", then was able to update Chrome successfully from Google Play.

Looking at the hardware specs of your phone, having 412MB of free space is equivalent to having just 2.5% of internal storage available, which seems pretty close to a low memory condition. I read somewhere (can't find the page now) that during installation you need twice as much space as what the app will finally use.
So for installing Chrome, which uses 45MB (at least on my phone), you would need 90MB free on top of whatever threshold your device manufacturer is using to trigger the low memory alert.


text:
How can I set a user profile password in Jelly Bean 4.2?
Tablet's users will be able to use different profiles since JB 4.2, defined at system settings level (settings -> user profiles). How can I set a password for each profile?

Each user account has its own lockscreen settings, so the easiest way to do this is to simply use a password lockscreen for each user. In fact, you can use entirely different lockscreen security for one user than you do for another (e.g. one could use a pattern, one a PIN, one a slide lock, etc).
To set this up, select a user and unlock the device, then go into Settings => Security =>Screen Lock and select the "Password" option (you could also use PIN or pattern, of course). Set the desired password, then lock the device. Repeat this process for each of the other user accounts to set up individualized passwords for each one.


text:
How do Google Play app updates work? Are they free?
Let's say I paid for an app, and after some time there is an update for this app.

Is this update free?  Will all future updates be free?
Or do I have to pay some fixed % of the current price of the app?
If it can be either, is it up to the developer?

According to the Google Play Business and Program Policies, you may re-install any app you have purchased, unlimited. (also if the app has been updated since you bought it).
Based on my experience it works like that indeed: I have updated and re-installed paid apps without any issue. Please note that the re-install/update also works on any other android device that uses the same Google account.

Thank you for pointing out this policy, however for me it is not precise, because reinstalling app is something different than updating it. Thank you from pointing out your experience!

You pay only for current version of an app which you can use on any no. of devices. Update of app may not be free.

@SachinShekhar When you pay for an app (Splashtop for example) you will always be able to get updates for free for Splashtop, since it was paid for. However, the developer released a different "upgraded" app (Splashtop 2). If I wanted those upgrades, I would have to purchase Splashtop 2. It is technically an "upgraded" version of Splashtop, but was released as a different app. So as long as it is the same app, you are not charged for updates; if they change apps you will have to purchase the new one.

@Dylan I am talking about the purchased app update. Go read TOS and T&C. Generally, developers don't use this feature, so we don't have examples.

@SachinShekhar do you have a URL for the TOS?


text:
Google Play movie rental errors as it says my device is rooted (it is not)
I have a standard Galaxy S3. I have rented and downloaded Movies from Google play before however now it is saying:

Downloads aren't supported on rooted devices (error 44)

However my S3 is not rooted. All software is update to date. I have cleared the cache but this does not solve the issue.

A lot of people seem to be having problems with Google Play Movies. If you have a look on the play store page there are a lot of people complaining that the app is buggy.
Lots of people have fixed issues by uninstalling and reinstalling, it may not help but it's worth a try.

This resolved the issue, although also required a restart.


text:
Internal and External SD card paths on Optimus 2X
When running the stock Optimus 2X ROM my "internal" SDCARD was mounted at /mnt/sdcard and my external SDCARD was mounted at /mnt/sdcard/_ExternalSD
I have now installed CM7.2 and the "internal" card is now mounted at /mnt/emmc and the external SD card is mounted at /mnt/sdcard
As a result, my restored apps (via Titanium) are looking at /mnt/sdcard for files that are at /mnt/emmc
My questions:
1) why do the two ROMs treat the cards so differently?
2) the stock LG way seems "better" as the "internal" card was actually being used by apps, now it's tucked away at /mnt/emmc how will it be used?
3) what's the ideal way to resolve my "apps looking in the wrong place" problem?
a) just copy the files from /mnt/emmc to /mnt/sdcard?
b) something else

This is a small bug in cyanogenmod. You can mount /emmc to /sdcard/external_sd by folowing command:
 su
 mount -o bind /mnt/emmc /sdcard/external_sd

You need to install a terminal emulator (e.g. Android Terminal Emulator) in your mobile for excuting command. It's 100% working.

This is a simple guide, howto fix the emmc Bug on Cyanogenmod.
1.At first install Rom Toolbox.
2.Open Rom Toolbox and scroll Down to Scripter and open it.
3.Click on add and make a script named "Emmc bug"
4.Put " busybox mount /mnt/emmc /mnt/sdcard/external_sd."into the Command field and save.
5.Press on the created script and check run on Boot.
6.Reboot
Also you can look at this post(useful)


text:
LG Nexus 4's Internal Storage Dilemma & its Apparent Lack of Support for USB OTG Connectivity?
As my contract on my current android phone is soon ending, I am considering purchasing the LG Nexus 4 (if it ever becomes available again on the Google Play Store) as my next phone, as it supposedly is in the top league but "without the price tag" so i'm informed.
I am aware that many people are disappointed that a microSD card slot is unavailable on these devices (I believe the same to be true of the Nexus 7 & 10, if I am not mistaken), and this may detract them from buying such a device.
From what I understand Google's reason for not including microSD support (unlike other manufacturers) is that they want people to know exactly what is on the internal memory of the phone, as many people "get confused" between what is on the internal memory and the microSD card, and therefore people can choose the required storage space ie 8 or 16GB (and therefore they know exactly what they have beforehand and accommodate their apps etc accordingly). Another reason is that Google want people to move away from internal storage & use Cloud storage more and more (and integrate with its other "services" eg Google Music) - a clever ploy on Google's part
This put me off from buying the device until a few weeks ago when I heard about USB OTG (On The Go) Cables, which are essentially USB Cables having a micro usb connector at one end which fits into the Nexus 4 and a USB connector at othe other (which opens up a whole world of opportunities - more so for tablets rather than smartphones I think).
This being the case I thought joy, storage is no longer a "problem". However I have heard reports that USB OTG connectivity despite apparently being supported cannot be enabled on the device.
Is this the case, have people therefore found a solution like rooting the device and flashing with a Custom ROM ie CyanogenMOD Jellybean 4.1  to achieve USB OTG Connectivity ?
Have people been unable to get hold of the phone in the first instance to comment or have Nexus 7 or 10 owners experienced USB OTG connectivity issues ?
If this is unachieveable i'm sure it is premature as Google are bound to provide an update at a future date (that is of course if they can supply the phone, or was the LG Nexus 4 simply a one time purchase wonder, when it hit the Play Store a few weeks ago)
Excuse the long(ish) post, but I believe the relevance of it

"a one time purchase wonder" - with the battery too being irreplaceable I do wonder this myself. (I have just replaced the battery on my old phone, which no longer held its charge and had expanded to a size that looked ready to explode!)

What model is your old phone w3d ?

A not quite so smart Nokia E65

I just wondered if it was a previous generation nexus phone

USB OTG compatibility is more dependent on the kernel than the actual operating system.
If the stock kernel doesn't support it, then it will (most likely) only be a matter of time until a custom kernel is released that has this functionality.
If you were to purchase it, remember that the tablet can only give 5V of power to the device - this stops you from using things such as portable hard drives with the device, which require a large power input.
You would be best asking on a dedicated ROM'ing forum such as XDA-Developers to find out if the stock kernel supports USB OTG, and if not, a custom kernel can be made to support it.
Please be aware, that you will need an app that allows you to use the USB OTG support.

From what i've been told the Nexus 4's Manual states USB OTG Connectivity is supported, however in practice to achieve this, is easier said than done

You will need to find an app to use it, I suggest you use Google.

Yes I have heard of people using an App called "Nexus Media Importer" available on the play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.homeysoft.nexususb.importer

Whether that solves the "problem" or not, I dont know

To clarify I have heard people using the above named app with the Nexus 7. Nexus 4 & 10 havent heard any confirmed reports

@Simon: According to Play Store: "This app is incompatible with your LGE Nexus 4."

@moose Thx for notifying me, BTW I don't own a Nexus 4

@LiamW This is an excellent article (24/3/2013) regarding getting USB OTG working on the nexus 4 - which backs up what you have said perhaps you would like to incorporate it into your answer http://www.androidcentral.com/android-advanced-usb-otg-nexus-4

@Simon Nexus Media Importer Blog http://nexususb.blogspot.co.uk/


text:
Shell script to reboot into recovery and install zip
Okay, without getting too deep into details, I'm looking to automate the installation of a flashable zip (must be flashed from recovery).  For now, I can use the command "reboot recovery" in a shell script to bring me into TWRP, but I'm not sure how to tell TWRP to install something automatically.
I know this is possible because Cyanogenmod does this exact thing with their ROM update utility.  Once a ROM update is downloaded, you click "Reboot and Install" from within CM, the phone reboots into TWRP, the installation of the flashable zip begins, and after it completes the phone reboots again back into CM.
I don't know if I can just append the file's path onto the "reboot" command with a particular switch?  I haven't been able to find documentation on the available options.  I was also thinking maybe TWRP looks for an update.zip file upon launching?
Does anyone know how to do this?

I ended up looking at Cyanongenmod's source code and figured out how they did it.
Here is my working .sh script:
echo 'boot-recovery ' > /cache/recovery/command
echo '--update_package=/sdcard/update.zip' >> /cache/recovery/command
reboot recovery

Update:
with android JellyBean [4.1] and later versions, the sdcard data is located now at /sdcard/0, So the second command must be:
echo '--update_package=/sdcard/0/update.zip' >> /cache/recovery/command

I got this error: E:cannot mount /sdcard (No such file or directory) ---- E:Can't mount /sdcard/0/update.zip ----- Installation aborted.

Your device may not use that symlink "/sdcard/" then.  Try "/mnt/sdcard/update.zip" instead.  All storage devices should show up somewhere in "/mnt/", use a root file manager or terminal emulator to list all the available options.

I can access mnt/sdcard in terminal, but when I got this error in recovery mode: Finding update package......
E:unknown volume for path [/mnt/sdcard/update.zip] ......
Can't mount /mnt/sdcard/update.zip

One thing you can try next is browsing your root directory structure directly from recovery.  In both TWRP and ClockworkMod, the "Install from Zip" feature can act as a directory-browser.  Navigate through your root directories (obviously not installing any zips here) and see if you come across any sub-directories which lead to your desired storage location.  On my device, I was unable to find any alternate paths; "/sdcard" is my only option.
If you're unable to find your sdcard, I'd say just forget about flashing from that location. Copy the zip you're flashing to "/cache" and call it a day.


text:
Add shortcuts to home button long press menu
Is there a way to add app launchers to the stock android's home button long press menu? I know you're able to do this in CM, but there must be some Xposed module, right?

Gravitybox lets you set navigation ring targets via the Xposed Framework.


text:
What is this system icon that looks like a plus inside a diamond with three curved lines extending from its right side on Samsung?
My Samsung Droid Charge has an icon in my status bar that looks like a plus inside a diamond with three curved lines extending from its right side. It is the left-most icon in the right adjusted icons in the status bar of this home screen capture.

What is this icon for? Also, is there a setting where I can remove it?

it looks similar to the gps icon i've seen on other devices, have you checked your location settings?

According to the manual (WARNING: pdf file) for the phone (page 24), it is the GPS icon.
Screenshot:

Of course, I should have RTFM. I did check out the Android 2.2.x PDF but didn't think to look at the manual for my actual phone.

According to the user manual (page 31 in my PDF viewer, actual page 24), that means your GPS is on/in use. You can check your system settings to disable location services (usually Settings->Location and Security).


text:
How to make a URL desktop shortcut have the page's favicon?
Theoretically, it should do this automatically. In practice, sometimes it works, sometimes not. All the pages below have proper favicons, but only the O Globo and Amazon favicons made it to the desktop icon. (The former in a better way, as you can see.) I added them the usual way, with Menu -> Add -> Shortcut -> Bookmark.
This is a (rooted) Milestone running Motorola's official 2.2.1 update. These are the pages involved:

http://moglobo.globo.com
http://cracked.com
http://mobile.formula1.com
https://mobile.twitter.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.supervia.com.br

Any reason for that erratic behavior?

It has to do with the site having an icon for "apple-touch" defined in the page. for example O Globe has the following:
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="favicon.png" />

And it works. There are differences in how other versions of android handle this. Here is an article explaining some how this works a bit. There could also be a "catch 22" to this though, as I see that the mobile Twitter site does have the apple-touch-icon-precomposed but doesn't seem to show the icon. This could be because of something Motorola did differently in their modified version of Android, or it could just be a bug.
If the site does not define the icon, then you can use a tool like Any Cut to change the icon.

It seems "Any Cut" app is removed from Play Store.


text:
"Cannot download, not enough space" when "Phone Storage" clearly lists enough space
I just installed Android 2.1 on my Pandigital Novel.  Anytime I try to download an app (via WiFi), I get this error:

Unable to download.  Not enough space on phone.

However, the phone lists the free space as being 125.57MB, about 25 times the size of the file I wanted to install.
I took the APKs I was trying to download and put them on my SD card.  I was able to install them to the device from there proving it does indeed have space.
What should I do?

It's listing internal storage as 125mb free, right?  Not the SD card?

@Bryan: Correct.  It lists the SD card(correctly) as having 8Gb.

hmmm....  I'm not familiar with your device.  It's a eReader/tablet sort of like a Nook Color?  Are you installing apps via Android Market or some other market?  Or via ADB?  The only other thing I can think of to suggest is to run a logging app (or use DDMS with the Android SDK to get a log) and see if it is saying anything else in the logs while installing.

@Bryan: It started life as an eReader.  http://www.pandigital.net/pandigitalnovel - I have the white one.  Then I put other firmware on it: http://www.slatedroid.com/index.php?topic=5098.0 - The very last link in the first post of that(linked) thread.  I am downloading APKs from market websites but not using an app.  I could not get ADB to detect my device.  I will look at LogCat.

Its a lot of stuff that doesn't work if it is not enough free Internal Storage - like receiving tiny SMS.  You could try a one time clean with MemoryCleaner.

This doesn't answer why it doesn't work, but...
As a workaround, if you have an SD card, you can insert it and it will automatically download to the card instead.

that doesn't work.

Another workaround that worked for me in a similar case was to restart my device.
I guess that the application is trying to find a continuous free space of about 5MB and memory is not fragmented efficiently (there are many chunks of 4MB or less). Somehow memory is rearranged after restart but maybe the explanation is different.

I doubt fragmentation is an issue here. It's rather that due to the restart some temp stuff might have been cleared up (e.g. something left in /data/local), and thus some space was freed up. But apart from that: yes, a restart can do that, sometimes :)

I'm experiencing this problem too, and my experience revealed that it's only the latest version of the app store causing the problem.
So every time I want to install or update apps, I first revert the Play Store to the stock version.
I go to the app drawer, long click the Play Store icon and drag it to "App Info" to open its settings (you can reach there via Settings->Apps->Google Play Store), the press "Uninstall updates".
It will install updates in the following short period, until the Play Store app is upgraded again.
Please comment on if there is a way to prevent the Play Store from updating itself automatically (auto-update apps is set to false).
Hope this helps.

This is a very annoying problem I have also encountered many times.
For some reason, it thinks you don't have enough space even when you clearly do.
Sometimes it can refuse a <1MB app when you have about 100MB free. Or it can allow a <100MB app when you have roughly 300MB free.
I don't think there is a real 'fix' to this.
Freeing up even more space should solve the problem.
You can just uninstall a bunch of apps and see if it works again.
Or you can clean your caches and other files you don't need (like the log mentioned by David Balažic) with an app like SD Maid, 1Tap Cleaner, or whatever app you use.
Cleaning caches/tombstones/logs can easily free up a lot of space for you to install whatever app you like.
The problem will return though once you run out of space again.
The (arguably) best solution would be to have fewer apps installed (I don't like this but it's what works best for me) or buy an SD card and install apps on the SD card (with the help of an app like AppMgr III or similar).
For those with a Samsung device that splits memory in SD card and USB storage, you'll have to find a different way to actually put the apps on the external SD card instead of USB Storage. I believe I read somewhere it is possible by factory resetting the phone and then choosing to install apps on SD or something like that, but I am yet to try that.

In my experience, I think Play Store won't let you install apps when you are running low on storage.
For example, it won't let you install even an app of about 2MB when the storage is just 90MB. This is possibly for performance issues. No one wants to install a 2 MB app that would load extra MB of data, leading to memory issues.
What I usually do is to back up large apps (even with app data), uninstall the backed-up app, and reinstall after installing the desired app. Another workaround is to get the APK from a trusted source.

I encountered this often before even if internal SD's free space was 2+ Gigs.
I tried this. On the terminal, type these lines:
su
ps set install location 1
pm get-install-location

Now, after two months and dozens of additional apps installed, the "not enough space" annoyance has not bothered me.
Hope this helps.

Unfortunately,  this can be the bane of many, many devices. Android needs a bit of storage left over, and won't let Google Play fill it up - god knows why, since other stuff can - and that's it.
You are not out of options, luckily. If you rooted the dang thing, you could buy a very large SD and modify the vold file to think it was internal storage.

Note: the following seems to work only on Samsung devices
Enter the number *#9900# in the dialer (no need to press the Call button) and the SysDump menu will appear, there select the second item (Delete dumpstate/logcat). This will delete some "hidden" system log files you didn't know exists and don't need. They can be up to a gigabyte big and cause mysterious "Cannot download, not enough space" and similar "no space" messages, when the system info otherwise claims there is plenty of space free.
Some suggest a restart after the deleting.

Incorrect code :(

Maybe it works only on Samsung devices?

Unfortunately, the device in this instance does not have any phone functionality.  Can you elaborate on other ways to find these hidden files?

According to this forum message (german), you can try to open the recovery menu and select the "wipe/clean cache" item there to get the same effect. The recovery menu is opened by turning the device off, the turning it on while holding some buttons. Which buttons depends on the device - google it. Also try to find more information about the wipe/clean cache operation, I never used it.


text:
"Souper Android Development" app suddenly shown installed on the Play Store, but I can't find the app on my Motorola Droid 3
While traversing the 'installed' list of Google Play, I noticed a very odd app named "Souper Android Development".
What's so suspicious about it is:

It does absolutely nothing to explain what it is, what it does, or what permissions are required
There is no option to open/uninstall
I cannot find it by searching for it
It is dimmed in the list with the other apps
It is not listed when I browse play.google.com/apps
Nobody (in the comments) seems to know where they got it.

Notice the app is dimmed (grayed out)

I scrolled to the top of the page during screen capture.  Notice how many standard features are missing

I have no idea where it came from.  I imagine it was either part of the humongous set of bloatware provided by Verizon or, what I'm thinking is more likely, the method used to root my phone: Pete's Motorola Root Tools.  I have scanned my phone with Lookout but it hasn't found anything.

Can anyone provide any insight as to what this app is?
How should I remove this app?  I am having difficulty locating it in "System App Remover".
Should I be suspicious of the rooting tool I used and take any action? I have been told this is legit.  Whether it is or not, it doesn't seem to be in any way part of the problem.
How can you trace a market app to its package name?

Update
While searching for other complaints on this app, I dug up:

A link to it on Google Play(removed).  I'm still curious as to how someone obtained this link, I couldn't find it in a search or any references to it.
It says it's not compatible with any of my devices but it's installed.
No one has found any traces of it on their phone (probably because it's 'linking' to com.motorola.contacts.preloaded)
It seems to only be affecting Droid 3 users.

Update 3/28/2012
Final update/Brief summary:

3/26: App showed up without user-approved install under the name "Brett Henderson" with no option to open or uninstall.  Later renamed "Souper Android Development".
3/27: Clicked the app's "share" button to view its link to the app on phone (com.motorola.contacts.preloaded).  This confirms Richard's suspicion that it was merely sharing its name with a legit system app as opposed to installing junk on the phone.  Further reading revealed that each app has a unique ID to prevent one app from providing "updates" to another with the same name.
3/28: The app was removed from the app market place.  As pointed out by Matthew Read, a similar bug happened not too long ago.  As of now, I haven't read anything official on this instance.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone exploiting this bug.

@Matthew:  I'm trying to find what this market app is "linked" to on my phone.  From ADB I ran pm list packages -f, but didn't see "SOUPER" anywhere.  Do you know how to see the app's displayed name?

Hmm, not sure.  You could potentially grep in /system/app/*.apk for "souper".

Thanks again Matthew.  Nothing different in *.apk but I believe this app is pretending to be com.motorola.contacts.preloaded.


text:
Is there a way for searching installed apps? (Dumb Search alternative)
I have been a victim of the infamous "let's turn off anything that Apple might have a patent for" aka "dumb search" on the Galaxy S3, and looking for a simple way to return my phone to the 21st century.
All I want is the ability to find an App quickly and launch it by name, without visually finding the Icon.

What I want is a set of features that existed in older versions of Android

In the Apps main screen, have the ability to search (currently works only for widgets)
If I find an App, I can press and hold it, and it will allow me to place it on any home screen

Use case #1 was removed and replaced by the Google Search app, which was as mentioned above downgraded to stop including local search (only shows web results)
Use case #2 was removed and has no workaround, I need to visually find an app to add a shortcut to it
I have searched in the Android Play store for "App Search", but found nothing, should I start writing my own app?

See this question (possible dupe). Thanks to the ubiquitous patent wars in the mobile space, Google & Samsung had to remove this functionality (at least for the US market)

@ce4 I don't think this is close enough to be a dupe, feel free to post the relevant part of the answer there as your own nswer here thought!

You can revert to your completely old behaviour. It needs some hacking though and might be illegal (decompile & recompile Google app)
Background: If you don't have root, you cannot install the old version over the new one.
What you could do: Install an app with the functions of the old Search app.
Idea: If the old app had a different package name, you could install it next to the new app.
How? Apktool!
Solution proposal:
Use apktool to decompile and change the whole namespace from com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox to com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox2  of a working old .apk (see .zip below, mind the 2 in the end), then recompile and install the newly crafted package.
Result: Old and new (broken) providers can be installed next to each other at the same time because they have a different namespace (.*searchbox2 instead of .*searchbox). Just find out which one is the old one and use that.
Benefits: No root required, permanent (cannot be taken away)
Drawbacks: You get 2x the same widget offering (1x from the old, 1x from the new), so you have to find out which works and which not
My test so far ('apktool' is an alias to 'java -jar /usr/local/bin/apktool.jar' on my machine, FYI):
apktool decompile GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk appdir
#append every occurrence of the namespace with '2'
find appdir -type f | while read a; do sed -i 's,uicksearchbox,uicksearchbox2,g' $a; done
#rename the directory to reflect that too
mv appdir/smali/com/google/android/googlequicksearchbox smali/com/google/android/googlequicksearchbox2
apktool build /tmp/bla.apk appdir
#Any sort of signing (jarsigner, signapk.jar,...):
java -jar /tmp/signapk.jar /tmp/certificate.pem /tmp/key.pk8 /tmp/bla.apk /tmp/gsearch2.apk
adb install /tmp/gsearch2.apk

Old solution
What would be nice to know: Does this only affect Samsung and Google's US customers?
According to Android Central, Samsung now deploys this update as a stability fix globally.
It's most probably this package, that got "updated":
com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox
(located at /system/app/GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk)
Having root is definitely required to revert the situation.
I'd however decide to get rid of Samsungs firmware altogether and install CyanogenMod for example (This might even be easier than getting root in the first place on the original firmware).
You might want to "reinstall" the unaffected version from the last firmware or one of a Euro firmware (if they're not stripped). For example, this archive from the popular Goo.im hosting site will most probably have a working (older) .apk that has the functionality you miss. It's a generic installation package for the popular Cyanogenmod aftermarket firmware that holds all relevant proprietary packages from Google (they had to be stripped off Cyanogenmod by Google's request some time ago). You can open it with any unzip program and extract the /system/app/GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk package.
That's how I would do it (using the adb tool from the Google SDK:
adb push GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk /sdcard/
adb shell
su
mount -o remount,rw /system
cp /sdcard/GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk /system/data/
mount -o remount,ro /system
reboot
exit

I used Application Explorer to generate this listing and see where the .apk is located:
App Name: Google-Search
Package Name: com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox

[...]

Source Directory:
/system/app/GoogleQuickSearchBox.apk

You can get the version of 'Google-Search' by going to Settings->Apps->All->Google Search, which lists the current version. Mine (the same as in the above mentioned .zip is: 1.4.1.299849)

btw, you can use adb remount for remounting.

Is there an app for searching installed apps?

Yes. Several apps exist on the Play Store for the express purpose of searching through the apps you have on your device.
I've linked several ones here, and you can see which one you prefer.
Thing is, these apps were hard to find. I wanted this function too, and a simple search on the web didn't turn these applications out at first.

App Search Plus
Lightweight, optimized, simple, pretty. Full disclosure: I developed this app!

FAST App Search Tool
A long-serving and mature application that's highly rated on the Store. Really small.

Another solution that you might want to consider is to use an alternative launcher like Nova Launcher. You can configure a swipe down in the launcher to start an app search.

Google Search, aka Google Now can search installed apps on your Android device. Yes, it is super-slow, especially on older phones, but it includes among other things the 'Search Phone/Tablet' option. I was looking for a cleaner and faster alternative that does not search everything, including the web, but finally ended up using it nonetheless, because all alternatives I tried are half-baked or crash on my devices.
If you fiddle a bit in the settings, there are things that can be disabled under tablet search, e.g. disabling the Google Now feature makes it somewhat faster.
To launch it, simply tap the Google Search bar, or tap and hold the home button.

Apparently, there is now (was created after this question was asked): Conjure - Search your phone.

Conjure helps you quickly find things on your phone. Search for apps, contacts, files, calendar events, & more. Conjure learns from your usage to provide you with the best results.
Conjure's focus is on speed and it is designed to help you find what you are looking for in as few taps as possible. It supports partial searches, fuzzy searches, and abbreviations.


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Show detailed information about current battery
My G2 Android used to last an entire day without charge for the past year. Now it appears that it gets to very low energy at about halfway through the day.
Is there something like coconutBattery (Mac) for the Android?

With coconutBattery you are always aware of your current battery health. It shows you live information about the battery in your Mac, iPhone and iPad.

I am essentially looking for original Design Capacity (ie. 6900 mAh) and now the Current capacity (6559 mAh).

Most of the information is available in Settings -> About Phone -> Status but you can also use an app from the market called Battery Info (i am sure there are others as well) and it will show you all the information on the battery. This app also has a widget that can display some information too.

At the time of me writing this it is not possible in the android SDK to get the raw mAH value so you wont find any apps that can display the exact mAH, only how charged the battery is in percent, and what is drained.

Thanks @Ryan Conrad, please see my edit above, I am looking for Original Design capacity and Current Capacity of battery, u know if any apps have that?

I added to my answer to address your edit.