text:
How do I change the function of the earphone button?
I have a Nexus S running Gingerbread and I use the stock app to listen to music. The bundled earphone has a button that plays/pauses music, but I find this redundant since I can either reduce the volume or pull out the earphone jack when I want to interact with the rest of the world.
It would be really awesome if I could change the function to "Next Track" instead since it'd be easy to skip a track while I'm on my bike. Is there an easy way to achieve this?

I'm guessing you've tried double clicking it? On my phone (Dell Streak), a double-click skips to the next track. Might just be DoubleTwist that, though, I'm not sure.

Oh wow. That works perfectly on the Winamp App! THANK YOU! (Not sure how to make the stock app respond to the button instead of Winamp, though)

It works for the stock app too. But the double-click time threshold is really low. It's really hard to double-click fast enough. Is there a way to change the time?

There's an app available in the market called ButtonRemapper, and the developer has a thread open on XDA that you can find here.  There is a version specifically designed for the Samasung Galaxy S (which I think is what the Nexus S was based off? See my edit below.) so you might want to try that version first, but I think your best bet is going to be trying this app and seeing if it lets you do what you want.
Oh, this app requires root access.  All the standard disclaimers apply.
Edit: Based on this link they seem close but have important internal differences.  I'm not sure how that will affect whether or not that app made for the Galaxy S will work for you.

I believe this app allows you to edit what the phones buttons do, not the headphones buttons.

@Matt - Some of the information on the XDA thread led me to believe it might have expanded support for other buttons.  It's a free app so there isn't much harm in giving it a shot if he's already rooted, and I think finding a non-root solution for this is pretty unlikely anyway.

True, no harm in trying.  I'm not sure it would require root to do what he wants to do though.  I believe that any given app can decide how it handles the multimedia buttons on headphones.  The reason you need root access for buttonremapper is because it's changing the intended functionality to the phones hardware itself which is locked out for security reasons.

@Matt - I figured the security issue would extend beyond the physical phone itself.  Imagine if you built a Bluetooth device with some kind of malicious app embedded on it and you could remap some physical button on the Bluetooth device to reboot the phone into recovery mode or something.

That's a good point. hopefully this works. I'd really like this functionality myself.


text:
Cell standby and Phone idle
On the battery use screen, what are the differences between Cell standby and Phone idle items?

I think "phone idle" just means general power use from the phone being on (listening for user activation, waiting for scheduled app actions, basic memory and CPU "being on" stuff etc.) whereas "cell standby" is about keeping the phone active on the cell network (brief signals back and forth with cell towers alerting them of your presence, listening for calls or SMS).

Sounds about right.

what is the "Android system" item about then?

Android system refers to the operating system itself: app management, opening and closing apps, boot time, etc.

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text:
How do I set up my wifi router for my Android device?
I have a wireless network set up with a Sweex LC000070 router, WEP encryption and while my HTC Hero can connect to the network, internet doesn't seem to work.
Is there any setting on the router I have to change in order for Android devices to connect?

OK that's strange I updated the firmware of my router and changed from WEP to WPA and now it works...

Have had the same issue on my droid 2.3.6. It used to connect to wifi but could not browse the internet until I disabled:
Parental Control
from my wifi router.
Hope this will help someone.

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

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text:
How can I change the default search box to use another browser?
I've installed Dolphin which I love, but the search box on the homepage always defaults to the regular browser.  I'd prefer it just go into Dolphin right away..how can I do this?

I had the same issue, it also meant that other apps such as Twitter, Facebook etc would launch the stock Browser app instead of Dolphin.

In settings, goto applications > internet > clear defaults. Next time you perform a search it should ask you which you would like to use and simply select dolphin.

Internet doesn't show up, I tried Browser, but defaults is grayed out

It should give you the option to clear defaults under Browser. If its greyed out try doing the same for Google Search.


text:
Is there a way to combine settings (Mobile/GPS/Bluetooth/etc) into profiles?
I'd like to setup some combination of On/Off settings and create profiles.  For example, when at home, I'd like Bluetooth/Wifi On, but Mobile Off.  When going to work, I want Mobile On and everything else off.  Is there an easy way to do this?

Check out Locale. It's not the cheapest app, but it is very well made and will allow you to do this. It switches to profiles automatically based on certain conditions too.
For example, when it detects that you are at home it can automatically switch to your Bluetooth/Wi-fi profile and turn off the mobile network.

Another possibility is Llama. It's similar to Tasker and Locale, but free. I don't know what other differences there are as Llama is the only one I've tried so far.

http://tasker.dinglisch.net/
Tasker is a bit complicated BUT it is insanely powerful. Check it out

Cyanogenmod 9 can do this. I think CM 7 also had this feature.
Unlike the other solutions, you'd have to switch the profiles manually. The upside is that it integrates into the OS more nicely.

Where? I could not find it in CM7 or CM7.2. True, CM offers profiles -- but not in the sense of this question (automatical location based switching).

CM doesn't offer automatic switching but the OP didn't actually specify that.

Hm, reading it again it seems you could be right. But as Wil explicitly bound his settings to locations, it seemed the logical conclusion. OK, let's leave it to Wil to decide :)

The question is two years old so I was mostly answering to the world at large :)

Ah, OK -- so never mind xD


text:
How do I change the home screen's Email icon to go to GMail instead of the default Email app on the Samsung Galaxy S?
On the bottom of the home screen there is an icon for EMail. I don't ever want to use the default Email app. I only use GMail and would rather use the Google GMail app. How do I change where the icon goes and how do I remove/disable the other app?

at&t Captivate (Galaxy S)
Android 2.1

click "applications", click menu button, click "edit". You should now be able to drag the email icon away. Then just replace it with the gmail icon by dragging it to its place.
The other way is to configure the mail application to connect to gmail with imap or pop, but I wouldn't recommend it since gmail app is much better.
Hope this helps!

Actually after clicking the menu button I had to click View Type, then customizable grid. But otherwise those directions did it! Thanks!!!

@Adam: Ok. This seems to be different between AT&T Captivate and Samsung Galaxy S i9000 then. But nice that you got it working! :)

+1 Didn't know you could do that, thought the bottom row of icons were hard coded!

Worked exactly as you described with my captivate on Rogers. Just had you click-hold the icons before I could drag them.


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How to use an Android device as bluetooth USB dongle?
Is there a way to use my android device as a bluetooth USB dongle without rooting it?

what are the functionaries you are looking for?

Bluetooth forwarding from my Nexus to my notebook.

If you want to add Bluetooth to your laptop, it's much more effective to just buy a dongle.  Here's a USB Bluetooth adapter for $2.85 shipped.

Thanks for this comment, but this is not what I actually intended to do.

I asked a similiar question, please look:
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/91645/phone-as-bluetooth-card-for-my-computer

If I understand your question correctly, you are curious if you can plug your phone into the USB port on your laptop and use the bluetooth connection of your phone as if you had bluetooth service on your laptop.
No, that is not possible.  The USB drivers for your phone do not permit that type of functionality.

Yes, that is what I wanted to know. Hopefully one of the future Android versions will support this.

This is possible or not possible depending on what you want to do with the bluetooth.  If it's something that an app on the phone can do, and you are willing to enable USB debugging mode on the phone and put the SDK's adb driver on the netbook, then you can indeed have the PC make requests over usb for software you create for the phone to do things with its bluetooth.
But if you want to do bluetooth things that applications (sdk, native, or poking around behind the scenes unsupported) cannot, then you are out of luck.

You can, but with remote controller apps that makes your phone control your PC through wifi, therefore giving you access to anything you connect via bluetooth from your smartphone.

Is there any app you can recommend?


text:
How do I enable the password/pattern lock on HTC 2.3.5 (Sense) mobile?
I have an HTC (Sense UI) mobile running Android 2.3.5 and I am trying to enable the password/pattern lock but it is not working. I tried enabling the lock in my settings but when I turn on the screen it is not asking for the password, it is directly launching the home screen.
How do I enable the password lock?

Are you rooted and running a custom rom? Some roms have an option to disable lock screens. Other possibilities may be lock screen replacement apps

Please try to provide a screen shot of the settings or some details about the setting menu?

clarris, I don't have any other apps to lock the screen. Any way native locking feature is that one. It has to work. Thanks for your reply.

Avirk, I tried to keep password like this: Settings -> Security -> options are here to keep the screen lock, If i kept the lock here but it is not applying the phone. Thanks

yes, Drake Clarris you are correct it has some custom rom. i successfully over come this issue. Thank you so much.


text:
Why is my device not utilizing all of its available RAM?
I have a Nook Color with Cyanogenmod 7.2 (on mSD), and Nook Color is supposed to be 512MB of RAM (says so on product's page).
When I open Menu (on bottom bar, while on desktop) > Manage Applications > Running, it says on the bottom left 95MB used, and on the bottom right it says 174MB free. These are about 270MB, does that mean my RAM is corrupted? Why is it not utilizing all 512MB of RAM?

This question (or derivations of it) continues to come up on this site, so I am going to genericize this just a little bit and use it as a "cannonical question" regarding RAM available vs. total physical RAM.

Although your device may have 512 MB of RAM in it, the settings almost always report the RAM that is available to user processes, not all of the physical RAM. This means that it won't report any memory that is being used by:

Android's system-level processes
Your GPU, which often uses shared memory
Any memory a cellular radio chip may need to function (irrelevant in your case)

Although this memory is not reported, it is being used by the system. Reporting it in a system monitor is simply not very relevant because the OS is going to basically keep it for itself forever (after all, the OS needs RAM to run properly, too). There is really no way that you can get this RAM "back" from the system, but you wouldn't want to anyway since your phone would basically stop functioning without it.


text:
Install Android APK as Mac OS X app
Is there a tool to package a particular emulator/SD configuration + APK as a Mac OS X application so that it can be distributed and run with a simple double-click? Something like Fluid for web apps... applied to Android apps on Mac OS (or Windows).

What's the problem with emulator of Android SDK?

Or virtualbox either and use the Android x86 project (which is what I imagine is how BlueStacks work) and install the apk on it, and distribute the virtualbox's image (size wise, I would think it would be about <512Mb so obviously would not be a good idea either!)

BlueStacks for Mac is currently in "alpha" testing, and is probably your best option at this point, although I don't believe it provides any kind of simple per-app packaging.


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Cannot restore Kies backup after firmware upgrade
I backed up my Samsung Galaxy S2 on Kies before updating to Ice Cream Sandwich. After the upgrade I tried to restore, but the restore fails each time I try.

Does it provide you with any kind of specific error message when it fails?

I had the same problem; this is what worked for me:

from the phone clear the app cache (I used app2sd)
restart phone
restart computer
start Kies
connect phone to computer
run restore again

Done.

Disable usb debugging in settings -> applications -> development.
Select samsung kies in settings -> wireless and network -> usb settings.
Try connecting the device again.

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text:
Phone is too flat to charge
My phone died today, and now it won't charge at all on the charger it came with. I don't think the battery has failed, as it still gives me just as much charge on a full charge as always. The phone is an LG P500 running CM7.
My battery charged perfectly in another model of the same phone. Does this suggest there is an actual problem with my phone?
What can I do to get my phone to start charging?

What do you mean by phone died?

Battery went flat.

But, you don't believe your battery has failed. Is your phone working?

Have you tried charging with another charger?

The phone was working perfectly fine. It had been on for about 3 days without needing a charge but as I away from home last night I didn't get a chance to charge it before it went flat this morning. I did try my brothers charger as he has the same phone, but it's not working.

Its possible that your charging interface went flat. To test it, insert your battery in your bros phone and try charging.

It seems like you are correct. Upon putting my battery in his phone and plugging the charger in, it immediately started charging correctly, giving me a charge indicator.

The phone should always charge, no matter how empty the battery is. You imply that the empty battery is the reason why it wouldn't charge, but I think that this is not true.
It is more likely that you are dealing with a hardware issue here. But first make sure that you connect the charger for at least an hour to your phone, just to make sure that it is really not charging. Even if there is no visual feedback of the charge process, there is still a chance that it does so. You could also try swapping the battery with the one from your brother, to see if the failure is the battery or with the phone.

To start with, my brothers battery worked perfectly. I've had the phone on charge for approximately 30 minutes and all it seems to do is try and boot, briefly showing the LG logo before it flicks off, repeating itself a few minutes later.

Answer seems to be what Sachin suggested in the above comments. Battery is now charging in my brothers phone.

The same happened to me, try plugging it in to a laptop with a usb cable. for some reason that was the only way the phone would charge while it was turned off or compleatly flat.


text:
How can I open Instagram links inside my Twitter app?
I'm looking for a way to open Instagram photos inside my Twitter app. I'm using Plume now, and it can open almost all the photos inside the app. When press and hold on the link the photo expands to the actual size, so Plume doesn't open the browser for every photo, and it's very convenient and quick. However, this technique doesn't work with Instagram links. When you select those, Plume opens the browser and redirects to the Instagram site, which takes several seconds. Twitter for Android is worse - it opens every photo link in the browser.
Is there a way for me to open photo links inside either of these apps quickly? If not, are there any alternative Twitter clients that support this?

Twitter for Android should show the image if you click on the tweet itself and view it, rather than clicking the link.  I don't know if it handles Instagram links though.

Well, it doesn't


text:
Why does my HTC Android phone's screen switch on and then off again?
The screens on my HTC Wildfire and Desire will just switch on and then off for no apparent reason.

Some badly developed apps can cause device wakes.
Try uninstalling or freezing suspicious apps.
Check the logs to see what is causing this.


text:
Is there an Android PMP equivalent of the iPod Touch?

Possible Duplicate:
Are there any devices that are like an iPod Touch, but run Android?

In other words, is there a piece of dedicated hardware designed (or shipped with) Android that is meant as a media player, so that I wouldn't have to pay for a phone, and just not use the phone features?

See also http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/967/are-there-any-devices-that-are-like-an-ipod-touch-but-run-android

There's also the Archos 28 which is a little smaller and a little cheaper than the Archos 32.  Again, they're both referred to as tablets but the Archos site (links previously) both say "Excellent multimedia player".
Also, MP4Nation may have some Android PMPs.

All of these are good answers, and all are linked equally. Yours is the closest to an answer I originally envisioned, with better info than my own answer [!!!].

I am now using an Orange San Francisco handset (rebadged ZTE Blade), sans sim card, debranded, flashed with FroYo (Android 2.2) and loaded with some well chosen apps as my day-to-day media player.  A review of the San Francisco/Blade can be found at:  http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/10/28/zte-blade-orange-san-francisco-review-two-thirds-of-a-nexus-one-for-one-third-the-price/

The Barnes & Noble Nook is based on Android, has no monthly fees, and includes the ability to playback music.  It probably isn't what you have in mind as a media player, but I think it fits your description.

I keep forgetting about the Nook.

also; seems that nook has been rooted http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/nook-torn-open-hacked-and-rooted/

The Archos 32 sounds like it's the closest, so far. Although it is bizarrely referred to as a tablet.

Samsung has a Galaxy Player 50 PMP, which will be coming out soon.


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how to batch update one's market application?

Possible Duplicate:
Is there a good app that lets me to the app updates in one go?

can I batch update the apps I dowloaded from the market? I receive notifications like "14 updates available", but I don't know how to update them all, usually I just click some important apps and update manually. It's tiring and takes quite some time.

This question has already been asked and answered: Is there a good app that lets me to the app updates in one go?


text:
Where to find an original Android image?

Possible Duplicate:
Where can I find stock or custom ROMs for my Android device?

I have found many custom ROMs for download. But now I want to use the official ROM for my phone. Is there any way to do it without a NAndroid backup?

Download ROM Manager and go to the "Stock Images" section of "Download ROMs".
You should always do a Nandroid backup when messing with system files. There's always a risk of something going wrong. Also when installing new ROMs (whether custom or stock), it's recommended that you do a clean wipe of the system before installing.

Note that usually you only need to wipe when switching Android versions. This differs per ROM though.

Many times it would be safe to just install over your current installations. But I've personally had issues when installing one 2.2 ROM  (Sapphire) over another (Bugless Beast)


text:
How to have phone prioritize encrypted Wi-Fi hotspots?
I have a Wi-Fi solution similar to FON which has an encrypted private home Wi-Fi hotspot and a guest network which is unencrypted and requires one to log in once a day. My problem (or rather, annoyance) is that the phone seems to prefer the unencrypted guest network. I have it enabled because I can use other people's guest networks when I'm roaming about in the city. It would make sense that between an encrypted and unencrypted hotspot, it would be wise to prefer the encrypted one, regardless of signal strength. Is there any way to resolve this?

You could change the guest network to be low priority by editing the supplicant .conf file (probably requires root, or adb use).  You can find out what file this is by looking at /etc/wifi/wifi.conf; the file you need is set as the SUPP_CONFIG_FILE property's value. Normally it's /data/wifi/bcm_supp.conf or /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf.  You'll see entries like the following in that file:
network={
    ssid="network name"
    someotherproperty="some other value"
    priority=0
}

You want to have priority=0 for the networks you least want to connect to, and a higher priority for networks you do want to connect to.  If you just have "don't want" and "want", use 0 and 1.  If you have "don't want", "not preferred", "preferred", and "super-preferred", use values 0, 1, 2, and 3 respectively.  You get the idea.

I'm using a Note 3 with Android 4.3. The wpa_supplicant.conf is only filled with general information of Samsung. Did Android/Samsung change the path?

Is your device rooted? If so, you can access the /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf file and set/edit the priority field for each network. I looked around on the market, and I haven't been able to find any apps that will allow you to edit this field in a GUI, or any other way to do it without root. I haven't personally experimented with it either, so I'm not 100% sure how it will work, but it's the only option I've found that looks like it might help you control which network your phone connects to when there are multiple configured networks within range.


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How much disk space does Android 2.3.3 and its default apps use?
Different phones advertise different total disk space.  When you get a brand new phone with Android 2.3.3 and its default apps, how much disk space do those take?

It's going to depend on the device. Each carrier/manufacturer likes to add their own apps and widgets. Some even pre-load multimedia files for you. So, this question really can't be answered. (Most definitive answer would be to just get the file sizes of the stock Android ROMs.)

Is there like a ball park answer? like less than 500 MB or 1 GB?

@Thierry I've heard anywhere from 80 MB to 400 MB, and wouldn't be surprised if there are bigger ones.  It's quite a range.

@Matthew Great, that's what I was looking for.  I will assume less than 1GB.

Great answer to a question I was going to flag as "impossible to answer".


text:
How can I check the OS version of an Android device?
I just bought an Xperia x10. How can I check what version of Android it has?

This is broadly applicable so I edited it, hope you don't mind.

Look at Settings -> About phone -> Firmware version (or similar).

Other users: Feel free to edit in any other places it shows up, since I know there are a few devices that have changed it for no good reason :P

On the HTC Desire (and probably most HTC devices) Settings -> About phone -> Software information

must be an HTC thing, my Evo does that too

Look at settings about device or phone or tablet, press android version again and again.  If it's Jelly Bean a jelly bean face will be shown, if it's KitKat a K will be shown.


text:
How to capture screenshot of entire webpage in Android browser?
How to capture screenshot of entire webpage in Android browser like I can take in my Desktop with Help of Firefox Addon called "Fireshot"?

You might want to check out the Dolphin browser. It supports many extensions, two of them doing exactly what you want:
Dolphin Screen Cut
Web to PDF

Firefox Mobile or another browser would need to support this directly for such an extension to work.  Do you need a screenshot, or do you just need to view pages offline?  In the latter case, the answers to this question might help: Viewing web pages offline

You can use browsers that support Add-ons. For example, I use Dolphin Browser and use the add-on called "Screen Cut" / "Dolphin Screen Cut" which allows freestyle screenshot so you can rearrange and measure a certain area of the screen if you so choose it over than a whole screen capture.
You can also use Maxthon Browser which supports this.

Firefox Mobile + addon Fennec Screenshot does that job perfectly.

Not working with ffox 40


text:
How can I share from my image gallery on Facebook?
Do I have to install the Facebook application on CyanogenMod 7 RC3 to share on Facebook from my image gallery?

Yeah, you need to install the Facebook application, since it adds the option on the drop menu. Then follow this instructions after you installed it correctly:

Tap and hold an image
The screen will change to be possible to select multiple images
Select the images you want to post on Facebook
Hit Share on the bar
Then Facebook

I hoped I didn't have to install the application ... Thank you for great answer and editing my question...


text:
Locale app & export settings
Is there any solution to backup Locale settings? I've defined couple of rules and I don't want to lose them while I reinstall some custom ROM.

possible duplicate of How to backup an Android device?

The first answer to that question mentions Titanium Backup, which (if you're rooted) can be used to back up individual apps.  I'll add an answer for non-root.

I don't think this is a duplicate. While backing up the whole device would, in effect do what Hubidubi wants, exporting the settings from the app could be used for more than just backup.

Quoting from the Locale's feedback forum regarding the Backup/Restore functionality:

AUTOMATIC BACKUP/RESTORE
  Locale has
  automatic backup and restore using
  Android 2.2's cloud-based backup
  mechanism. There are no configuration
  options within Locale--it just works!
To use this feature, simply make sure
  that backup/restore is enabled by
  going to the Android Settings ->
  Privacy and verifying that the
  checkboxes for Backup and Restore are
  both checked. Whenever Locale is
  uninstalled and reinstalled, the
  device is factory reset, or you
  upgrade to a new device, the
  situations will be automatically
  restored as long as Android is set up
  with the same Google account.
Locale's backup and restore is
  designed to work correctly across
  different devices with different
  hardware and software capabilities.
  For example, let's say a backup was
  made on a device with Wi-Fi and
  restored to a device without Wi-Fi.
  Locale will properly handle that
  transition.
Automatic backup and restore requires
  Android 2.2 or later, as well as a
  handset supporting Google's backup
  manager. If there are no options for
  Backup and Restore under Android
  Settings -> Privacy, then the device
  does not support backup and restore.
Since backups are tried to a Google
  account, be sure to always use the
  same Google account when setting up
  your Android devices.
MANUAL BACKUP/RESTORE
  In addition,
  there is a beta manual backup/restore
  feature to create a manual backup to
  the SD card. This feature is disabled
  by default, and must be manually
  enabled. After backups are enabled, a
  new Backup menu item will appear under
  the menu of the Locale home screen.
  From that menu item, you can create a
  backup to the phone's SD card. When
  Locale is re-installed, it will
  automatically detect any existing
  backups and ask whether you'd like to
  restore them. Because manual backups
  are a beta feature, we are unable to
  offer any support. To enable manual
  backups, please follow these
  instructions:

Allow installing apps outside of the Android Market
  a. Go to the Android Settings
  b. Tap on Applications
  c. Tap on Unknown sources
Install Backup Enabler
  a. Open the web browser on your phone
  b. Go to this address: www.twofortyfouram.com/backup.apk
  c. Once the download completes, tap on the download
  d. Follow the instructions to install
Perform backup
  a. Open Locale
  b. Choose Menu -> Backup


text:
Benchmark application for Android?
There is any application to measure and publish benchmark results from Android devices?

Quadrant and Linpack are the two I use.  Linpack is purely for measuring CPU performance, whereas Quadrant also takes into account I/O speeds, graphics performance, and the like.


text:
How to cancel an announced Android System update
I wrongly click the button to book a update for Android System.
How can I cancel it before Nov 22 after 02:00

You can not cancel the update itself because it has already been applied.
Modern Android devices have the system partition twice (called A/B partition). One that is currently active and one that can be used for installing updates "seamless" (so called by Google). Which partition is currently active on next boot can be changed.
The screen you show means that an update has been downloaded and installed on the non-active partition. The only step left is rebooting into the updated partition.
I am not sure if you do the reboot but not switch to the updated partition. No matter even if you would manage to do so I assume that the system would start to download and re-apply the update again on the other partition and then ask for rebooting into it to finish the update.
Prevent updates via Developer options
Edit: Even if it is too late for you I stumbled over a settings that might be helpful in similar situations:
On a Pixel 3a running Android 11 I saw in the Developer options and entry called Automatic system updates - Apply updates when device restarts
Therefore if you have such an option and disable it while there is already a pending update plus a scheduled reboot you can cancel the update installation.
If you decide later to install the update you can do that by manually triggering it in the Android system settings.

Is there a way for one to verify if the system update has indeed been applied?

@Firelord The screenshot shows the "restart now" button. As far as I know on systems with A/B partitions the updates are always installed in background and not between reboots. Hence if the update allows you to "reboot now" this means that the update already had been applied.

Turning off the "Automatic system updates" just worked for me on Pixel 4a/Android 11 preventing booting from the newly applied slot. Thanks!

@Firelord In A/B scheme when Android starts "applying" freshly-downloaded system update (which happens right immediately after the update is downloaded), it marks the slot to which the updates is applied (or you can say "flashed" I guess) as "unbootable" - https://source.android.com/devices/tech/ota/ab#life-of-an-a-b-update. This should be reversed once the update is fully applied. If you really want to find out the state of the slots and of the whole OTA process, you can adb shell reboot bootloder, then fastboot getvar all and look at the all variables that have "slot" in their names :)

Reboot into bootloader/fastboot mode.
$ fastboot getvar all | grep current-slot
$ fastboot --set-active=a
$ fastboot reboot

You can set the active slot to be a or b depending on which slot is currently used, from the output of the first command. For example, if you see (bootloader) current-slot:b, you set a as active instead. You can rerun the first command to verify that the change was made successfully.
Once you reboot, you will see a notification saying that the update has failed, which is what you want.

There is one simple solution to this thing, I have not experimented on Google Pixel.
If the Install later option is showing then you can choose the option to stop the software from being upgraded or the download files will be present in the download folder. From thereafter file gets downloaded you can go there and delete the file before installing it.
I have done this experiment on the Samsung Galaxy Phone.

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


text:
Is there a way to customize vibrate patterns?
Like many people my phone is most of the time in silent/vibrate mode. I was wondering if there's a way to assign different vibration patterns for different notifications, just like we do for ringtones and alerts with sounds.
Maybe there's an app that allows us to do that? I couldn't find anything yet.

SMS Popup does vibration patterns on a per contact basis (or for all texts).
Handcent does it only for all texts.
Missed Call will do vibration patterns for SMS (per contact), phone calls (per contact),  Battery, Calendar events, device storage, etc.

Using the Notification plug-in for Locale, you can set separate vibrate patterns for different conditions.

Vibromaker is has pre-defined patterns.

New app called WhoIsIt lets you customize the ring/notification audio and vibration.
Lifehacker review

Llama lets you create custom vibrate patterns for a variety of simple or complex events including location, either by typing in the pause,pulse,pause,pulse... numbers, or tapping out the pattern on a button
(Llama is free, funded by donations)

ViBe lets you select one of ten custom vibration patterns to attach to a contact for phone calls and SMS/MMS messages. (There's also a way to unlock and make custom vibration patterns.)
Free in the Market.
(Lifehacker review)


text:
Is it possible to move the keyboard to the top of the screen?
One of the biggest advantages to the Swype keyboard is the ability to effectively type with only one hand. However this dosent work very well since the keyboard is at the bottom of the screen. Is there any way to move the keyboard to the top of the screen only when on portrait mode so that I can grip the phone with one hand and type with my thumb on the top of the screen where my thumb has more range of motion?

On other note, wouldn't your hand obstructs the screen if the keyboard is on top?

Lie Ryan has a good point, and I don't see how holding it towards the top instead of towards the bottom would improve your thumb's range of motion.

I'm not sure how you hold your phone when I hold it my thumb clears the entire bottom screen perfectly. Try it yourself, bring up the keyboard and then flip the phone upside down and grip it in one hand and you'll see that you can still see the bottom screen just fine, well, depends on the size of your phone and hands I suppose.

There is no setting to do this.  It would appear there is also no supported method for a keyboard developer to set where their keyboard is drawn (see KeyboardView on android.com).


text:
Change image size before sharing an image via email
When I first used the share functionality (Share via email) from the gallery, Android asked me what should be the size of the images (fullsize / normal / small) that will be shared. I opted for regular then, and now I want to change this setting.
I cannot seem to find this setting option anywhere, anyone knows where I can change this ?
(Note: The "crop" feature in the gallery).

I went against the original clause in my question and used Image Shrink Lite.

If anyone else has alternative apps or ways, please mention & I'll be happy to have a look at it.

It's an Email setting, not a gallery setting. You need to go to  Settings → Applications → Manage applications → All → Email
Then hit "Clear data" to remove your settings.
You will have to reset up your email.

I found the option to arrange image size from within the email application itself(i use stock email app of samsung s4)

Nice for you! Mind to share where it is? ;)


text:
How to turn off red-dotted-underline spelling check when text-messaging?
I've updated my HTC Desire HD A9191 to Android 2.3.3 and now I don't know how to get rid off the spelling check (red dotted underline) when text messaging. The underlining isn't present when typing in Evernote's application, for example. It is strictly text-messaging issue.
There's no spelling-check option in message settings. I've tried turning on and off spelling check under Settings->Language & Keyboard->Touch Input->Text input->Spell correction and it didn't do anything either way. I don't have enabled neither 'Prediction' nor 'Word completion'. Google search didn't find anything about red dotted underline on Androids either.
Why would I want to disable spelling check? Androids don't support my locale the way they should (QWERTZ instead of QWERTY), so I'm forced to use German locale. Which is fine, I'd use English as a system language anyway. But the spelling check is underlining non-German words, which is obviously annoying to me as a non-German native speaker.

You can use an alternative SMS app, e.g. Handcent. I think the spell checking feature is probably HTC specific (AFAIK, HTC has their own SMS app).

go to: Settings->Language & Keyboard->Touch Input->International Keyboard , and uncheck all the languages EXCEPT the one that you're texting in.

This does not help if the language one is texting in is not recognized by the system.


text:
USB tethering not working after installing CyanogenMod 7.2 on Samsung Galaxy Ace (GT-5830)
I recently installed CyanogenMod on my Galaxy Ace and now its USB tether option is not working. The phone is detected by my PC only when I check the USB debugging mode. I can tether with external applications like Easy Tether but earlier USB tethering was built in for my phone when I had the Samsung stock firmware. What could be the possible problem?

It could be that CM's USB tethering feature is unsupported on your device (discussed a bit here: USB tethering with Cyanogenmod 7.0.3)

ROMs like CyanogenMod and others by no means are complete. They are always under major refactoring and between minor revisions major functionality may be broken. For a long time I have been using custom roms, and if some functionality is broken I would advise you to return to a previous version of the ROM, or switch to another ROM.
The problem can also be related to the kernel you are using. Kernel is different than the ROM. ROM is built on top of kernel meaning that kernel part covers the more low-level functionality. If the kernel you are using does not support some functionality about USB bus, then you can still have problems although the ROM has no bugs.


text:
Can apps be installed to or otherwise use the external SD card of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0?
I have a Samsung Galaxy 2 7" wifi only tablet using ICS 4.0.3. Samsung states that all apps on ICS must run from internal storage (8Gb). I have a program that requires more storage for the data files than can fit in internal storage. I have a 32 Gb external microSD card installed with sufficient room for the data files. Is there a way for the app to be associated with the data files on my external storage card so that I can run the app?

Did Samsung specifically say this has to do with ICS? It sounds like the way they've configured their devices for a while now (with an "internal" SD card partition that apps would use).

Samsung said that this is a function of ICS.  The following is one of the answers given by Samsung on their Support site for the Galaxy Tab 2, 7".  "Thank you for contacting Samsung.
The SD card can be used to store media like videos, music and photos. Apps are programmed to work strictly with the Android OS."

Use Samsung Kies to successfully connect your tab to PC, Samsung Kies supplies the drivers for your tab to be recognised by PC, when connecting you will also have the usual window pop up to give you access through explorer to both the card and the main tabs "drive", you can select through Kies where you place your media, internal or external. Hope this help.

Will Samsung Kies allow me to store and operate the application from the external storage card where I need to store the data files?

Yes, samsung kies is like iTunes in Apple products. It lets u download add and do all the things u need to do with the SD Card or your mobile in general

This doesn't appear to answer the OP's question at all. The question is whether or not an installed app can use the external storage card - Kies has no bearing on this.


text:
Backup and restore Android Settings and Application through ADB
I would like to ask if it possible to backup and restore all Android Settings and applications through ADB.
I tried:
adb backup -all
adb: unable to connect for backup

It is not working, while all other commands are working.
Is it possible to use this bmgr ?

i am using adb 1.0.29 on win7-64 and get the error adb: unable to open file ./backup.ab when executing adb backup  -all. does adb devices find your android?

I've had a similar issue when submitting multipe package names on the command line. The problem was (is) the number of packages to backup is too long. I needed to split it in multiple command calls

Here is my command for backing things up
./adb shell ls -l -a | grep '^[^l]' | sed -e 's/^d.* \([^ ]*\)\r$/mkdir sav\/\1; .\/adb pull \/\1 sav\/\1/' -e 's/-.* \([^ ]*\)\r$/.\/adb pull \/\1 sav\/\1/' | /bin/bash

list all files
ignore links
for

files : output an adb pull command
directories : make the dir (in case we pull sth empty) and output an adb pull command

execute everything in bash

There are some files where I get a permission denied - but as this backup is made in order to root the device, I can not get more permissions :(

This indeed appears to backup all files (minus the "permission denied" bits) even on older Androids (in this case, Gingerbread 2.3.3). I use this variant (added -p param to mkdir to avoid some error messages and removed ./ in front of ./adb): time adb shell ls -l -a | grep '^[^l]' | sed -e 's/^d.* \([^ ]*\)\r$/mkdir -p sav\/\1; adb pull \/\1 sav\/\1/' -e 's/-.* \([^ ]*\)\r$/adb pull \/\1 sav\/\1/' | /bin/bash

A much simpler way to do a recursive backup of all files, without needing any fancy regex is "adb pull /."

Make sure to run the SDK update and specifically check the box for Google USB Drivers and update the SDK.
After enabling USB debugging on your device and plugging into your PC, you should get a prompt about installing drivers. Even if its successful open device manager and find your phone, right click and update drivers and point it to the Google USB driver folder in the SDK > Extras > Google USB and let it update the drivers.
Then you should be able to pull full backups off your device.

This fixed the issue for me when I was having it.  The drivers were not the issue, but the ADB version itself was too outdated.

problem is probably due to more than one device/emulator connected.
check adb devices if it shows more than one device then it might not be able to connect specialy to emulators.
run adb usb it will restart other devices, then disconnect/reconncet usb cable, now run
adb devices
it should show only one device.
now do
adb backup -all
and you should be good to go :)

what I would have to do if I use the command locally via a terminal emulator for android?

I have a GS4 that I needed to backup and unfortunately ran into this error. after a bit of head scratching (and swearing) I found a fix that I hope will work for you. I was able to find this by just running abd and scrolling through the help documentation. I found that -d is a parameter that "directs command to the only connected USB device". So after plugging and chugging I got it to work for me. The command I used was:
adb -d backup -apk -shared -all -f C:\Users\NAME\backup.ab
Hope this works for someone having the same issue I had.


text:
Is there a way to set the default stream in the TuneIn Radio app?
I love TuneIn Radio, especially when using the 32kbps AAC audio stream.  But, every time I turn the app off and back on again it defaults to the mp3 stream.
Does anyone know if it's possible to change the default stream?

Open the app,
Go to Settings -> Playback.
Check auto restart player option.

I came up with this idea: In the general settings, at the preferred stream setting, I selected the low one. In most cases this will work fine (at least in my case). This way it will choose the lower bit rate AAC stream over the higher bit rate MP3.


text:
Can I connect my device to a Cisco pix VPN?
We are buying quite a few tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich. Will it be possible for us to connect these tablets to our Cisco pix VPN? I know that Cisco have launched an app but it is for ASA. I have looked and not found anything that could do this.

Cisco offers a rooted AnyConnect vpn client, and it turns out they also have an ICS AnyConnect available in the Play Store as well. This should help!

Cisco also offers AnyConnect apps specific to device manufacturers, you could try those out too. You'll see them in the play store on the left side in the "More from this developer" section

AnyConnect for Android requires Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Boot image 8.0(4) or later - I am not sure if this would work with our Pix

i don't know then :/ there are some other mobile vpn clients out there, but most are poorly updated and only apply to a narrow range of situations (having tried most of them myself :P )


text:
How do you load a local ROM with beebdroid?
I downloaded beebdroid, the bbc micro emulator and its working great but i cant figure out how to load a rom other than the ones it lists as being online.

You can't, sorry. We open-sourced it so that people would get involved and make these sorts of enhancements. So far, we've had precisely zero contributions back. Wanna be our first? :-)

I might be interested.  How much work would you foresee, roughly, to add local ROM loading support?

Go take a look at the code on github, and see what you think. Probably not a massive task.


text:
Android not registering A and PTR records with DNS server
I have been running ISC BIND and DHCP servers on my private lan for quite some time now. Recently, I configured the two servers to enable Dynamic DNS updates to my private zone. It seems to be working, as a couple of laptops and my old phone (Motorola Droid, rooted with an older version of CyanogenMod) did register their A and PTR records with my DNS server.
However, my current phone (Samsung Charge, rooted with Eclipse ROM v2.0) is NOT registering with my DNS server. I have noticed that in my lease cache (excerpted below), my Charge doesn't have any of the DDNS related entries that the other leases do. I'm thinking that the Charge, for whatever reason, isn't passing it's hostname to the DHCP server. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to confirm this suspicion, much less correct the behavior if I'm right. Any help in resolving this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Excerpt of /var/state/dhcp/dhcpd.leases:
# This is the lease for the Samsung Charge. It did NOT register with DNS.
lease 192.168.1.127 {
  starts 6 2012/05/19 01:10:38;
  ends 6 2012/05/19 01:20:38;
  cltt 6 2012/05/19 01:10:38;
  binding state active;
  next binding state free;
  rewind binding state free;
  hardware ethernet 78:d6:f0:69:af:9f;
  uid "\001x\326\360i\257\237";
}

# This is the lease for my mother's laptop. It DID register with DNS.
lease 192.168.1.126 {
  starts 6 2012/05/19 01:10:45;
  ends 6 2012/05/19 01:20:45;
  cltt 6 2012/05/19 01:10:45;
  binding state active;
  next binding state free;
  rewind binding state free;
  hardware ethernet 90:4c:e5:47:cf:ee;
  set ddns-rev-name = "126.1.168.192.in-addr.arpa.";
  set ddns-txt = "0061e3886dfc34c99e5f945805f4197a39";
  set ddns-fwd-name = "hestia.[public name removed].dyndns.org";
  client-hostname "hestia";
}


text:
Google's location-based services versus third-party services
Since Google offers various location-based services for which it uses its maps, known as Google Maps, what is so special about third party software programs that also provide location-based services? Don't those make use of Google Maps, which Google in turn bought from NASA? Is there any legal restriction that Google puts for those third-party programs?
I am a newbie.

You can read more about Google's Terms of Service for using Google Maps APIs or Google Earth APIs. That should define the legalities of using their data.
The APIs are used by 3rd-party application developers so they can use Google Maps/Earth data in their applications. They can build on top of that, providing additional functionalities. (e.g. Foursquare used to use Google Maps, for their check-in app).
However, there's a limit to how much data a 3rd-party application can use/access for a given period of time. Beyond that limit, 3rd-party application developers have to pay. This is similar to the limit that Twitter has for 3rd-party Twitter clients (like Falcon Pro, which recently reached this limit; thus, not being able to display Twitter feed in their app).

Wow, you've given me a holistic view. Great.

@softwarelover You're welcome. :)


text:
Unsupported File Type: Why did my Samsung Galaxy S suddenly stop supporting MP3s?
All of a sudden my Samsung Galaxy S claims to not support mp3 files (the phone has been idle for a few hours, I did not touch anything). Ogg files however still play without problems. When this happens, no app can play mp3 files, e.g. my custom ring tone is not played anymore (it just vibrates as if it were muted). A reboot of the phone fixes the issue but within 3-4 days the problem comes back. It does not make a difference if files are stored on internal or external sd card.
This also affects video playback, I'm just not sure if it happens at the same time or independent of each other. The youtube app can no longer start videos (unknown playback problem), and the video player app claims all video files as unsupported. I suppose the issue may not be the video playback itself but the audio codec used in the video (mp3).
Any idea how to fix this or debug this? I don't want to reboot my phone every couple of days - it takes 2-3 minutes to do this and a phone should just work.
I applied 2.2.1 firmware lately and this only seemed to make the problem worse. I had this before 2.2.1 (with 2.2) but only very rarely.
I'm curious if TitaniumBackup may be the culprit as the backup scheduler seems to stop processes sometimes. Maybe others experiencing this issue use scheduled TitaniumBackups, too? The hint was that since upgrading to 2.2.1 I also upgraded to the licensed TitaniumBackup version and scheduled daily backups. But this may just be coincidence. What contradicts this theory: Backups are scheduled at night but last time I saw this issue it happened during the day - mp3 worked in the morning, failed in the afternoon. The phone was idle during the time it "decided" to no longer play mp3.
Looking at forums (I only found a few hits in Google), people having the same problems suggest to simply reboot the phone - but that is no fix at all. Or they suggest to send the phone back for replacement - and guess what: It has not fixed the problem for people experiencing this issue. So I suggest it is not a hardware issue (neither related to sdcards nor to the phone itself).

I had the same problem happening to me twice now, but I am unable to force the issue. BTW: I don't use Titanium Backup, so you can probably strike that of your list of culprits.

@Matt I don't think this helps. On the one hand, there's my contradiction, on the other hand there's @bjoernz confirming it's also happening without TB installed.

BTW: I suspect the MediaFly app or the Adobe Flash is the culprit...

@bjoern I don't use MediaFly so you can strike that out. But how does Flash fit into the picture?

Maybe it was unfair to suspect Flash... I went to a website with video on it (twitvid), after that I was unable to play media files, but I am not sure if that was the cause... I'll have to reboot my phone soon and see if that was really related to the problem.

I just tried to repeat the steps that I thought were responsible for the problem, but everything still works fine...

@bjoern Maybe just a side effect of what Flash is doing, and it may be a side effect of what Titanium Backup is doing to the system. Maybe memory constraints?

This is getting ridiculous. Ever since I commented on this question I can observe this effect every 2-3 days... and I am still not able to enforce this behaviour. BTW: It does not only effect MP3s, video files (*.mp4) are also affected.

Could you please post the logcat? * Install SL4A (from Market, also called ASE, or from here: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

Open SL4A, Menu->View->Logcat
Menu->Share->{Your favourite method for sharing}

I installed SL4A and it seemed very taxing on the battery...

I think I found the problem.
Like bjoernz said, some application is creating many objects from MediaPlayer class and it's not releasing that after. So, I opened an adb shell, became root (su) and I found the PID (process ID) of mediaserver, using the command:

ps | grep mediaserver

The mediaserver's PID, in my case, is: 84
Then, I listed all resources used by that PID with the command:

lsof | grep 84

And I got the following result:
So, it became easy to identify that the official twitter application (com.twitter.android-1.apk) was the problem. Then I removed twitter application and I installed TweetDeck instead and the problem disappeared since last week.
Hope this can help you.
[]'s

This is interesting...

A last resort is always a factory reset, which should fix this problem. You could also have a look at the logcat output, maybe this will give you a hint about the cause of the problem.

When upgrading to 2.2.1 I did a fresh factory reset - essentially this is why I bought the TB license (restoring 100 apps by manual confirmation went beyond my patience)

Even though I didn't really wanted to do a factory reset, I tried it on Friday and the problem has not occurred since. While I am not sure, if the problem is gone for good, I will award you the bounty, so it won't go to waste :-)

The problem still persists :-(

@bjoern: I was already sure that a factory reset does not help.

@hurikhan77: I wanted to do it anyways ;-)

I have the same problem here, using Galaxy S with Android 2.3.3.
Looking at the log, we can see the PID (proccess ID) used by PlayerDriver.

V/PlayerDriver(   84): Completed
  command PLAYER_PREPARE status=-17

So, I've killed the PlayerDriver process and it has fixed.
In order to do that, you need to root your device and connect with adb as root. Ex.:

adb shell

su
Next time I'll try identify what files and pipes the process is using through lsof command
Hope this help.

I have finally had a chance to look at the logcat while the problem was occuring. The error message reads:
Completed command PLAYER_PREPARE status=-17

According to this forum "it’s caused by having too many MediaPlayer objects active at once." Unfortunately I have not yet found a fix. The only known workaround seems to be rebooting.
I am still not sure, which app (or combination of apps) reproduce the error reliably.
Edit: I guess that any application, that uses the MediaPlayer class can cause the problem. Those apps probably never reach a state where they call MediaPlayer.release(). Maybe we need to contact the vendors of applications that use the MediaPlayer, so they make sure they call release().
My superficial research did not lead to a solution, that would fix the problem without a reboot.
Edit 2: I have updated to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and unfortunately this problem still persists.
Some logcat messages around the error:
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): CommandCompleted
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Completed command PLAYER_INIT status=1
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PVPlayer( 2377): run_set_video_surface s=0, cancelled=0
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PVPlayer( 2377): run_set_audio_output s=0, cancelled=0
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Send player code: 5
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Create realtime output
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): CommandCompleted
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Completed command PLAYER_SET_AUDIO_SINK status=1
06-08 20:03:08.785 V/PVPlayer( 2377): run_prepare s=0, cancelled=0
06-08 20:03:08.789 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Send player code: 7
06-08 20:03:08.789 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): disable natpkt - 0
06-08 20:03:08.789 D/        ( 2377): After GetDurationFromRandomScan: clipDuration=8716644
06-08 20:03:08.789 D/        ( 2377): After GetDurationFromRandomScan: clipDuration=8716644
06-08 20:03:08.804 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): HandleInformationalEvent: 26
06-08 20:03:08.804 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): HandleInformationalEvent: type=26 UNHANDLED
06-08 20:03:08.804 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): CommandCompleted
06-08 20:03:08.804 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Completed command PLAYER_PREPARE status=-17
06-08 20:03:08.804 E/PlayerDriver( 2377): Command PLAYER_PREPARE completed with an error or info -17
06-08 20:03:08.804 V/PVPlayer( 2377): check_for_live_streaming s=-2147483648, cancelled=0
06-08 20:03:08.804 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): HandleInformationalEvent: 27
06-08 20:03:08.804 W/PlayerDriver( 2377): PVMFInfoErrorHandlingComplete
06-08 20:03:08.804 W/MediaPlayer(22989): info/warning (1, 26)
06-08 20:03:08.804 E/MediaPlayer(22989): error (1, -17)
06-08 20:03:08.808 I/AudioService( 2471):  AudioFocus  abandonAudioFocus() from android.media.AudioManager@480f3630null
06-08 20:03:08.812 I/AudioService( 2471):  AudioFocus  abandonAudioFocus() from android.media.AudioManager@480f3630null
06-08 20:03:08.812 D/PlayTo  (22989): opening content://dtmedia/media/1553 with Android Player
06-08 20:03:08.812 D/PlayTo  (22989): About to set Android Player datasource to content://dtmedia/media/1553
06-08 20:03:08.812 E/PVPlayer( 2377): isDrmfile playing 0
06-08 20:03:08.812 V/PVPlayer( 2377): reset
06-08 20:03:08.812 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Send player code: 18
06-08 20:03:08.812 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): handleCancelAllCommands
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): CommandCompleted
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Completed command PLAYER_CANCEL_ALL_COMMANDS status=1
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Send player code: 11
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): handleReset
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): CommandCompleted
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Completed command PLAYER_RESET status=1
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Send player code: 17
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): handleRemoveDataSource
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): CommandCompleted
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PlayerDriver( 2377): Completed command PLAYER_REMOVE_DATA_SOURCE status=1
06-08 20:03:08.816 V/PVPlayer( 2377): unmap file

I've switched to DarkyROM 10.2, now on 10.3. Both versions are Gingerbread based (2.3.3 and 2.3.4) and do not exhibit this behaviour. So it seems to be something specific to the Samsung stock ROM.

I experience the same problems, and I can't seem to get a consistent cause. After rebooting my phone, I don't see the problem again for another 12-24 hours. Because I use custom music as my alarm clock, I've adopted the habit or rebooting my phone before going to sleep. It's caused many late days to work before I figured out what was going on.
I started with a factory fresh install. Tested it out for a few days with no problems. Begin installing programs one-by-one with no problems. Eventually I started using Widgets, with no problems. I installed Launcher Pro with no problems.
But now the problems have started up again. I uninstalled Launcher Pro altogether to no avail. I removed all of my widgets, which appeared to work. I added them back one by one and I didn't seem to have any problems. But the problem came back. Over the period of two weeks, I couldn't isolate one widget that was causing the issue, so I ruled widgets out all together.
I have custom ringtones for my SMS, notifications, G-talk, Gmail, and ringtones. When this problem occurs, I can't even get my voicemail to play, much less anything else.
I use a program called "Soundhound" to discover music I haven't heard before. I think it might be related. Then again, I also use Advanced Task Killer, but even when I had that installed before it didn't have problems. I think when I use Soundhound, it is setting off some kind of strange chain-reaction which eventually---hours later--causes my phone to have this error.
I don't know enough about the logs or how to access them actual debug the phone, but I do know droves of people have had this issue and there seems to be no fix. In the meantime, I've uninstalled Soundhound and I'm checking to see if I still have the problem.

I noticed this problem on my galaxy s, it took a while to piece together, but it appeared to have started when I began using third party task managers. It happened with advanced task killer and watchdog installed.
I went back to using the native task manager and the problem appears to have gone away.... Hasn't occured in the past week. I'm running 2.2.1.
What I thought was the strangest was it happened on days I didn't even use the task manager, just The mere presence cause the problem...
Unsure of the technical reason behind this, but don't care... Native task mgr is fine.
Hope this helps the rest of you.

It's always a good idea to remove any third party Task Manager or Task Killer apps, Google specifically recommend against using them. There's evidence that they cause a lot of problems, and with Android's already aggressive memory management barely solve anything.

The same problem is on my galaxy s. I've noticed that if I use Google Listen and have some queue, mp3 stops playing. After clearing queue it was getting ok! But... It seems Adobe Flash  influences on media playback too. If I use it them any media playback fails, before rebooting. Maybe 2.3 will fix the problem. Almost tired to find the solution for 2.2 on Galaxy S

I just deinstalled Flash Player and will keep you informed when the problem occurs again.

I have flash installed but almost never use it. Plugins are loaded manually in my browser so it is never triggered. I doubt that flash itself is the problem, it is probably related to memory usage. If I do many parallel market updates, mp3 stops working. If I use memory intensive apps, mp3 stops working. It seems android kills an important service (which is normal behaviour according to its task management description) but never restarts this service.

I just started every app that I have (start app, press home button, start next app, ...) and my mp3s currently play anyways. BTW: Flash was not uninstalled apparently, only the updates. It got updated today again.

I found that the official Twitter app could be a culprit Youtube Forum

Have you tried testing for individual media files causing the problem?
Many moons ago I had a problem where certain files would corrupt the database of music and eventually cause problems for the whole library. This is very hypothetical as my experience wasn't on an android device and my Galaxy S works just fine. Despite this I thought you could try loading only a small subset of your media on and see if you still get the problem. It doesn't look like a codec problem and perhaps the media scanner cleans the database when you restart the phone. Sorry I don't have a better answer.

I will try and let you know, if it helps. But since I cannot reproduce the problem at will and I do not change my media collection on the phone at all, I doubt that it has anything to do with the files on my phone.

The problem still occurs if I have no "external" media files on my phone. I have just been streaming a podcast in mp3-format and after some time/some action mediafly will tell me that it is unable to stream the file and that I should download it (even for the same episode that previously worked). It is not a network issue, because I can download the episode without a problem and than I am still unable to play it unless I reboot.

Well, humpff. Perhaps 2.3 will resolve your problem? If I ever see it on my Galaxy S I will be sure to come back


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Why doesn't my Samsung Galaxy S communicate via USB?
I discovered today that I cannot connect my PC with Samsung GT-I9000 any more: when I plug in the microUSB cable, nothing happens other than that the phone starts to charge. Earlier I got to see Connect to Kies or something like that.
Things I've tried so far:
-Switcing USB debugging on and off
-Removing battery
-Trying different cable
-Trying reimaging PC to a known good state (where I previously would have found new hardware)
-Trying different computer
-Factory data reset
-Formatting internal SD card
-Entering download mode with mUSB jig (my phone has download and recovery modes disabled otherwise) and reconnecting mUSB cable. Then I saw the "USB Device Not Recognized. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned..." error on Windows (XP).
Is there anything else I could try before sending it to the long journey of Warrantyland?
UPDATE:
I tried an app z4root which rooted the phone without the need of usb cable, then I could use Rom Manager to force the phone into Recovery Mode (remember my phone had the 3-button combo disabled). There I deleted-erased-formated everything I could and when I got back to normal mode and tried connecting again, Windows found new hardware and Kies recognized the phone. Just to be sure, I pulled the cable from computer, waited for 2 secs and then reconnected but, alas, nothing happenend again. I reimaged the PC and redid the z4root+Rom Manager+Recovery Mode wipe thing but nothing. Then I tried to reinsert microusb plug into phone under an angle and witnessed a successful connection. Kies offered updating firmare. I did not breathe on the phone and carefully clicked mouse to accept in hope that if this was a software error, new update would fix it. The update went fine but after the phone rebooted and I could confirm the firmware version from About, I still could not connect.
Then I used USB jig which I purchased from eBay to force the phone into download mode and tried to connect it with a PC once again. The PC froze at once (even the mouse cursor did not move). I tried pressing every conceiveable keyboard combination from Enter to Ctrl+Alt+Del and then disconnected the USB cable. As soon as I did that, everything started moving again on the screen. I could reproduce this behaviour for 5 times. On the sixth time, however, Windows found new hardware and started installing drivers but soon after that a balloon popped up saying "USB Device Not Recognized. One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned [...]". Then I rebooted the phone and came back to the issue later.
I forced the download mode once again and plugged the USB cable in. Nothing happened. No frozing, no error.
Even though I have tried to wiggle the microusb plug in from every possible angle, it does not seem to have any effect. It just works when it wants to work. Charging works always, though.

Possible duplicate: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/5548/samsung-gt-i9000-stopped-detecting-usb-connectivity-not-a-driver-problem

Looks like it, yes.

When I think back of my saga, it possible that I got the connection only when I completely reimaged PC or reformatted phone (I cannot tell which is important because I did them both at the same time). And only once on both occasions.

@user3245, weird but I had a deja-vu that I already answered this posting. Anyway, I think that my phone's microusb port is corroded or short circuited (or both). I seem to get the proper connection on very rare occasions, like now. I'm going to take it to service on 19th.

@user3245 I just received my phone from service. They detected liquid damage within the port and did a chemical wash of it and said that all warranty is lost now. I was left with malfunctioning phone and €25 less money. Anyone know what to do next?

wow, I basically have the same problem. Just bought a Samsung Fascinate, it charges but windows says it has Malfunctioned and does not recognize it. In ubuntu's sylog, it says something liek "read error at -64 bytes, cannot enumerate usb device" etc etc. Called samsung, have a few weeks warranty left. They said I must have OEM Samsung cable so I ordered one on amazon, am waiting for it in the mail, when it comesI will call them and they will do 'troubleshooting steps' and if they dont work with OEM cord, then I will send it in for repair. I hope they can't fix it and give me a brand new phone!

@Matt While I don't remember the details any more, I remember that I downloaded zroot apk to SD and got the phone rooted without the PC. Then I installed a custom ROM and after that I haven't had any problems with it's USB connectivity.

The custom ROM may or may not have played a role. Reading my own comments here I recall that my phone gradually started to work more often. But after switching to custom ROM (Darky ROM, but I now use CM7) I never had any problems. So it may help.

@Henno, thanks. Well they claimed to have shipped it on Tues. so hopefully it will be in the mail around noon today. I will try it, if it works, then that's great, my problems are solved.  However I do not think it will work, I believe the data pins are corroded or have some gunk or something on them. I'd try cleaning it but I don't want samsung to say that I messed with it and voided my warranty so if it doesn't work I'm gonna send it in and hope they can't figure out what's wrong and just send me a brand new phone ;)

I have followed the Exact steps from Link :

Samsung mobile MTP Device cannot be installed
StackOverflow tutorial

Here are steps :  (for Windows specific instructions):

Ensure phone is not connected to PC.
Uninstall KIES from PC. Reboot your PC and Reinstall KIES after that. Just for great measure... open KIES, go to Tools | Troubleshoot connection error. Follow instructions and wait for it to finish the troubleshooting procedure.
Reboot your phone (or turn off and then on your phone again). Do not connect it to your PC just yet.
Once rebooted, go to your phone's dialer, type *#7284# - A configuration window will appear. In that window's USB section, if it's default to PDA, tap MODEM, then back to PDA, (if it is MODEM in the beginning, change it to PDA) then press the back key to exit. Most importantly, it must set as PDA when you exit.
Turn off USB debugging in your phone.
(Optional) Set your phone's screen timeout to a lengthy time. (minimum 1-2 minutes - recommended 5mins to 30mins) its found in Settings | Display. You can change this back later on.
Connect the phone to your PC with USB cable and let windows load your drivers... and wait for the drivers to get reinstalled.
Once reinstalled, disconnect the phone off USB. Switch USB debugging back on in your phone settings, and reconnect the phone back - you'll see windows load another set of drivers for your phone. Wait until it is completed. (This step is a precautionative measure to ensure your phone is identified with all the necessary drivers)
Once complete, unplug your phone, and turn off USB debugging... This is to ensure MTP will initialize. Also, press the phone's home key until your homescreen is displayed. Only after doing all that, reconnect your phone back to PC.
Test and see if MTP works using Windows Explorer. You'll see your phone's USB storage and SDCard contents if it does.

Hope it will help you..

I had a similar problem. It was caused by moisture getting into the terminals while using phone in the rain. One solution is to get terminals cleaned or replaced.

Yes, I think that this was my case too. I even sent it to warranty where they did a chemical wash but that did not change anything (besides losing the warranty). However it gradually started to connect more and more often and now it shows the dark Kies connect screen every time I connect mUSB cable. Now only my Windows installation is screwed (removing too much drivers with nLite but that's another story).

I'd try uninstalling all your drivers/software for the phone, rebooting, reinstalling the official drivers from samsung.com/uk, and trying again.  You could also just install the drivers on another computer that has never had the phone connected, to ensure it starts in a clean state.  If that doesn't work, I would guess a trip to Warrantyland is required.

I had similar problems with mine - plugin on USB, it would charge but do nothing else. It wouldn't even recognise the phone was attached to install drivers.
After some internet searching, I was ready to give up... but I tried on a different USB port... and more importantly, used an old usb cable from my old phone. Suddenly all sprang into life! So my suggestion is to try a different cable, I think cheap cables are not all made equally.
Charging worked with either cable, butif the PC knows something is plugged in and istalls the drivers then this is not likely to be your problem, unless you have a dodgy connection in there somewhere.

I tried everything too. But after a while, I had to install a fresh version of Windows 7 and to my surprise, Samsung Galaxy S connected with USB.

I will give here a solution which I found when I had a similar problem (note: this answer was already given in this question). It really took me some time to find this solution, and to be honest, I seem to be the only one with this problem/solution, but maybe it helps other:
-- my answer to a similar question on this site --
I had a similar problem when I still had my PALM synchronization software installed. For some reason or another, it used COMM port 4 for it's communication ( don't know why but it did ), and that conflicted ( probably behind the scenes ) with the communication with my Galaxy S.
Once I uninstalled the PALM synchronization software, the connection went fine.
So please check if on your pc some sort of other communication device is installed.

Nope, I had the problem even on freshly installed Windows. Funny thing is that it seemed to work on the very-very first attempt after a fresh install of Windows. But subsequent connections failed.


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On a Nexus S, how do I activate the front facing camera in a Fring video call?
video calling in Fring is working but the video is only showing the rear-facing camera, how do activate the front-facing camera?

From the Fring for Android user manual, do this after starting a video chat:

To switch camera, press the switch button on the left side.

If it doesn't work on the Nexus S, it's probably because they haven't had time to fix it since yesterday.  You can report a bug on their forum.

Yea I see in the manual that there should be an additional button, it isn't there yet in the Nexus S. Thanks =)


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How to turn off duplicate email notification messages?
Recently bought a Samsung Galaxy 2.
There's a built-in app for both Gmail and general e-mail. I've been using the general e-mail app.
I'm finding that I'm getting notifications from both apps for the same new Gmail e-mail that comes in.  Is there a way to turn off the Gmail app notifications?  (I tried deleting the app outright but it seems Samsung won't let me do this. It's not an option in the manage applications menu, whereas it is for other 3rd party apps.)

In the settings of the gmail app there is a setting called "Email notifications".  Uncheck that setting, and you should stop getting notifications from it.

For the sake of your battery life, in the gmail app settings, change the sync settings to never.  Turning off gmail notifications doesn't mean the app isn't running in the background, chewing up your CPU/battery life.


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How can I disable Kies in Samsung Galaxy S2?
Whenever I connect my S2 to the power outlet (not to a computer), the Kies application pops up. Where do I disable this auto-activation?

Samsung Kies is one of the worst pieces of software I think I've ever come across. I had to install it to upgrade my mother's SGS, I was astonished by how much it clogged up my system (3 separate autorun entries, 2 services), and how unbearably slow it was.

@fredley Kies Mini is a lot better, just a small standalone app.

Go to Settings > Applications > Development > and check USB debugging
After that if you connect your S2 to a PC it will connect in USB mode and you won't get the KIES application popup.

Sounds like there's something funny with either your USB cable, the charger or the socket on your phone that's causing it to detect it as a full PC connection, rather than just a dumb charger.
You should be able to get rid of that prompt for the moment by going into Settings -> Wireless and Network -> USB Settings and selecting the Mass Storage mode rather than the Samsung Kies mode.
However you really ought to try with another charger and cable to see if that fixes the actual problem, pure-charger cables shouldn't be detected as a PC, the signal on the cable is different and the phone should detect that.

I don't have USB Settings under Wireless and Network.

@ripper sorry you must be running a different update then, I know Samsung have moved that setting around at times. Have a look under the other headings in Settings to see if you can see the USB settings, I think it might have been under the SD Card and phone settings in the past too?

haven't found it.


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How to delete a specific file in Android so that it can't be recovered?
From my experience a file deleted from a computer filesystem can often be recovered unless it is overwritten with a special program (that's usually called "shredding").
Is an Android-based HTC smartphone any different? How can a specific file be deleted from such smartphone so that the file can't possibly be recovered?

Are you only looking for phone-hosted options, or would you accept suggestions about deleting the file when the phone is connected as a disk drive?

@Bernhard Hofmann: Well, if connecting as a drive makes such action easier - it's much better than nothing.

Related: How to make a complete factory reset, without anyone being able to retrieve my data?

That is unfortunately not so easy.
Since there is not API for the secure deletion of files, it would require root for the "secure delete app" in order to achieve block level access to the storage device. Only  access to the blocks of the deleted file eventually allows an app to overwrite the leftovers of the file with random data. Eventually, because the flash storage device could perform wear leveling. If that's the case, block #42 wouldn't be always the same physical block, which makes the system calls ineffective.
I think that's why there isn't a secure delete solution for android yet. At least I couldn't find one on XDA.

Could a program possibly open an existing file, overwrite it all with trash, close the file and then delete it?

You could program that. But it will be useless, because it is not guaranteed the overwrite will happen on the same physical blocks as the existing data.

Do you mean the filesystem or some other entity will transparently relocate the new written data to new location and mark previously occupied location free?

Yes, it's the choice of the OS where it wants to write new data for various reasons (fragmentation, etc.) and what nearly every modern OS does that. Even if not, there is still the layer where wear leveling could happen.

One simple solution would be to delete the file, then fill the memory with any other data so the space previously owned by the deleted file is sure to get overwritten.
Once the memory is filled up, the file(s) used for the filling can be removed, releasing the space again - only now recovery attempts will find only the filler file, not the original deleted file.
Note that this is intended only for combatting simple home recovery tools like testdisk. There may in theory still be ways to recover at least parts, or even the entire original file - however they would require some sophisticated high-end analysis methods. One example of such a method would be to analyze if some of the data is preserved because of flash wear leveling. However this isn't easily done, and AFAIK would require connecting the memory card to a custom reader device of some sort, and might even require taking the memory device apart.

Wear leveling on most Flash media will not always guarantee that overwriting the file will write over the same physical location on the memory.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling

@Chahk, Yes, I agree, that's why I included the "sophisticated methods" disclaimer. Point is, it's trivial to recover a normally deleted file using home tools like testdisk. If there are some easy-to-use home tools to recover content that's been spared because of flah wear leveling, I've never heard of them. Note that I never said this data flooding would be an absolute method, but quite probably something strong enough for the asker's needs.

I added more details to the disclaimer to improve my answer, and now mention analyzing flash wear leveling as one example of a possible remaining attack vector.

If you connect your device as a disk drive, you can use a utility like sdelete on Windows to securely delete files. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443
From the web page: "SDelete implements the Department of Defense clearing and sanitizing standard DOD 5220.22-M, to give you confidence that once deleted with SDelete, your file data is gone forever."

Will it help against wear leveling mentioned in this answer http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/14739/how-to-delete-a-specific-file-in-android-so-that-it-cant-be-recovered/14742#14742 ?

In all honesty, I have no idea. I don't even know whether there are any Android devices that implement wear leveling. Since it overwrites the original sectors, I would expect it to be unaffected by wear leveling.

Well, if there is wear leveling this program is affected - it does no magic, just opens the file for writing (like any other program would) and writes garbage there, then closes the file. If there's wear leveling the program can't possible know - it uses usual operating system primitives.

I wonder whether using the clean option a few times would provide protection against wear leveling. Since it's beyond our control, cleaning free space a few times ought to "find" the freed sectors and erase them.

Maybe, but I suppose it would take a lot of time.

If the file is on a sdcard then you could insert the sdcard into your notebook card reader and use srm, sdelete or whatever you usually use on your desktop for secure file deletion.
If the file is in the internal memory then probably the only reliable way to completely delete any trace of it (and everything else on the phone) would be to enable full phone encryption in Settings > Security, wait until everything is encrypted (about one hour), and then do a factory reset.
There are also apps in the play store that allegedly can wipe the free space with DoD level algorithms, but I have no idea how good they are or how they work.
And btw, keep in mind that flash memory has a limited number of read-write cycles, so running those apps too often can potentially reduce the memory chip lifetime.


text:
Durable settings of Screen timeout
I often set Settings -> Sound & Display -> Screen timeout to never timeout. When I turn off the device the settings is 1 minute again.
Do you know how to make the settings durable? My version is 2.2 (Froyo)

my device is Archos 7

Try this if you added apps and somehow changed some obscure setting. Nothing to do with firmware, whoops.
Setting > About device > Repair and formatting tools - Delete device configuration and installed applications
Failing that or if you're using it for reading & something similar. You should try one of those apps like "Tasker" where you can prevent screen dimming events during other apps of your choice. There's dozens (possibly hundreds) of apps that will keep your screen active.

Screen On Toggler
KeepScreen
Setting Profiles
Profile Scheduler
FastBright (if you're having trouble with it routinely waking up and using power, once you've got it working right that is)

If you haven't already, go here to Customer Service & contact the professionals that are paid to provide you with support. Perhaps this is a defective tablet.
Good luck.

Yes, if you post the right answer, you should get the bounty. And considering that xralf, that asked the question, wrote a comment a few minutes ago, I  think it would be safe to say that he hasn't solved it yet

There is a thread on archosfans.com about the precise issue you're having: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=34624&view=previous

I did a complete restore it started saving the screen timeout setting.

What is complete restore? If it's pushing the needle to the little hole, this didn't help.

@xralf: I wouldn't pretend that I am 100% sure what he meant, but my best guess is Factory Reset (Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset).

I accepted the other answer because I can't do complete restore now, but I believe that this could help too. Thank you

A Verizon Customer Care person had me power down, power up in safe mode, then power down, power up normally. Now the timeout works as expected: 2 minutes is 2 minutes.


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Where does Adidas Micoach loads music files?
I have a lot of music on my android phone that I want to listen when im running and using Adidas Micoach apk to trainning that I cant listen because Micoach doesn't list the music files on his player. I take a look and didn't find any option to load music from specific path on SD on micoach. Does someone knows where Adidas Micoach loads it's list of music?

According to this review, you may need to create playlists in the Android's stock Music player app, and miCoach will pull those playlists in.


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Does the EVO 3d's 3.5mm head phone also support a microphone?
My old Nokia had a 2.5mm headphone/microphone port. I've recently had that phone stolen and moved to a EVO 3D. It has a 3.5mm port: however, is this a compact headphone/microphone or just stereo headphone?

It is a headset (as opposed to merely headphone) port, tested using TRRS (tip ring ring sleeve) Klipsch Image S4i headset. Also, because of the peculiarities of the way HTC soldered the fm radio on the 3D, it apparently (I didn't test this, don't have any TRS headsets/don't care about FM) only works correctly with a TRRS cable.
You'll note on android, when you plugin a TRRS headset, the icon in the notification area is subtly different (it has a Mic boom under the headphones). If the notification area icon only has the 'phones and no mic, you probably don't have the headset plugged in all the way (happened to me with a case skin on my DInc) and music will sound kind of funny.
The pertinent HTC EVO 3d Forum entry

Do they make a TRRS to dual 3.5 mm microphone/headphone adapter? I want to run my EVO 3d into a mixer, and I'm looking for something that can provide that functionality.

Found it, knowing the TRRS term helped me search, thanks again http://www.amazon.com/Headset-Buddy-Smartphone-Smartphone-Headsets/dp/B004ETCSX0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314304253&sr=8-1


text:
Add mobile number to Facebook contact?
My Android phone connected to Facebook and grabbed all my friends. Now I want to edit their info and add a mobile number, but it does not let me do that; it only lets you change their ringtone and a few other little options.
I am also using GO Contacts from Go Launcher. It's a little annoying when I click "edit a Facebook contact" and it goes to the phone's default contact sheet.
If I click a person I input manually it will go to that person in the Go Contact app and give me extra options and all that good stuff.
Is this a problem with Go Contacts or something? Can anyone recommend something better? Needs to have a dark skin.

From your contact list, select the Facebook contact that you would like to edit.  Click the menu button and choose Edit Contact.  You'll see an indication that the user is a Facebook contact and may not be edited.  Now click the Menu button again and choose New contact.  This will create a new contact in your address book and merge the Facebook profile information with that contact.  You may now edit the contact to have additional details, such as a phone number.


text:
Extra cables for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
I just got this new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 from USA and I love it. However, I'm not the most organized person, and sometime I lose my cables. The GT has a special cable, which is not using the common connector. Is there a model-specific cable I have to order, or does any cable for similar Samsung Tab device will just work ? I saw third-party companies selling such cables. I don't mind paying some money for this, but this is basically essential for my tablet to recharge and exchange any large quantity of information.

Samsung sells replacement data cable.

Yeah. That's an easy reply. But Samsung doe snot sell directly to consumers. At lest not in Canada. I got cables from some other resellers. I found that Belkin has some cable too, coupled with a car power supply that provides power for recharge.


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Does the Samsung Galaxy S Plus support moving applications to the SD card?
On my Samsung Galaxy S phone, I cannot move applications to the SD card. It seems to be some configuration file error which you can only solve when rooting the phone.
Does anyone know if this has been fixed in it's successor, the Samsung Galaxy S Plus?
Model Number: GT-I9000
Firmware : 2.3.3
Baseband version: I9000XXJVO
Kernel version:  2.6.35.7
Build number: GINGERGREAD.XWJVH

What FW version do yo have?

@Flow Added the info in my question.

What is the version of your OS in S1? If you are at least on Froyo, that should be doable for some applications. Note that not all can be moved to SD.
If you are on Eclair I believe you can't do this.
S Plus is on Gingerbread so it should work fine.


text:
How can I re-install the stock Android 2.2 calendar?
I mistakenly deleted the stock Google Calendar application from my Android 2.2 phone (Samsung Europa GT-i5500). My phone is rooted. I can't recall what program I used for the deletion, but I have backups of 4 files saved on my desktop PC:

com.android.calendar-[big number].apk
com.android.providers.calendar-[big number].apk
com.android.providers.calendar-[big number].properties
com.android.providers.calendar-[big number].tar

How can I reinstall this application using these backups?

Looks like the files you have were created by Titanium Backup, so I'd start there.

Sorry, I should have mentioned that. I did try but I couldn't get it to work. Is there another way please?


text:
How can I change my Asus Eee Pad's language from Taiwanese to English?
I bought a Asus Eee Pad and when I did a factory reset the language was in Taiwanese.
How do I change it back to English? It looks like it only has Taiwanese on it.
I called Asus and they couldn't help me as they said that it had been converted into English by a Jail Broken Flash. I have no idea what that is.

Use the icons.
First look for the settings app or icon (looks like cog wheels). Scroll through the list of apps in your launcher. You can also press the menu button while on your main homescreen and choose the settings from there (same idea - look for the cog-wheel icon).
Once you're in settings, look for the menu option with a little 'A' icon on the side - that's the one for Language settings. Press that.
Now press the very FIRST menu option to get a list of languages.

Press the Shift button. It will change it back. That's what I did.


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Water-damaged phone no longer shows battery status or recognizes my SIM card
I have a T-Mobile G2X, and I accidently poored a glass of water on it. It turns on, wifi works and all the apps are the fine. However, the battery status is displayed as a little question mark, the date was reset to 2007 and it wont read my SIM card.
How can I do a clean install of Android? I'd like to see if that solves my problem, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that.
Is there anything else that could fix these issues?

Perform a factory reset. But I doubt that this will fix your problems. Sounds like they are caused by hardware.

I did a factory reset already and I have the same issue. I think the water caused a shortcut and affected the software. if it was hardware related I dont think the phone would turn on and wifi is working etc etc


text:
Connection Timeout on Google Play
I have a brand new ASUS Transformer Prime tablet running ICS which I have been using for the first time over the last few days.
I can access the internet without issue using the email, Gmail, browser, YouTube apps, but not Google Play. When I try to use the Google Play Store app it shows a "loading..." message for a few minutes and then stops with a "No Connection" message.
Any ideas how I can fix this?

I was on the verge of packing the tablet up and returning it to Amazon and thought I would try one last thing. I took the tablet to a friends house and tried it on their WIFI just to double check it was not my network. The table worked first time and I used Google Play to install a number of apps.
I then took the tablet back to my house and Google Play continued to work and I installed some more apps.
I have no idea what my router was blocking that prevented Google Play from working but it seems fine now. If the problem returns I know the issue is with my router now, not the tablet.

Note that the market in your device is actually an application trying to connect to a distant service in a certain why, while the internet simply loads web pages if a connection is found. I personally get the same issue you've described a lot so when it happens I just switch to G3 instead and it works. so it may just be an issue with the market app.

I am also using a ASUS Transformer Prime tablet but the Play runs very well in that. I would suggest the following,

Restart the tablet.
Try to charge for atleast 8 hours

Also did u install the latest firmware that is being provided by ASUS, that firmware is a bug filled update. Do not update that. If you have updated it then it could be because of that.

Sometime due to poor battery the tab is not able to connect properly to the Wifi or the 3G/4G data connection. (My own experience)

8 hours is generic time that I wrote since that is the time duration one should charge when they take their device out of the box. So 8 hours completely saturates the battery.


text:
What determines if a phone will accept a microphone in the audio jack - hardware or software?
I have two Android phones: a Nexus S and a T-mobile G2. I just bought a new set of headphones that have a built-in microphone. The Nexus S seems to recognize audio input but the T-mobile G2 does not. Is it a hardware limitation or because I am running Android 2.3.6 on my G2 and Icecream Sandwich on my Nexus S?

Both, plus the specific headphones as onik notes.

Most likely it's a difference in the TRRS layout of the headset.
For example, I have two "similar" headsets, one that came with Samsung Galaxy S and another that came with Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Even though they look similar to the naked eye, if I use the Galaxy S one with my Tab, I only get mono sound due to a minor difference in the TRRS layout.
Sometimes I can remedy this by pulling the jack a little out of the plug, but it's very tricky to keep it in the correct position.
Anyway, you should test the jack with different headsets to verify that there's no physical damage to the jack.

Hmm.. but it's the same headset being tested on both phones. Shouldn't it be some difference in the phones? The jacks for both phones work normally for just listening to music.

@Eliss Yes, that's what i implied with my example. My devices have slightly different layouts in the jacks, therefore the headsets work perfectly in their own devices. Most likely your devices have the mic pin in a slightly different position, preventing it from connecting to the plug on the G2, even though it works in the Nexus S.

I had exactly the same thing using the headphones from my old Galaxy S in my current Galaxy Nexus, it was worse than Mono, I was only getting one channel of sound, which meant on a couple of the podcasts I listen to, I could only hear one of the hosts talking. Switching to the headphones that actually came with the Galaxy Nexus (which looked identical other than using a different colour of plastic in the jack fitting) fixed that.

"It's not a hardware limitation, most likely it's a difference in the TRRS layout of the headset." <-- isn't that a contradiction?

@LieRyan Good point, I was thinking about hardware in the electronic sense :) Fixed now.


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Outlook Style Android App
I use 2010  Outlook running on a PoP3 server.  I just bought a Galaxy  Note and love it.  But I need an e-mail app like outlook that will allow me to setup folder and rules to move specific e-mail in their correct folders.  I don't care about syncing with Outlook on my window x64 O.S. because my server handles that for me.  But I need the portability  of my note with a sort of sophisticated folder/rule e-mail app.  I don't mind paying for it, as long as it just doesn't delete my mail after 30 days.

Try Touchdown. Their feature list includes "Email Folders" and allows for rules/filters (per this thread). If you like it, make sure to buy a licence before the 30-day trial is up.
I'm not an Exchange-on-Android user myself, but of those I know who are many prefer Touchdown.

Thanks I will look at it. I am a believer in purchasing software.


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Installing "xyz firmware" vs Rooting on "xyz firmware".
What's the difference between rooting on a particular firmware and installing a particular firmware?
Does that mean to root on "xyz" you must have installed "xyz" on your device?

As it says:

"root on XYZ" means XYZ is a pre-condition for this rooting instructions (so yes, it must already be on the device)
"install XYZ" means, well, to install XYZ (whether it already was on the device or not).

You're welcome. Sometimes it's the simple things which confuse us most :)

You're right :)


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How can I disable popup-SMS notifications (2.2 Froyo, HTC Evo)?
I have the HTC evo, and I need to disable the popup SMS notifications. I have the stock notification app and chompsms. I disabled all notifications from stock, and chomp has no option for popups (even when disabled this happens). Basically every SMS = a popup stating that heres your message, what to do: Done, Reply, etc. I would really rather it be a notification on the bar and not a popup.

Nevermind. This was a "quick reply" feature of chompsms. Wow. That was hard to find. Guess will accept this in 2 days.