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Monthly Archives: September 2009
How not to post a bug-report
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 23, 2009 No comments
When trawling the Android developer forums it sometimes feel like you run into people from another planet. More than often you come across the weird and wonderful world of noobs or what-cha-ma-call-its :
As seen in a bug-report on the developer forums.
Android: 3G Watchdog
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 22, 2009 3 comments
I try to avoid 3G usage as much as possible, especially since I am not on a data-bundle. There are the few cases, where I need to hop onto the internet via 3G, but would still like to monitor the bandwidth usage.
A nifty little Android tool called 3G Watchdog is available, which installs as a notification-bar icon and monitors your usage:
You are able to customise tresholds and alerts for your data-plan and monitor your mobile internet traffic usage (3G / Edge / GPRS) and get detailed status of your daily, weekly and monthly usage. The notification icon will only show when connected via mobile internet. In conjunction with APNDroid, probably the two best (small and free) tools for any Android phone.
OS X: SanDisk Cruzer Micro U3 removal tool
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 21, 2009 1 comment
SanDisk sells their Cruzer USB sticks with that pesky U3 tool, which mounts itself as a CD-drive on a Windows computer. Something you typically don’t see when running a Mac. There is an easy way to removing it, by downloading the U3 removal tool for Mac.
Start the U3 Removal tool and then remount the USB stick. The format will took on my 16GB stick about 30 seconds and that pesky CD drive is gone for good now.
For additional support or questions, visit the this forum.
Android: Avoid excessive data usage
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 19, 2009 No comments
APNDroid is one of those free, must-have applications (scan the barcode below to download on your Android phone):
A simple, little program which switches mobile data access on/off by just appending/removing “apndroid” to/from your APN-name. If you mainly work off a wireless network and rarely (but sometimes really need to) use a 3G/Edge/GPRS connection, this saves you the hassle of adding/deleting the APN manually.
Android: Too Many Pattern Attempts. Phone is locked.
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 17, 2009 15 comments
There you are, showing off your Android and that funky pattern lock feature. But you didn’t think that some joker would try too many times and lock your phone for good. Not to bad, since you just need to wait 30 seconds to retry – or?
Not quite, if you do it too often, the phone will lock you out for good and you can only unlock by either wiping your phone or by logging into your Google account. The Google account feature sounds reasonable and easy — but wait, your Wifi switch is not on (and you can only turn it on when unlocked).
Not all is lost, provided your phone is rooted and you have the Android toolkit installed (if “adb” means something to you, then read on):
Do the following:
> ./adb shell
# sqlite3 data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db
sqlite> update system set value=0 where name='lock_pattern_autolock';
sqlite> update system set value=0 where name='lockscreen.lockedoutpermanently';
sqlite> .exit
# exit
The above commands will connect to your settings-database and then disable the autolock as well as reset the permanent lock.
Android: Clear cache before upgrading to a new firmware
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 16, 2009 2 comments
I have been using CyanogenMod for a few weeks and am currently running 4.1.9.2 without an issue (no crashes, FCs etc).
Many users complain on the XDA-Developers forum about issues, but I truly believe that if people followed some basics, there would not be so many problems in the first place.
I have now upgraded from 4.0.4 to 4.1.7 to 4.1.8 and then 4.1.9 without having to do a wipe (and suffering data loss / re-install) by doing the following:
- Clear cache before installs: (boot into recovery and drop to terminal)
mount system
mount system/sd
rm -rf system/sd/dalvik-cache
umount system/sd
umount system
reboot recovery
- Upgrade to the latest firmware
- Reboot (be patient – it will take about 10 minutes. you can always remote attach via ./adb shell logcat to watch progress)
- Wait (don’t touch the phone until remote logcat has finished)
- Reboot into recovery and drop into terminal
- Fix permissions via fix_permissions
- Reboot & Enjoy the new firmware
Android: Partitioning your 16GB card
Posted by GNaschenweng on September 15, 2009 2 comments
MAJOR WARNING: The instructions below will wipe your SD-card for good. So make sure that you want to do this. (Follow my backup instructions just in case)
If you are running Cyanogen or a similar firmware which requires 3 partitions (FAT32, EXT3/4 and Swap), then execute the following commands which in short does the following: repartition your SD-card with a FAT32, EXT3 and swap partition and then convert EXT3 to EXT4:
parted /dev/block/mmcblk0
print
rm 1
rm 2 (if you have a 2nd partition)
rm 3 (if you have a 3rd partition)
Then run this for a 16GB SD-card:
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 15416
mkpartfs primary ext2 15416 15916
mkpartfs primary linux-swap 15916 15948
Then run this for a 8GB SD-card:
mkpartfs primary fat32 0 7425
mkpartfs primary ext2 7425 7937
mkpartfs primary linux-swap 7937 7969
Complete the partitioning and convert to EXT4:
upgrade_fs
tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
e2fsck -fpDC0 /dev/block/mmcblk0p2
The above should be done from the recovery-console (turn off phone and then Home + Power-button). If you use App2SD all your apps will be gone and some of the widgets will fail. The above is the perfect way of starting out fresh. I would recommend doing a Wipe as well as install of the latest firmware afterwards.
