Endless possibilities with Android!

Getting back to my story...

As I said I was missing some kind of notification for my phone without having to turn on my screen... That's when BLN came into play... It wasn't immediately available when I got my Galaxy S II, but after a few weeks one of the great developers from XDA, Hacre, came up with a kernel that made it possible for this great phone to be even better... Eventually Hacre (who has a great sense of humor, and if you click on his name you'll understand, he's pretty much like the comic strip on this link) got fed up with the complaining and repeated questions and simply quit developing for the GSII... :-( but other developers picked up the slack...

And now the biggest flaw in this otherwise great device was fixed!!! For it to work you need to get the BLN Control from neldar, which lets you personalize your Back Light Notifications... Now it was a matter of keeping the phone up to date with the VillainROM...but wait a second, that's boring...can't I change anything???? Well, of course you can, one of the best features of VillainROM is VillainTweaks! It offers the kind of customization that android is all about to me...

It offered some interesting tweaks in earlier versions of VillainROM, which are not available anymore... One of them shows me how much you can change WHATEVER you want in your Android device...
My mother, about two or three weeks after I did, got a Galaxy S II for herself and she didn't like one thing about it - the positioning of the power button - for a very simple and feminine reason, when she puts her phone in her purse the power button got pressed by whatever was in her purse and the phone turned on, which obviously is a big waste of battery... So how to fix what seems like an unfixable design flaw??? Well, anything is possible with Android!! All you need to do is edit a file and it's fixed! Yes it's that simple! And it's not a complicated computer programming kind of editing. All you have to do is erase the word WAKE from the file! Granted the file is quite hidden, but if you use Root Explorer, or some other file explorer that lets you mess around with your system files, it's not hard. If you want to do it you have to be rooted and do this:

- Open Root Explorer
- navigate to /system/usr/keylayout
- click and hold on "sec_key.kl"
- click on "Open in Text Editor"
- erase the WAKE word from the line which you don't want your phone to be awaken, be it the home or power button

- click the menu button then save and exit and reboot your phone

- DONE!!

It's highly recommended that you backup this file and if possible the whole system, but it never caused me any problems...

PS: If you don't have Root Explorer I highly recommend buying it, it's by far my favorite file explorer on Android!

And we're BACK!!

Hi guys, sorry it's been so long but we're getting back to action. And I say we because there's a new contributor to the blog. A great friend of mine Young Soo Moon. Moon has had his fair share of Android devices, including a tablet so he'll have a lot to tell you guys...

On the last post I was talking about getting Android Open Source Project on my Xperia X10, it did a lot for my device but it was never 100%, never reached a stable enough state to make me happy about it. So after about a year with my X10 it was time to move on... My first choice at the time was the Sony Xperia Arc. It was a beautiful device with good hardware and arrived with an up to date version of android. But it wasn't to be... I went to my operator's store but the VIP section of the store wasn't available because it was a weekend. So I had to wait a little longer, and then in the following week I spotted this article on the blog from my operator (I'm sorry it's only in Portuguese), which means that the Galaxy SII was coming to Brazil and more importantly to my operator!!! By then the Samsung Galaxy SII was the best cell phone available in the world, I wanted it badly and on top of everything, being the thinnest, lightest and faster phone out there it had an UNLOCKED BOOTLOADER!!! In case you don't know why that's important having a locked bootloader was the biggest reason the X10 developers had problems doing anything good for it. So on top of being a top of the line phone it was going to be easy to develop for!!! In other words it's pretty much everything you want in an android device!

So two weeks after that I went to my mobile operator's store to get one for me. I still had a month and a half left on my contract so I had to haggle a bit to get a good price for it. I managed to get it for about U$200,00 which was pretty much my budget for a new phone so I went ahead and bought it. WOW!!! Was I impressed, the phone was ridiculously fast and looked great, the screen looked incredible! But it was riddled with bloatware, but now I knew how to make this device even better.
So I got home and immediately dived head first on XDA forums and found the ROM that looked to be the best one available VillainROM, eventually I discovered that pulser was a recognized developer with great track record on XDA already. So I knew I'd found a keeper. I installed it and then it seems I was too excited about it and forgot to wipe anything when I first installed... That was a big newbie mistake and it caused the phone.apk - which is basically the app that makes your phone a phone - to force close constantly!! After freaking out a bit I calmed down and did it again, wiping everything now, and this time everything worked great!! I had the best phone in the world running the best ROM available for it!!!!
Life was good, but nothing is perfect, one of my favorite features from the X10 was missing completely from the GSII, the notification led... And then BLN came... (Back Light Notification) but that's a story for the next post...

PS: In this time I've been away I got myself an android tablet the Asus Transformer Prime and still have my Samsung Galaxy SII and I'm looking forward for the next Samsung flagship device... http://www.tgeltaayehxnx.com/

PPS: I know it's a little late for the party but if you haven't tried Temple Run you should try it! It's a great and addictive game and it's free!!

Android Open Source Project!!!

My Xperia X10 was my main phone, mainly because of better battery life and a more comfortable form factor. But after I got CyanogenMod 7 on my Motorola Milestone the battery life gap was closing and fast!
The biggest flaw of the X10 though was the painfully outdated Operating System (OS). It was still running Android 1.6 Donut! I had Android 2.3 Gingerbread running in my, older and not flagship phone, Milestone!
Something had to be done about that, and it was a long time and after a lot of broken promises and delays from Sony Ericsson that finally Android 2.1 arrived to the Xperia! Yes Android 2.1!!! That's not exactly ideal but it's much better than 1.6. From 1.6 to 2.1 there's a great leap performance wise and with battery life.
But right after getting Android 2.1 to my Xperia it was slower than when I had 1.6 on it! Yes, again Sony dropped the ball and really bloated up the OS making it sluggish and disappointing...
But then the X10 developers started to pick up the ball that Sony dropped...
The XDA forums had the answers again, and some great developers started tweaking the 2.1 release from Sony to get a good experience on our phones. One of the best 2.1 ROM's can be found here.
But that wasn't what we wanted, we wanted more, we always want MORE!!! So the great Jerpelea and the great zdzihu started working together and managed to get Android 2.2 Froyo working on our beloved Xperia!! That was great news... Although 2.3 is a nice upgrade there are no major features that you don't have on 2.2. 2.2 on the other hand had Flash support that 2.1 lacked!! That's big, just ask any of your friends that have an iPhone or an iPad that can't access some sites because they don't have flash...
But that wasn't all they did, it wasn't a Sony Ericsson 2.2, with bloatware, Timescape, Mediascape and other things that slow your phone more that it helps, it was Android Open Source Project!!! That means it was a clean, nothing but pure Android!! That's what the Milestone had when I bought it almost a year ago by then, but that was a much lighter better looking phone with a better hardware with it!! This ROM completely revitalized my X10 and made using it an enjoyable experience again!! And that was not all, for now I could change pretty much anything I wanted to make my phone look and act the way I wanted it to...

PS: Sorry for the long gap between posts, I'll try and get back to a post a day, but I've been a bit busy lately...
PPS: The app I'm recommending today is Total Commander for Android, it's still beta but it's one of the greatest file managers for Android out there, it's free and has no ads!! Click here for a more detailed description.
PPPS: I still have Google+ invites if any of you guys want it...

Now the real fun starts!

I've managed to get paid apps to work on my phones and I've got root access, now it's time to start messing around big time!
I've started really reading the XDA  forums and started to understand how Android works. I had a Motorola Milestone with Android 2.2 (Froyo) and my Xperia X10 with Android 1.6 (Donut). The Milestone had stock android and was running smoothly, but the battery life was very bad. I had real problems getting through the day with it. The solution came from one of the greatest apps I know in the market: Titanium Backup, with it I could freeze and uninstall system apps. Freezing an app is a less definitive solution to uninstalling. It stops the app from working without actually removing it from your system folder, so if you have a problem after freezing an app you can just defrost it...
So I started freezing the bloatware that was installed on my phone. After I froze a hole lot of apps I've never used and some lame games my battery nearly doubled!! Now was time to address the X10 problems...
The Xperia was laggy and also had a bad battery life, but this time the biggest blame was on the Timescape interface, if sucks battery like there's no tomorrow!! So I froze a hole lot of it, the Timescape app, the Mediascape, and other pointless apps. But the one thing I froze that made the biggest difference to me was the face recognition for the camera, I never used and it worked non stop on the background eating away my battery. The full list of apps to remove after you get root access can be found here. Now that I have a much better battery life with my phones there's no way to improve it....or is there?? That's when I found out about custom ROMs...

PS: You can only freeze apps with the pro version of Titanium Backup. It's not the cheapest app on the market but you'll not regret getting it for a second!

So THAT's how you do it...

Now that I managed to find this great source of knowledge, my beloved XDA forums, I could start messing around to try and make my Android phones better.
One of the first things I started reading about was root access. For those of you who don't know what that is I'll try to explain in a simple way. Root access is what you need to change your android device in deeper ways, it's almost the same as having the freedom to change any file you want in the Windows system folders... For those that want the more technical approach this link has a nice explanation. At first I was put off by the complex tutorials and DANGER signs all over. But then I found this app: the Universal AndRoot, which was supposed to be safe to use, no danger of bricking your phone. So I got my Milestone and tried it......... And voilà!! I had root access to my Motorola Milestone! With that I got more confident about messing around a bit more with my phones. So I got my Xperia X10 and installed the same program and also got root access to my X10!! Now things were starting to look good. With one little detail left, I still couldn't get paid apps...
But then I found this: the Market Enabler. This nifty app allows you to "fake" your location so the Market believes that you're in the US or Europe, or any other place that has paid apps! This app still works for those of you guys who live in countries without paid apps or even without Market!
Since then I could now use my phones to their full potential!!

PS: From now on I'll try to squeeze at least one tip on each post to help you guys, especially those new to android!
PPS: I've made an app for my Blog and it's already in the Market, you have the link right under the title and here is the QR code, enjoy!