I know that a previous post of mine talks about the infamous eMMC problem where the chip will burn out, however looking over some of my notes on eMMC chip problems I did come across a couple of things I noted in regards to possibly finding a solution to a couple of the issues.

 

Now the usual way we know we have an eMMC problem is that we get:

 

E:Can’t mount /cache/recovery/command

E:Can’t mount /cache/recovery/log

E:Can’t open /cache/recovery/log

E:Can’t mount /cache/recovery/last_log

E:Can’t open /cache/recovery/last_log

 

appearing as a debug message, this is actually the full “cache” partition being corrupted. Obviously the majority of rom chefs have run into this problem many times and myself included I have seen that message on more than one occasion over different handsets.

 

Usually there isn’t a fix for any error like that, once the cache partition is corrupted you really cannot recover from that, it is a catastrophic failure. The only way I have been able to fix this a couple of times and that was by immediately removing the battery and letting it sit for a couple of minutes before putting the battery back in.

Then if you boot directly into the boot loader and hit into recovery mode.

Now if you haven’t received any major errors you cahce partition should now be formatted as ext3, so if you cycle through the menus and format it to ext4.

Do a full wipe of everything, including factory reset, davlik cache and battery stats

Flash the rom of your choice again (now make sure it is the correct rom for the phone) and hope for the best that it works.

 

Now hopefully that potentially can resolve your problems, if not then you will probably have a serious eMMC problem and potentially will have bricked your phone.

 

I will say this method has worked 9 out of 10 times with me and I still have these notes saved for the next time it occurs.

 

Key things to remember, always track changes in the rom – see if there is a good user base and check them against other more popular roms to see the differences and benefits if there are any.

Of all the custom built ROMs I have used, on a majority of Android built phones I have noticed one common element/problem. They all seem to have specific problems when attempting the GPS fix and this is with the already downloaded AGPS data. Now the problem lies within one file within the final build of the cooked roms, probably a very important file that is used when creating the satellite fix. The file in question is the gps.conf file which lies within the main OS, luckily it can be changed.

 

Now the reason the file needs changing is because the majority of custom roms (especially non-sense roms) are keyed with the incorrect NTP server set. So the solution is quite simple, yet you still need to be an advanced user obviously.

 

Firstly get over to http://www.pool.ntp.org/en/ and find the most active server closest to your area.

Make sure you have a file manager installed on your phone which will allow you to edit specific files.

Navigate the file manager to /system/etc/gps.conf – Edit this file and change the NTP server to the one that you found was the closest in your area.

Save the changes you have made to the file.

Reboot your phone.

 

Now your phone should pick up the config when it boots, but what you can do to assist it is to reset the AGPS data that would have been downloaded previously. To do this you will need to download an app from the market place. It is free and the one I have used quite a lot is a tool called “GPS Status & Toolbox”. Once downloaded if you go into tools then manage a-gps. If you hit reset and then again fo into tools and manage a-gps, then hit download.

This will refresh the assisted GPS data that your phone/device is supposed to download automatically when “trying” to make a gps fix.

 

Hopefully that will help kick start the GPS and it should be a lot more responsive in getting a fix. Key point here is to remember to reboot otherwise no changes will take place!!

Everyone wants to run custom built roms on their phone – well any smart person does anyway! Custom built roms usually have added features like over clocking, memory management and less bloat ware than what is installed as standard.

 

Firstly to be able to flash your phone with a custom rom build you will need to find one. You will need to do some research on this one. You will need to find out what is compatible with your phone and also have an idea of what you want to achieve by making the changes.

 

Once you have your rom, and download it to your desktop you will need to rename it to “update.zip”. Next you will need to put the update.zip file onto the root directory of your SD card.

 

Turn your phone off and then boot your phone into recovery mode (fastboot needs to be disabled)

 

You will need to perform a full wipe/format and clear all the caches. These options are under the wipe option in the recovery menu.

 

Next choose “install from sdcard/zip file” and then choose the “update.zip” option from the menu.

 

Once the flash process if competed all you need to do is reboot the phone. The phone will take about 10-15 minutes to boot up after a new flash and once that is done you will need to set up your accounts again and that’s it.

When you first buy your android phone (and most probably every other phone) it will run a “radio Interface Layer” usually between the Android OS and the Radio device itself. This way they can communicate between each other so that the main functions of the phone can actually work.

 

However in some cases, and if you live a little bit on the edge then you may want to update this image with a more new up to date one. People frequently do this to avoid signal drop outs that happen to them or just general mobile phone signal problems. Majority of time these fixes are released in the next OTA update however if you are running custom builds you obviously won’t be able to get the OTA updates.

 

Now just to mark this with a disclaimer. If you actually geographically have signal problems then this will not fix them. This fix should only be performed if there is an up to date radio for your device and also if you are experiencing signal drop outs where you know there shouldn’t be. I will not be held liable for anything you follow out of this guide, you can brick your phone by incorrectly flashing the wrong radio. Make sure you are aware of the consequences if you do something wrong and that you know what you are going before you go any further.

 

1. Download the updated radio zip image
2. Place the downloaded file onto your microSD card and rename it PG88IMG.zip
3. Reboot your phone into the HBOOT menu (fastboots needs to be disabled)
4. Once in HBOOT you will be prompted if you want to flash the new image to the phone – select yes
5. After the process if complete you should just need to reboot your device and that’s it

 

Once your phone has booted (if you carried out the steps correctly) you should have a new radio image working on your phone. Once it has booted and everything is working, you will need to remove the image file from your microSD card so that it doesn’t keep trying to flash the image on every boot.

Nandroid backups are a fairly simple solution allowing you to avoid loosing all the data on your phone. A nandroid backup is a specific backup type which stores a “full image” of the phone on your memory card allowing you to restore this image at a later date if required.

 

Now you will require a rooted phone and a custom recovery flashed to your boot for this to be able to work – however I somewhat anticipate that you already have this if you are looking at this article.

You will obviously also require that you have a memory card to store your backup image on – a full backup can range completely in size. It really all depends what you have on the phone.

 

If you have all of the above then the process of creation and restoration is reasonably straight forward.

 

Firstly you will want to boot the phone into the recovery menu, and navigate to the backup/restore section in the menu.

If you enter into that section you should be presented with a range of choices, usually somewhat along the lines of:

 

• Nand Backup
• Nand + Ext Backup
• Nand Restore
• Bart Backup
• Bart Restore

The option you are looking for is “Nand Backup” (or “Nand Ext Backup” if you have a partitioned SD Card).  Confirm this selection and the task should begin.

The backup should take around 5 minutes to fully complete – but again this completely depends on how many apps and how much data you have on the phone.

Once it is finished you will have a full Nandroid backup on your memory card to be able to restore if needed.

 

Restoring the backup is much the same as the process above with a couple extra points.

 

Firstly you are going to need to boot into the recovery menu, however you will need to do a wipe on the phone/device. So you will need to select the wipe menu, and then “Wipe Data/Factory Reset” and also the “wipe Dalvik-Cache”. Doing this just clears the phone of any software problems that could be replicated onto the backup when you restore it.

 

Next you will need to go into the backup/restore menu and select nand restore. Once selected you will need to select the Device ID which should begin with a “HT”. This ensures that you are restoring the correct backup on the correct device.

 

Select your most recent backup that should be on screen and that’s that. You will probably have to wait at least 5 minutes on newer phones probably longer on older android phones untill the full restore has been done.

 

It will show as completed on screen when done and all you need to do after that is hit reboot and your device/phone should be back in working order the exact same as when you made the backup.

 

One tip I will give you and that is that if you are performing regular backups, clear your legacy backups or move them onto an additional storage device. You will also most probably want to store your most recent backup on another storage device as well incase your phone is stolen or lost. This way you can put it back to the way it was before everything was lost.

 

 

 

 

Ok so we all do it because its the only way we really wake up our HTC phones. Pressing the power button will make an interrupt to wake up the phone and take it out of sleep mode. Now the only problem is that the power button can become over-used and can become broken over time.

 

So why allow the use of the volume button to wake up the phone as well? Well from stock this option is not given, however – this can be modified and pretty simply.

 

Firstly you will want to find a file within your build called “android.policy.jar”  called KeyguardViewMediator.smali and you will want to open it with the notepad or something similar.

 

Once opened you will need the line with ” .method private isWakeKeyWhenKeyGuardShowing(I)Z” and delete the 0x18 &0x19 lines.

 

Save your edited file and repackage your build.

 

Once built flash onto your device and hopefully you should now have a phone that can be woken by using the volume buttons as well as the power buttons!

 

Happy modding!!

 

 

I have recently the pleasure of being able to play around with a couple of laptops, netbooks and tablets that have had built in GSM/3G modems. However, over the past couple of years we have been given the USB 3G modem which gives nearly every person with one of these the ability to connect to the internet on the go using a laptop or netbook. I have used these previously, and have run into several issues regarding these dongles. The first and probably most important one is that they are not built to last. They have a great deal of movement when placed into the socket which gives you connection issues and a multitude of problems when moving around as they potentailly can break in two.

Looking at the alternative which I have been usindg and these are usually built into the device. They work the exact same as your mobile phone (to a point anyway) they are usually joint via a series of connectors onto the main board of the system, and usually consist of a sim card reader and a bunch of fancy electornics that allows the connection to happen and also a antenna or aerial.

These aircards are by far superior to the 3G modems, they allow you not to worry about knocking the dongle out the device, or having some form of driver or connection issue. Usuaully with an Aircard you get better signal strength and better configurability. Aircards are great for systems you want to take with you on the go, a laptop fitted to a car mount so that you can track specific taget zones when driving. Seen in Storm chasers, majority of radar data is pulled using a Aircard to download the latest radar images for specific target areas. I have used these sort of systems in the past, but instead of chaasing storms I have used them for planning routes and journeys to avoid traffic on the go. They also give you the additional entertainment value unlike what a standard sat nav unit would give you.

The biggest technical adavnce regarding these form of systems has to be the tablet computers that have been launched over the past couple of years. iPads, Kindles, Android Tabs, and a wide range of other tablet machines all now come with built in 3G modems allowing the users to take out a pay monthly internet contract or even a pay as you go tariff to allow you to connect on the go. Maximising productivity, performance and overall satisfaction.

 

Tips for the future, if you are going to invest in one of these systems get one that has been well reviewed, works well and allows you to configure it to whatever specification you want it to. Also please remember to be safe 😉

I’m sure we are all aware of the famous IOS screenshot capability and how it came on all versions of the iphone without any sort of manipulation required. Well now we can rest at ease fellow android lovers, as turns out android have started to put it into the main distribution.

Now I am unsure as to how far this new reach goes, but as far as I am aware any android releases that include sense 3.0 or higher will include this new feature. It can be activated by pressing the power button and the home button (much like IOS) but of course we all now that android is better.

The screenshot is stored within your photo directory/gallery where you can obviously go in and review it, look at it or share it whatever really takes your fancy.

Overall this sort of development is a big step up. I remember when I had a G1, and the Hero – where you had to actually have the phone rooted before you could even consider taking screenshots. Even with the phone rooted it turned into a bigger pain trying to run the app than what it was worth.

Maybe this is a turning point. I’m not going to say that Android was missing loads of points and it was awful, because that is far from the truth. Overall the android OS is one of the leaders in its field and it is something to be proud of. Maybe now we can get just those little things that it was missing previous – you never know

Recently I bought this android tablet really look forward to the power and mobility it gave, and I was so surprised. It didn’t just fill me with joy using it, I use it pretty much everyday and what excitement I get from using it. I currently have the 32GB model, quite a large jump from the 16GB one at quite a price – but well worth it.

So I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t try to root the thing. Luckily the tablet came with a version of Gingerbread on it, and luckily with a little bit of hunting I was able to find a modified apk that would allow me to gain full root access.

The modified apk you are looking to get is called GingerBreak and it is a relatively easy and painless process to getting things moving.

You will first need to download GingerBreak and move it to the SD card in your tablet.

Next ensure that USB debugging is on and that install from unknown sources is ticked.

Open your favored file explorer app on your tablet and locate the apk file

Execute the apk file to allow it to install to your device

Now run the GingerBreak app, and allow it to run the root procedure.

As long as there have been no problems you should now happily be the proud owner of a rooted Acer Iconia A500

Disclaimer: I take no responsibilty for anything you may have caused to yourself or your hardware. This is written as an advice or a guide. Every situation is different and you follow these steps at your own risk***