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Updating the radio on your Nexus One

Fixes, Misc, Nexus One, Roms, Root No Responses »

Feb 142011

Updating your radio on your handset can sometimes provide better coverage or faster speeds when using data. You can usually find these radios scattered all over the net, but for our update on the Nexus One (N1), it can be downloaded from Cyanogenmod. We’ll be using the 05.12.00.08 radio upgrade from 4.06.

Although it states this .zip is flashable via your favorite recovery, it’s much easier and safer to do it via fastboot using adb. Assuming you have some knowledge of how adb works, go through the following steps for this update.

Download the .zip from CM’s website and extract the radio.img file to your adb/tools directory.
With your N1 powered off, boot into your bootloader (vol down + power on).
Connect a micro usb cable from the N1 to your computer.
Navigate to your adb/tools directory via a command prompt in your Windows installation. Issue the command “fastboot devices“. You will see your device listed.
Stop if you do not see your device listed. You will need to make sure drivers for your N1 have been installed and/or loaded correctly at this point.
If you do see your device listed, issue the command “fastboot flash radio radio.img“. You will see something like the following: sending ‘radio’ (26112 KB)… OKAY [ 3.866s] writing ‘radio’… OKAY [ 31.912s] finished. total time: 35.778s
Reboot your handset and you are all done. You can verify the radio has taken by going back into your bootloader or by going to your About Phone section in Settings.

Fix the Viewsonic G-tablet wake up lag

Fixes, Gtablet, Kernels, Roms, Root, Viewsonic No Responses »

Jan 132011

One of the annoying problems that plagued the Viewsonic G-tablet was the awful wake up lag that would creep up randomly. Once the G-tablet (Gtab) went to sleep, it would downclock the CPU only to keep it at low speeds even upon wake. So one minute you are cruising from app to app, the next minute everything is crawling.

This was an issue in the stock kernel, but since Viewsonic released the source, the wonderful devs over at XDA have managed to fix the problem with their custom work.

The easiest way to fix this would be to root your Gtab and install either TnT Lite or Vegan. The kernels have been patched in these latest builds and I can confirm using Vegan that the wake up lag is gone for good. You can of course just load a custom kernel, which you can find over in the XDA Gtab Dev forum.

Fixing the Market on the Viewsonic Gtablet

Fixes, Gtablet, Root, Viewsonic 3 Responses »

Dec 082010

I’m going to be posting up a few Viewsonic Gtablet based fixes/hacks to make it fully usable. Without these fixes, your Gtablet will be severely crippled by utter crap known as the stock TnT OS. Today’s quick how-to will be on how to enable all apps to show up on the Android Market.

Without this fix, opening the Market will show no apps available for your Gtablet.

The method outlined here requires something like Root Explorer or if you are familiar with the Terminal Emulator, you’ll be fine as well. You will also need Titanium Backup, you can download it from the developer’s website. Root access is a requirement.

- Open the Market and confirm that you do not see any apps
- Open Root Explorer
- Navigate to /system and mount it read/write
- Open in Text Edit the build.prop file
- Find the line that starts with ro.build.fingerprint and change it to say ro.build.fingerprint=samsung/SGH-T849/SGH-T849/SGH-T849:2.2/FROYO/UVJJB:user/release-keys (this is the fingerprint used by the Samsung Galaxy Tablet)
- Close the file and it will back up your old file automatically
- Go to Settings and then applications
- Find Google Services Framework and clear cache and then force close it
- Find Market and clear cache and then force close it
- Before rebooting, in Titanium Backup application, go into “Backup/Restore“, look for “Google Services Framework 2.2“, click on it and then choose “Wipe Data“.
- Go back and open the Market and it will pop up an error, this is good
- Reboot and let it log into your wifi
- Wait 5 minutes and then proceed to open the Market, you should now see all the apps that are available

Get ADB to recognize the T-mobile G2/Vision

Fixes, Hardware, Misc No Responses »

Nov 182010

If you are in need of pushing, pulling, or performing some other Android Device Bridge (adb) duties on your T-mobile G2, here’s how to make your PC recognize your device. By plugging in your USB cable to your PC, you’ll most likely see the following when issuing the “adb devices” command.

C:\Users\Andy\adb\tools>adb devices List of devices attached

The problem is that your PC does not have the correct drivers loaded. This just means your Windows based computer doesn’t know what to do with that phone of yours when connected. If you opened up your device manager, you’ll see an adb device with an exclamation point indicating failure to load drivers.

Assuming you already have adb tools downloaded, grab the usb drivers. This will appear under your “tools” directory. Now open up “android_winusb.inf” with notepad (or something equivalent) and add the following.

Right below “[Google.NTx86]” and “[Google.NTamd64]” add:

;T-Mobile G2 %SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C91 %CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_0BB4&PID_0C91&MI_01 ;

Now go back into device manager and perform the driver update option on that mysterious adb device we spoke about earlier. This will allow both 32bit and 64bit Windows PCs to see your G2 after it has been installed. These drivers were tested on Windows 7 Pro 64bit and confirmed to be working.

Force your launcher to stay in memory

Apps, Droid, Fixes, Root 4 Responses »

Sep 192010

If you use ADW, Launcher Pro, or Zeam, you most likely have encountered the dreaded home screen redraw problem. We dove into some tips on stopping Launcher Pro from redrawing a while back. That seemed to have helped a few people, but some didn’t see any improvement.

I recently saw a post on the Launcher Pro forums that showed a way for rooted users to force your launcher to stay in memory.

The below steps are written for Terminal Emulator usage. I assume it can be adapted for use with Root Explorer or something similar.

Switch user to root by typing su
Output the contents of this file: cat /data/local.prop. If you get an error about file not existing, then proceed to step 3. Otherwise, jump to step 4.
Echo (add) the following line to your local.prop file: echo ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1 > /data/local.prop. Reboot your phone and you are all set.
If step 2 produced the contents of the file, check to see if you have the ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1. If not, use a text editor to add it in at the end of the file. Reboot and you are all set.

Hopefully this will stop the annoying redraws that occurs not only in Launcher Pro, but other replacements.

Angry Birds not loading on the Droid Incredible

Apps, Droid, Fixes, Misc No Responses »

Sep 142010

Here’s another quick easy fix for your Droid Incredible (we’re on a roll). Rovio recently released their popular mobile game Angry Birds to the Android world to the delight of many Android users. However, some Dinc owners are not having much luck after downloading the game.

The issue a lot of people seem to be having is that as soon as the game starts loading, it exits out by itself to your homescreen. A tad annoying, but there’s a simple fix for it. As soon as the loading screen comes on (as shown in the above image), start tapping your screen. It does not matter where you tap, just keep tapping and it will bring you to the main menu. Subsequent game launches will not need this little fix — at least I haven’t seen a homescreen crash out yet.

Now go and slingshot your birds

Fixing custom kernel lockups on the Droid Incredible

Droid, Fixes, Incredible, Kernels, Roms, Root No Responses »

Sep 112010

The stock HTC kernel will work for the majority of Droid Incredible users out there. However, if you are in the market to cut down on some battery usage and gain some extra functionality, a custom kernel may be what you need.

There are a few custom kernels available for the Dinc like Hydra and KingKlick which provide overclocking and undervolting options.

This quick guide assumes you are rooted, know how to use ADB, can work your way around Clockworkmod recovery, understand that Nandroid backups are vital, and have some common sense.

Now the problem with installing custom kernels is that there is a good chance they won’t work for your phone. Not all Dincs are made the same, so what may work for others may not work for you. So with that said, sometimes you’ll find yourself loading a kernel, reboot, and find yourself stuck on the white HTC Incredible screen. This does NOT mean you bricked your phone — don’t freak out.

Before doing any kind of custom work, make sure you perform a Nandroid backup.

For my Dinc, I can’t load any Kingklick kernels. Every BFS and CFS version he puts out makes my Dinc lock up at the white HTC screen. After some digging, I may (or may not) have bad memory blocks on my Dinc. So when I try to flash various sized kernels, it sometimes fails and causes a lockup upon reboot.

So now that you are stuck on the white screen, there’s an easy way to fix it with your Nandroid backup and ADB. All you need to do is restore the boot image from your known good backup.

Reboot into recovery (hold volume down + power, then select the recovery option) by doing a battery pull.
Go into backup and restore -> advanced restore -> select restore boot.
Do not reboot your device yet.

I’ve noticed if I rebooted at this point, even the stock kernel would cause the white screen lock up. The reason for this is the extra modules installed in /system/lib/modules from the previous kernel install attempt. Restoring the boot image will not erase the new module(s) or restore your old one(s).

The next steps assume you have ADB access and know how to use it.

Connect your USB cable to your Dinc.
Go into the mount/unmount menu and mount /system.
In an ADB shell, issue the following command: rm /system/lib/modules/*.ko
Your previous custom kernel modules should now be deleted. To verify, you can do a list: ls /system/lib/modules
(Optional) If you have your module(s) saved to your /sdcard, you can now copy them back into /system/lib/modules.

Now you can go ahead and reload, via the update.zip method, another kernel of your choice. If you want to revert back to stock, you can grab the stock kernel (with undervolt goodness) off of Hydra’s website. For my Dinc, the only custom kernel that worked were the Hydra releases. I’m now cruising at 1.15Ghz without any problems.

You can also restore your complete Nandroid backup (or the boot and system backups) if all you want to do is get back up and running. The method outlined above is a better way to “clean up” if you are testing out various kernels and trying to get them to boot.

How to make Adfree work on the Droid Incredible

Apps, Droid, Fixes, Incredible, Root No Responses »

Sep 082010

Droid Incredible users who want to use Adfree may have a tough time due to the app not being able to write to the correct hosts file. There are two ways around it and both steps require you to be root. From the thread over at the Incredible Forums:

Search for Adfree Android on the market
Install and run
allow it to download and install new hosts file, it will copy it to your sdcard and try to replace /system/etc/hosts but fail (it should reboot the phone shortly)
Phone may reboot, this is fine, don’t worry. if it doesn’t reboot, check your SD card for a file simply named “hosts”. if it’s there, then continue on.
Power off the phone and hold Volume Down and power.
Use volume down to select recovery
In clockwork recovery volume down to “partitions menu” and hit the track pad to select
Select “mount /system”, “mount /sdcard” and “mount /data”
Plug in your usb cord and open a command line on your pc
enter adb shell and type: cp /sdcard/hosts /data/data/hosts (This copies the AdFree hosts file from the SD Card to the /data partition, where it can be edited by AdFree)
mv /system/etc/hosts /system/etc/hosts.bak (This renames the current hosts file, rather than deleting it, should you ever want to remove AdFree and return to the original hosts file)
ln -s /data/data/hosts /system/etc/hosts (This creates a symbolic link, which allows AdFree to edit the hosts file stored in /data while allowing the OS to use the file as if it were stored in /system. You won’t need to reboot into recovery each time you want to update the hosts file!)

If this is a bit too much to handle, there’s an easier way. Head over to the Unrevoked page and install Unrevoked Forever. This will set your phone’s security level to S-OFF, which will allow Adfree to work. Enjoy!

Make your Motorola Droid charger longer

Fixes No Responses »

Aug 112010

As many Motorola Droid users know, the included micro-usb cable is really short. Unless you have an extension cord, it’s most likely not going to reach your nightstand for bed time charging.

You can of course grab a new 6 foot cable from Best Buy or any major retailer. However, expect to pay almost $30 for it!

I prefer going directly to an online retailer that sells a huge amount of cables, Monoprice. I’ve shopped here for years and they sell quality cables for just about everything at ridiculous prices. I found a 15 foot micro-usb for a whopping $2.02. Yes, two pennies over two bucks. You can’t even find this length at most brick and mortars. Shipping was only about $2.50 to New York. You just can’t beat this quick “fix” for the price.

Make SetCPU settings stick

Apps, Fixes, Root No Responses »

Aug 042010

After upgrading to CM6RC2, I noticed my SetCPU settings were not sticking after a reboot. It would revert back to the default CPU speed of the kernel and clear my Advanced settings (32000, 50, 0, 0). A simple tap on the speed bar in SetCPU and it’ll bounce right back up, but this was annoying for someone who flashes roms and reboots constantly.

To fix this, you’ll need flash su (superuser) from the supplied version 2.2 in the rom with version 2.1. After loading up your rom, download su 2.1 below and save it somewhere on your sdcard. Then reboot into recovery and install the zip via the update.zip method.

You’ll now just need to save your default speed in SetCPU one time and it’ll stick after a reboot.

su versions 2.1 – Login Required

Update – SetCPU version 2.0.2 appears to have fixed this problem!

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