Tips & Tutorials - 16/21 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Sep

Android Central User Makes A Great Tutorial About Theming Android

Posted by Brad Ganley in Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

There is talk of rooting and ROMs throughout this article. If you aren't familiar with the process or its pros and cons, you can check out our primers here:

Sprintgirl, a user in the Android Central forums, has put together a tutorial for people who want to start theming their rooted Android phones. While the process is a bit, well, ugly, to put it nicely, this tutorial should help to clear some of the fog from the process. The tutorial uses the EVO 4G as it's target device but, as we know, Android is basically the same across all different phones so the process will remain more or less the same.

Sep

[Review] Battery Life Still Crappy? Try Doubling Your Juice With An Extended Battery. We Review A $12 3000mAh And A $63 3500mAh For EVO 4G

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Other Reviews, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 26th, 2011

Welcome to part 2 of my article series centered around getting that precious time between charges of your Android devices to be as long as possible. I'm reviewing EVO 4G products because that's the handset I personally own, but there is nothing stopping you from extrapolating my findings and exploring similar products made for your own devices.

The EVO comes with a battery containing a similar or maybe slightly larger amount of juice than most phones - 1500mAh. A portable powerhouse, my EVO can eat through its full charge long before the day ends, especially if I'm using my favorite WiFi tethering app for a few hours.

Sep

[Hands-On] Android Remote Notifier For Your Win/Linux/Mac Desktop: For When Your Phone Isn't Notify-y Enough

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Most nights that I'm at home, my son is sound asleep in the next room. To avoid waking him up, I put my phone into silent mode faithfully every night at 9pm and, subsequently, miss a whole lot of calls and text messages. That's bad for two reasons:

I miss what could potentially be important information or, as in most cases, good times.
It makes me look like a jerk who never answers his phone and ignores his friends.

So I thought to myself "I'm on my computer all the time, I should make an app that puts my notification on my computer screen so I never miss this stuff." Turns out, somebody already made that app and it is as awesome as I had hoped.

Aug

Modder's Monday: Hacking Without Hacking - A Guide to Customizing Your Android Device Without Voiding Your Warranty

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in App Reviews, Applications, Development, Editorials, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Modder’s Monday is a weekly column about rooting, hacking, and other forms of modifying Android written by Jaroslav Stekl, a man who spends his days coding, hacking, hiking, and of course, writing for Android Police.

One of the many things that I love about Android, especially after spending several years with an iPhone, is how customizable it is - right out of the box. You can change your keyboard, tweak the status bar to make it work any way you like, change apps’ icons, and even install home replacements that alter how your homescreen works. The best part about all this?

Aug

EVO Owners Benchmark 10 Custom ROMs, 1 Stock ROM

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Sprint, Tips & Tutorials

This has got to be one of the most useful things I’ve seen in my tenure here, although I may be biased because I own an EVO. XDA forum member nief1313 is in the (very slow) process of compiling the results of testing and benchmarking a ton of EVO ROMs. When I say a ton, I mean 11:

Stock Froyo
CyanogenMod 6 RC2
DamageControl 3.5
Fresh EVO 3.1.0.1
BakedSnack 1.2.5
Burnt Droid 1.0
EViO 2 Series v1.0.2
EViO 2 Series v1.1
Ava-FroyoV3RevA
OMJ’s v2.1
FroYo Fusion 2.3

Quite the comprehensive list, and a popular one at that: as I write this, there 27 people are viewing the spreadsheet.

Aug

EXCLUSIVE: enTourage Releases Kernel Source For The eDGe - AndroidPolice & Co Release Root Instructions

Posted by Justin Case in Development, eDGe, enTourage, Exclusives, Tips & Tutorials, Videos

Last Updated: June 5th, 2012

Those of you who actually managed to get your hands on an enTourage eDGe dualbook ebook reader/tablet/notepad device thingy (it's been in low supply lately) and have been waiting for it to be rooted just got your wish. Colin O'Dell and myself with the help of Sean and Jamezelle were able to root the eDGe, with full adb access.

How We Did It

No exploit or hack was needed. We were able to decipher the developer's debug password and use it to enable adb, which just so happens to be running as root.

What It Achieves

This root finally opens the eDGe to developers, enabling the debug bridge and allowing root apps to be used.

Aug

SysAdmin Series #7: Remote Desktop Access with VNC Clients

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

In the final installment of the SysAdmin Series, I’m going to cover some tools to access a remote system’s desktop using VNC (Virtual Network Computing) clients.

I’ll admit that as a sysadmin, I don’t personally have a lot of use for VNC as almost all of the systems I need to access remotely are text-only systems, and I use a simple SSH client for that work. However, I know some sysadmins who rely on VNC clients to do some work on graphical interfaces when being at a terminal isn’t possible.

With VNC, I feel it’s prudent to mention that while these VNC clients make remote desktop access possible, they’re not entirely practical given the current state of Android device screen sizes and resolution.

Aug

New Features And Fixes In The EVO 4G Froyo Update - Which One Is Your Favorite? [+Poll]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in EVO 4G (Supersonic), Froyo 2.2, HTC, Sprint, Tips & Tutorials

Well, the last few days have been pretty crazy, haven't they? Froyo OTAs hit on 2 major phones, one by one. First, on Monday, the final Froyo version came out for the EVO 4G, and today we saw Verizon's 2.2 show up as well.

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I'd like to take a step back and describe some of the EVO 4G specific Froyo fixes and features we've been seeing on our EVOs.

New Features And Fixes

^{A good portion of these bullets were written by a Quang Nguyen - our brave EVO tester}

1. Lock phone after X minutes of sleep.

Aug

[Tutorial] How To Wirelessly Transfer Files To/From Your Android Phone And Your Windows PC

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Development, Tips & Tutorials

This tutorial will show you how to access your phone’s storage for transfers to and fro over your local WiFi network. We will install FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server software on the phone then mount it as a network drive on a Windows PC. Your phone and PC must be connected to the same network.

1. Install SwiFTP

SwiFTP can be downloaded freely from the market. It is a small application which allows your phone to act as an FTP server. It can also allow you to access your phone from a remote network via a proxy, but that will not be covered in this tutorial.

Jul

Review: XDAndroid Allows You To Run Android Froyo On Your WinMo HTC Phone

Posted by Rick Morayniss in App Reviews, Devices By Manufacturer, News, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Still holding onto that HTC Windows Mobile phone? Love the hardware, but hate the OS? Well, you’re in luck, because the enterprising hackers over at XDAndroid.com have developed a version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) that you run from your SD card.

Currently, this version runs on the following HTC phones:

Raphael (Touch Pro)
Fuze
Diamond
Blackstone
Topaz
Rhodium.

Getting Started With XDAndroid

To run XDANDROID, simply download the appropriate version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) for your phone to your computer, extract the files, and copy them to your phone’s sd card.