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

May

Custom ROMs For Android Explained - Here Is Why You Want Them

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: August 20th, 2012

Introduction

Ever wondered what the whole Android custom ROM scene was about?

What is all this talk of installing "aftermarket", custom upgrades on your phone?

Who needs it? Why do it? Is it safe?

Don't fret - I'm here to explain - the AndroidPolice Academy is now in session.

By the way, the word ROM means Read Only Memory, but has migrated in the modding community to mean an actual custom OS image that you install into the ROM area of your phone.

Also, the word kernel essentially means the heart of the OS - it's the barebones operating system components.

Apr

ClockworkMod ROM Manager backup and restore

[Complete Guide] How To Fully Back Up And Restore Your Android Phone Using Nandroid Backup

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: January 20th, 2011

Introduction

In this tutorial, I will guide you through the easiest and most reliable way to fully and 100% back up and restore your Android phone.

By fully back up, I don't mean backing up just your address book or your emails, or your dog. I mean EVERYTHING that resides on your phone with the exception of the SD card - what we will create is essentially a full image of your phone's current state that you can restore to at any time as if nothing happened. This image will be written to your SD card which you are then free to copy around and back up on your computer.

Apr

[Updated] Rooting Explained + Top 5 Benefits Of Rooting Your Android Phone

Posted by Sarah Morrow in Development, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 6th, 2012

In this article, I will discuss all kinds of aspects of rooting your Android phone and the benefits that come with it.

Maybe you've heard about "rooting" a phone from a friend or read about it somewhere on the Internet. Maybe you even *kind of* know what it is but aren't sure what you can do with it. Or maybe you are already running a rooted phone and looking for more ways you can utilize it. Whatever the case may be, this article is for you.

What Is Rooting?

First, for the newbies, let me clarify what rooting is. Getting root or rooting your phone is the process of modifying the operating system that shipped with your device to grant you complete control over it.

Apr

Google Turns On Universal Suggest In Mobile Search

Posted by Chris Dehghanpoor in News, Tips & Tutorials

Today Google announced universal search suggestions on the mobile version of their search page. It has been enabled on all major smartphone platforms, so even our iPhone carrying “friends” should be able to partake.

Google first made this change on the desktop version of the search page back in December, and while it was neat, I can’t say I’ve really played with it since it was released. This probably has more to do with the fact that I just control+K to the search bar in Firefox or Chrome rather than visit the search page itself. If you missed the original announcement, universal suggestive search provides real time information in the drop down box that appears when you begin typing, in addition to the regular search term suggestions.

Mar

Don't Wait For Verizon To Update Your Droid To 2.1 - Do It Yourself And Do It Now

Posted by Android Police Team in Development, Droid (Sholes), Motorola, News, Tips & Tutorials, Verizon Wireless

Yesterday, Verizon released the Motorola Droid 2.1 update schedule which turned out to be so drawn out that by the end of it, we would have seen Android 5.0 (OK, not really but it could take 2-3 weeks).

Who wants to wait this long? It didn't take long for some smart folks over at AndroidForums to figure out where the update was located on Google's servers and provide instructions on how to accomplish it in a few easy steps. Here they are:

If you have rooted your phone, the 2.1 update will unroot you back.

Download https://android.clients.google.com/updates/voles/signed-voles-ESE81-from-ESD56.fa406da6.zip onto your computer.

Mar

Upgrade Your Android Phone's External Storage With A-Data Turbo 16GB Class 6 MicroSD Card - Review And Benchmarks

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Devices By Manufacturer, Other Reviews, Reviews, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

As I recently started downloading and listening to lots of podcasts, I found that my Hero's 2GB MicroSD card filled up literally overnight.

2GB is such a measly number that disgracing the Hero with it any longer was a blow to both mine and its pride, so I headed over to Amazon to find a new faster, higher capacity storage card.

After careful deliberation and weighing all pros and cons, I ended up picking the A-Data Turbo 16GB Class 6 MicroSD card.

Considerations

Here are the factors I had considered before I picked the A-Data card:

Size

16GB was enough for my needs and 32GB was getting really expensive.

Mar

Top 10 Best Android Related Podcasts To Keep That Podcast App Of Yours Satisfied

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

If you are as interested in Android as I am, you might just be looking for a more unobtrusive and interesting way of absorbing the news.

As this highly scientific chart unequivocally shows, the amount of new Android related information has skyrocketed in 2009:

So rather than spend hours trying to weed out the interesting bits in your browser (unless, of course, you're reading Android Police which is a delight - RSS/Twitter), you can instead fire up your favorite podcast app (BeyondPod on Android is mine) and subscribe to some Android podcasts. And now instead of listening to that Britney or Linkin Park song for the 33504th time while sitting in traffic, you have a great un-boring alternative - or rather 10 alternatives.

Nov

How I Doubled My Android Phone's (HTC Hero) Battery Life or Just How Much Email Polling Affects Your Battery

Posted by Android Police Team in Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: March 21st, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

It's not a secret that my Sprint HTC Hero has been having trouble keeping battery charge - by the time I came home from work, the battery level would oftentimes be at 10% or the phone would be simply dead.

One would give up and accept this futility but I had 2 reasons to keep trying to figure out why:

my co-worker's battery would consistently hold twice as much charge as mine - by the time I was at 50%, he was at 75%
a wide range of responses on Internet forums and blog posts suggested some people experienced excellent battery life, while others, like me, did not have as much luck

I received feedback from many people that the solution outlined here has helped them double their battery lives not just on their Android phones but also their Pres, Windows Mobile, and others.

Nov

Auto Formatting Android XML Files With Eclipse

Posted by Android Police Team in Development, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: April 16th, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

In this article I will describe the problem I've had with Eclipse's handling of XML file formatting as well as the best way to fix it.

I use Eclipse to do my Android development for a few reasons:

it's the only IDE fully supported by the Android dev team
it has a visual Layout/Resources builder that transforms XML files into corresponding visual representations
it's free and open source
I've been using Eclipse for many years and am very familiar with it

In order to use the visual features in Eclipse when developing for Android, you need to install the ADT plugin provided by Google

The Problem

However, one thing about Eclipse Android development has bothered me for a while - and that is XML formatting by the visual tools.

Oct

Installing The Android Plugin For Eclipse

Posted by Android Police Team in Development, Tips & Tutorials

Last Updated: March 21st, 2010

This post and all its comments were migrated from Artem's personal blog beerpla.net when Android Police launched. If you would like to visit the original post there, please click here.

Today is my first day looking at Android development. My first encounter with the Android plugin for Eclipse has not been very smooth, to say the least. I am not sure if it's Android's or Eclipse's fault but I just wasted 2 hours on errors during the plugin installation and would like to pass on the time savings to you.

The plugin install page provides initial instructions and the location of the plugin to give Eclipse (https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/).