Mobile Madness - Elephone P6000 - There's a reason it's cheap.

Gday all.

Just a quick word of warning for anyone jumping on the cheap chinese phone bandwagon...

I purchased an Elephone P6000 phone approx. 2 months ago and it has been reasonable (apart from the worst GPS navigation accuracy I've ever seen) up until now with the issue being that the cellular radio in the device basically just seems to be screwed.

I now see the cellular radio indicator going bat shit crazy and just cycle through all available network connections staying locked on to a single network for 30 seconds max with no ability to make or receive calls.

Evidently looking on the Elephone forums for the P6000 there seems to be other people who have had the same issue.

Oh well - at least now I've answered my question of "are these cheap chinese smartphones any good?".

As usual, you get what you pay for...

Restore SMS Backup Plus to Messages on CM11 (KitKat 4.4.3)

As all tech husbands and partners know, it's in your best interests to make sure your better half's tech works correctly.

So, being that I had to move the wifey's phone to CM11 to make BLN work, I thought it would be a good move to put mine on CM11 as well (so that it can be the test monkey when I have to perform trial and error to make something work).

So - we're both merrily using our CM11 loaded devices when we realise we can't restore messages using good old SMS Backup+.

As it turns out, Google has changed the SMS database security on KitKat and by default SMS Backup+ won't be able to write correctly to the Messages database.

So, scouring the internet revealed a lot of people recommending "join the SMS Backup+ community on Google+ and then you'll be able to access the Beta program which will fix the issue".

Well, that beta program seems to no longer exist.

So, what do you do?

Head over to the play store and grab yourself a copy of AppOps.

Make sure you use the one with no space in the name.

This program allows you to change an applications permissions to ensure it will work correctly for you on KitKat.

Be aware that you will need root access on your phone (not an issue if you're on CyanogenMod as it has root automagically - even if you're on a stock ROM, rooting is sooo easy these days!).

As it turns out, SMS Backup+ isn't given the permissions it needs to do it's job properly on KitKat by default.

So, once installed, fire up AppOps and scroll over to Personal.

Select SMS Backup+ from the list and scroll down to Write SMS DB.

You will notice that by default this is set to Denied.

Set it to Allowed and kick off your SMS Backup+ restore again and you're back in business.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini (i9195) Back Light (BLN) - How to Make it Work

The time had finally come to replace the old faithful HTC Desire S (Saga) for the missus so after much looking around we landed on the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini.

It ticks all the boxes for what we needed it to do but upon arrival we noticed it was missing one small but important feature we've taken for granted on every phone we've ever had between us (and yes - going back to our late 90's Nokia's as well!).

Believe it or not, the S4 mini doesn't include a notification LED.

Luckily, being an Android phone, there's always a way to fix things :)

To start the adventure, pretty much everything I read advised that BLN requires a patched kernel that has BLN support enabled.

So, wanting to stay on the stock ROM (touchwiz), I began the laborious task of finding a patched kernel that would work.

Amazingly, I found two!

There are two patched ROMs floating around. namely:
f4ktion_1.3.0-eur_lte-ML1
and
Vikinger-JB4.2-STOCK-eur_lte-18.01.2014

So, I gained root, installed CWM and flashed the kernel through CWM.

Then I installed BLN from Google Play which reported that the patched kernel was ok.

And....... Nothing.

Of note though, the Vikinger kernel absolutely kills your battery super fast.

So, at this stage, I thought ok, I'll downgrade the ROM to an ML1 ROM as that's what the patched f4ktion kernel was based on.

Still no dice.

At this point I arrived at the conclusion that (despite the odd person claiming they had BLN working on a touchwiz ROM but never replied to anyone that asked HOW?!) that the ROM itself must need to support for BLN as well.

As what is turning out to be a regular thing, I ended up finding out that CyanogenMod 11 has full kernel and ROM support for BLN included (when you install it the CM11 kernel will overwrite your existing one).

So, I headed over and grabbed the CM11 ROM from get.cm (the CM codename for the i9195 is serranoltexx), flashed it (don't forget Google Apps) , installed BLN and holy shit batman!
It works!

Being CyanogenMod, the ROM already includes root so there's one less thing to worry about :)

Interestingly, a CM11 ROM is about 200MB in size.
That's a bit better than the average 1.6GB Touchwiz ROM.

Now, for anyone who hasn't used a CyanogenMod ROM in a while, they've come a long way.
Apps are stable and all hardware works correctly on the 9195.

In addition, pretty much every little nicety that exists on Touchwiz is present on CM11 as well.
And if something's not there, you can be guaranteed there's an app or widget on the Play Store that will bring it back (we haven't found one yet).

The only problem I encountered on CM11 was restoring SMS's through SMS Backup +.
To fix this, check out my post Restore SMS Backup Plus to Messages on CM11 (KitKat 4.4.3).

So, there you have it.

Unless you're a lucky so and so who somehow manages to get BLN working on a Touchwiz ROM, as usual CyanogenMod is here to save the day :)

Enter the Chromecast

Tiny but huge.

Whether you're just after a device to wirelessly display your screen at a meeting or run your entire home media centre from your phone, the Chromecast dongle is your new best friend.

What is unique about the Chromecast that makes it special?

Two Words:

Cheap Convenience.

Need to show your mates a YouTube clip on the big screen? Just whip out your phone and Chromecast it.

Want to watch a video using your phone as the playback device?

Ezstream will take care of that.

Samsung Galaxy S3 4G Downgrade From 4.3 with Knox

Well as it turns out the reason my battery has been dying super quick is due to Samsung Knox being installed on the latest firmware I installed (I9305XXUENA2_I9305XSTEMK2_XST).

Knox is an awesome bit of software.
If you need it.

If you don't, it's a battery killing pain in the ass.

This is one of the most painful things I've ever had to do on an Android phone (except for rooting a UK HTC Desire) so to save you all some time:


1. Re-Flash your 4.3 Knox containing firmware through PC Based Odin (Assuming you've tried to flash an older firmware and killed the phone) PDA Option

2. Apply Chainfire Root through PC Odin PDA Options


http://autoroot.chainfire.eu/

http://download.chainfire.eu/232/CF-Root/CF-Auto-Root/CF-Auto-Root-m3-m3zh-gti9305.zip


3. Upgrade SuperSU to Disable knox

http://www.droidviews.com/disable-knox-security-service-on-samsung-galaxy-devices/

http://download.chainfire.eu/396/SuperSU/UPDATE-SuperSU-v1.94.zip


4. Install MobileODIN and your Kernel Image from Android File Explorer

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1347899

http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2643650&d=1395482021

http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1473459&d=1352634921


5. Copy desired 4.1.x ROM .tar.md5 rom to SD


6. Flash image through MobileODIN in Android OS

Follow instructions at:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1347899

Hint: Ctrl + F and search for Manual


Finished.
w00t. you are back to normal battery life.

Samsung Tec Tiles. Necessary? No. But damn cool.

I'm constantly impressed by my Samsung i9305 (or S3 4G if you will) Android Smartphone.

Whether I'm firing up sudo commands within the terminal emulator to do some external access testing or using my Qi charger on my desk to power the sucker up again, I'm constantly impressed with what you can do with this unassuming looking device.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day along the lines of "wouldn't it be great if you could just get in your car and your phone would turn on its bluetooth radio automatically?".

While you're at it, why not fire up driving mode and either the music player or Google nav?

I said "yeah - I remember something about Samsung selling programmable NFC stickers" and the inner geek in me thought I'd better have a look...

After a bit of Googling around I found the stickers in question and remembered they were marketed as "Tec Tiles" by Samsung.

For the reasonable sum of approx. $3 a sticker I ordered a pack of 5 off eBay and am well chuffed.

The setup was literally as easy as install the app on your Android phone from the Play Store and select what you want the sticker to do.

You then "write" to the tag (will have to look into this as I suspect the phone actually just reads a sticker ID or something and associates that with commands in a database or something - or it could actually program the sticker - who knows?) and that's it!

I've now got a nifty little Samsung NFC sticker in my car that I simply tap my phone against and I'm in (what I like to call) driving mode.

Necessary? No.

But they're damn cool :)

Android NFC + Paywave in Australia = Suck

Just picked up a Samsung 9305 and am raging that Google Wallet isn't officially available in Australia for Android (where there's a will however...).

For those of you that don't know, Google Wallet allows you to process online transaction (who cares - I've got paypal and a credit card) but also let's you bind a Credit Card to your Google Account as well as to an NFC chip on your Smart Phone (such that you can use your smart phone at POS terminals that support Paywave).

In theory everything that uses NFC should be able to be associated with an account and an NFC chip ID.

Unfortunately, it appears that this is too hard to implement in Australia right now, most like due to Australian Government finance laws.

Come on Google. If anyone can make this happen, it's you.

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Also, on a side note, have the day off and am watching Crank.

If this isn't the best movie ever, I don't know what is.

Remove Android SMS MMS Size Limit

Hey - just a quick one for those of you with Android phones that might have encountered a problem where you can't send or receive SMS attachments...

As it turns out, Android is a well-behaved little platform that sticks to carrier standards of keeping multimedia message attachments to a limit of 300K.

Other vendors totally ignore this standard and will send attachments of any size.

As it's Android, anything is possible and this is a prime example.

To remove limits to MMS attachment sizes, install Chomp SMS from the Play Store.

Now don't worry - you can still just keep using your normal messaging app and Chomp will just fix the attachment size issue for you and not bother you (if you follow these steps).

First, open Chomp and press the phone menu button then select Settings.

Next, select Mobile Carrier Settings and then select MMS Network Settings.

Finally, click on MMS Send Size Limit and select No Limit and select OK.

Next, to stop Chomp notifying you when you receive a message, go back to the settings menu and select Notifications and uncheck Notification.

Done and done.