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...

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.