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MIUI style Progress-Bar Battery Indicator on Android

April 5, 2012

It all started with low battery performance of smartphones, but now its more of a thing we love to showoff. Google Play is loaded with number of apps that either show the battery status or display advanced stats.

One of the best implementations of Battery indicators is done by MIUI ROM. ChargeBar brings the MIUI Style Circular Battery Indicator to all Android ROMs. It brings the same splendid circular progress of battery along with the charge animation.

Developed by Thomas Barrasso, ChargeBar displays the exact amount of charge left in your battery. It does this in the form of a completely customizable thin line.

App is full of settings that let you customize your ChargeBar. You can customize settings like starting on boot, hide in lock screen / full-screen apps to cosmetic ones like the ChargeBar’s color, height and position.

The default color for the Progress-Bar is Holo blue, the native color of Android 4.0 ICS, but you can choose your own color. Also, you can set the height of the battery bar indicator, default being 3 pixels. The best part is that you can place this bar above or below the Notification bar.

Works on Both Android Phones, Tablets Android 2.1 & above.

We love chargeBar and highly recommend it. Get it from Google Play. Best part, its free!

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Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under apps, mods | View Comments 

Reset Flash Counter Tool on Galaxy S2, Note

February 15, 2012

Installing, Flashing custom ROM to your modern Android smartphones increments the Flash counter each time. Manufacturers use this counter to void your warranty when they detect a counter >zero.

This Flash counter increments each time you flash a Custom ROM. However, Chainfire brings a superb Tool to Reset Flash counter on Android phones like Samsung Galaxy SII, Galaxy Note.

TriangleAway will let you reset your flash counter and remove the yellow triangle by coding the bootloader. Of course, it works only on rooted android with Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

As per Chainfire & Team Hacksung claim that the flash counter and triangle state had to be stored somewhere. You can dump and compare the entire /dev/block/mmcblk0 and you won’t find a difference. The solution comes with the new kernel uses by ICS builds. The flash disk actually has two hidden boot partitions, /dev/block/mmcblk0boot0 and /dev/block/mmcblk0boot1 . The MMC driver in the kernels used for Gingerbread did not present these partitions in the past, the MMC driver in the ICS kernel does.

This isn’t easily doable on Gingerbread. That is also why this currently does not work on the SGNote. When ICS is released for the SGNote it’ll probably be compatible out of the box, or trivial to make it compatible.

Soon as more official ICS firmwares become available, much more devices will be able to use this interesting tool which should be used for experts only.

Download TriangleAway apk more at xda forum.

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Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under mods | View Comments 

Enable Virtual buttons on Android ICS

February 4, 2012

You can Enable Virtual buttons on Any Android Ice Cream Sandwich ROM (Android 4.0.x), with a simple trick.

You must follow the instructions below very carefully in order to get Virtual buttons on ICS.

Step 1: Use any: ES File explorer or Root explorer to copy system > framework > framework-res.apk to PC.

Step 2: Keep a backup of the original APK  & Decompile the copied APK using APK Tool. APK Tool 1.4.3 would work fine.

Step 3: Open /res/values/bools.xml using a text editor, find config_showNavigationBar and set its value to true.

Step 4: (Optional) Optionally you can turn off backlight for your hardware capacitive buttons. To do this, edit arrays.xml. Search for config_autoBrightnessButtonBacklightValues and set all item values to ’0′ (i.e.zero).

Step 5: To avoid keyboard overlapping problem, you need to adjust the dimensions for the virtual buttons.Open dimens.xml, find navigation_bar_height and edit its value to something which suits you best. 37.0dip should be good.

Step 6: Compile the APK using aapt. Copy the modified APK back to system > framework.

You should now have enabled onscreen Virtual soft button for back, home and multitasking. Capacitive buttons will be disabled for some users, for others, they would continue to work.

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Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under ice cream, mods, tricks | View Comments 

HowTo Create Android Bootscreen / Boot Animations

January 31, 2012

Creating a Android Bootscreen / Boot Animations like a Pro can be a tricky thing.

To start with, you would need:

  • A photo Editing program (GIMP and Photoshop are the best.)
  • A text editor besides notepad or wordpad. (Notepad++)
  • An archive manager (7-Zip or WinRAR)

Here’s a summary of what you need to do, full description can be found at XDA forum:

Step 1: Folders
So in this step, we need to make folders. The number of folders depends on what type of animation you want. You can name the folders anything you want as long as they are reflected in your desc.txt

Step 2: Images
So this section will be a generalization of the images. Each image in the video is called a frame. They usually vary slightly from image to image which sped through makes the illusion of a video.

-Each frame must be 480*800 px (thats 480 pixels wide by 800 pixels tall) in png format.

Step 3: Placing images in folders
This step will vary from user to user. based on what type of animation you are making.

Intro to loop (2 folders):
With this one, you are going to place all of the images that is to be the intro to folder 1.
All looping images will go into folder 2.

Step 4: desc.txt
This is the ‘script’ that tells android how to animate the screen.

Step 5: Packaging

1. Highlight all of your folders and desc.txt and right click > “Add to archive…”
2. On the left side, change the radio buttons from rar to zip
3. Change compression method to “store”
4. Name the file. For now, you can name it anything. Eventually, it will need to be named “bootanimation.zip”

The final zip would have to be placed on your android in the right directory: copy bootanimation.zip to /system/customize/resource.

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Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under mods, OS | View Comments 

Enable Native SIP Calling on 3G in Android Gingerbread ROMs

January 30, 2012

We know Gingerbread Android 2.3.x is out of fashion but majority of the android users are still on Android 2.3, so it makes sense to still talk about it.

Gingerbread brought Native SIP support to Android for Calling over Wifi, 3G, without a voice plan. However, there are no straightforward guides around the web that talk about it.

Compatibility: Method works for: All Gingerbread 2.3.x Stock roms, AOSP roms, MIUI roms and Sense roms, worked for me on all.

Downloads: APKTool

1. Apktools bz2

2. Brut tar
Note: This guide is for windows, however, it works as-is on Linux, Mac OSX.

Step 1. Pull Framework-res.apk from your ROM’s zip file. Ideal path is  /system/framework directory.

Step 2. Extract both files that you downloaded to c:\apktools. You should see 3 extracted files. Copy the framework-res.apk to the same directory: c:\apktools

Step 3. Run CMD on windows, Terminal on OSX, Windows and run the following commands:

cd \apktools
apktools d framework-res.apk temp

Step 4. A folder named temp will appear. Inside temp, edit the file: C:\apktools\temp\res\values\bools.xml
Search the following line:

<bool name=”config_sip_wifi_only”>true</bool>

change  ”true” to “false” and save the file.

Step 5. On Terminal/ CMD run apktools again.

c:
cd \apktools
apktools b temp temp.apk

Step 6. Now rename your original framework-res.apk to framework-res.apk.zip. Open it with winrar/winzip/7zip it will open like regular archive. take the file that was created by the build process:
C:\apktools\temp\build\apk\resources.arsc

Step 7. Use this file to replace the file inside the archive of framerwork-res.apk.zip (overwriting the original, inside the zip)
rename the file back to framework-res.apk.

Congratulations, now you have a sip over 3g enabled framework-res.apk.

Step 8. Just replace it in your ROM zip and flush the ROM, you need to wipe cache and dalvik cache.

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Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under gingerbread, mods | View Comments 

Enable Google Videos [Movie Rental] on Rooted Android Phone, Tablet

August 13, 2011

Google had disabled Rooted android Phones, Tablets from running Android Movies rentals via Google Videos app. The app essentially downloads the full movie and makes it available for viewing for a limited time in a safe way, countering piracy.

However, a mod is now available for the Google videos app (Movie rentals) that can make it run on any android phone, tablet and needless to mention its still DRM protected.

This APK is a modified version of the com.google.android.videos-1.apk that bypasses the root & tamper checks. APK works on Android device (2.2+).

Note: This bypass doesn’t affect the actually DRM licensing, it will still generate a proper license key, you will still be limited to the normal viewing times, you will still have to pay to rent movies, etc. Don’t ask, because it’s not happening. It just bypasses/disabled the root check.

Download Android Videos Mod apk

http://www.mediafire.com/?x7hloixzb63pt2c
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9TT9G9W0 (Mirror)

 

 

Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under apps, mods | View Comments 

Multi-Boot Android ROMs

August 1, 2011

We all tend to be so much excited by different android ROMs that we often crave for different ROMs and often have to wipe our phones to tryout another favorite ROM. Now you can not just Dual boot your favorite ROMs, but you can Multiboot android roms without having trouble of any sort.

BootManager lets you install multiple ROMs on Android phone. It lets you install up to five ROMs on your phone; four on your SD card and one which is currently in use. Of course, you would need a rooted android phone for that.

Boot Manager is the first Android Multi-Booter Application! The application installs up to four ROMs to your sdcard and you can keep one on your phone as well to allow you to boot up to five ROMs and switch between them with just a reboot. This is the must have application for any flashaholic and will finally allow you to keep up with those nightly builds we have all come to love or just boot your favorite ROMs from your favorite developers. The application is great for developers as well since you now have 5 slots for testing ROMs.

Warning: Consider taking a (nandroid) backup before you do any changes to your phone. You may then download the ROMs to your SD-card that you want to install.

As of today, BootManager is only officially supported on Motorola Droid and the following HTC smartphones: Droid Incredible, Thunderbolt, Vision, EVO 4G, Inspire 4G, Desire and Desire HD, support for more coming soon.

Market link [$2.99]

 

Written by Tarandeep Singh · Filed Under apps, guide, mods, root, tricks | View Comments