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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 

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 

How to Unpack, Repack APK Files

June 15, 2011

Occasionally you may reverse engineer android apk files and then repack them with minor tweaks/hacks employed.

Its quiet easy to learn how to unpack/repack .apk files fast. TO get started all you needs is a Winrar (or equivalent) and file Formatter, which is created by despotovski. This app gives you a simple GUI to make all the changes you want.

Download Formatter | Mirror

How to unpack .apk files:
1. Open Formatter

2. Click the “Choose File” button and choose your apk file. Then, in the first text box, enter “.rar” (without quotes). After that, enter your desired name for your .rar archive and click the big “Rename!” button

3. Go to the folder where your .apk file was. You should see a .rar archive, named by the name you entered in Formatter. Extract it with your archive manager

Formatter

How to repack .apk files:
1. Compress the extracted files in a .rar archive (compress them normally like any other archive)
2. Open Formatter
3. Choose the .rar archive you made a minute ago
4. Set the format to .apk
5. Set the name to whatever you want
6. Click the big “Rename!” button

Formatter-repack-apk

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

How to Overclock Samsung Galaxy S2 1.5Ghz 1.8Ghz 2Ghz

May 12, 2011

galaxysii_setcpuWorld’s fastest gets even faster: Samsung galaxy S2 has now been overclocked from 1.2Ghz to 1.5ghz & even 2Ghz woot!

The overclock comes from the developers of SetCPU who  has now managed to take the SGS2 to a whooping 1.504 GHz,and yielding Quadrant benchmark scores of over 4000. Truth be told, he was actually take it all the way up to unstable 2 GHz and quasi unstable 1.8 GHz. The only problems at these frequencies is that we use high voltages that heat up the processor and phone too much, beyond safe limits.

Note from developer:

I have successfully overclocked the new Samsung Galaxy S II to 1.504GHz. This speed is enough to allow it to achieve really high benchmark scores like over 4000 points in Quadrant! 1.5GHz is a 25% overclock and makes this fast phone even faster and snappier in day to day usage.

I haven’t gone crazy on the voltages – 1.504GHz is stable at 1375mV on my device. Depending on your device, there may be even more headroom. I’ve gotten speeds of up to 2GHz to boot with instability (my unstable 1.8GHz Linpack run is currently in the Linpack top 10), but at very high voltages and temperatures. Leave it up to other developers to give you higher/more dangerous frequencies and voltages. If you stress the CPU a ton the phone will become hot to touch

galaxysii_4k_quadrant

How to Overclock Samsung Galaxy S2


1. Use odin3 and the USB drivers for Windows, details here.

2. Grab the kernel. It is a tar file for odin with the overclocked kernel and a initramfs with proper modules for the kernel:http://setcpu.com/files/galaxysii_oc_v1.tar
3. Reboot the phone into download mode using ADB:
adb reboot download
4. Flash the kernel using odin3 by placing the tar file in the PDA section and pressing “Start.”
5. The phone will reboot automatically.
6. Use SuperOneClick to root your phone if you haven’t already. ADB should have root access with this kernel so it’ll just work.
7. Grab SetCPU and try 1.504GHz.
Source code (with relevant commit for the overclock. I also enabled the interactive governor in the config): https://github.com/coolbho3k/galaxysii_oc

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

Install Google Talk Video, Audio on Android Gingerbread phone

May 2, 2011

Google talk audio, Video chat was made available as a part of android 2.3.4 Gingerbread update to Nexus S users, the same apk is now hacked to be installed on any Rooted Android phone/Tablet with minor tricks.

How to install Google Talk Video, Audio on Any Android Phone, Tablet

Pre-requisites:

 

1. Unzip the downloaded Google talk zip file and connect your phone/tablet to PC/mac.

2. Run the following commands using the adb:

adb remount
adb shell mv /system/app/Talk.apk /system/app/Talk.apk1
adb uninstall com.google.android.talk
adb push libtalk_jni.so /system/lib/
adb push Talk2.apk /system/app

3. That’s all, you should now have Google Talk with video installed, try it out and have fun.

If there is a problem, you can uninstall it by:

adb remount
adb uninstall com.google.android.talk
adb shell mv /system/app/Talk.apk1 /system/app/Talk.apk

Troubleshooting: If it doesn’t work, uninstall it and flash this zip on CM7. For other ROMs flash this zip instead. Make sure you take backups first.

Tested, Works on Cyanogenmod 7.

via xda

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

Download HTC Sense 3.0 Wallpapers

April 24, 2011

We like to jazz-up our android phones with some dazzling wallpapers. HTC is pretty good at designing UI elements including wallpapers and widgets.

HTC Sense 3.0 brings all new set of wallpapers that look amazing on any phone.

All wallpapers are High resolution, and would work on all cellphones and even most Tablets. Gove them a shot, we’ve also included inverted images for some of the wallpapers, they look brilliant as well.

HTC Sense 3.0 Wallpapers

(click for full size)

bokehBokeh-INVERTcellularcolorColor-INVERTcurtain_callCurtain_Call-INVERTdandelionDandelion-INVERTfoliageFoliage-INVERTHexMoleculeqbicQbic-INVERTshows_overShows-Over-INVERTStainlessstring_theorySun_and_MoonvelocityVelocity-INVERTWaveformsWaveforms-INVERT

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

Boost SD card Speed on Android

April 4, 2011

Sometimes on a good smartphone, the bottomline for application performance is the SD card. You can always chose from various classes of SD cards to attain required throughput, but even Class 10, sometimes, may not turn out too well.

On Android, many of us are dissapointed with SD card speeds. Even if it is Class 10 card, it performs poorly as compared to the PC.

Why SD cards are slow on Phones

The main reason for the poor speed is the Cache size for reading from SD Card. It’s set to 128 KB, on some ROM’s even to 4 KB. You can verify the cache size on your android phone from this file:

/sys/devices/virtual/bdi/179:0/read_ahead_kb

How to Increase SD card Speed

You can always edit it manually but changes are lost on every boot. In order to make changes persistent, it has to be done by loading the script on the startup through the init.d.

The easier, alternate way is to flash ClockWorkMod zip files from recovery:

Cache size: 4069. Speeds: W/s 5.6, R/s 13.7

Download zip here For Ra.1.7 http://db.tt/3Lvbazr

Cache Size: 204. Speeds: w/s 7.9 r/s 21.7

Download Zip here For RA1.7 http://db.tt/V3mAVyV
Other configs are also available in this post, thanks to laie1472.

How to Choose the Right SD card Cache setting

There’s no rule of thumb here, you must find which Cache size fits best for your SD Card. For testing, use the Root Explorer to change the value, then run SD Tools Benchmark – finally flash the CWM zip file that fits your SD Card.

If you are too confused and can’t figure out whats best or too lazy, go with my suggestion of 2048 KB Cache size, which performs at best for most of the SD Cards!

That’s all for now, enjoy the improved speeds on SD card.

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