Archive for June, 2010

Review of SetCPU 2.0.0-beta1

This is going to be just a quick screenshot review of our beloved SetCPU.  Looks the the dev of SetCPU finally got around to responding to the beta requests  he asked for ;)  No worries.  As I was getting this post ready he already sent out a beta2 update.  Wowzers.  He’s working fast.  Since this is a paid app that everyone should gladly pay for, I cannot post the link or apk.  This isn’t a warez blog.

For the most part, in his email, the major change will be the UI.  You can see it looks a great deal better from the screenies below.  My main concern was will it work with my droid running a froyo rom (Kanerade v1.1) with a 32 kernel … yes my friends … It does. =D

Problems updating google maps to 4.3 with froyo? Heres the fix.

So a few of my friends that have froyo loaded on their phones are having issues with updating their google maps app through the android market.  It fails to install the update and it looks like the market doesn’t even register that its installed … But the old version still works.

Here’s what you do.  All of my friends already have the android SDK installed on their computers so I assume you do to.  Plug your droid into your computer.  Do not mount the SDcard.  Make sure debugging is enabled and run these commands:

adb shell
su
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 dev/block/mtdblock4 system
busybox rm system/app/Maps.apk
cd system/bin
sh pm uninstall com.google.android.apps.maps
cd ..
cd ..
mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 dev/block/mtdblock4 system
sync

After you do all this, you will be able to go back into the android market and install that google maps update with no problems.

Source: Droid-Life

CyanogenMod team is working on a lot Froyo

Just passing some information on for the few that actually watch my blog. ;)  I’ve been following the cyanogenmod team on twitter and it looks like they are working like beasts on building froyo loads for the major phones out right now.  Nexus One, G1, Moto Droid and the Incredible … Oh my!  Thank goodness I posted a “HowTo” on loading clockwork recovery for the Incredible.

Looks like they might have a Moto Droid test build out this weekend too!  I’ll be watching my nightlies in Rom Manager =D

ClockworkMod Recovery on your Droid Incredible.

The folks at unrevoked.com have done it again.  They promised and delivered on figuring out the nand to flash your own recovery on the recovery partition.  They’ve created a desktop app called “Painless Reflash” and it installs clockworkmod recovery v2.0.1.0 for you.  They even made 3 versions for Windows, Linux and Mac users.  For the most part, it is very painless and completely automated.  In order for this to work, you need to have already rooted your phone.  This app does not root your phone for you.  The steps I’m going to provide have worked for me and I only had one phone to do this on.

  1. Stop any ADB process.  You can do this by using the “adb kill-server” command.
  2. Uninstall the HTC Sync applicaiton.  This will cause the reflash process to hang.
  3. You should already have the appropriate drivers installed from rooting.  If not, then follow this thread to root your incredible.
  4. Download the Painless reflash app from unrevoked’s website.  There are 3 versions so choose the one that applies to you. (windows for me)
  5. Install the app.  Personally I just created a folder on my desktop called “unrevoked” and chose it at the “choose destination folder” prompt.
  6. Plug your phone in and make sure USB Debugging is enabled.
  7. Run the “reflash.exe” file in the destination folder you chose earlier and wait for about 5 minutes.  The phone will boot, reboot and boot some more.  But it should not take longer than 5 minutes.  Once completed, you should be looking at the ClockworkMod Recovery v2.0.1.0 screen.

If your phone is stuck at any point longer than 5 minutes then it needs to be done again.  Check steps 1, 2 and 3.  You can also now download Rom Manager from the android market and update the recovery to the latest with no problems!

Froyo source has been uploaded on AOSP

Quick entry.  Looks like cyanogen and koush noticed that froyo’s source has hit the Android Open Source Project site.  I personally cant wait to see what cyanogen and koush can implement from source in their roms.

Adobe updates their mobile flash showcase site

Well this was a pleasant surprise.  I was just adjusting some settings on my nightly wipe and load of a random 2.2 droid load when I discovered that adobe has updated their mobile flash showcase site.  From the loading screen to the navigation and menu effects.  Very nicely done.  Got froyo and flash 10.1 on your android device?  Check it out .

ADW … Im impressed with this launcher

Well, I thought it was time to revisit the other big home screen replacement app called ADW.  I remember way back when it first came about, you needed to have root permissions to install it.  Now it’s available via the android market.  Originally, this was a decent replacement launcher.  It was better than stock and was pretty zippy once you configured it right … Then LauncherPro came out and I’ve been hooked and even blogged on it here.  Well, It seems that even LauncherPro has sacrificed speed and performance for a few added features … I’d rather take speed and performance.

With this in mind and my disappointment with the road LauncherPro was heading, I decided to give ADW another shot.  Last time I used it, was about a month ago and there weren’t any improvements.  What caught my attention to retry ADW was that cyanogen was making it his default launcher for his CyanogenRom.  Knowing cyanogen, that speaks volumes.  I downloaded it from the market and was most pleased.

  • We have speed again.  Minimal to no choppiness in desktop screen transitions.
  • Pinch zoom now available to preview all available desktop screens.
  • Adjustable widget sizes.  Resize any widget … May not look good for all widgets though ;)
  • Adjustable desktop space from 4×4 up to 8×8 … (well …8×8 doesn’t look so good but the 5×4 is what I wanted anyway)
  • Adjustable app drawer.  (I took out the so called galaxy side scrolling thing.  Reminds me too much of an iFail)
  • Drag to uninstall … (looks like it was inspired by LauncherPro)

I’m sure there is lots more, these are just the few I’ve been tinkering with that I thought deserved to be mentioned.

Android Market Link

Droid incredible root instructions that can work for the masses!

So … Sorry for the delay in blog posts.  I’ve been preoccupied with getting root privs on the Incredible.  I finally got it down thanks to this thread from xda-developers.com.  Earlier this week, (Tuesday at the half of the Lakers game 6) I got the adb shell error that you want to see:

exec ‘/system/bin/sh’ failed: No such file or directory (2)

I have been trying since the previous Saturday right after it was announced and was having no luck.  I tried everything that was posted all over the web and nothing was working for me.  What turns out to be a complete fluke, I got the beloved error message to pop up only once.  One of the failed methods I was trying was the set of instructions with the 10 Minute Root video.  The author included a batch script and I ran it at the appropriate time.  Without going into too much detail, it failed … And I have been chasing that beloved error message since.

Thanks to dreamersipaq’s post, I’ve been able to root and consecutively repeat the root over and over proving that this was not a fluke.  For those that have had problems with rooting their Incredible, it’s all about the timing.  This thread goes into great detail on how to get the timing right.  If you’ve been trying for almost a week like me with little to no results then I highly recommend that you review that thread.  Hope is not lost!

I may just have to revise it and repost it here on my blog with clearer instructions.

Droid, Quake3, Wiimote with a Nunchuck ZOMG!

I wanted to get this last bog in tonight.  This video shows my Droid running Quake3.  Nothing special right? … RIGHT?  Well this time I’m playing it with a wiimote and a nunchuck.

  • First you need to download kwaak3.  Big thanks to thunderbird2k for making this nice little app.
  • Second you need a PC copy of Quake3.  You can download the demo from ID Software.  I used my Q3 cd. :)
  • Third, download Wiimote from the android market.

Ill revisit this post again tomorrow with better instructions on how to set this up for those that are interested.  I’m sleepy.

OS Monitor … Great overall app for performance monitoring on your phone

This review is on an app that I absolutely love.  It’s a free app in the market called OS Monitor.  This has been a huge help is detecting performance hits on the many custom roms that I’ve loaded.   It’s able to break down and display the processor and memory usage of processes list and much more.  It even has a CPU load graph option that sits right up top of your notification bar.

I’ve learned that every time that I reboot or just boot up my phone, the Gallery3D application is running and updating the cache for about 2 minutes before it settles down.  This has been the case with any rom that has Gallery3D.  =D

It even has the ability to kill those processes that are causing problems.  Now I’m not fond of those auto task killers at all.  Although, I see a real need to kill certain processes if it’s causing issues … Especially when I’m downloading so many apps from the market that might be problematic.  I advise that you don’t use those auto task killer apps at all.  Just manually kill the processes with OS Monitor if you know it’s causing problems.

Just as I was taking screen shots of the process list, I saw something that got my attention.  I use LauncherPro and it’s been my default launcher.  It was actually the first thing I installed when I loaded up froyo.  So why is Launcher even loading?  Well this is my preference … I deleted the Launcher2.apk from the /system/app folder and rebooted.

qrcode

Android Market Link

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