Question and Answer about Android from Stack Exchange network.

I would like to control audio IO of my android phone with a computer. I'm currently using a usb audio sound card with a input mic and line output ports connected to my computer. A phone is connected to an adapter jack 4 pins to 2 jack 3 pins (reference). The adapters mic input is connected to the sound card line output and the adapters line output is connected to the sound card mic input. Like this, I can theoretically record phones output with the computer and play a sound on phones input from the computer.

I have with me 3 phones devices, one android 10 (Redmi Note Pro 8) an other one is a android 9 (Samsung Galaxy A40), the last one is an android 4.0.3 (LG p700)

Everything works fine on the 4.0.3. The phone can detect the cable and I can record the phone output and play on the phone input.

But on the two others devices, it's not working.

On Android 9 : the phone can't detect the jack cable of the adapter, but when I plug earphones with mic (jack 4 pins), it's working. I think that isn't an hardware issue.

On Android 10 : the phone can detect the cable but changes state every seconds (detected/undetected). That means it is switching between earphone output and speaker output which is impossible to record or play. Like android 9, i can plug earphones, and it's working.

I personally think this may be related to phone impedance that is checked by recent version of Android.

What should I do to record and play on audio IO of a phone from a computer?

It's possible to me to develop an app on android and create a program on the computer to initialize the connection. Stereo recording isn't the objective here, mono will be enough.

(I cannot use in my case other protocol like USB or Bluetooth to record and play on phones)

EDIT 1 : Concerning OMTP/CTIA standards

To know the standard used by each device, I did this experimentation. On my previous setup, I’m able to find that it is a CTIA standard (found with an ohm-meter, mic and output line are separated). I know then my Android 4.0.3 is working with a CTIA standard.

I have with me wires, a sound card (reference), and jack 4 pin to wires adapters (reference) (the adapters are respecting OMTP standard but we don't care because we are using 2 of them)

Firstly, I created a normal DIY setup

This setup works fine for the Android 4.0.3. Then i guess my sound card is a CTIA standard. But unbelievably, it works fine with Android 9, and don't work with Android 10.

Now, I know that my sound card, Android 4 and Android 9 are all CTIA standard

Secondly, I decided to create a crossover cable setup. Like this, I will force an OMTP standard with a CTIA sound card.

As expected, this setup do not work on Android 4 and Android 9. But on Android 10, an headset without mic is detected. But I'm unable to listen/play a sound on the device. When I'm switching cable side on Android 10, the headset is periodically connecting/disconnecting like with the first setup (before edit).

To conclude, I guess that my issue isn't related to OMTP/CTIA but to the protocol used by devices to find plugged headset. With the Android 4, the jack port contains a little switch to know when a cable is plugged. On the others devices, this switch is present but do not have a direct impact on the detection of a headset. I guess the switch are used to launch a program that could detect the type of the audio device plugged (headset with mic, headset without mic...)

I use Moto G6 ALI with a custom ROM Pixel Experience running Android 11. So far so good and I was using this setup for almost two weeks as my daily use phone.

Today suddenly the phone froze when opening Whatsapp. No further response on the screen was observed. I had to restart the phone by pressing the power button for more than 5 seconds. Since I have unlocked by bootloader several years ago, I saw the boot locker unlocked warning. This usually stays for 5 seconds and then after I usually the boot animation. But this time there is no movement beyond the unlock warning.

I had flashed TWRP recovery and tried booting with it by pressing Vol-Down+Power button and then choosing "Recovery". The phone started the recovery mode but stuck with TWRP logo.

I then restarted to bootloader and gave the command "fastboot devices" and my device was recognised. So I downloaded the 64bit version of the recovery image and temporarily booted with the command "fastboot boot mali.img". This too stuck at the same point. Any clues on how to go ahead?

There doesn't seem to be much written on this, but I see an option to pair my device with a QR code scanner. Is there a way to pair my phone with my computer by generating a QR code on my computer and scanning it from my phone?

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.

I'm using the Pixel 4a running Android 11.

Following the "Samsung (System-as-root)"* instructions, I cannot get Magisk to patch lineage-17.1-20210304-nightly-jfltexx-signed.zip for a Samsung Galaxy S4 (SGH-M919). Magisk throws an "unsupported/unknown image format" error.

^{*since Magik says SAR=yes}

Is there a way to root a Samsung Galaxy S4 running LineageOS 17.1?

^{cf. "root on 17.1?" r/LineageOS}

More recently I noticed something weird on my Samsung Galaxy S9 in the Galaxy Store. I have never used it for any apps other than the Samsung exclusive ones, but yet it shows me updates for some apps that are not from Samsung. For example the DJI Fly app, or the Zoom meetings app or the Discord app. App info for all theses apps say, they were downloaded from Google Play Store, but yet the Samsung Store claims it has updates for these Apps.

Is that normal? If I press update there do I suddenly get these Apps from the Galaxy store and am dependent on when they allow an update to the app?

I purchased a TCL 10L phone two days ago. To my surprise when I plugged it, the phone said "Fast Charging" and it charged very fast. People on YouTube say that it does not support fast charging. Anyway, on next day, when I emptied the battery, I plugged the charger in. It said something like slowly charging. I panicked and I removed the plug and plugged it back in. It said fast charging like the first time and is currently charging.

I am worried. Is the device displaying the slowly charging message normal? I have 1 day left to replace the device if there are any issues. Though, I am not sure if this is normal or not. The device does not have any faults so far. So, I would risk getting a new device with the same issue and more issues. The port is USB-C if that matters.

Regards and thanks.

Edit: I unplugged the charger at 97%. Then, replugged it. Now, it says "Charging" only. I tried unplugging/replugging two times and still "Charging" no more fast charging at 97%.

APKMirror.com hosts complete split apks, containing not just the base.apk but also many languages/multiple architecture support/vr apks etc. Take for example the contents of this chrome split apk:

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/chrome/chrome-88-0-4324-93-release/google-chrome-fast-secure-88-0-4324-93-5-android-apk-download/

.
├── autofill_assistant.apk
├── autofill_assistant.config.en.apk
├── autofill_assistant.config.ja.apk
├── base.apk
├── cablev2_authenticator.apk
├── chime.apk
├── chime.config.en.apk
├── config.ar.apk
├── config.de.apk
├── config.en.apk
├── config.es.apk
├── config.fr.apk
├── config.hi.apk
├── config.in.apk
├── config.it.apk
├── config.ja.apk
├── config.ms.apk
├── config.nl.apk
├── config.pt.apk
├── config.ru.apk
├── config.th.apk
├── config.zh.apk
├── dev_ui.apk
├── extra_icu.apk
├── image_editor.apk
├── image_editor.config.en.apk
├── stack_unwinder.apk
├── test_dummy.apk
├── vr.apk
├── vr.config.en.apk
└── vr.config.ru.apk

Where are they sourcing these from?

My mother had a shopping app on her old smartphone which runs Android v6. Recently I noticed that the app on her phone was no longer supported. I've seen such things happen on old phones generally with many apps. I just wanted to know, why do companies drop their support to older OS versions after few years? Does it cost them a lot to continue the support to older OS versions as well? Does it require a whole team to be hired to just keep managing the support for older OS? Just being curious about this. Thanks.

I started recently to look up for a way to permanently disable my wifi, bluetooth, NFS, Network and GPS. Unfortunately I didnt find a proper method to do that. There was the option to physically break the hardwares, but I didnt want to risk that, if I get something wrong there I wouldnt have a 2nd chance. Except of that, there was only some ways to disable the wifi but it was easy to re-enable it again.

Anyways I figured out, that I need to root my device in order to remove hardware files, but the problem is I dont know WHICH files would be okay to remove.

I'm using a samsung galaxy s8 with Android 9 Pie

Till now I rooted my device twice and deleted hardware files,

the first time I deleted wifi hardware files from the system/etc/permissions folder. That lead to brick my phone.

The second time I deleted hardware files of bluetooth and nfc from:

system/lib

system/lib64

system/vendor/etc/init

system/vendor/etc

system/vendor/lib64

system/vendor/permessions

surprisingly it worked, I totally disabled bluetooth and nfc.

Then I wanted to proceed to remove gps (I figured out S8 aint using gps but gnss) so I removed the gnss files and folders. But this time, it bricked my phone, so I had to reinstall the samsung firmware again and now I rooted my device again.

Before I start trying again, I would like to ask you, if any of you have some knowledge about this and if there is any no-go files, which I should never remove or smth.

I dont really just want to try out over and over, it is taking much time to do all this... I hope somebody can help me out.

Additionally, do any of you know how the network hardware is called? basically the hardware which lets you call people or just the hardware which connects to a network provider.

The reason why I want to do this shouldnt be important right? but if you want to know why:

I want to keep my privacy. I want to be able to connect to the internet only via ethernet cable and also I want to use my device more as a map to plan routes, camera, calc etc.

ALOT of other people want to do this too, but nobody (after searching for over 20 hours) had the right solution. Every way I found, it was possible to reenable it easily.

Thank you for taking your time and reading my issue! I hope you can help!!

I will give an update about this anyways!

Is it possible to buy an Android phone for 5 years?

First, replaceable battery, yes.

But then, will I be able to use new and newer Android versions?

How can I add a shortcut with this url to my Homescreen?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/1234567

When I open this URL in Chrome, the Maps Application starts and shows the desired page/activity. But because of this instant redirect from Chrome to Maps it's impossible to use chrome's builtin add-to-homescreen feature for this type of URL.

The final Shortcut should open the Maps-App as Chrome already does. The final shortcut may open my browser just for the redirect into Maps, so a simple URL-Shortcut should be fine.

I tried QuickshortcutMaker but it does not offer to add URLs.

I have an Android Head unit in my car running Android 8.1 It has Google Assistant and almost all of the voice commands I've tried work normally except for making calls with the command "call Mom & Dad". My phone is connected to the Head Unit through Bluetooth. It is running an AOSP version of Android 10. I can manually make and receive calls successfully on the head unit through the phone Bluetooth app that comes with the head unit.

Assistant recognizes the command and then displays "App is not installed." in a toast message. After that, it shows the command that was just spoken. There is a button next to the command that says "Call". When I press this button, it successfully brings up the Bluetooth app and makes the call.

I've tried the following with no change:

• installed Google Contacts
• installed an XDA version of the Google phone app as the Google Phone app does not show up in the Play store on my head unit
• I've made sure all permissions have been turned on for the Google app
• I installed an app called GVC CallHandler for Joying

When I try to do the voice call on my phone, it works. Initially, I made the call through the standard Google phone app. I then installed the GVC CallHandler app on my phone and selected it to make the call. Assistant tried, but when the GVC CallHandler took over, there is an exception saying that the Joying Bluetooth app was not found...which is correct when run on my phone...and that can be found in the app source.

The GVC CallHandler is not used and/or is not an option to make a voice call when I voice "Call mom & dad" on my head unit. After installing this GVC CallHandler on my head unit, when I pressed the Google Assistant "Call" button described above, then I am asked to choose between the Bluetooth app and the GVC CallHandler app.

From my research, I believe the message "App is not installed" is shown when no activity is found in Android to handle the intent being invoked. I'm not sure what intent is being called and don't know how to find out what intent is being called. I have the source for GVC CallHandler. It's an app from XDA that is available on the Play Store. GVC CallHandler XDA thread and the post with the source.

GVC CallHandler is an app that was previously created to modify the number being called to make it into a format that would work in the built-in dialer. It would remove characters such as "(", "+", etc.

So, any help to determine and address the "App isn't installed." message as described above would be great. What I'd like to do is say "Call Mom & Dad" and have the call go through my Bluetooth connected phone to make the call.

Addition: This happens to any and all contacts that I've tried.

Addition: The intention of this is to make calls through the Bluetooth attached phone.

Addition: While testing this again, I was able to find this in the logs related to the request to make a voice call:

android.intent.action.CALL dat=tel:xxxxxxxxx flg=0x1000000000 pkg=com.android.server.telecom (has extras)

This was followed by a failure to find the activity and/or the telecom package. I'm currently looking into this.

Thank you

Problem: I just upgraded my phone software, and the lock screen PIN buttons have changed appearance! They are now shifted up, smaller (circular with spaces in between them, instead of square and using the whole screen area), and less responsive. This seems like a terrible idea from a UX standpoint- completely messing up my muscle-memory; now every time I try to log in to my phone, I screw up the pin at least twice. Very annoying.

Examples: Before the lock-screen PIN had something like this, with square buttons, except they were larger & took up the whole the middle of the lock screen:

Now, this is the awful new lock-screen PIN layout:

Phone Specs:

• Galaxy S10e (SM-G970U)
• Android Version 11
• ONE UI version 3.0
• New Software Version: G970USQU4FTLN / G970UOYN4FTLN / G970USQU4FTN

What I've tried: When I try to look up this issue, most of the responses will be about changing my PIN lock-method to a password / pattern, etc. lock method, or changing the PIN itself. Those Q&A's I've found addressing the appearance / behavior of the lock screen tend to say it's inbuilt to the system & nothing you can do except for really cracking your phone software. I also don't see anything in Accessibility options, but maybe I'm missing something. Any ideas, or is this really something I'm going to have to put up with (until I get mad enough & just throw it in the trash)?

if Power and volume button is busted, is it possible to turn phone on by using adb or fastboot or any other method?

Or may be, How a powered off phone communicate with the power button and other things(i.e charging animation,volume button etc)? perhaps is it possible to tweak this communication to gain access externally?

Curious, solving this issue by software means, possible?

If ill root my phone and delete the browser and the play store for example... and then ill go into recovery mode and make a factory reset, will those app will come back?

If yes, is there a way to prevent simple factory rest to recover those app? ty

When you reset an iPhone, my understanding is that the device does not truly get reset to how it was when it exited the factory.

What about with an Android device? Does performing a factory reset on an Android device always reset the device to how it actually left the factory?

I decided to ask this question to help our community generate accurate answers to this other one.

On an Android Nougat (7.1.1) set top box, du and df of my /data partition are very different:

$ adb shell du -sh /data
1.0G    /data
$ adb shell df -H /data
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/sda9  10G   10G  469M  96% /data

I don’t think that anything else is mounted under /data:

$ adb shell mount | grep "\/data"
/dev/block/sda9 on /data type ext4 (rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,relatime,discard,noauto_da_alloc,data=ordered)
$ adb shell mount | grep "sda9"
/dev/block/sda9 on /data type ext4 (rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,relatime,discard,noauto_da_alloc,data=ordered)

lsof indicates to me that there are dozens of processes holding hundreds of small deleted files of the sort

init          1       root    3w      CHR               1,11       0t0      14517 /dev/__kmsg__ (deleted)
ueventd     391       root    3w      CHR               1,11       0t0      14593 /dev/__kmsg__ (deleted)
  . . .
main        756       root  mem   unknown                                         /dev/ashmem/dalvik-large object space allocation (deleted)
main        756       root  mem   unknown                                         /dev/ashmem/dalvik-large object space allocation (deleted)
  . . .
omm.times  3934     system  mem   unknown                                         /dev/ashmem/dalvik-mark sweep sweep array free buffer (deleted)
omm.times  3934     system  mem   unknown                                         /dev/ashmem/dalvik-mark sweep sweep array free buffer (deleted)

Using busybox, results are different (df shows much less usage), but there is still a large discrepancy between du and df:

$ adb shell busybox du -sh /data
389.4M  /data
$ adb shell busybox df -h /data
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/userdata
                          9.7G      8.6G      1.1G  89% /data

And using toybox, the results are similar to busybox:

$ adb shell toybox du -sh /data
389M    /data
$ adb shell toybox df -h /data
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/sda9  10G  8.6G  1.1G  89% /data

It think that it's important to note that these numbers remain similar after a reboot.

Also, I wish to note that I cannot OTA update this device's Android due to running out of disk space, even though the OTA image is only about 1GB in size. This fact leads me to believe that the results of df are accurate in terms of actual available disk space.

All adb commands are run as root i.e., I did adb root before executing them. But at risk of making this question be too verbose, here's everything run at the adb prompt:

$ adb shell
Z:/ # whoami
root
Z:/ # du -sh /data
389M    /data
Z:/ # df -h /data
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/sda9  10G  8.6G  1.1G  89% /data
10.197.12.14:/ # busybox du -sh /data
389.4M  /data
Z:/ # busybox df -h /data
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/userdata
                          9.7G      8.6G      1.1G  89% /data
Z:/ # toybox du -sh /data
389M    /data
Z:/ # toybox df -h /data
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/sda9  10G  8.6G  1.1G  89% /data
Z:/ # 

A user in comments has asked for the following:

Z:/ # while read num; do (( sum += num )); done <<< $(find /data -type f -exec stat -c%b {} +); expr $sum / 2048
393

I understand that du reports free space by scanning reachable nodes, and that this could therefore mean that my file system is corrupt. However, unfortunately, this is for devices in the field, and I don’t want to have to (and don’t think I can) run fsck or e2fsck.

What might be causing the huge difference between du and df on this device, and how might this problem be resolved? I’m happy to provide further logs.

I noticed an issue in mid December where a few messages in a row that were sent in a group MMS were never received on my phone. A few days ago, I had the same issue with an SMS message sent to me. There may have been other instances as well that I'm unaware of. In December, my default messaging app was QKSMS. In the instance a few days ago, my default SMS/MMS app was Signal.

I'm using an Asus Zenfone 6 on Wing's AT&T network (for those don't know, this essentially means Wing bought AT&T contracts in bulk and is reselling them individually).

I don't know of any issues with outgoing messages. The intermittent nature of this problem makes it difficult to troubleshoot. What steps can I take to ensure I don't lose any incoming MMS or SMS messages in the future?

I've been trying to troubleshoot a Wi-Fi issue (with a specific network) and have Wi-Fi verbose logging on, but I can't find any documentation on what any of the fields in the network selection menu are.

The network in question has the full info of:

Connected [ UN UN UN ] f=2462 00:00:b1:6b:00:b5 standard=4 rssi=-75 score=59 tx=23.3,27.9,1.0 rx=20.9 4G STAs:8[(2)

I understand rssi and STAs (although, I have no idea for the second number for STAs) and f fits the channel frequency, but the rest (UN, tx/rx, standard, score, and 4G) have me stumped.

Does anyone have any idea for these or a pointer to the relevant documentation?

I just learned how to use scrcpy. I successfully turned on ADB on the Android and am able to scrcpy to it from my PC. Now, I want to connect to multiple smartphones.

I notice it is a portable app, so is it a matter of duplicating multiple folders of scrcpy? Or can I connect to multiple phones from one instance of scrcpy?