I switched from iOS to Android when my iPhone 3G (not 3GS) finally gave up the ghost, and by that stage Apple weren't doing any OS updates to it either. That was a few years ago. On the whole I'm pretty happy with Android, since v4 it's felt less like a hobby OS and more stable. Even if it doesn't seem as stable as iOS, which is understandable since it gets skinned for each manufacturers hardware- making it akin to Windows in trying to accomodate everything.
I've got a Nexus 4 (the google phone) so you'd expect Android to play nicely with Googles own hardware, and yeah, upto 4.4.2, it has - it seems noticeably quicker doing things than on equivalent hardware.
So far, so good.
Android 4.4 came out late last year and it's caused problems on a number of devices. But the problem I had was when I made, or answered, a phone call - the dialler pad went black and inactive. The only way I could hang up was by holding the power button, or waiting until the caller hangup. And I couldn't use phone banking, or put the phone on speaker.
Sometimes hitting the power button on the side showed a brief glimpse of the panel. couldn't do anythnig with it, so presume this is Google's attempt at teasing me.
Not really the best look for a device marketed as a phone.
Even for me who doesn't really use the phone as a phone much.
So I've written this summary to bring together the number of pages and things I tried, eventually taking the phone back to Android 4.3.
What did I try
The internet is full of suggestions. Here's what I tried and what happened.
Tried alternative dialler
Kinda improved things, but still when receiving phone calls everything went dark.
Safe Mode
This is similar to booting into Safe Mode on a PC, it disables 3rd party apps etc. Instructions here.
Result: same problem, so it's Android and not an app I installed.
Restore to factory settings
Your phone has a restore to factory settings somewhere. It'll clear everything, so back up if you don't already sync to Google.
Result: as expected, same as Safe Mode.
Clean Install of 4.4.2
I'll give more detailed instructions under the restore to 4.3 section below. But figured before I took it back, I'd try a clean install of 4.4.2.
Result: phone seemed more responsive, but same problem with dialler.
Restore back to 4.3
And so, after being unable to get some voicemail, I decided to go back to 4.3. This involved a few webpages, and wasn't very Mac focussed, so here's my attempt at bringing it together - hopefully making it reasonably straightforward for most users.
Sources for this:
Cult of Android
Android Developer Site
Unlock bootloader for Nexus 4
Software you'll need
Android SDK- Developer Tools and API libraries
Android Factory Images - choose the 4.3 version
Android File Transfer Agent (maybe already installed if you move files/music around)
Instructions
Your Mac should already have the drivers to see the Nexus, if not install the Android File Transfer agent from here.
Extract the Android SDK, it will say you need to have a Java environment installed, but all you want from this large bundle is a small file called Fastboot.
Extract the 4.3 Factory image.
I kept both extractions in Downloads, as it was easier to keep track of where they were. But that's just me.
Find the file in the SDK called 'fastboot' and move this into the extracted 4.3 directory (called occam-jwr66y). Fastboot is probably in a subfolder called 'platform-tools'.
Put Nexus into Bootloader mode
Turn the phone off, then switch on by pressing the power key, and Volume Up + Volume Down simultaneously.
Connect the phone to the computer.
Start up a terminal window (Launchpad / Other / Terminal). Use the cd command to get to the directory you've saved everything into, for example mine was:
cd ~/Downloads/occam-jwr66y
type:
./fastboot oem unlock
You will be prompted on the phone to verify the process.
Open the script flash-all.sh using TextEdit from the occam-jwr66y folder and edit it so that all of the fastboot commands read ./fastboot my script now looks like:
./fastboot flash bootloader bootloader-mako-makoz20i.img
./fastboot reboot-bootloader
sleep 5
./fastboot flash radio radio-mako-m9615a-cefwmazm-2.0.1700.84.img
./fastboot reboot-bootloader
sleep 5
./fastboot -w update image-occam-jwr66y.zip
Back to Terminal, and type
./flash-all.sh
Your phone will automatically reboot, and ask you to set it up again. Things worked fine for me here.
But I also rebooted into the Bootloader, connected my phone up, and typed the following into the terminal window to lock the bootloader again:
./fastboot oem lock
It was then an annoying process of going through the Android store for My Apps, then clicking on the All tab and choosing what I wanted to reinstall.
However the phone dialler now does what I want it to do.
Hope this helps someone...
B
Showing posts with label Gadgets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gadgets. Show all posts
22 December 2009
A slightly geeky day at work
I had a few things to tidy up this morning, and a big meeting for cunning plan implementation. After lunch I decided to boot back into linux and finally finish the configuration. I'm using Kubuntu 9.10 mainly as I like the prettiness of the KDE desktop. The utilitarian approach of Gnome is good, but I like pretty - I'm a Mac boy damnit.
I'd already set up email, sadly Evolution doesn't have a Exchange 2007 plugin yet. I'm thinking of switching to the KDE mail suite, but it's never really rocked my world, so will continue with Evolution (mail) and Outlook Web Access for calendaring etc. I guess I could look at synching my outlook calendar with gmail which would do what I want better. Hmmm. No hurry as it does synch nicely with the iphone so I'm still getting reminders when I need them.
Got a bit sick of Kopete which is the default KDE instant messenger, so I've installed Pidgin since that's what I was using on the Windows side of the box. I've also edited the display settings so it's crystal clear (better than windows, which is odd), although it continues to want to display on the laptop and the external monitor - guess that's something to look at in the new year.
Using Firefox for the browser, KDE's default one is good, but has a few issues with websites that don't follow HTML coding properly.
The big win? Plugging in my Mac formatted ipod, the system recognising it, and Amarok (the KDE default media player) picking it up and playing tracks off it - no problems at all. The Pidgin plugins for 'now playing' are very simple to plug in, and there's a Last.FM plugin built in by default.
I haven't finished configuring my drive mappings, currently I can see the SMB shares, but only as read-only, and I can't be bothered doing much about that today. I'm sure I fixed that on another box, so will see if I made any useful notes concerning it.
Generally, I'm liking it. It's certainly a lot less clunky than it used to be - not nearly as smooth as MacOS, but certainly more is built-in and just works out of the box than Windows. I think I'll continue to use it more in the new year, if only as it reads the ipod and I can play music and tell people what I'm listening to. Yes, I am that shallow.
Oh and the Skype linux version, technically beta, works well. No problems there either.
I also tidied my desk, and starting reading about Prince2, but then decided fiddling with my linux box was more interesting.
Love, B
I'd already set up email, sadly Evolution doesn't have a Exchange 2007 plugin yet. I'm thinking of switching to the KDE mail suite, but it's never really rocked my world, so will continue with Evolution (mail) and Outlook Web Access for calendaring etc. I guess I could look at synching my outlook calendar with gmail which would do what I want better. Hmmm. No hurry as it does synch nicely with the iphone so I'm still getting reminders when I need them.
Got a bit sick of Kopete which is the default KDE instant messenger, so I've installed Pidgin since that's what I was using on the Windows side of the box. I've also edited the display settings so it's crystal clear (better than windows, which is odd), although it continues to want to display on the laptop and the external monitor - guess that's something to look at in the new year.
Using Firefox for the browser, KDE's default one is good, but has a few issues with websites that don't follow HTML coding properly.
The big win? Plugging in my Mac formatted ipod, the system recognising it, and Amarok (the KDE default media player) picking it up and playing tracks off it - no problems at all. The Pidgin plugins for 'now playing' are very simple to plug in, and there's a Last.FM plugin built in by default.
I haven't finished configuring my drive mappings, currently I can see the SMB shares, but only as read-only, and I can't be bothered doing much about that today. I'm sure I fixed that on another box, so will see if I made any useful notes concerning it.
Generally, I'm liking it. It's certainly a lot less clunky than it used to be - not nearly as smooth as MacOS, but certainly more is built-in and just works out of the box than Windows. I think I'll continue to use it more in the new year, if only as it reads the ipod and I can play music and tell people what I'm listening to. Yes, I am that shallow.
Oh and the Skype linux version, technically beta, works well. No problems there either.
I also tidied my desk, and starting reading about Prince2, but then decided fiddling with my linux box was more interesting.
Love, B
26 April 2009
In Bruce we trust, Network toys
Today? well it's pissing down so I'm curled up on the chair thinking about a nice glass of wine or beer - since I only had two all yesterday (but let's not talk about Friday).
I did head into work to try and recover data from a couple of computers. Which I did successfully, to the relief of their owners. But FFSake who doesn't run backups? I've had three data recoveries to do over the last two weeks. Two of them I've got everything back, and the third probably 90-95% back. But still - backups people!! For those of you not on MacOS 10.5 and the superb TimeMachine, you can still drag n drop stuff to an external harddrive. Do you really wanna lose all those photos? the pr0n you've downloaded? There's masses off small apps that will run backups for you on Windows...
Speaking of which, I was getting a bit paranoid about mine, and in particular the iTunes library. So I've invested in a small NAS so I can run that as a multimedia center through the AppleTV as well. I'll let you know how that goes when it's arrived (has a 1TB drive in it, with space for a 2nd if I want to RAID it). I'm intending to tidy up my DVDs lying around the place and get them on there.
Figure the iTunes library can live there and be dragged to the 750GB FW800 drive periodically for redundency. Oohh I could write a script for that. No no no stop it. Geek !!!
I think it's wine weather and a nice classic movie, probably Errol Flynn.
Will just read the paper first.
Me xxx
28 October 2008
Phones!!!
Ok I'll admit straight up I don't like gadgets much. Which probably comes as a surprise to most people, but really I can count on one hand the gadgets I have (ipod, laptop, appletv). And I hate phones. Really hate. I hate their ringing. I hate people wanting me to do stuff, and i hate their general intrusion into daily life. Which is why i don't have a landline at home.
I like text messaging and watching my phone ring, just so I know who I'm ignoring.
So when work told me I needed to put my mobile number on the business card I said 'no' it's a personal phone, so you won't be doing that. They said fine they'll get me a work phone. I got excited at that point and said, can I have an iphone. They said no, and my enthusiasm disappeared. I ended up a with a Palm Treo 700wx. It's a hefty wee thing, but does fit OK in my pocket, and TBH I'm a hefty wee thing too. It runs Windows Mobile and lets me read my emails and get reminders of meetings. That's proven to be very useful and I like it for that. The layout is mostly Windows-y so I can navigate around it pretty easily.
The battery seems crap, like 2-3 days (max) when ive got it checking emails and on phone. And it doesn't seem to have a phone only option (ie no Outlook), I'm not saying it doesn't have one, but I haven't found it. And I can't be arsed reading manuals. I tried. I really did. But got bored and found beer instead.
And my personal phone? well the SonyEricsson thing I had died. Badly. So I got an iphone. It's like sex, I can't get enough of it. Looks great, is really simple to use, does everything I want a phone to do (aside from MMS, but there's a hack for that), and syncs with my Mac - which was always a driving issue for a new phone. The SonyEriccson did ok via BlueTooth tho'.
It's simple to use, the keypad is easier to use than the Treo (which isn't too bad - looks crap, but works ok) and typing messages is quicker than I thought it would be. I would have thought my fingers would be too big and i'd get the wrong letters, but no. It's just great. And it looks even better!
I haven't ever felt this kind of need for a phone before. I even answer phone calls on it !!
So there is another gadget in my life, and I can see this one making life easier - which is my usual issue with gadgets, in large they don't add anything. This one - syncs my calendars, organises my shopping lists, allows me to dump to-do's on it including shopping lists, can check the weather, tap out emails, listen to music (if I ever get around to putting any on there), watch movies (if I get around to that). Oh heaven and joy :)
me (somewhat infatuated)
I like text messaging and watching my phone ring, just so I know who I'm ignoring.
So when work told me I needed to put my mobile number on the business card I said 'no' it's a personal phone, so you won't be doing that. They said fine they'll get me a work phone. I got excited at that point and said, can I have an iphone. They said no, and my enthusiasm disappeared. I ended up a with a Palm Treo 700wx. It's a hefty wee thing, but does fit OK in my pocket, and TBH I'm a hefty wee thing too. It runs Windows Mobile and lets me read my emails and get reminders of meetings. That's proven to be very useful and I like it for that. The layout is mostly Windows-y so I can navigate around it pretty easily.The battery seems crap, like 2-3 days (max) when ive got it checking emails and on phone. And it doesn't seem to have a phone only option (ie no Outlook), I'm not saying it doesn't have one, but I haven't found it. And I can't be arsed reading manuals. I tried. I really did. But got bored and found beer instead.
And my personal phone? well the SonyEricsson thing I had died. Badly. So I got an iphone. It's like sex, I can't get enough of it. Looks great, is really simple to use, does everything I want a phone to do (aside from MMS, but there's a hack for that), and syncs with my Mac - which was always a driving issue for a new phone. The SonyEriccson did ok via BlueTooth tho'.It's simple to use, the keypad is easier to use than the Treo (which isn't too bad - looks crap, but works ok) and typing messages is quicker than I thought it would be. I would have thought my fingers would be too big and i'd get the wrong letters, but no. It's just great. And it looks even better!
I haven't ever felt this kind of need for a phone before. I even answer phone calls on it !!
So there is another gadget in my life, and I can see this one making life easier - which is my usual issue with gadgets, in large they don't add anything. This one - syncs my calendars, organises my shopping lists, allows me to dump to-do's on it including shopping lists, can check the weather, tap out emails, listen to music (if I ever get around to putting any on there), watch movies (if I get around to that). Oh heaven and joy :)
me (somewhat infatuated)
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