I own an HTC INCREDIBLE and I've been told to "root" my phone to get rid of all the bloatware. What is rooting and how do I do it? A lot of my apps and all of my music and all photos are saved to my mem card. There are some HTC apps I would actually like to keep. Also, is there anyway I could get swipe on my phone?
Yep - you can root your phone to get rid of bloatware and allow you to do all sorts of other things, basically, rooting the phone allows you to be the administrator of your phone, whereas now you just have a user account on it ... As for how to root, that's been done a lot of different ways and is explained in a number of places - you should read several how-tos so you'll have an idea of what you're getting yourself into (and whether you want to bother)... The contents of your memory card should be safe, but you should back them up anyway, since memory cards do fail during normal use. Simply rooting won't automatically remove any of your apps, so your good there, but it will give you the ability to remove apps, or even break (or even "brick") your phone, so take it easy and don't take any steps 'till you understand what you're about to do.
Here are some resources you can check out :
Ok, actually I'm not allowed to be helpful by posting links since I'm a new member, but google these terms: root droid incredible Jonamerica - that'll get you started...
As for swype the legit way to get it is to sign up for their beta (it's available on their website which I can't link you to) and go from there.
Thanks so much. I'll check it out!
Just a few newbie tips for you.
I'm new to all of this also.....rooting and flashing.
1. Read a lot before you do anything. Its not hard but readup first!
2. Be patient......2 or 3 times while I have rooted or flashed I have thought that maybe my phone is dead. Sometimes there is no visible indication that the phone is actually doing what you want it to do. Let it sit there and do its thing. DO NOT PANIC and pull the battery!
3. Backup backup backup backup BACKUP!
Have fun.....I am
wildland said:
Yep - you can root your phone to get rid of bloatware and allow you to do all sorts of other things, basically, rooting the phone allows you to be the administrator of your phone, whereas now you just have a user account on it ... As for how to root, that's been done a lot of different ways and is explained in a number of places - you should read several how-tos so you'll have an idea of what you're getting yourself into (and whether you want to bother)... The contents of your memory card should be safe, but you should back them up anyway, since memory cards do fail during normal use. Simply rooting won't automatically remove any of your apps, so your good there, but it will give you the ability to remove apps, or even break (or even "brick") your phone, so take it easy and don't take any steps 'till you understand what you're about to do.
Here are some resources you can check out :
Ok, actually I'm not allowed to be helpful by posting links since I'm a new member, but google these terms: root droid incredible Jonamerica - that'll get you started...
As for swype the legit way to get it is to sign up for their beta (it's available on their website which I can't link you to) and go from there.
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Thank you for this search link. Guide is very helpful, fills in alot of the blanks I've been having.
You're welcome.
There are numerous other guides and threads out there, so googling and reading is a good idea... I just researched it again since I rooted my wife's Inc. last night and since it has an SLCD screen I wanted to make sure that unrevoked had been updated to work with these screens - turns out it has and it worked fine. I actually had a scary moment when the phone wouldn't boot into recovery (five vibrations and a blank screen) but a google search and a battery pull saved me and so far so good since then - and I was able to uninstall verizon's backup assistant which was killing her battery every day.
Is that the only reason you rooted your wife's phone, was to remove some of the bloat? I might end up doing the same.
ramma2 said:
Is that the only reason you rooted your wife's phone, was to remove some of the bloat? I might end up doing the same.
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Yeah, that was the main reason - when she upgraded from her dumbphone, we used Backup Assistant to transfer her numbers over, but lately it's been hanging during sync and killing her battery (and/or it may be syncing over the poor 1x data connection rather than available wifi - not sure about that but it sounds like something Verizon would do (it would both be a bit more secure, and use more data they could bill us for)). Since Verizon in all their wisdom made it so you can't uninstall that app or disassociate it from your account, I figured the I'd use force and just root the phone - worked too, now her battery's lasting all day, no problem.
I also would recommend rooting to anyone concerned about certain apps wanting internet permissions - DroidWall is a great app allowing you to prevent apps from accessing the internet (or you can block just wifi or just 3g for a specific app, potentially allowing you to better manage your data usage).
make sure to read alot about what ur getting into.. And remember to always backup before you do anything (incase of errors/problems) you can always boot back to stock...happy rootin!
Check this out: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Barebones.
That guide is specific to Cyanogenmod, and it's a little outdated, but it's a good starting point to learn what applications are required for the phone to run, and which applications are simply "extra."
so, I am usually pretty paranoid when it comes to my phone. I set up Avast anti-theft and I set a pin for my sim card.
if someone steals my phone, then I can text it and it'll track it on a map. If they take out the sim card and tries to use it on a different phone, they can't without the pin number.
now, the problem is, someone stole my phone. they turned it off the second they got it. I sent it the text to track it. after a while, I realized, the person would have to unlock my sim card before the text can be sent.
I did get it back, but to prevent this, is there something I can do to auto-unlock my sim card on my phone?
bl3achcrazy said:
so, I am usually pretty paranoid when it comes to my phone. I set up Avast anti-theft and I set a pin for my sim card.
if someone steals my phone, then I can text it and it'll track it on a map. If they take out the sim card and tries to use it on a different phone, they can't without the pin number.
now, the problem is, someone stole my phone. they turned it off the second they got it. I sent it the text to track it. after a while, I realized, the person would have to unlock my sim card before the text can be sent.
I did get it back, but to prevent this, is there something I can do to auto-unlock my sim card on my phone?
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Click to collapse
As far as I know from personal experience you can not unlock the sim without the pin code. It would take away the whole purpose of having security on your sim card. It is there just in case of this scenario. I mean you can leave it off if you want to be able to find it.
I leave mine with only the main screen lock for that reason. I want the phone to turn on so that prey cann do it's job. If I lost my phone's and couldn't recover it then it's easy enough to blacklist in the UK!
Sent from my HTC One X using xda app-developers app
Hi:
One of the things I liked about my iPhone 4S is that I could easily take a picture, and still enjoy having my phone locked. I could even initiate Siri (who I never got to understand my accent), and thus I could even make calls and send texts - or in my case, get stressed out trying as the darn thing usually misunderstood me.
I have only found one app that can do that for the Note 2; but it only allows pictures, not making calls etc.; and it makes my phone look like a bloody iPhone ("smart iPhone 5 lock screen" app, in Play Store). More importantly, it only gives camera access, not "calling and texting", for example.
Ideally, I'm looking for an App that can allow some apps to be used, but still locking up the rest of the system until a passcode is entered. There are a bunch that do it from a so-called "locked screen", but it's not truly locked, except against accidental key presses. I am not even sure if the Android OS fundamentally supports this, but if it does, I'm willing to pay for it, as I don't enjoy the time it takes to unlock my phone when I am in a hurry, and I do not want to leave my phone unlocked as I have personally sensitive data on it.
Anyone have any ideas? I have tried multiple searches in the PlayStore and just come up with more of the same. My phone is not rooted, and I am not feeling very brave about doing that just yet, so I really want a regular App, if such a thing exists?
Regards and thanks for reading.
Andrew
Hi everyone,
I'm the new owner of an unlocked T-Mo D851, and will be using it on AT&T. I bought the T-Mo version instead of the ATT version due to the unlocked bootloader and better Dev support. Love those Devs!
I figured I'd post a thread with the things I learn along the way, to help others that might benefit, particularly since I'm joining the G3 community long after the novelty has worn off. Folks like me that join have a lot of past experience to review here, and so much is out of date it can be intimidating, particularly when our new device acts a lot different from our old one. I hope this thread helps someone, but at minimum it will serve as documentation for me to refer back to, should I need that. I'll include links where appropriate.
I'm an intermediate level flasher, having worked with maybe 6-8 other phones/tablets. So, I know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to have an ego to bruise. My most recent phone was a T-Mo Galaxy S4. But I dropped it, and cracked the screen, just a few weeks after getting it all settled in with a nice 5.1.1 GPE ROM. Sigh.
I got the phone a few days ago but have just gotten around to working on it.
On day 1 I charged it up, skipped setup (touch corners, upper left, upper right, lower right above the softkeys, lower left above the softkeys... took 10 tries or so!), and connected the wifi (no sim card inserted yet). It immediately found update 20E (it shipped with kitkat). I let that update, but was surprised it didn't find the current 20G update. I want to make sure I start with the latest firmware/modems etc. installed.
In this thread, helpful user @mitbit2k3 pointed me to the online LG site that lets you download the LG Mobile Support Tool. It also gives instructions for installing the PROPER PC connection driver for the phone which works, versus the default Win7 driver that doesn't work for the purposes of the update. With proper driver installed, and with USB connection in the right mode (follow instructions to set the phone USB settings), I got up to 20G stock.
I exercised the phone a bit (still without SIM card) and made sure everything worked... cameras, GPS, wifi, etc.
Then I figured it would be time to install TWRP and take it from there. Much to my surprise, you need to root this thing FIRST. Even with an unlocked bootloader, you can't just fire up ODIN and flash TWRP.
I did my research on the forum and through Google... with all the versions of software since release there were numerous descriptions of how to root the thing, some of which were outdated. For me, on 20G software (5.01 Android), this worked fine:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LGG3/comments/3n0nk1/new_super_easy_oneclick_way_to_root_g3/
it references back to XDA of course:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/lg-g3/general/guide-root-method-lg-devices-t3129197
From this I learned to review the top level LG G3 subforums, not just the T-Mobile XDA subforums!!
OK, that rooted me just fine and installed SuperSU. I was able to use the "first way" which is super simple.
With that done, I was able to install TWRP. I went straight to the source for it:
https://twrp.me/devices/lgg3tmo.html
I used the "dd" method which involves running ADB on the PC. I use a version that is a "Minimal ADB and Fastboot" that works fine... I used it to mess around with my Shield tablet previously, so I was familiar with it. Basically you run the minimal ADB through a desktop icon, and it loads a command line interface. You type ADB Shell after plugging in the phone to the USB cable (it has to be on, developer options enabled, debugging enabled). Then you type the commands listed on the TWRP site. Pretty soon TWRP is installed.
Next I had to figure out how to get into download mode. Yeah, yeah... power plus volume down... been there done that, but on the LG you have to boot with power/down, then when the LG icon comes up you release for a second, then press the two keys again, then at the next screen tell it you want to wipe the phone, and confirm this again on the next screen. THEN it finally boots into TWRP. Kinda scary. And getting the keys right takes some practice.
Once in TWRP, I backed everything up (including EFS partition) to an external SD card, just in case I messed something up. I had previously erased the SD card from within the phone's SEttings/Storage mode, to make sure it would be able to be accessed. No problem.
So now I've got a rooted phone, with TWRP installed, and the next step is to figure out what I want to do ROM wise. I wish there were a 5.1.1 GPE stock + LG Camera ROM. But I haven't found one. I like plain ROMs. The default stock ROM, even if it were debloated, its a bit annoying to me (and just 5.0.1) so I'll probably move to BlissPop or Slim something, but I will research around.
It's time to stick my SIM in and see how the phone does on AT&T. I'd like to get a baseline before I go ROM-hopping.
I will say that on stock ROM, with no SIM but WIFI on, the standby power drain on this thing is incredible. It went overnight (7 hours) and was still reading 100%. A whole 24 hours in, it was only a few percent lower. Of course, I hadn't attached any Google accounts, so the phone was truly idle, but it's very impressive nonetheless.
Stay tuned. I'll be updating this as I go along.
OK, I'm a few hours in.
No problem with my ATT SIM card in the phone; the phone was purchased unlocked and everything hooked up fine as soon as I entered in the APN information for ATT (which you can get from here).
The phone gave me a warning about WIFI Calling invalid SIM; I went into the settings and turned off WIFI calling, since I'm on ATT and only T-Mo offers it.
One other problem I haven't sorted out yet is that I get a text each time I reboot the phone, apparently my phone is sending a text to a very long address 060504071000004163.... and the text I get back is an error message that this isn't a valid number. Not sure how to turn this off. Annoying, but once per boot won't kill me until I figure it out. Google will likely be my friend. EDIT: I think this relates to T-mo visual voicemail. I went into the T-Mo Visual Voicemail app and I immediately got another one of these texts. Time to remove this app...
Meanwhile I notice the WIFI reception of this phone is much stronger than the S4. On the other hand, it seems less likely to drop a weak WIFI in favor of a stronger one... I have several access points around my house, and I've found I've needed to switch them manually now and then. Haven't had to do this on the S4.
I'm also struggling to get restores to work from my Backup Your Mobile app. I moved the backup onto an SD card in the G3, but the app isn't recognizing it. Uh oh. That's got my MMS/SMS/Call log backups. So, I've still got things to work on.
I gradually entered my various Google accounts, and let Play Store download the updates needed for all the apps. I've got about 75% of the apps I use re-downloaded.
I've got one "serious" problem in that the Play Store says the ATT Visual Voicemail app, which is a cornerstone of how I use the phone (because it transcribes voicemails into readable text), isn't compatible with my phone. That's crap. It worked fine on my T-Mo S4 (running a generic GPE edition). I'll probably have to sideload the app, but it's annoying that it's locked out.
Making progress.
I still couldn't download the ATT Visual Voicemail app from the Play Store, and went stir crazy trying to find it on my S4 (which is rooted, so I should be able to find it, but...). I went haring off in lots of directions, including making a full apps backup with Helium, but then the G3 won't restore without using the PC app due to changes in 5.0... which is weird because my S4 (which is running a 5.1.1 GPE ROM) restores fine. I don't have the PC app installed so I tried using Backup My Mobile... but then eventually figured out that on the S4, with ES File Explorer, I not only had Root Explorer OFF (didn't know I had to turn it on), but it's easy to find apps with the APP Library. Once I found the app there, I uploaded it to my Google Drive, then downloaded it from there onto the G3. It installed fine.
I used System App Remover (which requires root) to get rid of all the T-Mobile specific apps and that annoying Lookout security program. Bah! This cured that spurious text message I get with each boot. It was definitely due to the T-mo visual voice mail. Problem solved!
In using the phone, I'm a bit bummed because it didn't occur to me that a big part of my bigger screen as compared to the GS4 would be taken up by the softkeys on screen. The S4 has a physical home button and capacitive keys to either side. So, my screen isn't effectively much bigger, when I account for dedicating some of it to the buttons. You can make the buttons autohide, apparently. One issue is I use my phone in landscape much of the time, and the buttons don't rotate to the new "bottom" of the screen when I rotate. Gotta figure that out.
This morning I installed the PC Helium App so I could enable backup/restore access on the G3. That worked fine, but Helium on the G3 still doesn't detect my external SD card, in order to restore from it. I could manually copy files over to the internal Carbon folder, and restores from there worked fine. Still, I'm not sure why I'm having so much SD Card angst. I know things change each version of Android wrt SD cards... maybe something is fixed in 5.1.1 (as I had on my S4) that is broken in 5.01 on the G3.
So, I've got some tweaking to do from here. The phone is basically set up and working fine except for some straggler apps that I won't bother with until I need them, with one major exception: I need to go in and set up Light Flow. That app is a big part of how I manage notifications on any phone...
If you rooted your phone, then download and run the SDFix app from the Play Store. Apps will then have the ability to write to the external SD card...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nextapp.sdfix&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dsd+card+fix+kitkat&pcampaignid=APPU_1_bJMtVsTJBoKajwP4noeABw
... and yes, it also works w/ Lollipop.
redduc900 said:
If you rooted your phone, then download and run the SDFix app from the Play Store. Apps will then have the ability to write to the external SD card...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nextapp.sdfix&hl=en&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dsd+card+fix+kitkat&pcampaignid=APPU_1_bJMtVsTJBoKajwP4noeABw
... and yes, it also works w/ Lollipop.
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Thanks. I'll give this a whirl!
EDIT: WORKED LIKE A CHARM. Thanks again! And thanks for the link, because there were several SDFix apps. The link made sure I got the one you intended.:good:
OK, I'm in a pretty good place after making some changes. Still plenty to tweak though.
First, I decided to abandon the stock Home launcher. It was a bit annoying with little UI tweaks LG made that make it just not how I expect it to look, but the kicker was that in landscape mode, the titles of the icons were not readable... they were mostly cut off. I use Rotate (Ultimate Rotation) so pretty much every screen including home is rotatable. But LG Home maintains in landscape mode the little dots representing the various home screen pages... these take up just enough room so that things get squished a bit and the titles cut off. Couldn't figure out how to disable that, so just bailed and installed Google Now Launcher which fixed me right up. That fixed the look and feel of the home screen, the apps drawer, and even reverted settings to the normal views I'm used to.
The only problem is that it kills double tap to sleep... or at least reduces the footprint of the double-tappable area to the notification strip at the top. Sigh. In another thread someone mentioned using Greenify to fix it. I'll try that when I get a chance.
Another weird thing I've got going on is that when I connect via Bluetooth to my car, it starts playing music. See this thread. That's pretty annoying... for now I deleted the default music that was playing, and with an empty directory nothing plays.
I put on a screen protector last night. I got the 0.2mm iCarez one. I performed the application in a steamy bathroom after running the hot shower for a bit, per some tips over in the Accessories thread. I left the backing on, positioned the glass on the screen, taped one side for the "hinge method" after getting it perfectly aligned and accounting for the eventual loss of thickness of the plastic underbacking, cleaned everything one last time with the alcohol wipe, peeled the backing, and plopped it on starting in the center. Got it perfectly positioned and no major bubbles. There were a couple of "spec sized" non-uniformities but they were gone by morning.
I'm gradually setting in... Still lots to play with.
I've noticed the WIFI, while it gets good reception, is a bit sluggish to drop a weak connection in favor of a strong one. Anybody got a tweak for that?
Frankenscript said:
I've noticed the WIFI, while it gets good reception, is a bit sluggish to drop a weak connection in favor of a strong one. Anybody got a tweak for that?
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Try this app for WIFI management. I have tried several and this is the best I have found. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.kman.WifiManager I agree completely that the wifi in the phone is very slow to drop a weak signal and grab a stronger one. But with wifi manager you can play with the sensitivity. Good luck.
Will do. Thanks for confirming it's not just me. Also on another note I just found the LG keyboard has lots of settings for customization. Not bad. May keep it!
Sent from my LG-D851 using Tapatalk