Bluetooth beats Wifi

The other day - when  I was on the train to Prague - I needed to get some work done on my iPad, but the WiFi on the train was dead. Usually then, I enable the hotspot on my Android phone, but this time I decided to finally try this over Blueooth.

I wanted to do this a long time ago already, but the Wifi was too easy.

So, what can I say... it is almost as easy (of course), but uses a lot less energy, both on the iPad and more importantly on the Nexus 5.

I guess, I'll keep it like that. Bluetooth tethering definitely beats Wifi tethering.

Android Screeen Recording

While I was trying to access my broken Nexus 5, I managed to get keyboard/mouse/touch access via the debug bridge (adb), but from time to time I had serious problems actually reading certain parts of the the screen (broken display!).

So I checked if and how I can do screen recordings, and found that it works really easy. At least starting with KitKat.

Fully documented on the official adb pages.

Of course you need USB debug access to your phone, but you do not need root access (!).

So all you need is a terminal/shell and then you can do start screenrecord.

Like:

adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/test.mp4
and stop it with Ctrl-C

and then get the file to your PC with
adb pull /sdcard/test.mp4
and remove it on the device with
adb shell rm /sdcard/test.mp4.

And this is the video, showing at first nothing (display off), then I switched the device on and then I swiped up to unlock:

There are some useful options available:

Options	Description
--help	Displays a usage summary.
--size <WIDTHxHEIGHT>	Sets the video size, for example: 1280x720. The default value is the device's main display resolution (if supported), 1280x720 if not. For best results, use a size supported by your device's Advanced Video Coding (AVC) encoder.
--bit-rate <RATE>	Sets the video bit rate for the video, in megabits per second. The default value is 4Mbps. You can increase the bit rate to improve video quality or lower it for smaller movie files. The following example sets the recording bit rate to 6Mbps: screenrecord --bit-rate 6000000 /sdcard/demo.mp4
--time-limit <TIME>	Sets the maximum recording time, in seconds. The default and maximum value is 180 (3 minutes).
--rotate	Rotates the output 90 degrees. This feature is experimental.
--verbose	Displays log information on command line screen. If you do not set this option, the utility does not display any information while running.

If especially like the --time-limit for short recordings.

... and how to restore it

As noted a couple of days ago, I broke my Nexus 5 and managed to get a backup via adb.

Finally, UPS managed - as usual with their second attempt and one call in between - to deliver the new Nexus 5 yesterday.
So, unbox, switch on, log into Wifi, etc etc... and have the system update to 4.4.3.

What?!?
Say Again!

"... and have the system update to 4.4.3."
No matter how often I repeat this, it's still weird that a brand new Nexus 5, ordered and shipped directly from Google, comes with 4.4.2 the end of 2014.

Anyway, update to 4.4.3, reboot, update to 4.4.4, reboot, update to 5.0....
Nope.
No 5.0. No Lollipop. As we know, rechecking every 5 seconds for an Android over-the-air update is as useful as hitting the elevator call button 10 times.

Well, so enable developer options with the 7x tap on the Build Number. Enable USB debugging.
Connect to PC, authorize, find the device with "adb devices". Voila.

Let's try the "adb restore". Enter the password on the mobile, this time without the help of the "adb shell input" workaround. The restore starts, and ends without any further message after about 2-3 seconds.

Not good.
Lets check the log with "adb logcat". There's something about mismatched header versions, so lets google this.
Well, as can be expected you cannot restore a 5.x backup to a 4.x device.
How silly of me to even consider it.

Recheck the over-the-air upgrade.
Nope, still not 5.0.

So screw it, download the factory image for 5.0.1.
Unlock bootloader, apply image, as described.
Reboot, log into Wifi, ...
Then the new Lollipop Setup Assistant kicks in and allows me to actually place my old phone to he back of the new one to NFC pair them, and transfer the basic settings (mainly account and Google settings) directly.

So I plug in the USB mouse again to the old, broken Nexus 5, and try to find the NFC settings (which are of course in the broken part of the display). Google around a bit to find there in the settings they are, and manage to half blindly enable NFC.
A couple of seconds later I have my account and (Google) launcher settings on the new Nexus 5.
Nice.
A lot of the app icons on the home screen are marked to show that the app itself is (still) missing behind the icon.

So I tried to restore the backup.
Again enable developer options (I just loaded a new system image, so everything I did an hour ago was of course gone) and USB debugging (and sideloading).

And now the "adb restore" really did work. Since there is no proper status on the device itself, I started a "adb shell logcat -s BackupManagerService" in another window to see some progress.

And about half an hour later I was done.
Most apps had their settings again, but not all.

Considering what last-resort hack this was, pretty good.
Considering how easy it is, to upgrade from one iPad to the next (via iTunes) this was pretty ugly.

By the way:
The Setup Assistant from Lollipop now supports a lot of options, even restoring data from a previous backup.
But I was not really inclined to test this right now.
If someone wants to sponsor yet another Nexus device for me, I'd be happy to test this for you.

Wakelock Detector for Nexus 5 non-root, Lollipop

Earlier this week I had a good discussion and exchange with Max  - mainly on the Moto 360 watch, but also on a lot of Android / phone topics.

We were sort of mentally debugging a battery/power problem he had on his device (1+1), while my own Nexus 5 was lying around as idle as possible: I had to put it into power saver mode because my own battery was down to 5% at 7pm already.

So after all this discussion about Android power consumption etc etc, I decided not only to do some cleanup on my own device:

• delete two of the 3 calendar apps, because Lollipop Calender + widget is quite OK now (I removed Cal and Sunrise)
• change email sync frequency in Boxer from Automatic(Push) to 15 minutes.

but also to install the Wakelock Detector app (WLD), to check if any app is blocking my phone from going to sleep properly.

Since my phone is not rooted (and I have not intention to root it - for the time being), I needed to provide a little help and trick to WLD: essentially through local tpcip connection to the adb on the device. Very well documented here.

So, let's see what I'll find out.

USB Debugging a Nexus 5

It is described all over the internet, so let me repeat it here :)

To USB debug your Nexus 5, first enable USB Debugging in the Developer options.
If you don't yet have the developer options visible in Settings, then enable them like this:

Go to Settings and About Phone, then scroll all the way down to "Build Number" and then tap 7 times on the item "Build number"  (yes, weird)

Once done, in the Settings menu under the Developer options enable "USB Debugging" and connect to the PC via USB.

From a command line check if you can see the phone with "adb devices".
If none shows up, you might want to kill any running adb.exe instance from the task manager and retry.

If this still fails, open the Windows Device Manager, and look for the Nexus device right at the top under "Android devices".

If this shows an error or warning, you need to install the proper driver.
Right-click on the "faulty" android entry in the list and select "Update driver software". Point the update to the android-sdk path on your computer.
So check where you installed the Android SDK into. From the SDK path it is  under extras\google\usb_driver
(e.g.  %appdata%\..\Local\Android\android-sdk\extras\google\usb_driver)
It should find the "Android Composite ADB Interface" driver.

Once this is installed, your Nexus 5 should be visible to the debugger. Again, kill any running instance of adb.exe first, just to make sure)

If not, google is your friend :)

Say Hi to my Nexus 5

So, I finally did it.

The lack of Android updates and the (inevitable) decline in battery duration - my HTC One S was already 2 years old - made me go to the Google Play store and get a Nexus 5 (32GB). With the wireless charger.

tl;dr: happy happy happy.

Buying it
Apart from UPS's blunder on literally the last mile (the guy cannot read building numbers or name plates) the buying and delivery process was excellent. Really close to one-click :)

Basics
It came with 4.4.3 and this night updated to 4.4.4.

This time I went for un-rooted and no bootloader.

Migration
Transferring apps and data was easy...Google-Login and then the apps just re-install from the play store, 99% of the data is in the cloud anyway... The most cumbersome part was getting the login and account credentials into all the apps.
Even this was easy with LastPass on Android - expect a separate post on this.

Only for two apps I needed to move local data; one was BeyondPod, my podcast manager and player. However, this was totally easy: do a backup on the old phone, choose to share the backup via PushBullet to my Nexus 5 (also an upcoming story), within a second receive a notification and the backup on the new phone, and open it in BeyondPod. That's it. All subscriptions incl listened-to state are now on the new device.
The other one was my weight recorder, and copying was easy as well, with the help of DropBox and Astro FileManager. I'll spare you the details of the file :)

The call history, sms/text and Wifi settings I got with a Titanium XML Backup (does not require root) and restore. Not too important for call log, but great for Wifi settings.

UI Experience
So now I'm sorting out where I really miss HTC sense, but it's not a lot.
Turns out the HTC contacts, mail and calendar apps had some nice advantages over stock Android.
Also turns out, that the (stock) Google Now Launcher does not have badges anymore, so I'll miss the little red number on my email/gmail and others.

The Google Now launcher is OK, especially with the Google Now just being there.
But - by Max's recommendation - I'm now testing the Aviate launcher... Sigh... 3rd story that I need to write. Suffice it to say, it's free, by Yahoo, intergrates well, and - most importantly - guesses your context (i.e. work, home, travelling, ...) and adjusts the app/widget groups accordingly.  Let's see in some weeks how this works.

So, stay tuned for some more stories on it.

My Next Android?

What should my next Android be?

HTC One M8 
As much as I hate HTC for dropping further support on the One S, they still have the best hardware (IMHO) of all the Android manufacturers. As this is their flag ship product, they wont kill support for it soon. Also, there is the Google Play Edition of it, so support of future Android releases is secured.

Google Nexus 5

Plain google, good HW, maybe not as fancy as the M8 but solid. A lot cheaper (in both senses of the word). Good choice for the money, I'd say.

And I think I'd love the wireless charging.

1+ One
OnePlus seems to have fancy HW and a weird go-to-market approach: selling hardware by invitation only... Only make me want to have it. You won :)

[revisited] Google's reference gadgets

Almost 2 years ago (Jan 2011) I was musing about Google's reference device strategy; see my post from then.

At that time Google had the Nexus One (by HTC) and the Nexus S (by Samsung)  devices out, they also released the Cr48 as a reference for their Chrome line.
And I was wondering

I wonder when they will release such a reference device for tablets (with Android).
Or will they ever?

Well, they did, didn't they.
Here's the full Nexus family of devices as of now;

• a really cool smart-phone (Nexus 4)
• a mid size tablet (Nexus 7), that I really long for
  and
• a full tablet (Next 10)

So, they did it.
Thanks

Google's reference gadgets

With the Nexus One (by HTC) and the Nexus S (by Samsung) Google clearly wanted to publish a reference implementation and hardware for the respective Android versions.

The same is true for the Cr-48 as a reference hardware for their Chrome OS netbook operating system. Or Browser... or whatever it is now.

None of them is about about having a product out in the market, nor is their (main) purpose to have vanilla Google devices, which are not soiled by nasty vendor or operator code and customizations...

No, it's about setting a standard.
Having a reference.
For all the manufacturers, vendors, operators, reviewers (and bloggers).

I wonder when they will release such a reference device for tablets (with Android).
Or will they ever?

Currently it seems they haven't made up their mind about the tablet space... should it be Android (=tablet as a large phone, like Apple did) or should it be Chrome OS (=tablet as an even more reduced netbook, like everyone thought, before Apple did it the other way a year ago).

I guess this years CES will show.