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Not everyone has unlimited mobile broadband usage, even though it almost seems like all of our smartphone activities nowadays require it. It can be hard to keep track of your broadband usage if you like to stream or download videos and music, keep all your accounts synchronized, and download a lot of apps---especially if you’re with a provider that takes hours, even days, to update your usage. And if you’re unlucky, you may even have some apps sneakily using your precious data right under your nose, something that many folks may have experienced.
Yes, there are definitely ways to spice up your Android lock screen, especially when you’re right here on the XDA forums. Mods that emulate lock screens of other devices? Check. Tutorial to teach you how to blur the lock screen? Check. Change your lock screen settings with an Xposed module? Check.
If you’ve felt that current automation apps such as Tasker and Llama are a bit lacking in ways, especially by not being open source, you’re not alone. There’s definitely an appeal in having the flexibility and freedom of tweaking and modifying an app, even if it may be missing some features or can be streamlined or themed in certain ways.
So now that the second raft of Sony Xperia devices are finally receiving the long awaited Android 4.3 update, I'm sure that there are plenty of folks eagerly glancing at the notification area and Sony PC Companion in anticipation of that firmware update notification. Some of you may also be constantly refreshing your device's XDA forum page, meticulously keeping track of every relevant tidbit of information. If this sounds just like you, you may want to check out XDA Senior Member Macmol's Xperia Update Checker.
The Samsung Group Play app is pretty sweet in theory. The ability to play your songs on various devices at the same time can be a great social feature, as well as a less awkward alternative to struggling to hear a song your friends ‘must absolutely listen to,’ as it plays from your phone’s pitiful speaker. If this sounds like something you want to try on your unsupported device, you may want to check out Chorus.
Although boot times have been significantly reduced in recent years, and reboots are now only very sporadically required due to unrecoverable lag or similar issues, it still seems like it can’t get any slower. This is why many folks have been resorting to disabling unneeded apps that run on startup in order to lessen the boot up speed. But what can you do when the Android platform does not have this option natively? Rather than going the easy way by downloading an app, why not add it to your settings page yourself? Well, this is exactly what XDA Recognized Contributor DaRk-L0rD shows Sony Xperia users how to do in a new tutorial.
Unveiled to the world only a bit more than a week ago, one doesn't know whether to be surprised or not to find out that the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact has already been rooted and can run CWM recovery. This was achieved by none other than XDA Recognized Developer DooMLoRD, who has contributed much to the Xperia development community in the past.
Among the growing market of smart watches and wearable devices, the Samsung Galaxy Gear is probably one of the more prominent names. It is, after all, from one of the most success Android device manufacturers. So its a bit of a dampener when Samsung decided to restrict the Galaxy Gear to only the owners of the few compatible Galaxy devices such as the Note 3, Note 10.1 and the S4.
Instantly Beam Messages Between Chrome PC Browser and Your Android Device with Message Beam
Beaming messages, URLs, and other texts from a PC web browser such as Google Chrome, to your Android phone or tablet is nothing new. This function normally comes bundled with a host of other features in the form of a WiFi PC/Android client, or less commonly, as a standalone app such as Google Chrome to Phone. But if you aren't looking for a fully fledged client, or find yourself unhappy with whichever standalone app is out there on the market, you might want to check out Message Beam.
We've all pretty much gotten used to the standard Android navigation bar setup, which is normally any permutation of a back, home, and recent apps buttons. This generally features the home button right in the middle between the other two. But what about the power and menu buttons? Surely, they're just as commonly accessed to warrant a place on the convenient navigation bar, right?
Up until now, customizing an Xperia launcher and lock screen has been quite the hassle, usually consisting of decompiling an APK, making your edits, and recompiling it. So if you wanted an extra row or column of icons on your home screen, you had to flash this, if you wanted fading home screen indicators, you had to flash this, and if you wanted to get rid of the app dock, you had to flash this, and so on. For every little change you wanted, there was an individual mod that you had to flash, and this can definitely become burdensome if you wished for a lot of changes.
Although only released last year, one wouldn't really say that the Sony Xperia M is a very distinguishable device, especially in the vast sea of Android phones. With some middle of the road specs including a 4-inch screen with 480 x 854 resolution, a dual-core 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB of ram, one will probably be forgiven to think that it's simply 'just' another Android device.
Some of the more popular file-hiding apps on the Android market right now are pretty good at their jobs, that is hiding photos, videos, documents, and such. What many of them aren't very good at doing is hiding themselves. More often than not, such apps have their very own, very obvious app icon and name in the app drawer. Or in the case of the more 'elaborate' apps, there may be a 'dummy' UI with an icon of a shady looking character in the corner that you must press.
One nifty app that was made exclusive to Sony's latest flagship, the Xperia Z1, is the MotionShot camera. As its name suggests, it allows you to capture motion in a singular image, with a resulting similar to the featured image to the right. So although MotionShot doesn't necessarily provide an absolutely essential function, it wouldn't hurt to have it on other Android devices.
Most, if not all OEMs, like to bundle devices with their own iterations of certain apps, especially music players, gallery apps, and video players. Most of the time, they're not that different from one another, despite how much each OEM makes them out to be. Despite this, many folks still have their favorites in regards to which app they like best. This may be because they've recently moved on to another OEM's device, or simply because they like the look of it.
With official and unofficial Android 4.4 KitKat roms appearing on a fair amount of devices in the Android world, both the new and the old, it's with no doubt that many of you are wondering when your device will get to experience the newest flavor of Android. Owners of newer devices likely have the assurance that their respective OEMs will introduce Android 4.4 sooner or later. But for many people, this isn't the case. With this in mind, people look towards the alternative: AOSP-based source-built aftermarket ROMs.
Ever since Google unveiled Android's latest flavor, 4.4 KitKat, users have been on the edges of their seats, biting their fingernails in anticipation of trying it out on their own devices with an official update or with custom ROMs. This is no different for owners of the aging and relatively old Sony Ericsson Xperia devices of 2011, being the Xperia Arc, Arc S, Pro, Ray, Mini, Mini Pro, Active, Live, Neo and Neo V.
System dump files of Android firmwares are just so immensely useful. It's how everyone else can get their hands on the new, leaked version of firmware, the reason why we can taste the goodies of the new, chocolate flavor of Android on other devices. It's also the foundation for porting features not native to the device you're holding in your hand right now.
A couple of months ago, we featured an app called Vybe. This is an interesting and fun app that allows users to easily and freely customize the vibration patterns of incoming calls and SMS with no risky tinkering of system files. Although vibrations may not be the most important feature to personalize, it's good to know that the option is there if you're wishing for something different.
If you haven't noticed by now, the XDA forums allow users to conveniently attach a host of files of various types to forum posts, allowing the rest of the community to download. They can either be downloaded to a PC via a direct download link or straight onto your device with a QR code. However, during situations when your device isn't right besides you, downloading files to the device can be quite the hassle. So rather than emailing yourself the download link, downloading the file onto your PC and then transfering it over to your device, or simply waiting until your device is available, you now have Downiton.mobi to do it for you.