Flash-Droid Tech

19/08/2017

Hello everyone!
Me and a buddy of mine are researching electric vehicles and what factors will motivate the public to switch to electric vehicles. Kindly spare 5 - 10 minutes to fill up this form for our study. Don't forget to share the post with your friends and help us reach more people.
Thank you!

The aim of this survey is to identify the key features and specifications of the EVs that will motivate purchase of electric vehicles. Please fill this quick survey and let us know your thoughts (your answers will be anonymous).

04/06/2017

"Factory Reset protection" locked you out of your phone? Flash-Droid tech just might be the key to your daily companion.

Comment to know more.

15/01/2017

One of the most minimalist launchers I've seen. Want to know the name of the launcher? KISS. Before you think it's a terrible name, it's actually an acronym for "Keep It Simple Silly". Rather than describing it, just have a look at the video to get an idea of how simple the launcher actually is.

PS - It's a silent movie ;)

09/01/2017

The feel of this launcher may be more familiar to the masses but don't be fooled. It has only a single home page where you get to add a single widget of your choice. Swipe to the left and instead of a news feed from Google now or Briefing you get your app drawer with all the apps neatly organized in tabs. You can drag and drop apps to your preferred category but sadly you can't create your own custom tabs. Lastly, if you swipe downwards on the home screen, a slow pull down animation of the notification bar comes to life. Definitely not a feature-rich launcher but a different take on the idea with no nonsense simplicity.

07/01/2017

In my initial open source endeavors, the first thing that caught my eye was a good ol' launcher similar to the one found in CyanogenMod. The CM launcher is named "Trebuchet" whereas it's open source cousin is named "Catapult". There are definitely a lot more launchers available on the play store market for download with bags of features, but in my opinion this launcher has an appeal to it that makes it stand out from the rest.

Home screen widgets and icons? - check
A cool app drawer? - check
A decent amount of customization? - check
And finally, open source? - check.

It is available on the play store for free download - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaneoriley.cyanogenport.launcher3&hl=en , Do try it out for yourself!

P.S - I will be looking at more launchers in the following posts and move on to more open source apps that could serve as alternatives to our daily go-to apps.

04/01/2017

Did you know? It is possible to go "Google-free". Android which is an Open Source project (AKA AOSP) is almost entirely populated by applications that are proprietary (Yes, I'm looking at you Google). There are many open source alternatives to the apps that Google provides. In the following posts I will be looking at the apps that interested me the most.

19/11/2016

Here's quick video with instructions on how make your very own custom ROM from Android Authority.

02/09/2016

For those of you who have phones that do not have custom ROMs available can make use of Xposed Framework. It does not require the flashing of any custom ROM but requires your phone to be rooted.

Xposed is a framework for modules that can change the behavior of the system and apps. And it's also easy to undo. As all changes are done in the memory of your phone(RAM), you just need to deactivate the module and reboot to get your original system back. There are many advantageous modules including ones that have the ability to disable ads system wide(wow :O, right?!) , disable ads on YouTube, increase battery life, even a few hacks for Pokemon players and many other nifty features which would not be previously available on either stock or custom ROMs.

You can check out the Xposed site -
http://repo.xposed.info/module-overview

15/08/2016

Flash-Droid Tech

24/07/2016

The main advantage of flashing your cell phone is you can upgrade the mobile operating system yourself without having to pay any money for it. There is no agreement when you buy a phone you will be given the next new iteration of the OS.

The next advantage is Choice and customization. You can install a custom operating system (such as Cyanogen instead of Stock Android) in order to obtain a customized experience or get rid of bloatware.

Important security updates come out with the newer versions of software that your old phone might be missing out on. Through flashing, you can update your phone to a more recent operating system with better security.

Finally, it is up to you whether you wish to flash your device. If you do decide to flash your android device, you know who to contact. ;)

17/07/2016

Here's a list of well-known custom ROMs that may be available for your android device. Each custom ROM has it's own unique feature set. You can check out their websites for more details about the custom ROM they provide. Apart from the one's mentioned below, there might be many more ROMs available for your device. :)

-> CyanogenMod (www.cyanogenmod.org)
-> ParanoidAndroid (www.paranoidandroid.co)
-> OmniROM (https://omnirom.org)
-> PAC-ROM (www.pac-rom.com)
-> SlimROMs (www.slimroms.net)
-> BlissROMs (blissroms.com)
-> Resseruction Remix (www.resurrectionremix.com)
-> MIUI (en.miui.com/)

If you have used any of these ROMs in the past, what are your thoughts and opinions? Comment your favorite ROM!

09/07/2016

Many people may consider Android to be 'insecure' compared to its main competitor IOS. The fact of the matter may be due to the nature of the mobile operating systems. Android is open source whereas IOS is not. Each operating system has its own positives and negatives. Considering the fact that Android is comparatively less secure than IOS (So I'm told), today, I'm here to introduce (Or rather reintroduce) a nifty little feature that Google provides on all Android devices to protect your phone data.
"Encryption" is available under the Security section in the Settings. You might want to take a quick backup of your personal data before you encrypt your phone. Also, it would be preferred if your phone has above 80% charge and is on the mains while the process takes place. It can take an hour or more for the entire process to complete depending on the phone's hardware and the amount of data to encrypt. Be patient and do not interrupt the process or it could lead to complications.
Some key things to note is that once you encrypt your phone, the data on it cannot be accessed without a password every time you switch on the phone. Also, encryption may slow down some of the older android devices. If you want to remove the encryption, a factory reset will have to be done.
But once your device is encrypted, your data is relatively safe compared to an unencrypted device. Even if your phone was stolen (God forbid!) you can sleep a little better knowing that it's not possible for the thieves to empty your account overnight.

If you need more insight into encrypting your android device, I suggest you check out the following link - http://www.howtogeek.com/141953/how-to-encrypt-your-android-phone-and-why-you-might-want-to/

Google introduced full-device encryption back in Android Gingerbread (2.3.x), but it has undergone some dramatic changes since then. On some higher-end handsets running Lollipop (5.x) and higher, it’s enabled out-of-the-box, while on some older or lower-end devices, you have to turn it on yourself.