Back to Stock and Unroot on Nexus 7

My Nexus 7 is more or less a development machine, and as part of my development process, I need to test a tool called Mobile Iron.  It's the security solution that our company used.  So installed it, and it refused to install secured apps because it detected that my Nexus 7 has been "compromised", probably because it's rooted.

So to continue my work on it, I need to unroot it.  BUt how?

I used my office machine Dell Dimension M6600 running dual boot (Windows 7 Enterprise edition and Windows 8 Pro).  But then both failed to run the Nexus Root Tool 1.7.1 .

Then I realized that I successfully used a Netbook Lenovo S12 running Windows 7 Pro with Nexus Root Tool.  So I yanked it out, and sure enough it worked.

And so I carryout the unroot process, which is actually pretty simply:

• Launch Nexus Root Toolkit 1.7.2
• Click [Backup] to backup your device
• Click [Flash Stock + Unroot]

During the process, I needed to follow whatever instruction that came up on screen, but never the less, at the end, I have an stock Nexus 7 device.

2 more video player apps out of my phone

I loaded some Chinese dance videos to my andorid phone.  Some are flv, while others are avi and on.  I tried to play them, and found MoboPlayer and mVideoPlayer failed to load some of the videos.  And for that, they will stay out of my device.  DICE Player, BSPlayer and MX Player are still going strong.  So ... great!

Just because I uninstall you doesn't mean I hate you

Here's yet another round of my massive android software uninstall from my Galaxy Nexus phone.  I have this crave to keep my Galaxy Nexus lean and mean for several reasons:

• It's not a high end phone, so having lots of background process can seriously slow it the phone down.
• I don't see myself upgrading to another phone soon.  I like my Galaxy Nexus and I found it do great enough job to assist my daily life.  
• The more apps I have, the more time the phone will spent on updating.

So these are the apps I uninstalled recently:

Musical Instrument:

• SPC Demo, Real Piano, RD4 Demo : these are new breed of apps that provides digital musical instrument with low latency.  Finally Android has potential to do what Garage Band did on iOS device.  But then, I already have an iPod Touch generation 5 with Garage Band and other great musical instrument apps.  I don't need some promising but inferior apps on Andorid.

Explorer

• File Expert, File Manager, Astro File Manager: they are .. fine, but just not as awesome as ES File Explorer.  I still keep FX (File Explorer) because it doesn't have ads to annoy me, and it has some cloud access capability.

Wall Paper

• Mario Live Wallpaper, PhotoWall:  Yeah they are cute for a while, but eventually I got tired of them.

Voip:

• Line, GrooVe IP Lite, Kakao Talk, Viber, Bobsled Calling: I mainly use Talkstone, and have GV Phone as my backup just in case.  That should be it.

Audiobook: 

• Music Folder Player Free: it could be a good app, but I don't have time to play with it yet.

Time to pay up for Android apps that I like

I have $20 Google credit that I need to spent before Sept 30, and that spanned me to start looking various Andorid apps and see if there's any of them worthy to pay for.

The first one is DoggCatcher.  I've been keep looking and looking, and still found DogCatcher the best podcast app on Andorid.  Worthy of my $2.99.

For local network browser, I have to say that the free ES File Explorer still beats the rest of them hands down.  Here's why I have problem with the others:

• FX+ : The + feature cost a few bucks, which is fine if it works.  But it doesn't.  Network connection takes like forever to complete.
• FileExpert: Tried the network feature, and just keep giving me "Cannot Open"
• File Manager: Same ultra long network connection problem.
• Astro File Manager: Got the error "DUP_NAME"

At the end, I settle with ES File Explorer.  Oddly enough, the product is free, and I don't know how to pay for it.

Next stop: Video player.  Once again, there are lot of apps, and I settled with a free one called Dice Player.  Don't know how to pay for it.

Then, audiobook player.  This one is odd, because I tried to pay for MortPlayerAudiobook, but then found Akimbo Player does a better job.  Both are free.

Next, VOIP.  I settled with Talkatone because it has both iOS and Android version.  And by paying US$9.99, I can ultimately get rid of ads on both the Android and iOS version.  Great feature, gotta say.  I also like GVPhone, but since I already paid for Talkstone, it doesn't make sense to pay for another one unless I found something that I really hate about it.

So there it is.  After researching for whole day, I ended up paying 2 apps.  Hopefully, I can find more apps that worthy to pay for.

Another thing I learned about Google Play: if you buy something, the among will be instantly credited from your account.  But if you cancel a transaction, it actually takes quite some time to credit the amount back.  At least I haven't seen it credited back to my Google Play credit yet.  Either that or the amount credited back to my another credit card.  This is so freaking confusing.

(Update) The refund finally comes back to my Google Play credit.

Journey of bringing JellyBean 4.3 to Nexus 7 gen 1

I was (and still am) pretty darn frustrated when I realized that OTA Jelly Bean 4.3 failed to install on my Nexus 7 generation 1.  It's like some hidden problem in my Nexus 7 and I need to resolve it.  I knew it's going to a long journey to investigate the issue and eventually resolve it, so I tried to push it til weekend.  And this is that weekend, so here we go.

My very last resort is to wipe out my Nexus 7 and start everything from new, I was ALMOST OK to do that except that I have a Puzzle & Dragon game on that device, and I have quite some progress on it and didn't want to lost those.  Fortunately, Gunho provides a solution, although I haven't tested out it yet.

So now that I have it taken care of, I am now ready for the worst case.

When OTA installation failed, my logical next step is to think about side loading the update .  That approach brought me into some trouble as I found that the Android SDK I had didn't seemed to be working.  So I had to use Eclipse, and then [Andorid SDK Update] to update it.  After I had it updated, I found that on my Dell XPS desktop, I am not able to get the full drive view (14+ Gb) of my Nexus 7.  So I switched to the Windows side of my MacMini.  Now I got trouble because the Nexus 7 Windows driver did not see the Nexus 7 after Nexus 7 got into Recovery ADB mode.  There is a hack to fix that problem, But that hack doesn't work with my MacMini since it can't boot to allow F8 getting into safe mode.  So now I am on my S12 netbook running Windows 7, hoping that this would help solving the problem.

And then I found that the stupid command prompt on this S12 piece of shit netbook doesn't recognize the Z Drive I mapped for access the adb command line.  So I have to explicitly map it on command line.

Now I need to get to:
Z:\_Apps\AndroidMobileDev\android-sdk\platform-tools
and then example what I have:

Adb devices  : shows me the device.  So it's a good start. Now I do this:

adb reboot recovery

And trying to do "adb devices" and found that no device is connected.

Same as what a lot of people complain about.  It's time to give this fix a try.

Eventaully, I got the sideloading working using the fix mentioned above.  It worked exactly as stated, but then I need to do it this way (instead uninstall the previous "Android Composite ADB Interface"):

- Right click on "Android Composite ADB Interface"
- Select "Update Driver Software ..."
- Click "Browse my Computer for driver software."
- After you tried to install, you may get a message saying that a better driver already exist.  If that is the case, you need to force to system to use your hacked driver by:

- select "Let me pick from a list of device drives on my computer".  And in there pick the one your hacked.
- You will then get a warning saying that the driver is not certified.  Just say OK.

This works on Windows 7.  On Windows 8 you need to reboot in a mode that ignore driver certification using [F8].

Now I get sideloading working, but then, I got "assert failed" and then "installation aborted".

So I have a feeling that I might need to go extreme by restoring the system into fresh factory mode.  The senario 2 of this seemed to explain my exact situation. But then I am stuck with the problem which the bootloader step giving me this:

sending bootloader ... okay
'writing bootlader'.... failed (remote: (invalid state))

Just like 
Just like what have been mentioned here.  Now I feel stuck.

So I installed "Wug's Nexus Root Toolkit v1.7.1", and then did both backup on all apps and specific app (the only one I care) using [Backup].  And then I use [Flash Stock + Unroot] to flash the device to stock JWR66Y (4.3).

But I still got problem.  It was the same "invalid state" issue.

Finally I found out the solution.

All is need is to restore back to Android 4.2 (nakasi-jdq39-factory-c317339e.tgz) instead of 4.3.  Once done (and connect to WiFi), the system will kick off the 4.3 update.  And I got it completed successfully.

Then I used Wug's Nexus Root Toolkit v1.7.1 to restall the data for the only game that I care by:

• Turn on the development mode of android, and then turn on USB debugging.
• Use Nexus Root Tookit to root Andorid 4.3 on Nexus 7.
• Install the app 
• Use Nexus Root Toolkit to restore app data that I previsouly backed up.

Now I have a clean Nexus 7, with latest Andorid 4.3.

Next time if I got problem updating the later OS (like 4.4), for the worst case, I will have to do these:

• Use Nexus Root Toolkit to backup all data
• Use [Flash Stock + Unroot] in Nexus Root Toolkit to roll back to stock Andorid 4.3.
• Apply official OTA update
• Restore apps
• Restore app data.

After all these, I suddenly realize the value of keeping my Lenovo S12 netbook running Windows 7 Home edition: for all the dirty hacking tasks.

Galaxy Nexus, Dell XPS 8500 and USB Ports

I knew this before, but just proved it once again, that not all USB ports on my new Dell XPS 8500 are equal.

I realized it when I tried to connect my Galaxy Nexus to my new Dell so that I can do android development.  All 4 ports on the front and on the top of computer failed to establish the connection, but the port and the left side of the top roll worked.  In fact, I don't event need to explicitly install the Samsung driver, and everything just started working.  So ... strange.

HTC Desire is now officially a feature phone to me ... because of Puzzle & Dragons

I rarely turn on my phone HTC Desire partly because my pre-paid voice plan doesn't have data support, and rarely do people call me.  After all, my Galaxy Nexus with no voice but "unlimited" (slow down after 2Gb) data plan does all I need to do daily.  Still I used once in a while thought of using it more as a voice phone with internet capability, and it as such.

Today, though, I found that this damn phone even suck as being a internet capable device when I tried to install and play Puzzle & Dragon on it.  Sure it installed the app alright, but the speed was sooooooo  freakkkking slooooowwww  down to a torture level.

So, yep, my HTC Desire is almost dead to me except being a feature phone.

Google Chrome and Google Bookmark

Since Firefox constantly messing up on my desktop machine (Mac Mini 2009) under Windows 8, I decided to completely give up on Firefox and just use Chrome.  With extension support, Chrome pretty much does everything I want a browser to do.  The finally problem is to add the ability to add page to Google Bookmark, and even that has been solved by the suggestion here.  So goodbye Firefox, I don't miss you.

Nexus 7 and watching movies on Flash drive

There is a reason why Nexus disable accessing thumb drive directly from micro USB port: it drains battery life fast.  10 hours battery life will turned into 4 to 5 hours.  I learned that during my recent flight to Montreal (Quebec, Canada).  I kept watching movies and TV shows on the flight using my Nexus 7 and various thumb drives, and of course my Nexus 7 was rooted.  After watching 2+ hours of video, I found the battery drained down to 50%.  So with that means watching 5 hours will use up all the batteries.  That's not good for a long flight like the one to Hong Kong.  And unfortunately there's no external battery, no microSD slot or a model with 64 to 128Gb of storage.  Still, I will continue using Nexus 7 as video playback device in trips because it works so well and can handle almost all video file formats.

wonder which device to blame

Today our family is driving to Toronto, and I found this the perfect moment to try out thethering feature of my Roger iPad mobile phone plan.  So I turned on the Personal Hotspot feature on my Galaxy Nexus.  MyPad 3 and my Nexus 7 was able to pick up hotspot, but not my Microsoft Surface device.  I was puzzled, and kept trying various options.  Eventually, I yanked out the SIM card, and use it on my iPad 3, and use iPad 3 as personal hotspot.  Now, all my devices, including Microsoft Surface, are able to access Internet.  So I am pretty puzzled now.  I don't whether I should blame my Galaxy Nexus lame at being a personal hotspot, or Microsoft Surface sucks at accessing personal hotspot.  But at least I am glad that I have various devices to try out different options.

So I can still root after 4.2.2 update on Nexus 7

I was so used to accepting all the update on my Galaxy Nexus phone that I did the same on my Nexus 7 when a 4.2.2 update alert popped up.  Only after then I realized that the N7 was, once again, unrooted, and I lost one HUGE feature on my N7: watching video directly from thumb drive.  So now I need to find a working rooting instruction for Andorid 4.2.2 on Nexus 7.

Luckily, the old one that worked is still working as long as you follow a few lines of instruction on the site to make it working on 4.2.2. .  I tried and it worked pretty well.   So ... I am happy again :-D .

Rooting Nexus 7 ... again ...

I didn't realize that rooting is not a one shot deal.  I thought once I applied root to an android device, it will stay rooted forever.  Most tech genius on the net will read this and poke fun on my stupidity.  Yep, making mistakes, and then learned from the mistakes.  That's how civialization get birthed and evolved.  You are welcome.

Anyway, I figured it out a few days before I my trip to Canada, and found that my Nexus 7 couldn't recognize the thumb drive I hooked to the device, and thus couldn't play the videos on that thumb drive.  Not good, consider how many hours of boredom I need to endure during the whole trip.

I rooted the Nexus 7 back when it was JellyBean.  Now the system already updates to 4.2.1.  So I guess I have to do rooting again.  The good thing is that since I rooted once, I don't need to wipe my device to root again.  So found this tool called "Nexus Root Toolkit v1.6.2" (NRT_v1.6.2.sfx.exe), downloaded it and installed it on my Lenovo S12 Windows 8 OS device.  Problem came as the app didn't seemed to work.  Searched the web, and found out that the app and the driver it uses had problem on Windows 8.  No problem since I kept the Windows 7 partition exactly because of this kind of situation.

So I installed the app, and this time I found that it bitched about missing Nexus 7 driver.  No problem again, because I had it in my shared drive (usb_driver_r06_windows.zip).  After that I followed the instruction, and eventually got a rooted Nexus 7.  Now I can watch video during my Canada trip.  Yeah.

More info....

"Plan B" to avoid Google Music messing with my audio files

After being fustrated by Google Music Android app not honoring .nomedia, I finally found a great way to avoid the problem.  It turns out that Google Music can't recognize files that stores 2 levels deeps.  So you if have a folder /MyStuff and put mp3 files in it, Google Music will pick it up and index it in its catalog.  But if you put the mp3 files in /MyStuff/SuperAwesome, then Google Music will ignore it.  So all I need to do from my now is move my audio files in folders at least 2 levels deep.

.Nomedia not work with Google Music

Still not happy that Google Music app on Android does NOT honor .nomedia file.  Damn you Google.

Time to speed up my Galaxy Nexus by uninstalling bunch of apps

The user expert  of my Galaxy Nexus is once again slow to a point that I can't tolererant, and it's time to do something about it.

The biggest reason why it's getting slow is because there are quite a lot of process running at the back for NO GOOD REASON.  I understand that in order to prove me updated information, some apps will kick off some process at the back once in a while, and I understand that.  However, I can't tolerate apps that keep staying at the background all the time and yet:

- Without option to choose whether to stop to service and STAY STOPPED until I choose otherwise
- Before even use it once

So here's the list I uninstalled from my device.  Notice that they are not all bad apps.  It's just that I personally don't use them enough to justify having them keep running at the backrgound for no good reasons:

Android application that runs that background for (to me) no good reasons:
- PhotoWonder
- Amazon AppStore
- PhotoWonder
- DoubleTwist
- SugarSync
- Spotify
- Office Suite
- Dropbox
- Nook
- WeChat
- musiXmatch
- WongXin (Alibaba)

So now they are gone, let me see if my Galaxy Nexus experience gets any better.

Ultimately, I really should just rooted my phone so that I can use "Freeze" tools to keep services from starting.  But it will involve wiping out all data on my phone.  So ... well ... someday I will root my phone.  Someday.