android

I'm a big fan of the Fallout franchise, so when I discovered Fallout Shelter, I was happy to see a new member of the family. It's actually a pretty engaging little game, but it has some ugly flaws that I find frustrating, so I'm going to complain about them.

My LG E960, better known as the Google Nexus 4, decided to let me down. Around the same time, the radio stopped working properly and the digitizer stopped recognizing touches right in a fairly important spot — above the "e" key. Clearly it was time to take a right-hand turn and buy a new device from a different manufacturer. At just this moment, Amazon offered a discount on the second-generation (2014) Moto G, and the sale was made.

For literally years now, people have been asking for Bluetooth functionality in Android which is not there. One notable example is audio-to-headset, to permit listening to music on a headset device which does not support the bluetooth stereo audio profile. My pet issue is pinless trust, which is needed for devices like the Sony BD Remote and many Logitech mice which use no pin code. This has been a known issue at least since Gingerbread. Why is it still a problem?

In the quest for the ideal living room entertainment device, one of the strongest contenders is the "USB stick" class of Android devices. One of the latest credible entrants into this market is the Tronsmart MK908, a Rockchip RK3188-based device running Android 4.1.1 or 4.2.2. It notably features four cores and a very slightly larger case than other stick-form computers, permitting inclusion of a more useful heat sink. But like basically every other similar device on the market, there are significant failings to this tiny computer.

I thought about actually titling this piece RIP, Ouya but thought hey, let's save the hyperbole for the body. What's actually happening is that I'm taking my Ouya back to Gamestop and washing my hands of this whole experience. Maybe I'll buy one used later, when the Mad Catz console comes out and they all end up on eBay for a song; by then perhaps there will be a CM port. Unfortunately, the Ouya console is deficient in basically every area.

My Ouya decided it didn't want to pair the original controller any more, so I performed a factory reset after backing up all my apps with TitaniumBackup. Then I performed a factory reset, which doesn't. It left a couple of apps behind, including ES task explorer. Upon entering the adb shell, I found I could no longer su. The fix in my case was to reinstall superuser.

Have you ever wanted to launch an Android app from the shell, but you were confused as to how to go about it? Me too, but after a bit of searching about I found a couple of posts that explain how to do it. Short short form, you use aapt to find the activity you want to execute, and then you can use the am command (on the device) to launch the program.

I've got an Android phone with, currently, no phone service. Well, OK, it's a WinMo phone chainloading Android, but that's relatively irrelevant. Soon I will want to avoid using minutes from my incoming T-Mo PAYG phone card, so I'll still want to make phone calls using SIP any time I'm in WiFi range. You can even get out of paying for outgoing calls so long as you turn them into incoming calls.

If you look for advice on an ssh client for Android you will invariably be told to install ConnectBot. Unfortunately, this program terminates ssh connections as soon as it makes them on my Nook Simple Touch. Therefore it cannot be used. KBOX Terminal doesn't work on it either. I don't want to install full Debian. What's left? SSHDroid is your answer; if you install a terminal emulator so you can get to it. SSHDroid is powered by dropbear, and it includes the ssh client.