Automate Flow: Always go back to Home screen whenever phone is unlocked at launcher screen

This is an example of Automate flow. To learn more about Automate for Android phones, click here.

This is a very simple Automate flow with only 4 blocks (including the Flow beginning block).

Most if not all Android launchers support multiple screens for you to organize your apps and widgets into different screen as needed. One of the screens is your Home screen, which normally is where you put your mostly accessed apps and widgets.

When you are at the launcher screen without any opened foreground app, you can always go back to the Home screen by pressing your phone's Home soft key or Home button.

If most of the time, when you unlock your phone and start using it, you want to be at the Home screen regardless of which launcher screen you were at when your phone went to sleep and locked itself, this is exactly what this Automate flow will do.

This flow will wait until you unlock the phone, and check if you are at the launcher screen (meaning, no app is opened at the foreground). If yes, it will emulate pressing the Home button so that you will go to the Home screen automatically.

If you were running an app at the foreground (such as Whatsapp, browser, email, Facebook, etc.) when the screen was last locked, the flow will do nothing and you will return to the app screen after unlock.

In order for this flow to work properly, you need to set the correct launcher app of your phone in the "Is foreground app" block, because different Android phone vendor might provide their own launcher app to the phone. In addition, Android system also allows you to install and use 3rd party launcher app such as Nova launcher, Apex launcher, TSF launcher, etc.

You can tap on the "Pick activity..." button as shown above to select the launcher app you use in your phone.

The setting in the above screen is for Samsung TouchWiz launcher. For HTC phones, set the Package to "com.htc.launcher" and leave the Activity Class as empty field.

What if you never set any screen lock to your phone? In that case, you just need to change the "When device unlocked" block to "When screen is on" block.

Automate Flow: Switch your phone between Vibrate and Normal profile with customized mute

This is an example of Automate flow. To learn more about Automate for Android phones, click here.

Your Android phone is likely to have 3 general sound profiles:

• Normal - ringer (for incoming calls) and notification will play a sound.
• Vibrate - ringer and notification will mute. The phone will vibrate when there is incoming call.
• Silent - ringer and notification will mute. There will be no vibration as well.

In fact, your Android phone has the following 6 types of sound, which you can set their volume individually (note: certain phone has paired the ringer and notification sound volume, so that the notification volume will always follow the ringer volume):

• Ringer - for ringing tone sound
• Notification - for notification sound
• Media - for music and sound in apps, including Whatsapp, Facebook, Youtube, etc.
• Alarm - for alarm sound
• In-call - for phone conversation
• System - for shutter sound of camera, screen lock/unlock sound, keyboard sound, etc.

When you switch your phone's sound mode from one to another among Normal, Vibrate and Silent, the volume of these 3 sounds will be changed accordingly: Ringer, Notification and System.

Note that the sound volume of Media, Alarm and In-call remains unchanged. This means when your phone is set to Vibrate or Silent mode, your instant messenger apps will remain unmuted and will still giving out sound, because Media sound remains unchanged.

You might want to also mute the Media sound when you set your phone to Vibrate or Silent mode, and un-mute the Media sound when you set it back to Normal mode.

Of course, there are apps that enable you to set additional customized sound profiles, but I am going to share with you how you can do it yourself by using a simple Automate flow.

The flow below will help you toggle between Vibrate and Normal sound mode. Since the Notification and System sound will follow when the Ringer sound changed, you just need to toggle the Ringer mode.

The beauty of this flow is on its next step. When you toggle the Ringer mode to Vibrate, it will also mute the Music audio. When you toggle it to Normal, it will unmute the Music audio accordingly.

To use this flow, run it once to enter Vibrate mode, and run it again to go back to Normal mode. The flow will display a message about the mode you have changed to, and end.

With this example, I'm sure you can easily modify it to toggle between Silent and Normal mode and save it as another flow.

You can also make it a single flow to toggle among Silent, Vibrate and Normal mode. That will require another block to check "Is ringer mode Vibrate?" when "Is ringer mode Normal?" returned a No. If this returns Yes, you might want to set ringer mode Silent, mute audio Music, and display "Silent mode" in the toast.

Making your Android phone smarter by programming task automation using Automate

Automate is a freemium Android app developed by LlamaLab that enables you to perform task automation in your smartphone.

With it, you can really make your phone much more smarter by running programs constructed using simple flowchart called Flows. All programming in Automate is done graphically by drawing flowcharts (without writing a single line of code) by joining building blocks, whereby each block will perform a single task.

A sample Automate flow looks like this:

Some of the examples that you can program your phone with Automate to do smartly:

• Every morning when you wake up, greet you with a female voice with weather information and major stock markets closing index point. Pick up your calendar event and read out your appointments in the day.
• When you are driving your car, auto enable Bluetooth and auto connect your phone to your car's Bluetooth hands-free function, and auto answer any incoming calls. When you leave your car, auto disable Bluetooth and resume manual phone answering.
• When you are approaching home, auto send a Whatsapp message to your spouse that you are on the way and will arrive soon.
• When you arrive home, auto turn on WiFi function and connect to your home WiFi. When you leave home, auto turn off the WiFi function to save battery.
• Whenever you open Spotify app at home, auto enable Bluetooth and connect to your wireless speaker. When you open Spotify at other places, it won't do this and will play the music using your phone's speaker instead.
• Whenever you enter into your favourite cinema hall, auto mute your phone and set it to vibrate mode. Unmute it when you leave the place.

Automate comes with several hundreds of ready made building blocks. There are basically just 2 types of block:

• Action block which has a single output (example: Enable WiFi)
• Decision block which has 2 outputs, 1 for Yes and 1 for No (example: Is WiFi enabled?)

For decision block, you can set the evaluation to be tested immediately (example: Is WiFi enabled?) or wait for the condition to change (example: When WiFi is enabled or disabled).

The ready made building blocks are grouped in the following categories:

• Apps
• Battery & Power
• Camera & Sound
• Concurrency
• Content
• Date & Time
• File & Storage
• Flow
• General
• Interface
• Location
• Messaging
• Sensor
• Settings
• Telephony

Here is an example of available blocks inside one of the categories above (Camera & Sound).

To use Automate, you can either:

• Just run the sample flows that suit you
• Create your own flows and run them
• Download flows shared by other users in the community
• Download flows from the community, and modify them to suit your need

Automate comes pre-installed with several useful sample flows.

There is also a user community for its users to upload and share their flows with other users. You can upload your flows in the community too.

Community flows are categorized into the following groups:

• Business
• Communication
• Education
• Entertainment
• Finance
• Games
• Health & Fitness
• Home
• Media & Audio
• News & Magazines
• Personalization
• Photography
• Productivity
• Security
• Shopping
• Social
• Sports
• Tools
• Transportation
• Travel & Local
• Tutorials & Examples
• Weather

Below are some of the top rated community flows available for download:

A running instant in a flow is called a fibre. Each flow when executed will have one or more fibres.

The free version of Automate app is fully functional and ads-free, only with restriction of allowing up to 30 running blocks in all the running fibres. This is sufficient for most simple tasks. If you need to run more complex flows, or need to run a lot of flows concurrently, you can pay a small fee to upgrade to the Pro version.

If you configure Automate to run on system startup, all its running flows will resume from their previous running state even after a restart.

With Automate, you can make a lot of wonders in your phone, without writing a single line of code. All you need is constructing your logics with blocks and charting them into flows.

Automatic incoming and outgoing calls recorder for Android phones

Have you ever encountered any situation that you wish to record down your phone conversation for future reference?

It could be a negotiation talk, or a sales order through phone, or any conversation containing message which you need to record down that typically you'll quickly search for paper and pen and asked the other party to repeat it. It could also be a scam call that you want to keep evident, or any other phone calls that you just want to save.

I use Automatic Call Recorder developed by Appliqato Software for this purpose. It is free for use (with ads), and you can also purchase the ads-free Pro version which will also unlock some of the unique functions not available in the free version.

Take note that there are quite a number of "call recorder" apps that can be found in Google Play Store. The one that I mention here is developed by Appliqato Software which has already achieved a few hundred million installation.

The beauty of this app is that once installed with automatic recording turned on by default, it will automatically record all your incoming and outgoing calls on its own without the need of prompting you. You can also temporary turn off this automatic recording function in its Settings.

Recorded calls will appear in its Inbox which you can replay and perform further action, such as save it permanently (will move from Inbox to Saved folder), jot down a title and notes about what is the call about (for your search reference), delete it, share the recorded audio to another app (such as sending to Whatsapp, Telegram, email, cloud drive, another phone through Bluetooth, etc.).

This call recorder can save the recording in either one of AMR, AAC, MP4 or WAV format. The default AMR format is suitable for voice recording, which produce relatively small file size. In case the recording sound volume is too soft, you can make configuration to increase the loudness.

You can configure the app to automatically save a copy of the audio record to your Google Drive or Dropbox, and you can specify for this synchronization to happen only when the phone is connected to WiFi.

Under Storage setting, you can specify how many number of recordings to retain in the Inbox, and the storage location path of your Inbox.

Under Filters setting, you can specify whose phone calls to record, and whose phone calls to skip recording. By default, all calls will be recorded.

In case you find the app failed to record some of the calls, it might be due to battery optimization function of your phone, which you can set to ignore battery optimization for this app.

REMAX RC-FC2 Letto handphone/GPS/tablet holder mount stand with 3-in-1 magnetic charging cable for car dash or table top

The REMAX RC-FC2 Letto car holder is apparently an upgraded version of the RC-FC1 holder.

It is improved to support 360 degree rotation for easy adjustment of the device's viewing angle. Its nickel metal plate can also lean forward and backward with 90 degree adjustment. It now comes with a 3-in-1 cable connector consisting lightning port, micro-USB port and USB Type-C port.

A sticky PU cushion is placed in front of its metal plate holder to hold the device placed on it at firm place to prevent dropping during situation such as emergency braking or sharp turning at high speed. Its round shape base is made of same material. This is how it looks like after assemble:

You can put it on your car dash, mainly for navigation purpose. You can also put it on your table top and act like a charging station.

It is strong enough to hold a 10" tablet firmly without much problem.

When you use navigation app that makes use on GPS function and will keep the screen always on, such as Waze or Google Maps navigation, your phone/tablet battery will drain out pretty fast.

The magnetic charging cable of the REMAX RC-FC2 is able to help you maintain the battery level or even to charge it to higher level. When charging, its LED light at the receptacle will turn red. When the device is fully charged, or the RC-FC2 is not performing charging action, the LED light at the receptacle is blue in colour.

Mobile LTE network: moving forward from 4G to 5G

5G is the next generation mobile network coming after the current 4G LTE-Advanced. It is still under research and development, but we can expect it to hit the market in near future.

What can we expect from 5G enhancement from the current 4G technology?

• Up to 1000 times increase in bandwidth per unit area
• Up to 100 times more connected devices
• Up to 10 Gbps connection speed to mobile devices in the field (see picture below for comparison with older technologies)
• Perceived network availability of 99.999%
• Perceived 100% network coverage
• Maximum of only 1ms end-to-end round trip latency delay
• Up to 90% reduction in network energy utilization

So, 5G is the next generation mobile technology well prepared for the world of IoT, with significantly improved bandwidth, connection speed, stability, reliability, coverage, etc.

With 5G, the necessity of laying fibre landline will be greatly reduced. The world will truly enter into Gigabit Internet era.

Huawei which has just received the "Outstanding Contribution for LTE Evolution to 5G" award at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 is among the industry leaders who lead in the worldwide 5G development. (Unfortunately to investors, Huawei is not a public listed company)

REMAX RC-FC1 handphone/GPS/tablet holder mount stand with magnetic charging cable for car dash or table top

I have just purchased this REMAX RC-FC1 car dash or table top mount stand for handphone, GPS, tablet or other similar gadgets. Beside being a mount stand for the mobile device, it also comes with a magnetic charging mechanism to keep the battery of the mobile device charged.

I found this REMAX RC-FC1 to be very innovative and useful. Its non-slip silicone base can stay firm even on curved surface.

It is very flexible and fit for most mobile devices up to 10" size and not too thick after wearing their case. If the mobile device is too thick, then it might not be able to slot into the 2 holders, which consist of 4 legs each to be attached into the holes of the base.

The base consist of multiple holes to make it very flexible to configure the holder position for different size of mobile device, which you can make them closer for smaller device or for upright screen display, and to make them further apart to support for larger device in landscape display mode.

The magnetic charging cable consists of 2 charging connectors: micro-USB for most Android devices, and Lightning connector for iPhones. Therefore, this car holder is suitable for all mobile devices that use either one of these 2 charging connectors.

The cable is 24cm long, which might be too short to reach the USB port of large tablet in portrait position. It is designed to be magnetically attached to the charging base, so that you can lift your phone or device from the holder without worrying of dragging the whole thing, as the cable will be easily detached from the base if you pull it too far away from the base, to reach your ear, for example. This will ensure the base is still staying firmly on its place, and nothing will be dropped or harmed due to the pulling.

The charging mechanism is essential for your phone or other mobile device to keep its screen on (in "car mode", if possible) and not worrying about its battery being drained out.

Although its main use is for putting your mobile device on car dash, you can also use it to place your phone or tablet on your table top at home or office. In this way, you can make your phone or tablet to be your digital clock / calendar / photo frame, or any other creative display gadget.

You might be interested to watch the video below to know more about this product and its usage.

MyCelcom Postpaid App to track your Celcom mobile usages

Celcom is now at the final stage of developing their MyCelcom Postpiad App for Android, for their Celcom First postpaid mobile plan users. Apparently, this mobile app is going to launch soon, and already available for free download in Google Play Store.

This is how it looks like:

The app shows your billing amount due, and you can pay your Celcom bill directly in the app. It is also able to show your last 6 months billing history.

With the app, you can instantly check your up to date usage of the current billing month on Internet data (free quota - weekdays, free quota - weekends & top-up quota), phone calls (free quota & pay per use), SMS (free quota & pay per use) and international roaming.

If you used up your free Internet data quota, you can also buy add-on Internet quota in the app (2GB for RM18).

You can get the detail information about your Celcom postpaid plan in the My Plan Details screen as below:

Last but not least, you can also use this app to check for your SIM card PUK number.

Click here to download the MyCelcom Postpaid App for Android.

File Manager + the free, fast, easy to use file explorer with simple GUI and great features

What is the file explorer app you use in your Android smartphone? The stock is usually primitive, and the famous ES Explorer has gone complicated.

My choice is File Manager +, which has a simple, straightforward, easy to use GUI, yet packed with some great features.

There are quite a number of apps in Google Play Store named as File Manager, look for the icon above to locate the right one.

In a simple screen, this app shows you the available and used storage space in your phone's main storage, and external SD card, if any. It also categorizes the files stored in your phone into Images, Music, Videos, Documents, Apps, etc. for easy navigation and access.

 

It can even link to network storages in the cloud (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive), or remotely access via Windows neighbourhood sharing, FTP, FTPS and SFTP access. It also provide an option for you to make your phone become an FTP server, so that its files in internal and external storage can be access from PC or any other FTP clients.

It also has a Storage Analysis function to examine the storage occupying percentage analysis, and list out the large files that have taken up a lot of storage space.

 

The good news is, this app of high usability with neat and clean user interface, is free for download and use, and it doesn't contain any ads too.

How to open the menu / more options in Android devices without the menu navigation button?

One of the problem I faced with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A 6 (10.1", S Pen, LTE, SM-P585Y) Android tablet is that, although it has a Home button, a "Recent Apps" button and a "Back" button, it doesn't come with a "Menu" button which certain apps rely on to bring up their More Options menu.

Anyhow, there is a workaround solution for this, by using the Accessibility Assistant Menu.

To enable this, go to Setting > Accessibility and select the "Dexterity and interaction" option.

Then, select the "Assistant menu" option inside the "Dexterity and interaction" menu.

Switch on the "Assistant menu", and you will see this floating action button appear on the screen:

Tap on it and you will be able to see the "More options" soft button.

In your app, tap on this "More options" to bring up and access into its menu settings.

You can switch off this "Assistant menu" after use. The floating action button will disappear from the screen when it is switched off.

Mcdodo 2-in-1 USB type-c and micro USB fast charging data cable

If you bought a latest smartphone that uses USB type-c connector instead of the old style micro USB, you might probably want to search for some 3rd party fast charging and data sync cable for it.

If you still possess other smart mobile devices that use micro USB, a 2-in-1 cable that supports both USB type-c and micro USB will be very nice. If you also have Apple iPhone, perhaps a 3-in-1 cable that supports USB type-c, micro USB and lightning will be even better.

For this reason, I have recently bought some Mcdodo brand 2-in-1 USB cables. They have another 3-in-1 model as well with the Apple lightning connector.

This cable is 1 meter long, and supports fast charging with 2.1A current output. One end of it is normal USB connector, and the other end of it is a micro USB connector. What makes it special is it also comes together with an adapter that tied with it, which can be connected to its micro USB connector to convert it for USB type-c connection.

It also comes with a handy silicon belt that can be used to tie the cable up nicely in an organized manner for easy carriage.

Its cable is insulated with thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) material, which is robust, durable, anti-abrasion, anti-pull, anti-wrap and has high resistance to heat, oil, direct sunlight, flame, water, acid, alkali, alcohol, etc.

U Mobile attacked competitors again with free video streaming on top of existing data quota

If you have a smartphone or tablet attached with U Mobile postpaid and prepaid service, and you have been using it to watch online videos, here is a good news to you.

U Mobile has just launched their Video-Onz service, providing free additional quota on top of existing data plan for you to watch videos using the apps from the following 12 providers:

• YouTube
• YouTube Gaming
• Youku Tudou
• iflix
• Astro on the Go
• HyppTV Everywhere
• Viu
• Eros Now
• tonton
• Herotalkies
• ONFM
• Pocketimes

This mean that when you are watching videos with these apps, you are given additional quota on top of your existing Internet data quota for the video streaming, for free by U Mobile under the Video-Onz service.

The monthly allocation of the free Video-Onz video streaming quota on top of the existing Internet data quota of various U Mobile postpaid and prepaid plans is as below:

There is no Video-Onz quota imposed for P70, i90 and i130 postpaid plans, meanings you can watch videos or movies with the above 12 video streaming apps as much as you wish, as there is unlimited Video-Onz data for these plans. 

Nowadays U Mobile marketing is really aggressive in capturing the market share by providing competitive package that really can shake and disrupt its competitors, which is a good news for all mobile consumers in Malaysia.

Let's see what will Celcom and Digi offer to counter attack this. Maxis? Maybe their customers need to cry and scream and swear for another time again for them to finally react.

Meanwhile, the P1 (now known as Webe) under TM has been making a lot of hoo-haa recently, but until today the general public is still unclear about what they are going to offer to join this intensified competition.

Updated my HTC One (M8) to Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) with Sense 7.0

My HTC One (M8) Developer Edition smartphone received its OTA update from Android 5.01 (Lollipop) to Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) last week.

In this update, its Sense UI also upgraded from Version 6.0 to Version 7.0.

 

Here are some of the noticeable changes found in this update:

• Android Marshmallow introduces a new feature called Doze which can tremendously prolong battery life. After this update, my phone still has remaining 58% of battery after 19 hours of normal usage with several phone calls, heavy messaging, email checking, calendaring, and moderate BlinkFeed reading, Facebook, web browsing, Youtube, etc. This is really amazing to me. I believe the battery can easily last for 2 days usage without recharging with this new version of Android.

• The Navigation Bar is now user configurable. You can now add more soft buttons to it, define which buttons to show, or even hide out the entire bar.

• Now you can have control on the app permissions, defining what permissions to grant to the apps installed in the phone.

• Configurable "Do not Disturb" mode

• Option to format the SD card as internal storage.

• Home Widget that can auto-switch the icons and widgets on your home screen based on your location (Home, Work, or Out).
• More personalization to the Theme and accent colour.

U Mobile awarded as Malaysia 2015 Fastest Mobile Network by Ookla and give 1GB additional free quota in December 2015 to all subscribers

Which mobile network provides the fastest 4G LTE Internet bandwidth in 2015?

According to the Ookla Speedtest results, the winner is... U Mobile, and the second place is... Celcom. The Maxis who made a lot of noise recently ends up at the third place, and the forth is Digi.

(Source: http://www.speedtest.net/awards/MY)

Right after winning this award, U Mobile has announced that all their postpaid and prepaid subscribers will get 1GB extra quota to their data plan for free in the month of December 2015.

I have received this SMS from U Mobile too!

Seems like I have made a right choice in switching my tablet network provider from Digi to U Mobile recently.

Meanwhile, there is news that P1 who invested heavily in the wrong technology (WiMAX instead of LTE) will make a strike back to the market under the umbrella of TM. This means that TM who all the while in the fixed line market, will soon enter into the competition world in the mobile market, after they bought P1 mobile business quite some times ago.

Things are getting interesting, especially if you still remember P1's advertisement about "potong", ended up they need the rescue from TM.

Anyhow, it is a good news for consumers to see more competition in the market. We look forward for more quality service and more "potong" in pricing among them.

Using My U Mobile app to check monthly plan quota usage and perform other account management

Nowadays most Telco already have mobile apps for smartphone in Android and/or iOS to check for our prepaid or postpaid subscription plan quota usage and perform other account management, including doing top-up or monthly payment, etc.

Such official Android apps for various Malaysian telcos are:

• U Mobile: My U Mobile
• Digi: MyDigi
• Maxis: MyMaxis
• Hotlink: Hotlink Red
• Tune Talk: Tune Talk
• XOX: MyXOX

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any official Android app for Celcom (either postpaid or Xpax).

Among them, I found that My U Mobile is so far the best mobile app which is very clear and straightforward for checking quota balance with its simple user interface.

In its My Plan screen, you can clearly see what is the subscribed plan, what are included in the subscription package, and each of their individual real time quota usage, all displayed in one screen.

The mobile apps of other telcos also provide similar information, but might be spreading the information into several screens, and/or the user interface is not as straightforward to the user.

In the same My U Mobile app, you can also check your bill statements and perform bill payment with credit card too.

You can also use it to apply for U Card to collect points and enjoy privileges. The U Card can stay virtual inside your smart phone too.

I think My U Mobile is so far the best official Malaysian telco app in terms of design and development. However, it could be the worst in terms of maintenance and support.

Like you can see in the above screen about U Promotion, the same Starbucks 10% discount for U Card members repeated 3 times, showing poor quality control. We would expect it to show only once per item, or if it repeats, there should be some different between each items, and not exactly the same.

In addition, the server of this My U Mobile seems to be pretty unstable. Users can be completely cut off from the server for more than one week, rendering the app completely unusable. Worse still, there is no announcement or information from U Mobile explaining what happened to the downtime, and when will the service be available again, leaving their users in complete darkness.

So, I've experienced the best design and usability, together with the worst maintenance and support for this My U Mobile app. Can't we get the best from both side to have a perfect service?

Switched telco plan of my tablet from Digi Tablet 1GB plan to U Mobile U28 3GB plan

About 2 months ago, Digi started to offer a new RM25 SmartPlan with 1GB monthly Internet data quota.

I contacted Digi to find a way to switch over my Digi Tablet 1GB plan (RM29/month) to this RM25 SmartPlan. Disappointedly, Digi told me there is no way to switch over, unless I terminate the existing Tablet 1GB subscription, and reapply for a new RM25 SmartPlan subscription.

Since there is no flexibility to switch over to the new plan, I wondered if there is any other better postpaid plan from Celcom, Maxis or U Mobile for my tablet, and I found U Mobile U28.

The monthly subscription of this U Mobile U28 is about the same as the Digi Tablet 1GB plan, and is in fact RM1 cheaper.

However, it provides 3GB monthly Internet data quota, which is triple of what the old Digi Tablet 1GB or the new Digi RM25 SmartPlan is offering.

On top of that, there are free voice call minutes and free SMS every month, which is not available in the Digi counterpart plan. Anyhow, it is very rare for me to use the tablet to make phone call or send out SMS, although I do use it to receive SMS.

Similar to Digi SmartPlan, I can listen to KKBox music with U Mobile all day long without using up my Internet quota, with their free music streaming service.

U Mobile also provides free YouTube and Tonton video streaming, but only within the very odd time period from 2am to 10am everyday.

As a result, after terminated my Digi Tablet 1GB plan, I switched over to U Mobile U28 plan to have a try.

Now, after about 2 months of usage, I decided to stay with U Mobile.

I found that in many places in urban area, the Internet speed of U Mobile is about the same with Digi. I some places, it is even better than Digi. In certain rural areas where U Mobile only able to provide EDGE or GPRS data speed, I still have my Celcom First Plan in my smartphone as backup Internet. After all, Celcom is still having the best rural coverage among the telcos now.

Disabling customized ringtone in Whatsapp message notification

Recently, whenever a person in my Android phone's contact who I have set a customized ringtone sends a Whatsapp text message to me, my phone will play the ringtone as if the person is voice calling me.

This is very annoying and not a Whatsapp "feature" I want. Firstly, it really confused me as I always tought the person is calling me instead of sending Whatsapp message to me. Secondly, the ringtone MP3 is quite long to play. Imagine how frustrating to wait for it to stop everytime it plays just because a new Whatsapp message is received.

Luckily, I found the place to disable this annoyance.

To disable it in Whatsapp, go to Settings > Notifications and untick the checkbox of Contact Ringtone under Message Notifications.

This is another Contact Ringtone for Whatsapp calls which you can see when you scroll down the above screen, and I am OK with that.

If Whatsapp really want to put a feature for customized message tone, they should make use of the SMS tone instead of the call ringtone. I consider this as an annoying bug, and ought to be fixed in their next version release.

Updated my Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P1000) to Storm CyanogenMod 11 with Android 4.4.4 (Kitkat) from stock firmware of Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread)

My first generation 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P1000) is aged, but is tough and still functioning well.

Although it only has a single core CPU, 512MB RAM and 16GB internal storage, it is still capable to handle most of the task as an Android tablet, especially with the newer firmware of Android Kitkat and above.

However, its official firmware by Samsung is stuck at the last generation Android version 2.3.3 (Gingerbread), last updated a few years ago.

Luckily, there are supporters and developers who keep working on its latest unofficial firmware. One of them is Storm31 who makes customized version of Cyanogenmod Android OS for this Samsung Galaxy Tab.

With this unofficial firmware using Android Kitkat, the Samsung Galaxy Tab runs even smoother,  more powerful and more feature rich than its latest stock Gingerbread firmware.

I have successfully updated my GT-P1000 from stock Android 2.3.3 to Storm CM11 Android 4.4.4, and I'll share with you how to do it.

First of all, backup all the data in your tab that you want to save to your PC or to its external SD card. Warning: this upgrade will wipe out everything and no user data will left behind in the tab. You better save all the data you want to save now.

Then, remove the external SD card from the tab. If you keep the SD card in the tab, the data in it might be wiped out too.

Download the following files:

• GB-Stock-Safe-v5.zip (287.91 MB)
• Samsung_GT-P1000_CyanogenMod_install_all_in_one.zip (192.24MB)
• cm-10.2-20131104-UNOFFICIAL-p1.zip (185.18 MB)
• cm-11-20150428-UNOFFICIAL-p1.zip (212.4MB)
• pa_gapps-modular-pico-4.4.4-20150308-signed.zip (99.2MB)

GB-Stock-Safe-v5.zip contains the latest official stock firmware for GT-P1000. You'll need this in case you bricked your tab along the upgrading process. This will restore your tab back to its original state with stock firmware of Android 2.3.3 (but without any user data).

Inside it you'll also find Samsung USB driver for Windows which you need to connect your computer to your tab in order to perform the upgrade. If you have already installed the Samsung USB driver in your computer before, then you don't need to install it again.

Inside it you can also find Odin 1.7, the firmware flashing tool to flash the firmware file(s) from your computer to your tab using the USB cable.

Samsung_GT-P1000_CyanogenMod_install_all_in_one.zip contains the ClockworkMod (CwM) Recovery, the CM 9.1 firmware, and a later version of Odin 1.85.

Note that you cannot upgrade your firmware from stock Android 2.3.3 directly to CM 11. You need to replace the stock firmware with CM 9.1 first, then update it to CM 10.2, then only to the latest CM 11 or upcoming CM 12.

You need to replace the stock Recovery in the tab's ROM with ClockworkMod Recovery in order to flash the CM firmware from the SD card (either internal or external) into the tab.

cm-10.2-20131104-UNOFFICIAL-p1.zip is the firmware flash file of CM 10.2.

cm-11-20150428-UNOFFICIAL-p1.zip is the firmware flash file of CM 11. If there is a newer version than this, you can use the newer version instead of this one.

CyanogenMod Android does not come with Google Play Store and Google Play Service, that's why you need pa-gapps-modular-pico-4.4.4-20150308-signed.zip to flash the Google Play Store and Google Play Service into your tab. Once you have the Google Play Store (previously known as Market) in your tab, you can use it to install more Google apps and Android apps into it.

After you have done backup of all the data you want to save from the tab to your PC, removed the SD card from the tab, charged the tab to at least 90% battery level, and installed the Samsung USB driver, you are ready to start this upgrade process.

Step 1: Unzip GB-Stock-Safe-v5.zip in your PC.

Step 2: Power off your tab. Then hold down its Volumn Down button, at the same time, long press the Power button. Your tab will go into Download mode with screen looks like below:

Step 3: Execute Odin3 v1.7.exe inside the Odin3_v1.7 folder.

Step 4: Connect your tab to your computer using its USB cable. You should see the first box in Odin's ID:COM section turns yellow.

Step 5: Click the PIT button and select the file gt-p1000_mr.pit.

Step 6: Click the PDA button and select the file GB_Stock_Safe_v5.tar.

Step 7: Click the PHONE button. If your tab is GSM-based (Asia/Europe/Middle East/Oceania/Africa/Rest of the world...), select modem.bin inside the folder JPZ Modem. If you are an American T-Mobile user, select modem.bin inside the folder T-Mobile Modem. If you are AT&T (USA), TelCel (Mexico) or Telstra (Australia) user, select modem.bin inside JK3 Modem instead.

Step 8: Click the Start button. The flashing process will begin. Let it run until you see a green PASS! box. Do not power off your PC or your tab, or disconnect the USB cable before you see the green PASS!.

In any event you bricked your tab, you can come here and perform Step 2 to Step 8 above to bring your tab to live again.

Step 9: Your tab should reboot. If not, reboot it. The Android initial setup screen will appear, don't bother to fill in any information, just tap on Next or Skip until you reach the home screen.

Step 10: Turn off your tab. Disconnect its USB cable from PC, and put it into Download mode again (Volumn Down + Power).

Step 11: Unzip Samsung_GT-P1000_CyanogenMod_install_all_in_one.zip in your PC.

Step 12: Now you can execute the newer Odin3 v1.85.exe inside the Samsung Odin3 v1.85 folder.

Step 13: Connect your tab to your computer using its USB cable.

Step 14: Click the PDA button and select the file CF-Root-TAB7_XX_OXA_JQ1-v3.3-CWM3RFS.tar inside ClockworkMod Recovery folder.

Step 15: Click the Start button to flash ClockworkMod Recovery into your tab.

Step 16: Power off your tab. Now you can plug back the external SD card to the tab if you want.

Step 17: Reboot your tab until you get back the Android home screen.

Step 18: Set your tab USB connection to Mass Storage Mode.

Step 19: Transfer the file cm-9.1.0-p1.zip inside CyanogenMod v9.1 for Galaxy Tab GT-P1000 folder to the tab's SD card (internal/external).

Step 20: Turn off your tab. Go into Recovery mode by holding Volumn Up button and at the same time long press the Power button.

Step 21: From the Recovery menu, select Install ZIP then Choose ZIP from SD Card. Locate and select the cm-9.1.0-p1.zip file, then confirm the selection. CM 9.1 will be flashed into your tab and replace the stock firmware. Wait for the process to finish. If there is any error, repeat this step again to reflash CM 9.1.

Step 22: Reboot your tab. The Android initial setup screen will appear, don't bother to fill in any information, just tap on Next or Skip until you reach the home screen.

Step 23: Repeat Step 18 until Step 21 for CM 10.2. The file to flash this round is cm-10.2-20131104-UNOFFICIAL-p1.zip. Note that updating from CM 9.1 to CM 10.2 might not be so smooth and might need to repeat Step 21 a few times before a final success.

Step 24: Reboot your tab. The Android initial setup screen will appear. This time, you can fill in your information, and connect to your local WiFi, until you reach the home screen.

Step 25: Repeat Step 18 until Step 21 again for CM 11. The file to flash this round is cm-11-20150428-UNOFFICIAL-p1.zip.

Step 26: Finally, flash the minimal Google apps. Repeat Step 18 until Step 21 again. The file to flash this round is pa-gapps-modular-pico-4.4.4-20150308-signed.zip.

Step 27: Reboot your tab. You will find the Google Play Store appears in your home screen.

Step 28: The keyboard that comes with CyanogenMod might be too basic and primitive. I replaced it with iFlytek Voice Input for Pad which you can install from Google Play Store.

Now, you can enjoy your GT-P1000 tab with new generation of Android and the CyanogenMod experience.

Change Google Now cards temperature display from Fahrenheit to Celsius

If you have an Android smartphone with Google Now, and you would like to change the temperature display in your Google Now cards showing weather information of your favourite place from Fahrenheit to Celsius, or vice versa, I'll show you how I did it in my HTC One M8 running on Android Lollipop version 5.0.1.

Firstly, locate the 3 little dots on the top right corner of the weather card. Tap on it.

You will be asked 3 questions. The first question is whether you are interested in weather updates for the location, answer Yes, then swipe left to answer the second question.

The second question "what temperature units do you prefer?" is exactly the place for you to tell Google Now to display the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Make your choice and then swipe left again for the third question.

Answer Yes to "continue to get weather updates". Then tap on the "X" on the right hand side of the question to return to Google Now cards screen.

Once you have answered these questions, you can find them in Google Now customize setting. To locate it, tap on the three bars on the left of Google to open the Google Now menu.

Then, tap on Customize.

Lastly, tap on "Everything Else".

You will be able to change your preference on temperature units here too.