Fixing Android unable to connect to WiFi network problem with FXR WiFi Fix And Rescue

Have you ever encountered these kind of WiFi network connection problem with your Android device?

• Your Android device unable to detect the presence of a particular WiFi router/AP although SSID is broadcasted and all other wireless devices can detect and connect to the WiFi without problem
• Your Android device's failed to obtain IP address from the WiFi router/AP and unable to start, although the WiFi DHCP service is running well with other wireless devices
• Your Android device's WiFi service just unable to start

Normally, situations as above come at a sudden, and before that, your Android device has no issue at all connecting to that particular WiFi all the while.

Sometimes, rebooting the Android device can fix the problem, and you'll be able to connect back to the WiFi again. However, the same problem might also come back again.

I've encountered such annoying problem between my Android phone and my home WiFi router, and I finally fixed it using a free tool called FXR WiFi Fix And Rescue.

It is a one button fix solution. Just click the "Fix My WiFi" button and the tool will attempt to fix your WiFi problem in your Android device for you. You will lost all your WiFi settings, including all the saved WiFi connection passwords, along the process. However, this is still much better than having to do a full factory reset to the Android device.

It worth to give it a try before going for factory reset or sending the Android device to repair center.

App: Use Business Calendar for Android to sync Google and Facebook calendars

Do you find the Calendar app that comes with your Android phone not impressive enough? Do you want a calendar app that can show as much information as possible in a single screen in a well-organized and readable way, especially in the Month view?

So far, I came across 2 Android calendar apps that meet this requirement, and able to sync with Google Calendar. They are Business Calendar for Android and CalenGoo.

I prefer Business Calendar by Mikado Software of Germany because its price is cheaper than CalenGoo, there is a free Lite version of it, and most importantly, its user interface is very much alike Google Calendar accessed with desktop web browser. It also has a more business professional look-and-feel than CalenGoo.

Click here to see some screenshots of Business Calendar.

Business Calendar is able to access and sync with the same set of calendars as the HTC Calendar app, including PC Sync (that will sync with the calendars in your PC through HTC Sync program), multiple Google Calendars as well as Facebook Calendar. Apparently, it shares the same calendar database with HTC Calendar that comes together with the phone.

Beside Month view, it has Multi-day (Week) view, Day view and Agenda view. Its Month view uses popup to show event details, allowing you to access the information easily within the same screen. Its Multi-day view supports multi-touch zoom-in and zoom-out gesture.

One of the thing I like about Business Calendar is it comes with highly customizable widgets of various size from 2x1 to 4x4 (altogether 12 of them), allowing us to access and manipulate the calendar directly from Android home screen.

App: Setting Profiles in Android phone with MyProfiles

Profile setting and management has been a must-have feature in all mobile phones since long time ago, even before smart phones available in the market. This function allows us to quickly change multiple settings in the phone to specific need, such as set it to Silent Mode in cinema, Battery Saving Mode at night, etc.

However, this basic function doesn't come by default in Android, and we have to install the 3rd party application from Android Market in order to have such function in our Android phone.

I find MyProfiles developed by Fancy01 Inc. in Taiwan to be the best in terms of user friendliness, easy to use and good user interface, although it isn't the one having the most comprehensive features. Its operation doesn't consume much battery too.

MyProfiles lets us define an unlimited set of profiles and name them accordingly. Here are the profiles I set in my phone.

MyProfiles provides 40 over icons for us to choose and associate to the profiles we set, which is pretty sufficient.

For each of the profiles, we can define the settings of:

• Sound volume for ring tone, media, alarm, notification, in-call and system
• Sound effect / music for ring tone, alarm and notification
• Vibration
• SMS notification handling
• Auto answering
• Auto speaker on
• Screen display timeout
• Auto lock timeout
• Airplane mode
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• Mobile network
• Auto Sync
• WiFi hotspot
• GPS
• WiMAX
• Mobile data connectivity
• Display brightness
• Screen auto-rotate
• ... and more

After the Profiles is setup, they can be switched into until the next toggle, or switched temporary for a period of time, then fall back to the settings before the switch.

The temporary mode will be handy in situation such as: we know a movie will be ended in 2 hours time, so we set our phone to be in Silent Mode for 2 hours and let it auto-revert back to its previous state.

We can also schedule for a certain profile to be triggered during certain time period.

Currently, MyProfiles still lack of features such as location based auto profile switching, car motion (> 20 km/h) auto profile switching, battery state profile switching, cable connection (and/or charging state) profile switching, etc.

MyProfiles development is pretty dynamic, with new release coming out at least once every week. Fancy01 is also very responsive to emails sent to them.

MyProfiles comes in 2 versions, the free MyProfiles Lite and the paid MyProfiles. Its price at US$1.49 (increased from US$0.99 since 28 April 2011) isn't expensive and very affordable.

If you own an Android phone and haven't found a suitable profile management app yet, or you find your current profile management app too difficult or tedious to use, I recommend MyProfiles to you.