Saturday 19 October 2013

Custom ROM install on Galaxy S3

It didn't really work out too well to begin with

Still not quite sure how exactly what I did that was wrong, but it didn't work at first. I used the shortcut in the ROM manager application to boot into recovery. I had already done the backup as per the instructions and then I moved on to step three which was to wipe out the data and do a factory reset. The next step was to do a cache partition wipe and up until that point everything went okay. The next step was to do a wipe of the dalvik cash which was supposed to be in a section called advanced. Unfortunately, I didn't see any possible way to get into an advanced part of the process.

I thought that maybe I had set up the deletion of a certain part of the cache within the ROM Manager application, so I went ahead with trying to install the custom ROM. The file for the custom ROM was sitting in the correct place on the phone and I was able to navigate to it from within the menu in system of the recovery mode. I selected it and gave it the go-ahead to process and after a short while I got a message to say verification failed. This was some verification of a signature which is required so how or other and there was no getting past this problem.

2013 10 19 06 04 06

Making use of the backups

Within the recovery mode there was the possibility to go to backups and to select the Nandroid backup and try to run it. That didn't work either and I got another error message. It is a bloody wonder that anybody is able to do any installations of custom ROMs to a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone as for sure, it really isn't easy. As you can see I was getting frustrated at this point in the game.

I had to go back to the standard installation of the phone that came when I bought it. I was pleased that at least I was able to do that without any problems. There weren't any problems, but there is a pain in the arse of having to set up all of the applications that I had before, once more. The first thing to do was to reinstall ROM Manager and my Helium backup application. There was a certain amount of messing about having to put in my Google details for the phone with the relevant passwords. Some applications were having to be downloaded from the Google Play App Store and some applications I was able to bring in again from the external storage. This is the procedure that is in process at the moment and I'm not able to do much else apart from wait. I didn't get all the way and I thought I would try again after I had the apps on there to be able to do so.

I haven't given up yet!

I am getting some help from somebody on the Google plus community called Rooted Samsungs. The only problem with this is the fact that it is not a direct conversation with somebody helping out, but a back and forth of posts within the conversation I started. It would work better if I could do a Google Hangout or maybe a Skype instant message or any other instant message service. As it is I am waiting for the guy to return the answers to my questions and he is probably doing the best he can while he is doing something else. He might even be at work!

Success at last - Running cyanogen mod

I kept trying to work out why it was the booting into recovery mode kept on taking me to the standard recovery mode when I was trying to get to the specific ClockworkMod recovery mode. I moved files from one folder to another and tried again and eventually something clicked and it worked for me. I found that by downloading the CyanogenMod file from within the ROM Manager application and also the same for the Google apps file that was required, worked better than downloading through the Mac. The ROM manager application put these files into specific places and this could have had an effect upon whether it was going to run properly or not. In any case, it all worked in the end!

Lots to do to finish off the job

I couldn't believe it when I finally saw the CyanogenMod spinning logo on the screen. To a large extent I just kind of followed my nose with doing things and clicking buttons to continue the process. I realised that I had to get back into the ROM Manager application in order to install the Google apps thing and I was very happy that it was quite seamless in the way that part of the job worked.

I'm also delighted with the fact that the applications that I had on the phone beforehand are automatically being updated from the backup that was made as part of the ROM Manager job. It was taking some time in order to get these applications downloaded again so I made sure that I had the other backup application loaded, Helium Pro. I was then able to quickly get some of the applications reinstalled from the backup which was residing on the external SD card.

It doesn't look all that different - At first

After reinstating and setting up the application Nova Launcher everything on the phone looks pretty much as it did before. I can go into the settings of the phone and I can see that it has been updated to Android version 4.2.2. It would have been nice to be able to go to version 4.3 and thats maybe possible further down the road. I can at least see that all of the bloatware from Samsung and from the phone company have been removed. I did like the way that I could swipe my hand across the screen of the phone to make it do a screenshot. I don't have that any more, but that is not too much of a problem as I have another way to do screenshots.

I like the way that when I do a slide to unlock the device I have a choice of sliding it to the right to just unlock it or I have four other options. One takes me into the messages app, the other takes me to the music app, another takes me to the phone app and finally there is one which opens up an Internet browser. The Internet browser is not the one that I am going to be using as I prefer to use a chrome, but the other choices could be useful.

Looking good so far

I have been able to set up all of the accounts on the phone with Google, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Dropbox and I have been able to get the passwords in there from 1Password as previously

Friday 18 October 2013

Upgrading the Galaxy S3 to a Custom ROM

What exactly is a Nandroid backup

Last night until 1 o'clock in the morning I spent fiddling with my phone and getting it ready to put on a custom ROM. I got a lot of information from a Google plus community about how to do it. I needed to download extra stuff, for example I needed to do a Nandroid backup as well as download an extra application to add Google apps to the update. This is due to the fact that Google do not let the custom ROM makers distribute their applications within the actual custom ROMs. Android Custom ROM I have to admit that the process is quite complicated and confusing and not for your average human. Updating your phone to a custom ROM is more for the geeks of the world. I do consider myself to be a geek, but I have to admit that I'm finding this process a little bit challenging this first time around. I suppose that once you have done this process while two times it seems a little bit more friendly and easy. I bought an application called ROM manager which is supposed to be making things easier. I watched a video showing how to do the process but it didn't show all the things that were shown to be necessary as per the information from the Google plus community. There are certain files that have to be downloaded and the files are specific to the model of the phone that you're working with. There are rather variables also which are dependent upon the custom ROM that you want to put on your phone.

Why would anyone want to do this?

When you get a phone from a carrier it has extra software on the phone that is commonly called bloatware. So one of the reasons to use custom ROM is to get rid of that extra and required software. That software can't be otherwise deleted from the phone. After having the Nexus seven for a couple of weeks and using the latest version of Google Android and liking it, it seems like a good plan to get to something a little bit more pure Android.

Instructions from Geoff Whiteley at Google plus

With CWM this should be your procedure....

  1. Boot into recovery (shortcut in ROM manager)
  2. Backup (you've already done)
  3. Wipe data/factory reset
  4. Wipe cache partition
  5. Wipe dalvik cache (in advanced)
  6. Format /system (only /system nothing else, found in mounts&storage)
  7. Install zip, navigate to ROM
  8. Install gapps
  9. Reboot system
  10. Enjoy

Monday 14 October 2013

How to post to iOS and Mac App DayOne from Android

DayOne journalling from Android

My favourite application for journalling, diary keeping is an application called DayOne, the only problem that I have with it is the fact that I use Android with my phone and my Nexus 7 and there is no Android App. The joys of being a slider between platforms iOS and Android. So what I need is to have some way where I can share from my Android devices, so that it all will go into DayOne with no extra work on my part. I did wonder if it would be possible for me to send an email to myself that would let me grab the contents to put into DayOne. I still think that process would be possible, but I have tried another way first and it works. On the Android devices I have used the application called Draft although I could have used any of the text editing applications that synchronise with Dropbox.

The way that it works

DayOne journal
The first part of the job is to create the journal entry in Draft and to do that with a particular file name. The file has to be called DayOne.txt and the application is already set to synchronise with Dropbox in app settings. In the blink of an eye the file is saved into the Dropbox folder called Draft. Then it appears like magic onto the Mac and the iPad and the Galaxy S3, anywhere I have Dropbox.

Keyboard Maestro Magic

Keyboard Maestro is a marvellous application that allows you to do all sorts of automation tricks on Mac OS X. I have found on numerous occasions that Keyboard Maestro is far better than the Apple application Automator. I can use it to simulate keypresses and key combinations and to work off numerous triggers. In this case I decided to have two triggers, one is based upon a time and I have chosen 11:30 PM in the evening and the other trigger works from a keyboard combination. This means that I can activate it manually or I can leave it and at the specified time the macro will run by itself and add my Android journal entries into DayOne.
I have the macro open up the specified file and to select all text within it and copy it to the clipboard. Then the Keyboard Maestro macro opens up DayOne in a new journal entry mode and pastes the text from the clipboard. I then have it set so that DayOne changes to the list view and this effectively saves the post.
Keyboard Maestro Editor
To finish off the macro and to tidy up, I then tell it to delete the text file that was opened up by Textmate on my Mac. This has to be done so that I don't end up with the duplicate entries. During the testing procedure I did use the command to move the original file to another folder rather than to delete. After I have found that the copying and pasting into DayOne had been successful I decided to change it to delete the file as I no longer needed to keep them.

What comes next to automate journalling with DayOne

Any other posts that I make to Google plus, Facebook, Twitter or any other social networks are in effect journalling or diary keeping. It would be handy to be able to take those social network postings and to put them into one place. The application DayOne would be a good place for all of that. There is a guy called Brett Terpstra who has created some scripts that take the posts that he has made on social networks and put them automatically into DayOne. The set of scripts uses the command line interface from DayOne and I have downloaded this and tried to make it work. Unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful in getting it to work on my system. I am just not geeky enough. So I will have to have a look at another way to get this social network journalling to put into DayOne.