How to simply fix the edit-only contact problem in android (force delete contact)

Problem: you cannot delete a contact from your contact-list because it is write-protected because there are links to e.g. Signal or Whatsapp shadow contacts.

The classical way is to unlink the contact, delete it and force refresh the whatsapp contact list. But this won’t work for Signal users

Here is a much easier way:

install the “simple contacts” app by simple mobile tools (also in fdroid store) and use it instead of the default app. Deleting contacts works in this app no matter if there are links.

Simple or?

Yeah I know it is a bad advice to simply point to an app. But the issue is here google contacts is crap. I am sure there are some other apps able to do this, but this one is OSS and doesn’t sell your data.

Anyway: maybe it is a good idea to simply replace the google contacts app in your workflows by his app. And as maintaining apps is sometimes exhausting maybe a little thanks to the maintainer (not me) would be a good idea. E.g. a good rating.

How to root the easy way

First unlock oem completely. For this boot into bootloader mode and execute fastboot oem unlock. Warning: this erases all your files.

Wait until an OTA update (skip if you can grab official firmware for your device (and it is the current version or we need a franken vendor partition) (but we still need the boot file from the official firmware)). Don’t install it; extract first the ota url (logcat or generate bugrequest while downloading) or extract update.zip. This zip file should contain a file named boot. And this file we need.
Continue the update. Now transfer the boot file to the device, install magisk manager on your android device and patch the boot file. Pull the patched file via adb from the device and switch the device into bootloader mode. Now flash the patched boot file to the boot partition and reboot.

Now you should be root.

If you want to stay root do the ota capture method before every update and patch the boot partition after every update.

I hope this guide was helpful

How to fix no wlan on android after root (not completely correct boot used / old vendor partition)

Do you know the problem? You root android via a magisk patched boot partition but the kernel on the boot partition slightly differs from the vendor kernel modules and you haven’t wlan, bluetooth, …

Here is the fix: let’s build a franken-vendor partition.
First you need root access. For this enter su in adb shell. Now go to magisk manager or whatever root tool you use and allow su.

Before we beginn: better make an backup of the vendor partition (adb shell "su -c 'cat /dev/block/platform/mtk-msdc.0/11230000.msdc0/by-name/vendor'" > vendorbackup). The exact path you can find out by using: adb shell cat /proc/mounts. Make at least a backup of the /vendor/lib/modules .ko files.

Next: remount the vendor partition in read-write-mode (mount -o remount,rw /vendor). Somewhere in /vendor/lib/modules are some .ko files. These are the linux kernel modules the wrong android kernel cannot load and this is the reason why we have no wifi, bluetooth, …

Next step is to transform the vendor image to which the boot partition original belongs. If the ending is .img we have to transform the sparse image into a raw image for mounting. Elsewise you may can skip the step.
Install the package containing simg2simg (for every distro, or operating system the name differs so you have to find out the program yourself).
Desparse the image with simg2simg <image> <rawimage>

The next step differs if you cannot the raw image. If this is the case move the raw image on the android device and mount it here.
Now you can overwrite the .ko modules with:
cat <vendor mount path>/lib/modules/<module name>.ko | adb shell "su -c 'cat > /vendor/lib/modules/<module name>.ko'"
or
adb shell "su -c 'cat <vendor mount path>/lib/modules/<module name>.ko > /vendor/lib/modules/<module name>.ko'"

You have to repeat this step for all modules. After that reboot and wifi should work again

how to fix: android has not enough space for updates (after many updates)

After some time android updates stopped due to insufficient space. After a short investigation I found out that the problem is google play

google play saves every update intern in its cache. This way the cache grows to a enormous size.

The fix is very easy: clear the cache of google play. For this go to settings -> apps and open google play in the list of apps. There should be a button: “clear cache”. Pressing it will solve this problem

Android Autosync

Sorry it was late yesterday. I rewrote this article:

Checklist adding a google account to android:

• deactivate Autosync by tapping on the email address (in accounts) and deactivating every sync option
• deactivate in google preferences: check device for malicious apps especially the option beyond that you send them data

This is why I cannot recommend Android. It’s a clear breach of trust (you see the first thing never if you don’t know it and google doesn’t say it anywhere that autosync is active by default)

As I said in my former blog post I wouldn’t recommend deriviates either (same hyper-commercial App community)

I think the same is true for IOS and Windows 8 smartphones.

What exists and looks good is firefox os.  There are even some cheap smartphones. But I have no experience with it.

But I need App: xy
Install android-x86 in a virtual machine. I think it’s straigthforward so I don’t explain.
But be careful, don’t forget the checklist.
Anyway this is also a good way for non-smartphoner to have access to apps.
One difficulty is to install apps which doesn’t want be installed on tablets.
An approach is to install the apk file. Better would be to tricking android in believing a smartphone (sorry I didn’t find out how yet)

android and admins

The Android userbase is an hostile environment for admins and developers. Even android is technically a very good idea (except java).

Firstly every problem is appified. You don’t get any usefull information about internal stuff (e.g. where files lay around) by searching after the problem. The solution for every problem is: install app xy (and boost the download score of someone).

Secondly most android developers come from the windows world. They don’t share for free. Saying: this world doesn’t give anything for free why should I do so? Many apps say: hey I fix this, but lacking information how they do it. Sadly there is no filter to filter them away.

Thirdly transferring knowledge is risky. Some important features/bugs could be “fixed”. Or you could get legal trouble. Even android is under gpl this discourages people from transferring knowledge.

Fourthly you get logged and recorded on every step. I never thought about the normal world implications: Every app you looked, you installed, deinstalled is haunting you. Not the secret services, but the companies. They push advertisment crap. On a small display this is especially annoying.

Fifthly some apps have advertisements. They put you into the risk of beeing hacked by their advertisment crap (happened often enough). Also eating your internet, display space and battery. Imagine this on your PC. Every 10 Minutes something pops up and annoys you. I hadn’t this for years (since I switched to linux).
(I heard from a prof that the internet speed improvements are mostly for advertisments (that the speed penalty by them is noticed less))