How to just about survive in Android OS

If purchasing hardware, beware of “Shanzhai” models: these typically break down after 3 to 4 months, and some reportedly shipped with malware (e.g. Tecno). Reputable manufacturers’ devices should last several years, although some ‘budget’ options have been known to last less than two. Devices advertised as “waterproof” are not necessarily *usable* in wet weather, and can have overly-sensitive touchscreens even in dry weather.

Regarding BlackBerry devices, I believe the situation is:

Before Blackberry 10 - No Android support

Blackberry 10 (Q10, Passport etc) not upgraded to 10.2 - Simple, non-NDK applications can be repackaged for BlackBerry

10.2.1 - APKs install direct to phone; NDK works; most APIs supported, except for things like taking over the home screen or running a background sound recorder when app is not visible

Priv - *is* Android (a “security-enhanced” fork of Android 6 through 9, all of which are no longer supported)

but I haven’t actually tested any BlackBerry device; in particular,

Some pre-4.4 devices, such as the Galaxy S2, are advertised as having 16G capacity, but only 2G of this is “device memory” and the rest appears as a fake “USB disk” which not all applications can use for their data.

Newer devices are less likely to come with such inconvenient partitions in their memory.

Real MicroSD cards (usually SDHC i.e. up to 32GB) are supported by some (not all) devices, and can be used for storage of media but not all applications before Android 6 (which can “adopt” a card for extra “internal” storage instead), but any new card must be tested with f3write and f3read (or equivalent) before use, since counterfeit high-capacity cards are common (e.g. “32G” where only 7.4GiB work reliably, even if the seller describes it as “genuine” or “authorized”). Many counterfeit sellers, when faced with a test report mentioning h2testw (a proprietary Windows equivalent of F3) issue a refund and tell you to keep the card. Such cards are often usable if repartitioned downwards to their true (smaller) capacity

1. in the Terminal, check with mount to see which disk number it has,

2. unmount it with diskutil umount

3. use (e.g.) fdisk -e /dev/disk1 (ignore any “could not open MBR file” errors)

4. edit 1 and set true size in 512-byte blocks

5. w and q—Disk Utility will likely pop up (launch it yourself if it doesn’t)

6. select the first partition e.g. disk1s1 (*not* the partition table itself!) and erase.

but repartitioned cards probably *shouldn’t* be used for Android 6+ internal storage until somebody checks that setup honours the altered partition table.

If you don’t have time for all this testing, complaining, repartitioning, and repeating until you get a high enough capacity, it’s well worth paying the extra few pounds to buy from a reputable high-street chain instead of online (but test it anyway, just in case they too get caught out).

You might also want to find an A1 or A2 logo to check the card is fast during random (not just sequential) access, depending on how you plan to use it.

Android 4 has a “Font size” setting under “Display” (although the range is limited); Android 6+ has “Accessibility” settings including Font size and also “Display size” which changes the reported DPI—this can work better with some applications. Also available is the “TalkBack” screen reader, and a built-in screen magnifier—a bug in Android 13 can make its scrolling lag by dozens of seconds and sometimes lock so the phone needs soft-resetting; this seems to have been fixed in Android 14.

Taming the Home screen

Some devices ship with ‘widget’ software that plays a continuous stream of advertisements from the Home screen, consuming your data allowance and generally being a distraction—especially if you intend to use your device to demonstrate things to others. Sony’s “What’s New” is one such example and cannot be disabled from Settings/Apps. I was initially able to mitigate this by using Sony’s “Simple Home” (which can give larger print, although the customisation options for Version 1.0 on Android 4.x don’t allow for removal of its three “speed dial” slots—I suggested moving these to the top i.e. furthest from your hands if you don’t make voice calls from this device), and I suggested refusing to accept OS updates (such as from 4.4 to 5.0) just in case the update removes Simple Home and brings back the “What’s New” widget (Android security is basically a lost battle anyway—even Google’s own “Nexus” models have ceased to be patched just 3 years after initial release—so you should be aware that anything you store is at risk of compromise no matter what; if the consequences of that are worse than inconvenience, keep it on something that’s more secure than Android)—but it turns out there’s a way to turn off pre-installed widgets without relying on the availability of Simple Home. The instructions that should have been in the box are as follows:

In about 2024 some Android devices started shipping that don’t even display buttons for Home and Back (let alone have physical ones like the early models)—on these you might have to swipe from the bottom to reach the Home screen (or if you prefer see if there’s a Dock setting under System / System Navigation or similar, which might be useful if the “swipe from bottom” logic has crashed and you don’t yet want to restart the phone), or swipe and hold (or swipe while *on* Home) to reach the running applications list, and swipe from the left to go Back or to minimise the keyboard.

Useful applications

Unless otherwise specified, these can be searched for in the “Play Store”, but beware that advertisers can pay for other apps to be listed at the top of the search results, so the app you searched for is not always the first result.

You might like to try both and see which one’s image-processing works best with your documents.

You might also wish to check:

1. Your local transport authority or bus company (if you are a bus user), for example Cambridgeshire’s “MyBusTrip” (annoyingly listed under M by Simple Home; this can be worked around by assigning it a place on the dial-pad) presents the same data as on the bus stop signs, which might be useful if your stop lacks a sign or you’re not close enough to see it; some buses are actually tracked while others are just assumed to be in their timetabled locations. See also nextbuses.mobi although I’m not sure if they always use the same data.

2. Your bank: they just might have an application that works better than their website (for some tasks), although few if any banks test on all versions of Android so don’t be surprised if they break it

3. Any large marketplace site you sometimes happen to use (again their application might work better than their website for some tasks, but might break on some versions of Android)

4. Any large supermarkets you sometimes use for deliveries (same applies)

5. Your local library (some of them subscribe to digital audiobook services)

6. Any other large organisation(s) you’re associated with might have applications to expedite access to their servers and/or reading material, which might be worth checking (especially if they allow offline use)

7. Any “chat” networks your contacts use (but beware of commercial licenses and data use)

Since at least Android 4.x, background data can be restricted per application in Settings (usually under Data Usage), and Android 9 finally implemented my suggestion of also allowing Wi-Fi connections to be limited—useful for connecting to “personal hotspots” etc.

“Wi-Fi Calling” on Android

“WiFi calling” (the ability to route voice calls, and sometimes SMS messages, to and from your mobile-phone provider via WiFi when the building you’re in blocks their signal) is not a “standard” feature of Android, but is provided as an extra by certain manufacturers on certain devices. Therefore there is no specific “minimum Android version” that supplies WiFi calling—you have to choose from one of these particular models: Galaxy S6+, HTC 10+, Huawei P10+, Nexus 5X+/Pixel+, Xperia XZ1, E&OE, but beware Huawei phones made after late May 2019 no longer use the Google application store due to American trade sanctions.

The old “inTouch” app from H3G UK ceased to be supported on 15th May 2019. This used to make WiFi-calling available on more devices (by carrying it separately from the phone’s built-in dialler) and was a reason to choose the Three network on such devices, but this is no longer the case.

Sound-recorder applications on Android OS

Students recording lectures etc have generally moved from dedicated hardware to mobile ‘apps’ (applications). Below are my notes comparing some of the available alternatives on the Android platform. Usual disclaimers apply.

I only list apps that:

1. Work in the background and/or with screen off (saving battery),

2. can record a long talk even in the unpaid version of the app.

Android 9 and above does not allow telephone calls to be recorded: any recording happening at the same time as a call will get silence for the duration of the call. Therefore if you plan to both record a talk and call somebody to listen live, you’ll need two separate devices (unless you’re running an older version or you managed to ‘root’ it).

StereoMatch “Amazing MP3 Recorder” (removed from “Play Store” in May 2024; APK at stereomatch.com)

Pros:

Cons:

If you record OGG (MP3 encoding is a paid add-on but OGG is provided), the default settings give about 72 kbps for speech (31M/hr, variable).

Onall Sound Recorder No Ads (removed from “Play Store” in March 2019)

Pros:

Cons:

Triveous Voice Recorder

Pros:

Cons:

Rehearsal Assistant (removed from “Play Store” in December 2017)

Pros:

Cons:

iPhone ships with Voice Memos (possibly under Extras); this too works with the display switched off or in the background, and records 64kbit AAC (.m4a). Some other iOS programs output .aif files that might need converting on a Mac.

Legal

All material © Silas S. Brown unless otherwise stated. Acrobat is an Adobe trademark. Adobe is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Android is a trademark of Google LLC. Apache is a registered trademark of The Apache Software Foundation. Bluetooth is a registered trademark held by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. Firefox is a registered trademark of The Mozilla Foundation. GitHub is a trademark of GitHub Inc. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. H3G is a trademark of Hutchison Whampoa Enterprises Limited. HTC and Touch are trademarks of HTC Corporation. Huawei is a trademark of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd registered in China and other countries. iPhone is a trademark of Apple in some countries. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Mac is a trademark of Apple Inc. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. MP3 is a trademark that was registered in Europe to Hypermedia GmbH Webcasting but I was unable to confirm its current holder. QR Code is the UK registered trademark of Denso Corporation. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung. SourceForge is a trademark of VA Software Corporation. Unicode is a registered trademark of Unicode, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Vodafone is a trademark of Vodafone Group Plc. WeChat is a trademark of Tencent Holdings Limited. Wi-Fi is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Xperia is a trademark of Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. Any other trademarks I mentioned without realising are trademarks of their respective holders.