How To Factory Data Reset Your Android Device?

Now or later everyone will feel that your mobile phone is loaded with loads of unwanted data and may choose to clear that off by removing the apps/data manually and few (lazy) smart people (like me!) would always love to choose the easiest way to wipe the data and it will be nothing other than choosing the “Factory Data Reset” for restoring your device to the factory build settings by wiping off all the data from the internal storage (yup, your data on external storage will be safe unless you format your SD card) along with all the manual settings you have done like date & time, configuring your Google account, system and application data and all other custom settings would be erased as well.

Manual Way: How To Auto Delete Old Text Messages From Android?

The device will be restarted after you select ‘Factory data reset’, your phone/tablet now behave like a brand new one (except for possible wear and tear’s), you just need to follow the onscreen instructions for configuring your device (exactly) like the way you have done for the first time.

Why You Would Like To Do A Factor Reset?

The possible reasons which tend you to choose reset the data to factory settings include:

You may choose to sell your device, and clear off your personal data left over on the phone (just to make sure that the device carries none of your personal information)
Unfortunately your device is stuck with problem and you wish to surrender/give/claim the device to manufacturer for your own reasons.
Strange Behavior of the device, yeah lot of software related issues will get fixed if we reset the phone/tablet.
As I said earlier, your are lazy enough (proud to be) to clear data individually.

TIP: How To Improve Battery Life Of Your Android Mobile?

Precaution: Things To Do Before You Do a Factory Reset

Follow these instructions carefully as they may come handy just in case if you end up with few issues.

Backup..! Backup..! Backup..! Just backup every (important) file from your phone to external PC/Storage.
Move all the paid apps (if any) to your external storage so that you won’t need to buy them again.
Sync all your contacts with your Gmail account or install software PC suite and backup all your contact details.
Make a list of the apps which you would like to install after you complete the “Factory Data Reset”.

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How To Factory Data Reset Your Android Smart Phone?

For resetting the device to factory build settings and clear off the internal storage completely just follow these step by step instructions and know ‘How To Factory Reset your Android Phone/Tablet?’

First to start with click on Menu –> Settings.

Scroll down and tap on ‘Privacy Settings’ or few phones may also need to check in ‘SD & Phone Storage’.

Now the last step, just tap on ‘Factory Data Reset’ and in the next screen click on ‘Reset Phone’ to complete the process (optionally you may also check ‘Format SD card’ for clearing off the data from external storage card).

Please note that it may take up to 5 to 10 minutes of time to complete the process of factory restore, post the restore you are now all set to configure your (new) device again.

We have taken care of each and every detail that you need to do for resetting the phone to factory data settings, but just in case if you face any difficulty in configuring these options please feel free to use the comments box below, we will glad to help you with the process.

How To Auto Delete Old Text Messages From Android?

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With the advent of email & SMS marketing and the increased pace in number of messages exchanged between friends and family, the number of messages in your inbox will keep on growing day by day and heavy load or increase in number of messages in your inbox will result to load the Text Messaging app very slowly and storing excessive number of messages texts in your message box will result in more processing time for opening the Messaging app which in turn will use more power from battery resulting in a quicker drain of power. So it is always recommended to carry less number of messages either by deleting them manually or by doing it in the automated way, yeah your Android device is capable of deleting the old messages from your smart phone automatically..!

Before you wonder and ask me “is it possible to delete messages from inbox automatically from my Android phone?” let me confirm you again, yeah it is possible and all you need to do and follow is to configure your device as mentioned in following steps.

CHECK: How To Know What Version Of Android You Are Running?

How To Automatically Delete Old Texts on Android Device?

Deleting the texts in automatic way is pretty simple, and for configuring that first you need to launch your text messaging app.
Now, click on ‘Menu’ button and then click on ‘Settings’ button.

Under setting, just check the option ‘Delete old messages’ (when you turn-on the setting, just notice the green check-mark to confirm that the option was enabled) and then you are free to set the limit for your text conversations. Although the default value is 200, it is recommended to set a lower number for better performance.

DO YOU KNOW? How To Improve Battery Life Of Your Android Mobile?

That’s it, configuring it is pretty simple and straight forward and you need to do is to enable a setting. In case if you have any issues please let us know your concerns through the comments box.

Happy Android’ing…!

How To Install Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) SDK on Windows?

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ICS is the latest version of Android, and for those who don;t have an ICS powered Android device or for people who would like to check out Android in their local system (Windows Machine), setting an emulator in Android SDK is the best way to run the Ice Cream Sandwich as it helps you in exploring the features of the Android 4.0.

DO YOU KNOW? Key Features of Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 Platform

How To Install & Run Android 4.0 (ICS) on Local PC?

In order to run the Android OS, first you need to install Android SDK in your machine just follow these tutorials for installation & setup of Android SDK.

How To Install Android SDK with GUI Setup? | Android SDK Manual Setup on Windows

After installing the SDK, open the SDK application which will search for the updates as applicable and fetches all the SDK packages that are available for Android.

You will notice “Android 4.0 (API14)” in the fetched packages, just select it and select “Android SDK Platfrom-tool” under ‘Tools’ (refer the screenshot below) and click on ‘Install Packages’.

After you click on Install Packages, a pop-up will then be prompted which asks you confirm the selections and to accept the license terms, just go through them (recommended) and click on ‘Install’ to go ahead.

Wait for few moments for downloading the stuff from Internet and to complete the setup, once everything was set, just click on Tools in the menu bar and click on ‘AVD Manager’ (Android Virtual Device Manager) in the drop down, and in AVD Manager click on ‘New’ in order to create a new virtual device for running Android 4.0 (ICS).

Enter “Android ICS” (optional) in name field and select “Android 4.0 – API Level 14″ from drop down for Target and for the rest follow the setup as selected in the screenshot below and click on ‘Create AVD’.

A pop-up will then be prompted, just click on “OK”, which will create the virtual device that runs Android ICS.

Post the setup, just select the virtual device which you have created now and click on “Start” and click on “Launch” in the followed window.

The pre-booting will start for running Android ICS which will take around 5 minutes of time (for the first time) and once everything gets loaded, Android 4.0 will be loaded and running in the Emulator resulting the welcome Screen.

Now you can start using the Android ICS in the emulator, in case if you stuck with some issues while setting up the Emulator do let us know about the same, we will be glad to discuss your issues and help you in going ahead with the installation.

HTC Desire HD Unbiased Review

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HTC Desire HD is a successful Android flagship phone designed to lower the trade-off of having a massive screen and the following is the in detailed review of the HTC Desire HD.

Box Contents

USB Cable
Mains Charger
8GB MicroSD Card
Stereo Headset
Documentation

HTC Desire HD Review

Hardware Specifications

HTC Desire HD runs on a Qualcomm Scorpion processor of 1GHz with 768 MB RAM. It has 1.5 GB of Internal memory and an external MicroSD support of up to 32GB of which 8 GB is included. It has accelerometer, compass and proximity sensor.

Software

It runs of Android Gingerbread, which is upgradable to Ice cream sandwich. HTML and Flash browser support is available. Google search, Maps and Gmail are enabled. Google Talk, Youtube and Picasa integration is available. It supports Facebook and Twitter applications also. Voice memo and predictive text input are included.

Design Elements

HTC Desire HD is a 123x68x11.8mm dimensioned phone weighing about 164gms. The front of the Desire HD is mostly taken up by screen. The four touch sensitive options are all easy enough to press and light up when the phone is in use – we’d still rather they were the physical keys of the original Desire, as it’s easier to hit them without taking your eyes off the screen. The dimensions of the phone are designed to decrease the trade-off of having a massive screen, but it only partly works. The thin frame makes it easy to hold in the hand, but in the portrait mode it’s still impossible to reach the top of the screen without jiggling the phone around in your hand.

Display Features

HTC Desire HD has a LCD capacitive Touch screen with 16M colors. It has a 4.3 inch screen with 480×800 pixels and ~ 217 ppi pixel density. Multi touch is enabled with HTC Sense UI enabled and Corning Gorilla glass display is available.

Camera

It has a 5 MP primary camera with 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, dual LED flash included featuring face detection and Geo-tagging. No secondary camera is available.

Multimedia Features

The music player on the HTC Desire HD is really good. The audio output has been boosted by the addition of Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual surround sound. The audio playback formats supported are aac, amr, ogg, m4a, mid, mp3, wav and wma. The audio recording could be done in amr format. Video playback formats available are 3gp, 3g2, mp4, wmv, avi and xvid. Video recording is handled in 3gp format.

Performance & Battery Life

It has a standard 1230 mAh battery. The stand by time is up to 490 hours on 2G and up to 420 hours on 3G. Talk time is up to 9 hours 15 min on 2G and up to 5 hours 30 min on 3G.

Final Words

It has the super slick UI and the browsing experience is great. Dolby Mobile and SRS Virtual sound are added advantages. E-book reader is very decent and the contacts are very easy to connect.

Battery life is very poor and there is a lack of OLED screen. Video player is not very good and connectivity to HTCsense still has some bugs.

Samsung Gets 9 Million Pre-orders For Samsung Galaxy S III [Report]

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Samsung Electronics has received over 9 million pre-orders from over 100 international carriers for Samsung Galaxy S III, the next generation super smart phone from the company as reported by the Korea Economic Daily on Friday and in addition the report says that Samsung’s smartphone factory is working round the clock at its full capacity of 5 millions devices per month.

Samsung has emerged as the world’s largest smart phone maker by moving Apple to the second slot in the race in Q1 of 2012 and as per the current statistics of the market, Samsung has the largest share in Android smart phone market and is now ruling among the other players, as per the recent stats Samsung holds about a whopping 40% share in Android based smart phone market across the world.

CHECK: Samsung Galaxy S III Unveiled, Specs, Pictures & Features

Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III will be available in the market starting from May 29 in Europe and would be released in US & rest of the world (includes India, Singapore, Dubai, Australia, China, Korea in the second phase of its launch followed by United States) by June. The pre-booking for Samsung Galaxy S 3 to the end users is open across the world.

Samsung representatives have declined to comment about the pre-order reports.

*This news is originally reported by Korea Economic Daily and later by Reuters.

Why We Love Android Over iOS?

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Smartphones, everyone wants one and those who already have it want a better one. The mobile phone market today is flooded with smartphones from major brands as well as cheap rip-offs which try to emulate the big brands. A smart phone today is less a phone and more of a computer. Virtually anything you could do on a computer could be done, just as easily, on a smart phone.

People today are aware that the brand of the smart phone does not matter as much as the operating system used in it. After many years of cut-throat competition, we can all agree that two major players have emerged in the smart phone OS arena. Android OS and iOS. We also have the windows smart phone, Symbian and other portals but we are not talking about them as they occupy a relatively lesser share of the market as compared to Android and iOS.

ALSO SEE: What is Android & Why it is Better Than Other Mobile OS?

We personally prefer the Android operating system as compared to iOS. Let us look at some of the aspects which make android a better option compared to the iOS. (Please keep in mind that I will be talking from both programmer and layman’s point of view).

Advantages of Android Over iOS

Price

Let us put the most basic advantage of android first. They’re cheap. You can get a fully functional decent android device for about half the price of an apple device, be it a phone or tablet you are looking at.

Hardware Options

Anyone who has ever set his eyes on an iPhone knows how it looks. And that’s it. Every single iOS device is designed the same way. One physical home button and everything else on the touch screen. This is miles away from the wide range of options you have on android devices. You can get almost any configuration you like in android. If what you want is not available wait for a little while, because of the sheer number of companies offering android smartphones, it could be released within a couple of months.

Software Options

Not only is hardware an option for android, the software is also versatile. Android is partly open source, that is, we can change the source code of any program to a certain extent. This is not at all possible in iOS. Apple is under a lot of pressure to change this but it does not look like anything is going to happen about this in the near future, because of this open source advantage, android users can change the functioning of their phone to personalize it for their own needs.

Android Advantage: What is Rooting on Android? Advantages & Disadvantages of Rooting

Ease of Software Development

Getting into the application development field is also easier in android compared to iOS. A membership into the iOS developer program ( which is mandatory for iOS app developers) costs around 99$ per year.

In android, the development platform(SDK) and the tools required for development could be obtained free of cost. To publish your app in the android market, it will cost you a one-time only payment of 25$, which is almost one-fourth of what one has to pay the iOS developers program YEARLY!

DO READ: How To Install Android SDK On Windows Platform?

Just because Android offers these advantages does not necessarily mean that iOS is useless. iOS also has advantages over Android like more powerful tools for development, better interface, a more stringent privacy policy etc. If these are your primary concerns, you may find the iOS more suitable. Both the operating systems are state of the art and one can choose either depending on their needs and requirements.

Key Features of Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 Platform

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Android has gone out of its way to revamp its ageing Honeycomb (3.0) It came out with the all new Ice Cream sandwich (4.0) in November of 2011. Since the time of its launch it has been received by the android community with much enthusiasm. Let us look at some of its aspects.

The Home Screen

The most noticeable change is of course the change in the home screen configuration. Although the lock screen is pretty much the same as that on the honeycomb, they have made some welcome changes to the home screen. The home screen has not been changed much since the gingerbread, but in ice cream sandwich, they have introduced a home screen dock. This works pretty much like the iPhone dock where you get to store your most used apps. Widgets can also be resized to your need by double tapping on them.

CHECK: Secret Dial Codes of Android To Unlock Hidden Functionalities

Talk to Me

One notable improvement over honeycomb is talk to me. This allows users to type their messages simply by talking to the phone. Though this was already present on the honeycomb, there you had to press a button first to activate this feature. Here it starts automatically as soon as you start talking to the phone.

RAM Conservation

One constant problem android users always complained of was the inability to conserve their RAM. The number of applications running simultaneously could not be managed.

In the Ice cream sandwich, you can scroll through recent apps using the button at the bottom and scroll through the open and recently used apps. You can close unnecessary apps by just flicking at them!

Application Updates

The core Google applications have been updated. The web browser now also functions in the incognito mode. Another welcome change that they made is adding the web page saving feature. You can now save web pages on the net for offline reading later on.

DO YOU KNOW? How To Know What Version Of Android You Are Running?

Contacts can now also be viewed by photograph in a column format. Changes have also been made to the camera. We can now take panoramic pictures and editing tools have been added to the camera app.

The app drawer icon has now been incorporated into the bottom of the touch screen. The app scrolling system has now been changed from vertical scrolling to horizontal scrolling. A different folder for widgets has also been incorporated into this menu.

Android Beam

Android has once again taken a leaf out of apple’s book by emulating the hugely successful iPhone app, bump it. Through android beam, you can share images, videos or applications just by bumping the two android devices together.

Although, this is an improvement over the honeycomb version, estimates show that the most of the market share is still occupied by Gingerbread (Android 2.3). Only about 5% of android users use honeycomb and even lesser use ice cream sandwich. So all in all, if you have a decent android phone capable of handling ice cream sandwich and the version of ice cream sandwich has been released for your phone, I would definitely recommend installing it.

How To Know What Version Of Android You Are Running?

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Android is the most powerful and #1 mobile operating system and the best part of it is, it is getting better and beautiful day by day with the addition of new and most awesome featured. Besides the features, it is always best to upgrade to the latest version of the software as the latest version will come up the bug fixes that came up in the earlier versions and it is highly recommended to upgrade to the latest version (at the time of this writing it is Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.4) provided your manufacturer supports and provides the official update for the version (for when if your hardware meets the latest software requirements and the manufacturer didn’t release an official update, you can still upgrade using the available custom ROMs released by third-party/freelance developers by rooting your Android device at your own risk).

To Know more about Rooting, we recommend you to go through this write-up: What is Rooting on Android? Advantages & Disadvantages of Rooting

As we said there are multiple versions of Android OS’s available (Cupcake (v1.5), Donut (v1.6), Eclair (v2.1), Froyo (v2.2), Gingerbread (2.3.2), Honeycomb(3.0), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.4)) it is very important to know the version of the operating system which your device is running & now getting into the business, follow the mentioned instruction to know about the Android version that your device is running on.

How To Check What Version of Android You Are Running on Your Device?

In order to know the version, click on “Menu” on the home screen and then click on “Settings” button.

Scroll down, and click on “About Phone”.

In the next screen, scroll down to find the “Android Version” on which your device is running.

That’s it, now its time to check for the latest updates as applicable for your device, Good Luck…!

How To Block Ads on Rooted & Unrooted Android Devices?

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How many of you feel annoying when you see ads while playing with Apps? many of you right, and the fact is ads do spoil the experience of using the apps, thank god that few of the developers do offer premium version of the apps where there won’t any sort of ads but there were few particular apps which do annoy the users completely by distracting the primary use of the app and this tutorial will help you with the best possible ways for removing the ads.

Installation of Ad blockers works completely different in rooted and unrooted devices (valid for both mobile phones & tablets) and therefore please make sure to select the valid way to install the ad blockers.

How To Install Ad Blockers in Rooted Android Devices?

Rooting Android devices do have specific advantages and here is the list of benefits we get by rooting an Android mobile (although it has few risks, we can overcome them by after going through the mentioned instructions carefully).

So, going to the context “AdAway” is one of the most popular app which helps you in removing the ads completely (both from Apps & even from browser), AdAway app works on an updated block list which will be revised from time to time and thus helps you in blocking the ads before they reach your mobile.

How To Install AdAway App For Blocking Ads?

Open Play Store, and search for AdAway and install the app by following the regular method.
Once you complete the installation, open the app and tap on “Download files and apply ad blocking” button which will download the latest block list filters and updates on your Droid system.

Reboot your Android device and post that you will be free to browse the apps/Internet ad-free.

How To Disable Ad-Blocking Filter?

It’s pretty simple, you just need to open app and unselect the option “Disable Ad Blocking” and reboot the device or simply remove the app and restart the device for applying the changes.

We also have alternative apps To AdAway which helps us in living an ad-Free world, one such app is “AdFree” (remember that even this app works only on Rooted Android Phones).

How To Block Ads On Android with AdFree App?

Open Play Store, and search for AdFree and install the app by following the regular app installation procedure.
Start the app, and click on “Download & Install Hosts” and change the selection list as per the below screenshot and post that reboot your phone/tablet.

Voila! you are done with the changes and are free to live in Ad-Free world.

How To Install Ad Blockers in UnRooted Android Devices?

For unrooted devices, frankly there are no much options left to go ahead with ad blocking, but you can still block the ads for browsing Internet and for the same you need to install “Firefox” browser app first and post that follow the mentioned instructions to set up ad blocking in the browser.

How To Block Ads on Firefox App in Android version?

First you need to launch the Firefox app and click on Menu button and then click on Settings –> Add-ons.
Now search for AdBlock Plus extension and install the add-on, after installing you need to restart the app to push the changes into effect (This method is pretty much similar to the one of desktop version).

That’s it, from now you will be able to start browsing your favorite websites ad free.

Editor’s Note: We don’t admit that every ad is annoying and we are not even against the idea of inserting ads in apps as we know that running ads is the only stream of monetization for app developers but there are few developers whose primary motto in making apps is to just make money and therefore tries to spoil the experience by distracting the users with huge ads, anyways sharing this tutorial is completely informational and we recommend our readers do apply the above mentioned methods if you are completely uncomfortable with the ads-concept.

So guys, what are you waiting for, start living your ad free world, for any kind of difficulties please get back to us through comments section and we will be glad to discuss all of your issues that you end up while setting up these apps.

Step By Step Instructions For Installing Android SDK

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Installation of Android SDK is one of the major steps one has to take care of before actually digging into the development of Android, the term SDK stands for software development kit, which is basically a set of software development tools which help in the creation of applications based on a specific software package, hardware platform, operating system, software framework, computer system or video game console. The SDK is also referred to as dev kit by some. For some software the SDK includes only a set of files which form the user interface between the machine understandable programming language and the advanced hardware systems to communicate with the embedded systems. Almost all SDK tools include debugging aids and other utilities presented in the integrated development environment (IDE). Some SDKs also include sample codes and the supporting technical notes to clarify points from the chief reference material.

Like any other SDK, the Android software development Kit allows developers to create new applications based on the Android operating system. The Android Software Development Kit will be of use to develop applications in the Java language using other development tools. In order to use the SDK, the user needs to install it on the computer. The installation of the SDK is a bit more complicated compared to any average program.

However, if the following steps are followed properly, you will not face any problems in SDK installation.

Setup Guide For Android SDK Installation

Step 1: First download the latest Android SDK from the following link (http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html)

Step 2: After the download, unzip its contents and save it to the root of C:\ (You will get a new folder within C:\ called “android-sdk-windows”)

Step 3: After installation open the android- sdk- windows folder double-click the SDK manager file to launch it.

Step 4: If you are launching the SDK manager for the first time you will be asked for the packages to be installed. Please select the following files which are necessary for SDK installation.

Android SDK Tools, revision 15
Google USB Driver package, revision 4
Android SDK Platform-tools, revision 9

You can reject all the other options if you are not interested in them.

Step 5: Wait for the tools to get installed and close the manager after installation is complete.

Step 6: Now in the Control Panel select System Properties (for Windows XP) or System (for Windows Vista/7).

Step 7: Now select the Advanced settings; Click on the Advanced tab (for Windows XP) Click on Advanced system settings on the left. (for Windows Vista/7)

Step 8: In the next window click on Environment Variables.

Step 9: Now under the “System variable” option double-click the “Path” option.

Step 10: Now within “Variable values” option, input the following path %SystemRoot%;C:\android-sdk-windows\platform-tools;C:\android-sdk-windows\tools.

Step 11: If your Google USB Driver package doesn’t support your device, you can download the following drivers (github.com/gu1dry/android_winusb/zipball/master) and install it. This driver package supports all the android devices. After downloading the file unzip it and copy the android_winusb.inf file to the following path: C:\android-sdk-windows\extras\google\usb_driver\ to replace the existing android-winusb.inf file.

Step 12: In the smart phone make sure to enable USB Debugging by using the following path Settings>Applications>Development.

Step 13: Now connect the smart phone with the PC using the USB data cable.

Step 14: Now in the command prompt type “adb devices”. If the command list device then the installation was successful. If no devices are displayed go back to step 10 to reinstall the drivers.

Step 15: Now right-click on My Computer (for Windows XP) or Computer (for Windows Vista/7) and click on the manage option.

Step 16: In the next window click on the device manager icon on the left side of the window. If the drivers were properly installed you will see “Unknown Device” with a yellow exclamation mark (ADB).

Step 17: Now right-click on the ADB and click on the “Update Driver Software” option.

Step 18: Now click on the “Browse my computer for driver software” and in the next window select the “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer” option.

Step 19: In the next window click on the option “Have Disk” and then select the “Browse” option.

Step 20: Now navigate to the following path ‘C:\android-sdk-windows\google-usb_driver’ and select “android_winusb.inf”.

Step 21: Please click on the ‘Android ADB Interface’. This will show a popup warning you about the hazards of doing it, simply click on the “Yes” option.

Step 22: After you complete the installation, open the computer’s command prompt and please type “adb devices”.

Step 23: If the command lists any devices, the installation was successful.

That’s it you have finished installation of Android SDK. You can now develop applications for your device and sell them on the Google Play store.

Do let us know if you any help in setting up the Android SDK, we will be glad to help you with the issues that you meet with during the process of Android SDK installation on Windows platform.