Interloper View

I recently tried Android for Work (also known as Work Profile). It is similar to the multiple user I wrote about previously except that the apps reside within the primary user account. This approach as a few advantage over the multiple user account, they are: Alarm from the work profile will appear on the screen. In multiple user mode, only alerts of the active (selected) profile are visible. The problem of turning on the Do Not Disturb and switching profile will not happen. This option is available in more brands of Android phones. Will not encounter issues of non responsive screen (i.e. keyboard for entering password does not appear) is drastically reduced ~ not too sure whether this is an issue with my phone or the general problem with using multiple user. The Device policy is applied only within the work profile. The disadvantage of using the work profile is that applications that can be added to the work profile are restricted by the Company administrator. In order to

I thought my phone was broken. I could not grant or revoke permissions on any of the apps on my phone unless I restart the phone in safe mode. I could not perform zoom or even change anything in my camera, I could only take normal shots. It was so frustrating that I considered buying a new phone. However, I decided to perform some research as a final attempt. Each time, I tried to make any changes I am faced with the following screen. Turns out the offending application was es explorer. I do not remember which site provided me this information but the solution was found in one of the comments to the article. At first, I uninstalled es explorer and everything works again. However, I was not satisfied, I decided to reinstall the app and tried the suggestion in another comment to just disable es swipe. The suggestion was effective, so I can continue to use es browser.  To disable, the swipe feature, go to the settings and then click the on button and select disable:  

The ability to create multiple user accounts (I shall refer as profile to avoid confusion of accounts for apps) on Android phone was introduced in Lollipop but I could not find it until I started using OnePlus One. This feature is disabled in brands like Samsung, Xiaomi and Asus. I think this option is enabled for Sony Xperia. Multiple user account option is enable if the Users option is available in the Android settings (see the picture above). This is an excellent feature that allows me to separate my office information from my personal information; I do not have to worry about the enforcement of policies required by my company affecting my personal user profile. I tried Samsung Knox briefly but did not like it because the Google policy still had to be enforced on the main account and also Knox consumes a lot of memory (since it is running with Android on my main account) and makes the phone very slow. With the multiple user profile, I can decide which one to use (and less

I found a need to come up with a system to help me remember. Over the years, the process has changed but the goal remains the same. Since moving to an Android phone I have been using GTask.  GTask GTask is a third party app build using Google Task (since Google did not provide an app). It works well to help me track my task, to do list and provide reminders for follow up. Calendars are useful to track your schedule but it is not convenient for task that require follow up or use as reference. I can easily create a task from my GMail. GTask is simple and easy to use but provides text only fields. I decided to explore Google Keep. Keep Initially I used keep as an enhanced version of gTask so I do not need GTask anymore. A few things I like about Keep are: I can now attach a photo to the entry. It provides a convenient way to use certain cards like Starbucks, Domino’s privilege card. Entries are available without network. I do not subscribe to mobile data

Note 3 is already more than a year old and is superseded by Note 4. However, I have had it for slightly over 6 months.  I decided to treat myself with the S View cover mainly because it allows me to take pictures without unlocking my phone. I missed a few photo opportunities while struggling to unlock my phone. Sadly, I was not aware of the many issues plaguing this product. The following are the ones I am aware of. Repeating Calendar Events Calendar events keeps repeating themselves even after we dismissed them. Initially I thought it was because I did not dismiss the event correctly. However, I found the following thread discussing the issue. The problem is the S-Planner for Note 3 which comes with KitKat is not compatible with S-View cover. A temporary fix is to install the S-planner for S5. The apk is available from XDA Developer . Note that you will need to reinstall the apk each time you reboot the phone. This problem does not affect everyone. Some of my friends are no

I recently noticed that my android phone was incurring data charges (while I was not on data plan). Initially, I thought it might be due to a virus, rogue app or some setting I may have accidentally activated. In order to trace the issue, I started removing apps from my phone, but the data charges kept happening. On the first day the charge was RM5 but subsequently it ranged between 2 cents to 20 cents. In order to stop the hemorrhage, I activate a one month plan. The one month plan was RM 30 for 30 days, but the unknown data usage had already cost me RM 15 without any benefit to me. I also tried resetting the phone to factory mode, but found that the phone automatically restored some of the applications that were still installed - great feature, but not when I am troubleshooting this data leech on my phone. Resetting the phone helped in resetting the data counter and allowed me to see the amount of data consumed. It was the background data were incurring the cost of my mobile data

The following is a sample of how easy it is for hackers to obtain the data on your computer. Android was used as an example but it could easily be IOS, Windows or even a Macintosh. The article explaining the research and the root cause is found here . However, if you choose not to read the article, a demo of how easy it is to obtain your information is shown here .. The videos are also shown below:

There is a sale on Ebay since Jun 11 and is still going on today. Samsung Galaxy S5 is listed at RM1899 while it is sold else where in Malaysia at RM2399. When the sale was first announced, I was sure that the phones would be sold within minutes of the sale. This has not been the case. The nice thing about the phones are that the warranty comes from Samsung Malaysia. The few people I spoke to agreed that the price is very attractive but as of today the different variations of the phone is still available - Gold, White, Blue and Black. Note 3 is also also sale at RM1899 but those are also not selling. I can only speculate the reason why those phones are not selling. Could it be one of the following: Lack of awareness. Potential buyers are not aware of the sale. The phones can only be bought using PayPal.  Even though the phones are on sale, it is still too expensive for most Malaysian. Those who want the phone already bought them. There are many other phone options out there

I have been looking for a replacement for my aging Desire HD for more than a year and have been holding off until now. At this time, I have decided to stick with Android a decision I made when I moved from HTC Touch 3G (running Windows Mobile 6.1) more than 4 years ago. Support I considered the different brands in the market and decided to stick to only the popular brands like HTC, Samsung, Motorola, or Sony. This is based on my experience with HK Video where no upgrade or patches are available and it is impossible to get any custom ROMs. The tablet I bought came with Android 4.1.1 which had two major problems. First was a bug which prevented me from connecting to my office wifi. The second (which is a bigger concern) is that the version of Android is vulnerable to Heartbleed (OpenSSL). Samsung has the reputation of providing software updates up to 24 months. I have not heard of any other companies providing support for such a long time. If there are any, please let me know. I only r

Recently I came across a call to keep healthy by walking 10,000 steps per day. Initially I thought it was relatively easy to achieve. I decided to give it try. I have a pedometer but decided that since I have my phone with me most of the time, I might as well get an App to make my phone a pedometer. Widget Screen I looked at a few apps but found AccuPedo to be the one most suitable for me because of the following reason: It provides both steps as well as a calorie count. It has a widget which makes it easy to switch it to pause mode. You need to do that when driving in order to avoid counting the movement of the car as steps. The battery usage on my phone is minimal. It counts my steps with minimal intervention from me. I just need to make sure that the phone is in my pocket when I walk around. After trying this for a few days, I found that I only managed to exceed the 10,000 steps threshold when I ran on my treadmill. I used the nike plus app at the same time

This is a follow up from my last blog posting . It turned out that the HK Video Note 3 phone had a bad motherboard which had to be replaced. As for the 9.9 inch tablet, it recently became corrupted and would not start. After the HK Video screen, it just stayed on the screen with the word Android on it. That was recovered by the person at the store by pressing on the power and the - volume button to restore the OS on the tablet. After recovering the tablet, I decided to take a closer look at the default configuration of the tablet and found that it comes with a task killer installed and is rooted. I suspect that most of the issues I encountered is the result of the task killer killing critical processes in the background. As mentioned, I encountered issues where core applications failed and could only be recovered by resetting the tablet to factory mode. I am not sure if effect of the task killer is due to the fact that the table is rooted or because of the OS version. I did