Author Archives: Vijay

Fix missing obb after moving to another ROM or Android 10

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I have recently seen many people complaining about loosing obb files from Internal Storage even if they never formatted it while switching ROMs. This is troublesome for people with Games having large obb files to redownload over a limited-data plan or slow network.

Fix

If your /sdcard/Android/obb directory has no files which you had before switching ROM, check the following locations on your device with a root explorer like Mixplorer or alike-

1. /data/media/Android/obb
2. /data/media/0/Android/obb

If one of these locations have your game obb folders, move them to the other. This will make your obb files available on /sdcard/Android/obb

Worked? Buy something for yourself from my link of Flipkart. Thanks.
Curious why it worked?

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Ultra Fast Downloads with aria2 on Android: Multi-Connection Download

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We have all been to the situation where downloads are not as fast as we expect and we couldn’t decide whether culprit is our Network, the Server or the Download Utility/Browser we are using.

With aria2 you can get best out of your Network and the Server and can download files at optimal speed.


What is aria2?

aria2 is the next generation open-source download utility with lots of features and options and can download files and torrents in very efficient manner. You can read more about aria2 at aria2.github.io and can check documentation for latest version here.


How to download faster with aria2 on Android?

On Android, use an open source app Aria2App which can be downloaded from F-Droid or Play Store to install and control aria2 in GUI.

On first run, select In-App downloader and on next screen select the latest binary i.e. aria2 1.34.0 at the time of writing. Select In-App downlaoder again after binary download completes

  • Aria2App
  • Aria2App Init

Open sidebar menu and select Global Options. Note that we can set options per download as well.

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Restore Split Apks Efficiently : pm Session Install

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[Update – 2019-11-05]
Migrate is adding this script in the latest Android 10 compatible version launching today 🙂
https://t.me/migrateApp/27530
https://t.me/migrateApp/24706

Problem

I regularly flash custom ROMs on my android devices like any Android Enthusiast and that requires a good backup tool for my apps and app-data so that I can avoid downloading them again and again from Play Store/F-Droid and sometimes keep previous state of running to avoid setting up afresh.

Migrate Backup is a great tool which can backup everything in zip and can be flashed from recovery.

I was doing this one day and was stuck on restoration of PayTM app, which made me think that the restore process has either failed or somehow hung. But I gave it some time and it completed in around 15 minutes. This was ridiculously high as my other 50+ apps took less time altogether than that one app.

I asked this question on Telegram Group and many people had issues with Apps which use split apks, some with Facebook, others with PayTM. I also got to know that a similar Backup/Restore tool Swift Backup is also taking ridiculous 40 minutes for restoring PayTM, and there is very less possibility of fixing this

This baffled me… why would Play Store take a minute to install the app and similar installation by any other method would always take 15 times more?


Solution

After experimenting for some time with pm (package manager), I found that almost all backup/restore solutions were handling the split apks the traditional way, that is

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Android adb Backup and Restore

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What is ADB?

ADB stands for Android Debug Bridge. As the name suggests it is intended for developers to debug apps from her/his machine. ADB is a part of Android SDK which is available for Linux, Mac and Windows Desktop OS’s.

How to Connect to ADB?

You need a PC and the compatible cable (Micro USB in most cases, can be proprietary) to connect your Android Phone/Tablet. To use ADB interface enable USB Debugging in your phone under Developer Options. You can enable Developer Options menu in Android 4.0 and up by tapping Build Number under About Phone or About Tablet menu for 7 time repetitively. After you get the toast message confirmation, hit back and Developer Options will appear around About menu. Enable USB Debugging under the same. ADB command which you need to run on your PC is included in Android SDK’s “platform-tool” directory. You also need driver for your device which can be downloaded via most of the manufacturer’s website, otherwise XDA-Developers is a good source for the same.

Create ADB Backup

After you have connected everything, open a command prompt / shell in the directory you want backup to be saved —

adb devices

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Starting out with Raspberry Pi 2

Introduction

Introduction to Raspberry Pi 2 at this point of time would be a bit old-school, but hey! I am taking a chance 🙂

Raspberry Pi is a revolutionary tiny computing device which was introduced with a very noble cause to help kids get along with Computers in an interesting and affordable manner. You can check the Making of Raspberry Pi at their official website here https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/

Raspberry Pi has come a very long way and attracted many enthusiasts and organizations due to it’s affordability and power to do things. A mere $35 device with an HDMI, USB, Ethernet(RJ45 LAN) ports and ability to run on any 5V mobile charger made it a huge success. Over the time it developed a huge ecosystem of developers, manufacturers and users where plenty of software and hardware became available.

Think of a full fledged Computer System (with limited resources obviously) of palm size running on less power than your DTH box or DVD Player. Yes, it’s fascinating at the very least.

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