Swipe to Remove Notification+Crt On+14 Toggles+Extended Power Menu [Mod] [DDKQ8]

• Crt Off Screen Animation ( No need to check ‘All Animations’ ) [No On Screen Animation]
• Swipe to Remove Notification (Swipe a notification Left or Right to Remove it, CyanogenMod style)
• Lidroid’s 14 Status Bar Toggles
• Extended Power Menus (Reboot+Recovery+Download Mode)

Here

1. Copy the Mod to ‘/sdcard‘
2. Reboot in ClockworkMod Recovery 4 or 5
3. Select ‘Install Zip From Sdcard‘
4. Select the
5. Reboot and you’re done.

Note: You Must be on Deodexed (& hence Rooted) DDKQ8 firmware for this mod to work.

Here’s Some Screenshots

Credits:
pratyush.creed
He further credits-
Lidroid for the toggles Source
Hansip87 For the Swipe to Remove Notification Source
RomanBB for Status bar Mods

[via xda]

Surveillance and Monitoring Apps for Smartphone Users

For smartphone users, playing sophisticated games of espionage may be easier than ever and this is due to the ever increasing number of surveillance apps. Most of the times, these apps are programs that are downloaded and installed on smart phones, iPhones, Android phones and so on. You then need an online account to access the information being captured by the app on the smartphone.

Few of the leading surveillance apps:

Most of these apps are capable of a comprehensive monitoring of the smartphone user’s phone usage. This includes emails, text messages, calls and even location. Most of them are popularly used by parents who want to keep track of their children and protect them. They are also used by employers who want to ensure there is no misuse of the phone privileges being accorded to employees. None of these apps are available on Google Play store.

• StealthGenie–this app can be downloaded and installed on the smartphone and left to run in the background. It will help you track location of the smartphone, listen in to the calls being made and received on the phone and even access the contacts list on the smartphone. It will cost around 25$ for 3 months which is the cheapest of the lot.
• Mobile Spy– a product from Retina- X Studios, this app can be installed directly on the phone and it keeps running invisibly in the background. The data thus recorded can be accessed online with the Mobile Spy account. This app also gives you the location of the phone. You can also exert remote control over the phone. The best part about this app is the fact that it will upload all data irrespective of the fact that the user may have deleted all logs. It costs around 50$ for 3 months license.
• Mobistealth – this app will help monitor calls, video logging and change in SIM card. There is also the very useful feature of phone wipe which will enable you to delete and wipe out all data on the phone should it be lost or stolen. The remote control feature of the phone can also allow the microphone to be activated and conversations can then be heard other locations as well. Unlike others a demo of this app can downloaded by signing up on the website.
• From the house of SPYERA comes the Spyera software that can be downloaded on to iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones. It allows you to intercept live calls, read the text messages of the user and read email as well. There is also the fact that there is total protection of privacy as far as activity logs are concerned. Thus only authorized people can access and use the data generated by the software. The app is not available in google play store though can be bought directly but will make a hole in your pocket the size of an asteroid. We won’t even mention the price.
• SpyBubble is the easy option of tracking the cell phone’s use and promises easy usage, URL usage tracking and photo tracking as well. This app costs around 40 bucks and too comes with a demo.
• mSpy is another specialized software that can be installed easily and enables spy calls, cell identity tracking and monitoring of tasks and web accounts too. The website offers an online demo and app cost 100 bucks for 3 month license.

Most of these companies offer monthly subscriptions. You can even opt for a 3 or 6 month subscription and annual packages too.

About the Author:
Cynthia loves to blog on latest mobile technologies. To know about her updates please click here.

Improve GPS & Sensor on CM 7.x on Samsung Galaxy Ace [Lagloose's Patch]

Almost all the roms coming for Samsung Galaxy Ace are based on Cyanogenmod builds. One thing which irritates users on the roms based on CM is the slow GPS.
Lagloose on xda decided to something about it. In his own words:

The PFGPS Tweaks by PFittech didn’t really work for me. So i took a look at the GPS functions of Stock Samsung ROM to see what i can do. CM7 and Samsung use different ways to provide GPS funtions. While CM7 ‘directly’ accesses the hardware, Samsung does it via a running daemon (/system/bin/gpsd’). Obviously this works much better than GPS functions provided by CM7. So i decided to try the Samsung GPS functions in CM7 which worked very well out of the box. I always have a GPS-Fix now in less than a minute. This required a complete replacement of HW libs provided by CM7. This worked without any problems. All Sensors (at least for me) are working. More than that, i personally have the feeling that everything is a little bit smoother and faster. But that maybe a ‘Placebo’…

• It completely replaces the libs in /system/lib/hw with libs from Samsung STOCK ROM
• It installs ‘gpsd’ in /system/bin
• It installs a stock gps.conf in /etc
• It wipes your /data/gps directory to remove old xtra.bin files

http://www.4shared.com/zip/G6mCEPDh/cm7X_gpspatch.html

• No need to wipe anything. Just flash via CWM 5.0.2.6

Note: PFGPS doesn’t work with this patch So if you’ve already flashed PFIttech’s PFGPS tweaks, they will be uninstalled by my patch.

So what do you say, problem solved? Or no problem at all? Do let us know in the comments below!

[via xda]

Exclusive Interview with Slaid480

A few days ago, we featured the handover of device maintainer for CyanogenMod 7.2 for Samsung Galaxy Ace to Slaid480. Ace Tips managed to get an exclusive interview with the popular developer and we asked him a few questions.

Ace Tips: You seem to be popular in the xda community. Can give us some background on who you are?
Slaid: My name is Salah Abouabdallah, I live in Meknes, Morroco. I’m a student in High School and I’m 16 years old now.

AT: How did you first get into developing?
S: I had experience with Linux because I have run it on my PC for more than 4 Years. After I bought Ace (My first Android phone) I took some time to understand the Android structure and how it works with the Linux kernel before I started coding and developing for it.

AT: Did you have any previous experience developing for other platforms?
S: Yeah, especially developing for Linux as I had some knowledge in Java, C++ and C.

AT: Why did you decide to develop for the Ace in particular?
S: It was my first Android phone, so it was a natural choice. It was this phone that made me discover this great Open Source world. Although I will start some projects for other phones too, but I will never forget my lovely Ace!

AT: Do you enjoy being on xda, and why?
S: Yeah. Here in xda, there is great help and support for my device and this is what encouraged me to code for Android!

AT: What would you say is your best achievements in development so far?
S: Well, I have done a lot of stuff, including being device maintainer for CyanogenMod, working on AOSP for Ace, all of my scripts including SlaidyBoost and working with TeamCooper on their projects.

At last, we would like thank Salah for his precious time and we wish him a great future ahead. Sometimes people tend to undermine talent by age, but Salah has proved himself by getting recognition from the CyanogenMod community!

Slaid, our knight in shining armour!

Members of various forums rejoiced recently as Slaid480 is taking over as device maintainer for the Samsung Galaxy Ace.

As we featured recently, we questioned whether official builds for Galaxy Ace were worth it. We were quick to judge, however it seems that official Cyanogenmod has been brought back from the grave.
Slaid480 is well-known in the Galaxy Ace community from creating various scripts and sharing them at xda. His most recent project, called SlaidyBoost, was even featured in xda’s news portal.

At the moment, Slaid is only releasing his builds on his xda thread, however when he gets access to CyanogenMod’s buildbot, nightlies should be pouring out.
We wish him all the best, and thank him for taking such a big role in the Ace community.

Get great Android games for 1 cent!

Update: The Humble Bundle has ended. Check back for another bundle soon.

Cheep games often means bad quality, right? Well not this time!
Introducing the Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac and Windows and Linux) 2!

Humble Bundle is a collection of games for multiple platforms and you get to choose the price, from 1 cent to a billion dollars!

In the Humble Bundle you get;

Canabalt

Cogs

Avadon

Zen Bound 2

Snuggle Truck and Smuggle Truck

…and if you pay more than the average ($6.41 at time of writing) you get;

Swords and Soldiers

You get to choose where your money goes, and a proportion of profits go to charity.
If you spend more than $1 you get product keys to use on Steam as well!
These games are great, and they run on all platforms, however you have to be quick, as there is less than 8 hours to go until the bundle ends!

Check the counter to see how much time is left and grab the bundle from here!

Fool your friends (or yourself!)

With April Fools day fast approaching,  here’s a fun little app to trick your friends into believing that your phone can charge itself using the power of the sun!

The app is called Solar Charger, so you probably know where this is heading!
When you launch the app, your screen displays a fake PV panel. Along the side of the screen, there is a spoof VU meter that adjusts depending on the light level reaching your phone’s light sensor, and can be hidden to show the rest of the panel.

You can adjust what the panel looks like from a selection of 3 styles.
It even warns you when there is too little light!

The most hilarious part of this app is that when you press the Menu button on your device, you can read some Play Store reviews, some that claim that it doesn’t work, and others that claim it does!

However, on a more serious note, scientists and engineers are working on transparent solar panels that could eventually make their way to mobile devices and enable your screen to become a PV panel.

The app is available now for free on Google Play.

Let us know about any pranks you have played with this app!

Titanium Backup Pro 4.8.4.1 In-Depth Guide and Review

Many users of Titanium Backup will agree; It is the one of the best apps for Android.
Why though? In this review we’ll tell you what Titanium can do, why you need this app and how to use all of it’s features.

When you first launch Titanium, you will be greeted by the ‘Overview’ screen. This tells you about Titanium Backup, various library files and details about your Internal and External memory.

By pressing ‘Backup and Restore’ on the toolbar, it shows a list of installed applications stored on your Internal and External Memory, as well as your system partitions. By pressing ‘Ordered by app name’, you can sort your apps in various ways, including when they were last backed up or installed, their size or the number of backups

By pressing on the button marked ‘Click to edit filters’, you are welcomed by this screen. This screen allows you to filter and search through your apps, as well as labeling them so they can be processed individually.

By tapping on an application, it will bring up a small window telling you what backups your application has and also has buttons to Backup, Wipe Data, Uninstall and Freeze.

When you restore an app, Titanium will ask you if you want to restore the Data Only (If the app is installed already), App Only or App+Data.

Titanium also allows you to add notes to individual backups. You can also protect backups, so they don’t get overwritten by newer backups.

By pressing your device’s Menu button,you have a number of options.

The most used option is Batch. This allows you to perform tasks in bulk, such as Backup, Restore, as well as other advanced tasks.

Another handy tool are the Market Tools. These allow you to fix issues with the Play Store, such as apps that won’t update or fixing market links to apps.

In the ‘More’ menu, you can use lots of awesome advanced features. The 4 most handy are ‘Send Data’ (Where you can export a list of your apps), ‘Overview of app storage use’ (Where you can see visually what apps take up the most space, ‘Create “update.zip”‘ (Where you can create a CWM-flashable package with Titanium inside it) and ‘Extract from Nandroid backup’ (Where you can extract apps from your CWM backups).

With all the features Titanium offers, the 6 dollar price tag makes it justifiable, as it could just save your life. This is the best root app ever! Titainium is highly recommended. The support from the developer is great, and also a wiki is available so that you can find answers to most of your questions.

Titanium Backup is free on Google Play, and the Pro version is available for 5.99USD on Google Play, Paypal or Moneybookers.

The latest Indian Firmware: Gingerbread 2.3.6 DDKQ8 [Review with Screenshots & Download link]

Finally, firmware with Android 2.3.6 has been launched in India with version number DDKQ8

There are quite a lot changes introduced by Samsung in this version (some mainly because of Apple’s patent fight with Samsung on Slide to unlock lock screen and Overscroll bounce…! Damn you Apple!)

So before we move to the review of this ROM, here is how to get it on your phone:

Method 1: Update using Samsung Kies
Method 2: For flashing with Odin. here is the link to the firmware: Hotfile.com: One click file hosting: S5830DDKQ8_S5830ODDKQ7_INU.zip (Pass (if any): sampro.pl)
Then just follow the flashing with ODIN tutorial.

Note: Clear Cache Partition from recovery menu after update! Otherwise, you might have problems!

How to go to recovery menu?
Turn off your phone. Then, Power On it by holding Power+Home button at the same time. You will reach the recovery menu. Navigate with the Volume Rocker and Select using Home button.

1. Lock Screen

The Unlock method has changed. When you keep your finger on the screen, a lock like symbol will appear! You have to slide your finger over the screen to unlock!

A big advantage is that the lock screen also displays your unread text message count and you can directly access the messages by sliding on top of the red circle which has a message symbol on top! It even supports missed call count and you can access your missed calls directly! Cool, huh?

Unfortunately, you don’t have the old slide to unlock method but you can use an app like widgetlocker to go back to old slider type lockscreen.

2) Touchwiz

Not much has changed…! The call button icon and Memo icon has changed somewhat. And the home screen is loopable now. In the app drawer, you can navigate to any page by simply tapping at its screen number on the top, and it will go to that page.

[Official] CyanogenMod 7 for Samsung Galaxy Ace [Release Candiadate 1]

Not a week has passed by since the first official nightly shockingly! appeared on CM repositories for Samsung Galaxy Ace. This was indeed with compliance with earlier reports that official CM 7.2 was confirmed for Ace & will release with the global schedule.

The Cyanogenmod 7.2 Official is finally making its way to Samsung Galaxy Ace. The final stable version release will coincide with the global official release of CM 7.2 for more than 69 devices.

There might be some bugs, so inexperienced users and those who would like a finished product might want to keep away.
So without further ado.. Here we go:
Download Links:

• CyanogenMod RC1 build: Official | Mirror (Mediafire)
• GAPPS GB 20120116 – Market 3.4.4
• cm-blackhawk-kernel.zip (Overclock Kernel)

1. If you aren’t already on Gingerbread (2.3.x), do so. (Tutorial)
2. Install CWM Recovery 5. (CWM 4 might work) (Tutorial)
3. While in CWM Recovery, do the following:
   • Wipe data/factory reset
   • Wipe cache partition
   • Wipe dalvik cache
4. In CWM Recovery, choose
   Install zip from sdcard > choose zip from sdcard > update-cm-7-20120312 NIGHTLY-cooper-signed.zip > yes. Install.
5. Reboot system!!
   Note: First boot may take 2-5 minutes.
6. Install Google Apps:
   • Choose Install zip from sdcard > choose zip from sdcard > gapps-gb-20120116-237-signed.zip > yes. Install
   • Reboot!
7. Install Kernel with Overclock capability
   • Choose Install zip from sdcard > choose zip from sdcard > cm-blackhawk-kernel.zip > yes. Install
   • Reboot!

And Done! Now you are up and working. Steps 6 & 7 are optional.

Note: Without step 6, you will lack basic google apps on your phone. They cannot be included in CM builds due to google objection.
Without step 7, you won’t be able to change CPU frequency.

Bugs:

• Yet to be reported (Report at code.google.com/p/cyanogenmod/issues/)

This is THE news people have been waiting for. Not only after the final version release, not only the users will have a definite version to install but the devs will also be able to use it as a base for a custom ROM.

7.2.0 CHANGELOG (notable new features or fixes)

New devices: Samsung Galaxy Ace
Common: Updated translations – (everyone)
Common: T9 predictive Phone dialer – Danesh M, Pawit Pornkitprasan
Common: Media player and recorder fixes for a number of corner cases – CAF, Danny Baumann
Common: Profile resets – Ladios Jonquil
Common: Assorted Wifi fixes
OMAP Common: Support for recent OMAP3/OMAP4 devices – omapzoom
Common: Control haptic in quiet hours – Danesh M
Common: Lockscreen updates and new styles – Andrew Sutherland, Danny Baumann, Danesh M, Sven Dawitz, Taichi Nishimura
Common: Bluetooth MAP support – Jonathan Bensen
Common: ICS telephony fix backports – Spencer Oliver
Common: Support for Bluetooth GPS dongles – Cuong Bui
Common: Better support for mouse and usb keyboards – Emilio Lopez, Tanguy Pruvot
Common: Fix timezone detection in Hawaii – Warren Togami
Common: ICS Transition effects backport – Russ Underhill
Common: ICS Rotation effects backport – Tanguy Pruvot
Common: Allow photo storage selection when possible – Greg Kochaniak
Common: Improved Calendar reminder options – Danny Baumann
Common: Fix color banding in Gallery while displaying 32bpp images – Sang Tae Park
Common: ADB over network
Common: Improved AVRCP 1.3 compatibility
Common: Improved external keyboard and mouse behaviour on some corner cases – Tanguy Pruvot
Common: Status bar battery icon configuration – Simon Davie

What do you guys think? Drop your opinions in the comments below.
[via XDA]