Top tips and tricks thread for 2.1

[Guest Dr Who]

Having tried to keep up with at least three different threads on 2.1 ROMS I thought it would be useful to gather in one place various tips, tricks and hacks that optimise the performance on the Pulse.

I have to say I was inspired by this post regarding improving performance on the Pulse by keeping the home screen in memory:

Try setting "ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1" at the end of /data/local.prop. For me it helps a lot, launcherpro almost never gets kicked out of the memory. I used it way back in 1.5 times as well, still works, I don't even see why isn't it default instead of 4. Setting it to 0 is not good though, because then it _never_ gets kicked out of the mem, even if the device would need it to run something - so you end up like not being able to run iGO or something.

But I have seen (and forgotten!) several other useful changes similar to this, which if I come across them again I will post here, thinking things like the correct settings for SetCPU and the like.

I would suggest not posting any ROM variant specific hacks here but if there is anything generic then lets collect them together.

Edited June 3, 2010 by Dr Who

[Guest Dr Who]

Another useful sounding post regarding problems with seeing apps on the Android Market:

Market issues are caused by Google not adding the ROM fingerprint to the Market database. There are other devices with the same issue. What doesn't help us is that Huawei signed the 2.1 Pulse rom using test keys, which means it will never see copy protected apps on the market. The solution for now is to change the fingerprint to another device like the Nexus or HTC Legend. Quickest way is to find and install Eris Market Fix.

Any changes you make using a fix like this or by editing build.prop manually need some time to work, sometimes 24 hours.

btw I'm using the Nexus fingerprint. I don't see Shopsavvy or Evernote though, but I do see Twidroid.

BTW if anybody is able to see both those apps could they please mention what fingerprint they are using in build.prop please.

And another one on removing the "Continuing internet access will lead to traffic" nag banner:

Edit /system/build.prop

This is the switch that causes the prompting

ro.config.hw_new_wifitopdp=0

Change the 1 to a 0

reboot.

You may have to re-enable data services.

Edit : removed the region and locale settings as these are not needed (thanks Jan M)

Edited June 3, 2010 by Dr Who

[Guest Jan M]

/system/build.prop

# disable "Continuing Internet access will lead to traffic. Continue?"

ro.config.hw_new_wifitopdp=0


# disable ring delay

ring.delay=0

ro.telephony.Call_ring.delay=0


# time between known AP scans in seconds

wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=30

[Guest giorgitus]

hi, i can't find in my rom this file /data/local.prop the folder is empty!i'm using rom 2.1 rooted with astro. where is it?how can i modify it?

thnx you are really grate!!!

[Guest Dr Who]

hi, i can't find in my rom this file /data/local.prop the folder is empty!i'm using rom 2.1 rooted with astro. where is it?how can i modify it?

thnx you are really grate!!!

Try reading from here: http://android.modaco.com/index.php?s=&amp...t&p=1298719

Edited June 3, 2010 by Dr Who

[Guest Simon O]

The SetCPU fix was only needed in the beta roms. Any based on the official roms are setting the CPU speeds correctly (245MHz minimum).

Following on from the market fingerprint mentioned above, I'm currently using these settings:

ro.build.description=passion-user 2.1-update1 ERE27 24178 release-keys

ro.build.fingerprint=verizon/voles/sholes/sholes:2.1-update1/ESE81/29593:user/release-keys[/code]




these are from the Eris Droid Fix and can be added to /system/build.prop

just remember to comment out the existing ones with a #



Update:



Been reading that it helps to have a fingerprint containing the correct build, in our case it's ERE27. Try the following:



[code]ro.build.description=passion-user 2.1-update1 ERE27 24178 release-keys

ro.build.fingerprint=google/passion/passion/mahimahi:2.1-update1/ERE27/24178:user/release-keys

Any changes to this require a reboot and some time to work, usually 24 hours. Unless anybody knows a way to force a market refresh?

Edited June 3, 2010 by flibblesan

[Guest Stevos]

/system/build.prop

# disable "Continuing Internet access will lead to traffic. Continue?"

ro.config.hw_new_wifitopdp=0


# disable ring delay

ring.delay=0

ro.telephony.Call_ring.delay=0


# time between known AP scans in seconds

wifi.supplicant_scan_interval=30

Using that ro.config.wifitopdp=0 setting (or possibly something else I've changed, but I think it's that) seems to have made it impossible to turn off wifi.

Turning it off in the settings, it just turns itself on again.

Annoyingly my broadband provider (tiscali) are having one of their regular outages so this had disabled my phone's connection.

Very odd.

Edited June 3, 2010 by Stevos

[Guest deadphill]

can someone perhaps post a customised build.prop? I assume we can just drop it into the phone and voila?

At least I hope you can just do that!

Cheers

Phill

[Guest Stevos]

+1 to that. If anyone has these fixes working (especially the market fix), please post your build.prop and any other instructions needed (I understand that the market fix might need a next-day rollover to pick up the change to keys, or a clock time modification for the same effect)

Does the market fix actually need new keys generating / replacing, or is the change to build.prop values sufficient? I haven't managed to get anywhere with the values given, or by modifying the existing ones.

[Guest Simon O]

Ok here is my build.prop

flibblebuildprop.zip

I cannot gurantee it will work for you but it should work on any rom based on T-Mobile 2.1

Also you can add

ro.HOME_APP_ADJ=1

to local.prop contained in /data/ or within /cust/t-mobile/{country} (ie UK)

I edited all the local.prop files within cust and zipped them up. If you are making a custom rom, you can download and replace the entire directory.

cust.zip

[Guest Simon O]

The phone has an interesting bug when using the 2.5mm to 3.5mm headphone adapter. Music playback stops after a few seconds and making a system noise will resume playback.

Previously people would use Autostarts to fix the issue. I found that you can do the following via adb shell:

su

pm disable com.android.music/com.android.music.MediaButtonIntentReceiver[/code]


The setting survives a reboot. If anybody knows how this could be added to a custom rom, please help.


Edit: Just need to mention that this ONLY works with the stock music player. If you have installed more than one player or even Last.FM then you would need to find the command for each player based on the above, or purchase and install Autostarts.

Edited June 5, 2010 by flibblesan

[Guest Daniel Williamson]

hey does anyone know what this is in build.prop ? >>

hw_internal_sd=false

Dan

[Guest Stevos]

The confirmed tweaks (and details of what they affect) should probably go into the wiki http://wiki.modaco.com/index.php/Huawei_U8220

Actually it looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, no details of the 2.1 stuff currently.

[Guest gyusza]

anyone knows if changing the

dalvik.vm.heapsize=22m

line to something bigger will do any good?

i set it to 32, we'll see

[Guest Stevos]

I assume that's the heap memory size allocated to each VM. I'm not sure if it's dynamic up to that amount, or a fixed size per running VM.

Each app runs in its own virtual machine, so tweaking that value could have a big impact, but it could be good or bad...

If VM heaps end up being bigger, it could mean more unloading when switching apps - also it might be set to a certain fraction of the total available heap size, so changing it might cause inefficiencies and losses. I'm guessing it should be tweaked to particular hardware configurations.

[Guest Jan M]

Using that ro.config.wifitopdp=0 setting (or possibly something else I've changed, but I think it's that) seems to have made it impossible to turn off wifi.

Turning it off in the settings, it just turns itself on again.

Annoyingly my broadband provider (tiscali) are having one of their regular outages so this had disabled my phone's connection.

Very odd.

I haven't seen any side-effects like that...and don't recall anyone else reporting them...so I think it must be something else you've changed.

[Guest eckengucker1]

I just made an update pack which includes all changed posted here (thanks to flibblesan for the locale.prop) . I've reorganized the build.prop to make it easier for ROM cooks setting there own values (I've added some descriptions)

For changing the music-headphone-bug you've to delete the MediaButtonIntentReceiver-part in the Androidmanifest.xml stored in the Music.apk app

I assume that's the heap memory size allocated to each VM. I'm not sure if it's dynamic up to that amount, or a fixed size per running VM.

Each app runs in its own virtual machine, so tweaking that value could have a big impact, but it could be good or bad...

If VM heaps end up being bigger, it could mean more unloading when switching apps - also it might be set to a certain fraction of the total available heap size, so changing it might cause inefficiencies and losses. I'm guessing it should be tweaked to particular hardware configurations.

Thats correct - the heapsize is the maximum size in megabyte an app-VM an reach = the maximum amount of space the app takes from the generall RAM-space (Pulse have 192 MB RAM overall)

Theoretical you could run 8,72727272... apps simultaneous with a heapsize of 22mb (=22m) With an larger size you can run less apps but the apps can access more RAM

The problem is that the system itselfs takes a lot of RAM so you don't have much space left.

Eckenguckers_build_fix.zip

Edited June 3, 2010 by eckengucker1

[Guest Stevos]

A fairly serious issue for developers - the logcat is disabled in these ROMs. I don't think this should be the case.

it can be enabled by the following commands:

echo 1 > /sys/kernel/logger/log_main/enable // ** '1' is enable log_main,

echo 2 >/sys/kernel/logger/log_main/priority // ** '2' is the log level, you can get the level number from the android source code.

could be worth building into startup scripts.

Thanks to flibblesan and deardan

[Guest Simon O]

After making the build.prop fingerprint fix to show my phone as a Nexus to fix the market, I received an email from Google today saying:

"Welcome to Android"

Hello,

Your new Nexus One phone has many cool and useful features. Learn more by clicking on the links to watch brief YouTube videos directly on your phone:"

:(

hopefully I won't have any problems :(

[Guest goce.nakov]

After making the build.prop fingerprint fix to show my phone as a Nexus to fix the market, I received an email from Google today saying:

"Welcome to Android"

Hello,

Your new Nexus One phone has many cool and useful features. Learn more by clicking on the links to watch brief YouTube videos directly on your phone:"

:(

hopefully I won't have any problems :(

Just say it is Nexus but put it in the Pulse mask :o

[Guest thedarkduke]

# disable ring delay

ring.delay=0

ro.telephony.Call_ring.delay=0

This didnt fix the rising Ringtone

I used Eckenguckers_build_fix.zip and flashed it.

Any Ideas what i am doing wrong ??

[Guest goce.nakov]

This didnt fix the rising Ringtone

I used Eckenguckers_build_fix.zip and flashed it.

Any Ideas what i am doing wrong ??

This is not for rising ring tone but for delayed ring....I guess you noticed when somebody call you there is like 3 to 4 seconds before the ringtone start to play...

[Guest thedarkduke]

THX for the Info

Is there a Fix for the rising Ringtone too, didnt find anything in the Board ??

[Guest eckengucker1]

You can try to delete the darvik-cache it may help

[Guest Dave Blencowe]

I'm using the Oscillation ROM, and before that the official T-Mobile ROM and could see and install applications such as Shopsavvy without having to alter anything myself. Is there any reason for this or am I missing the "bug" completely?