Rooted Android users: your device is not passing Security checks

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Every now and then, every rooted Android user faces this issue that while they try to activate some apps that involve security, they get a message saying that they can’t use the app because their phone is rooted. It’s good that they face it. It shows how strict Google’s security is. But on the other hand, it’s annoying too because we can’t use such apps .E.g. Most of the banking apps. Those apps are required frequently but rooted users can’t use it because their activation doesn’t complete.

Other example does include Google’s Tez. While activation Tez gives the error as below.

Your device is not passing Security checks.

Here’s how you solve the issue and get such apps working on rooted devices.

  • First of all, figure out your android OS version from “About phone” menu in settings and download proper ‘Magisk’ file for your rooted device.Here’s the link : Magisk Download
  • Boot your device into recovery. Here’s how you do it.
    • Search for “boot <your device model no> to recovery ” and find the keys to be pressed in order to enter your device into recovery mode.
    • Power of the device and start it again with key combinations your just found in above step
    • Your device should boot into recovery.
    • Well, how do you know that? – you see menus such as “install”, “wipe”, “backup” etc on the screen.
  • You should know how to flash a zip file in your device. Anyways, here’s how you flash it . Check out article: “How to flash zip file in your android device”.
  • Flash the Magisk file you just downloaded.
  • Restart your phone and try to install the app you wanted to install.
  • Now it won’t give you that warning. All secured apps now start working.

 

Let me know your difficulties and FAQ in the comment section below. Feel free to mail me your detailed problems at mjadhav570@gmail.com or you can start discussing at FAQ section “FAQ“.

Note: As rooted android devices are assumed to be not trusted, all these apps don’t work, Installing Magisk just hides the root from apps or android security layer thus allowing you to bypass the security checks and making app work on your device. By no way, this thing is secure.

Android users! Be aware of screen burn in issue observed on few of the devices…

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Did you remember those days where we had those CRT monitors in which picture used to get displayed with continuously emitting rays onto the display? Crazy technologies no?

Now recently few of the smartphones are exhibiting screen burn in issue. CRT and recent AMOLED display technologies are totally different technologies but screen burn in issue is been seen on both kind of displays.

Basically few things on our mobile display like navigation bar, status bar, Always ON display, wallpaper for that matter…these things are always there on the display, Display pixels(LED’s) in those portion of the screen are always been powered ON and OFF in order to display the stuff.

This continuous burden of displaying same stuff again and again causes some display pixels to retain the previous data for long time. This results in retention of information over the display for long time.

Now note here down that although this thing is called “Screen burn in” issue, there no actual burning over screen or any part of the screen. Its called so because the pixels exhibiting this behavior look like burnt in.

Here is one of the screens with this issue.

This doesn’t even happen instantly but on few models, it’s seen to happen after few months of usage. On the other hand this issue might be a serious issue if you don’t have first aid for it .

Well how to prevent your screen from this effect?

How to prevent your screen from Screen Burn in issue ?

Here are general tips . Basically preventing screen burn has to do with preventing same pixels begin lit up again and again.

  • Turn OFF few features such as Always ON display which kind of show the clock on center of screen. Few custom ROMS provide moving clock which basically moves the whole clock pixels few pixels apart so that same pixels won’t get lit up continuously.
  • Another suggestion could be to change your wallpaper regularly. It makes your phone look awesome and prevents from screen burn in too.
  • Don’t power display at 100% brightness . Less brightness means less current flowing through those LEDS.
  • Darker colors for wallpapers, display elements, themes might help.

Problems with Android Oreo backup/restore process : temporary fix

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Android Oreo has recently been released an is been ported for few devices. I’ll be writing an article soon on “How you backup not only the apps but the whole Android ” so that while flashing your phone, or for some reason if your phone goes off, if in case it gets soft broken, you an restore it as is.

But here’s the thing with such Backup and Restore in Android Oreo. If you backup Android Oreo ROM that has fingerprint or pin or password set for lock-screen ( Everyone’s phone has one of these now a days) using one of the recoveries like TWRP and CWM, It’s probably not gonna get restored and you won’t be able to unlock your device after restore which makes it completely unusable.

So how do you solve it ?
Here’s the steps for this.
Note: Your phone needs to be rooted in order for this trick to work.

  • After you restore your phhone, boot it to recovery and go to file manager.
  • For TWRP recovery, its here: Advanced -> File Manager
  • Go to path /data/system/ and find a database file called ”locksettings.db”.
  • Its the file which has all the info about your fingerprints and lock-screen patterns etc.
  • Select this file and delete it.
  • Reboot device.
  • Done! your phone won’t even remember that it had any lock-screen pattern set before. IT will simply unlock directly.
  • Setup new patter/pin/fingerprint as per your choice and enjoy !

Let me know your difficulties and FAQ in the comment section below. Feel free to mail me your detailed problems at mjadhav570@gmail.com or you can start discussing at FAQ section “FAQ“.

Have a good day :-). Peace !!!

How to backup android partitions using TWRP/CWM

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First of all , let’s talk little about recovery…you should know that.

Have you ever observed your phones storage? If it’s 64 GB storage, usable memory you get isn’t that much. Its usually about 52,55 GB. Where does the other space go?

Its used by Android system by itself . The whole compiled code of android system installed in your phone is kept there. It isn’t kept directly as is into it but there are some partitions made and specific code is placed in specific partition.

One of those partitions is recovery partitions. Its usually responsible for flashing your phone, resetting it, erasing other partitions etc a piece of code which wakes up recovery partition during phones restart and helps to perform all operations/responsibilities of recovery partitions is called “recovery”.

TWRP(Team Win Recovery Project) and CWM(Clock Work Mod)  are both examples of those piece of code..

    

So as you know little about recoveries, let’s now go ahead and see how do you backup and restore using TWRP and CWM.

Note: installing TWRP/CWM requires that your phones bootloader is unlocked. Follow article “How to unlock bootloader of your mobile device” for unlocking it.

How to back up android partitions using TWRP/CWM:

  • As every device model as different hardware, their partitions structure is also different. Thus, recoveries for every phone model are unique. Download one specific for your phone model. Search for “TWRP for <device model name>” or “CWM for <device model name>” and download the recovery.
  • Download ADB-FASTBOOT drivers from here. Install them on your PC.
  • Go to Settings –> Developer options  on your android. If you don’t see developer options then go to About phone and click on Build number 7 times. Come back to settings, you should have it now.
  • Turn on “Android debugging” or “USB debugging” option.
  • Connect your phone to PC and execute commands below:
  • adb reboot bootloader
  • On successful execution, your phone should automatically go off and start again into bootloader mode. You are ready now to execute next command.
  • fastboot flash recovery <path to downloaded recovery>
  • Now here you might encounter error saying that fastboot is not recognized. In that case, Download ADB-FASTBOOT from here, extract it, go into the extracted folder, keep shift pressed and right click. Select “Open command window here” and execute above command into it. It should work now.
  • There might be another error where the command prompt keeps waiting for device saying <waiting for device> message. But this is something specific to device. So let me know in case you have such error.
  • On successful execution of above command, execute below command.
  • adb reboot recovery
  • Your phone should boot into recovery that you just installed. either TWRP or CWM.
  • Awesome. Now check out snaps above and refer them for procedure of backing up android partitions.
  • If you are on TWRP, directly select back up option, select partitions to back up on next screen and swipe the slider at bottom to start backing up. This procedure creates TWRP/backup folder in root directory of your device internal storage.
  • If you are on CWM or Philz recovery, select “back up and restore” option, select partitions. It should start backing up partitions. This procedure creates CWM/backup folder in the root directory of your device internal storage.
  • That’s it, you did it !!!

Let me know your difficulties and FAQ in the comment section below. Feel free to mail me your detailed problems at mjadhav570@gmail.com or you can start discussing at FAQ section “FAQ“.

Have a good day :-). Peace !!!

 

How to unlock bootloader of your mobile device

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Let’s see bootloader concept quickly first. You should know that…

When you turn ON your mobile device, it can’t directly start loading android system. It needs to be woken up step by step. E.g. First it checks if the device hardware is working fine or not, then starts loading something called as kernel etc etc.

So one the section in this waking up process is “Bootloader”. There are other sections, partitions too such as Recovery, Data, System etc.

These bootloaders now a days, for security reasons, come locked by OEM so that they can’t be modified without permission. and thats wat we need to unlock in order to allow us to install recovery into our phone or to install custom ROM.

There are few tings you need to consider before  you think of Unlocking bootloader.

  • Unlocking bootloader of your phone might void your device warranty. Check out OEM terms and conditions.
  • Unlocking bootloader isn’t illegal but you might void your warranty.
  • Unlocking bootloader is completely safe.

With that said, let’s go with the steps to unlock bootloader of any android device.

How to unlock bootloader of Any locked device:

  • Search for “Unlock bootloader <OEM name>” , select first result. I mean one which is published by OEM.
  • Go to Settings –> Developer options  on your android. If you don’t see developer options then go to About phone and click on Build number 7 times. Come back to settings, you should have it now.
  • Turn on “Android debugging” or “USB debugging” option.
  • Download ADB-FASTBOOT drivers from here.
  • Connect your phone to PC and execute commands given on the webpage you opened in step 1
  • As per the method, you should get an email with unlock code. Use further instructions on same webpage and unlock the bootloader.

Now I understand that I took this pretty straight forward but unlocking bootloader is little different for different OEMS. So can’t publish the universal method.

Let me know your difficulties and FAQ in the comment section below. Feel free to mail me your detailed problems at mjadhav570@gmail.com or you can start discussing at FAQ section “FAQ“.

Have a good day :-). Peace !!!

 

How to restore exact same copy of your mobile device to another

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So here we go.

Most obvious thing, you need to take backup of your phone first in order to restore it onto another.

Usual backup apps doesn’t take the real backup. They just backup apps. They don’t keep any app specific data such as your game score, your app settings etc. And that’s the catch. Let’s see how do you backup apps with data so that you won’t need to worry about setting the device again and that headache of installing the apps again.

Backup Android apps with Data: 

Here are the steps :

  • Unlock your phone: Lot of the phones now a days are factory locked. Search for “Unlock bootloder <your device model name>” and open the link that comes from OEM only. Follow steps at “How to unlock bootloader of your mobile device” to unlock the bootloader of your phone.
  • Install custom recovery such as twrp or cwm : Download and install one of these recovery files for your phone. Search for “Twrp/CWM for <your device model name> XDA” and download the file. Let me know in the comment section in case you can’t find recovery file for your device. Read article “What is android recovery twrp/cwm“ to know more.
  • Backup using recovery options : Boot your phone to recovery and backup partitions called “data, cache, dalvik, system“. Don’t get confused. Read article “How to backup partitions using TWRP/CWM“, you will get to know what I am talking about.

Now as the backup is complete, go to TWRP/CWM respective folder using any file manager app and find a folder called backup there and transfer the whole to the new device that you wanna restore. This backup is useful in case you reset your device. You can restore it as it is without worrying about downloading apps again and without worrying about setting the whole stuff again.

To restore this backup into another device, make sure that the phone model is same, backup taken on one device absolutely won’t work on other. Don’t even try it, it will brick your device and it won’t ever wake up. Use article “How to restore backups using custom recoveries in android“ .

So once you copy backup to new device, follow same above steps, unlock your target device, install same custom recovery, and restore using recovery options.

Cool! you are done. Restart your phone and that’s it.. Your target device get restored exactly same as the source one. You can use the same method one the source device too. In case you reset your phone, you can restore the same backup again on the same device to restore it back to the previous state.

Let me know your difficulties and FAQ in the comment section below. Feel free to mail me your detailed problems at mjadhav570@gmail.com or you can start discussing at FAQ section “FAQ“.

Have a good day :-). Peace !!!

 

Welcome Back …

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Hey,

We are so happy to see you back here again. WE are setting up “My Android Page” and will be back with whole redesigned experience, lot of exciting articles and more fun ..

Thank you so much for being a part of My Android Page community…

– Mukesh