Fun with ADB

It seems you can connect and debug the Android tablet over WiFi. Way cool.

Enable it on the Android device running 4.1.1+ under Developer Options, Debugging and check ADB over network.

Then on the desktop in my android-sdk\platform-tools folder:

adb connect 192.168.0.106:5555

connected to 192.168.0.106:5555

Viola! Neat stuff

Hacking Samsung Galaxy 2 7.0

I mean leave the stock Samsung kernel? pfft! Where's the fun in that? Besides, I want to get Android 4.1.1 on this puppy.

• Odin - Samsung Flashing Application
• ClockworkMod - ClockworkMod directions
• I downloaded the "P3113 - 6.0.1.0" one
• Follow the steps in the ClockworkMod directions
• CyanogenMod 10 - directions
• I downloaded the Google apps and nightly build for P3113
• Copied zips to the internal card on the tablet. I just put them in the root.
• Booted into recovery and flashed CM10 zip - love the confirmation screen!
• Did a wipe, reboot

Let me say, this community is great. There is a ton of work going on and good creativity. This is one thing that is seriously missing from the iOS community - different target, I know. But there is more of an adventurer/hobbyist feel to this one.

The upgrade went smoothly and it all appears to work as it should. I don't care for the default keyboard - the Samsung one was a little nicer. I also expected the device to tell me it had 8GB but still reports only 4 - Samsung must have absconded with the other 4. But I have a 16 GB external card so storage should be sufficient.

Are you really, really sure?

Samsung Galaxy 2 WiFi

I picked up a Galaxy 2 to play with. Partially I wanted to see how Samsung's iPad knockoff performed, and partially because I want a real Android device to explore development with.

So far I like it - not an iPad by far, but not bad either. The biggest issue that I've experienced so far is the horrible performance of the WiFi radio. One floor above my newish Apple Time Capsule router and I'm hardly registering signal. Compare this to every other computer from iPads, Mac laptops, iPhones and HP laptops - all of these get sufficient signal even at the far reaches of my property and two floors above.

This device came with Android Ice Cream Sandwich (aka, 4.0). I'm going to try to upgrade it to Jelly Bean (4.1) though this might be a little more difficult than had I bought the Nexus. It's an 8 GB device, but there's only 4 left after the Samsung bloatware footprint.

Those who know me know that I'm a borderline Apple Fanboy. I've not bought the new iPhone 5 though unfortunately I did upgrade to my phone and iPad iOS 6 (I hate the maps, but overall like it on my new iPad). So why fool around with Android? Because it's fun. Because I suspect that corporate users will ultimately be more comfortable with it over being tied to Apple, who they might feel is too much of a consumer company.

So, we'll see how this goes - but so far, I really like the little Galaxy 2.