the Nandroid freeze issues is cause by SD card’s compatibility, some SD cards doesn’t working well with Motorola 2.26.29 kernel after it have an ext partition, sometimes it fail to write data on SD card when people using the Nandroid tools.

To fix this problem, download the zip package below on your computer, unzip it, put all the files in folder “SD card/OpenRecovery/lib/modules/2.6.29/”, overwrite the current files, and done. Try reboot into Recovery mode, try back up something to see if the issue is gone.

FYI, all credits go to Nadlabak.

Download Nandroid OR fix for Milestone

The post How to Fix the Nandroid freeze issue on Milestone A853 appeared first on Chrom Loop.

* How to install CyanogenMod 10 for Motorola Milestone A853 (for the guys who already playing with CM customize roms)
1. Download CM10 for Milestone nightly rom update package and the google apps for Android Jelly Beam package. (download link will be attached at the end of this post)
2. Reboot the phone to Open Recovery, wipe data, wipe cache and davilk cache.
3. Apply update, Install the CyanogenMod 10 rom then install the gapps.
4. Reboot system. First boot may take more than 5 minutes. (boot animation still CM9)

The first running of CM10 system on Milestone A853 will be very very slow, that is because every applications use the hardware accelerator, eaten up all RAM. Just be patients, after setting up your google account, the first thing you are going to do is disabled the apps using hardware accelerator, in the app drawer, you can see an icon of silver Gear, open it, then disable all apps’ hardware accelerator permissions, then reboot the phone, you will find out the system is running much smoother than before.

CyanogenMod 10 for Motorola Milestone A853 RAM usage screenshot

CyanogenMod 10 for Motorola Milestone A853 battery usage screenshot

Download CM10 for Milestone nightly builds

Download gapps for CM10 Milestone A853: gapps-jb-20120726-minimal.zip (source from XDA thread )

The post [Rom] CyanogenMod 10 for Motorola Milestone A853, How to Install and Quick Review appeared first on Chrom Loop.

You may wondering how they make this game feeling so real, Virtual Table Tennis 3D is using OpenGl 3D graphics, and the vibration force feedback is giving the players a good experience at the right time, those things making this game interesting and very playable.

You will have 30 levels to pass through with 3 difficulty settings. There are 10 countries to choose, every next countries is harder to defeat.

Free download Virtual Table Tennis 3D on Goole Play

The post [APK] Virtual Table Tennis 3D for Android Download, Simple, Real and Fun appeared first on Chrom Loop.

1.Use another launcher application, e.g. Apex launcher.
Trebuchet launcher is the default launcher, it is slow and use almost 14MB RAM, it is terrible as the X8 only have 256MB RAM, I used to wait for 3 seconds if I wanted to go back to home screen.
this is the Apex launcher drawer screenshot, its default theme is the same as Trebuchet launcher, but there are a lot of elements you can customize, e.g. homescreen, dock, drawer label. The most important thing is that Apex launcher is much faster than Trebuchet, it is very smooth on X8.

2.Remove native applications which you don’t need.
Android ICS need more RAM to run, we can not get more for our phone, so we need to free up some RAM which is taken by some background running applications. For those apps which is installed by yourself, you should only install the necessary things, don’t feed your phone with to many apps. For the native apps which you don’t need, you can remove it from folder “system/apps” by root explorer. Here is a list of apps which I have removed.
-DSP manager
-Calendar, CalendarProvider
-CMUpdateNotify
-CMWallpapers
-Development
-SpareParts
-Stk(SIM card toolkit)
-ThemeChooser, ThemeManager, MiniCM9.apk
-VoiceDialer
-VisualizationWallpapers, LiveWallpapers, MagicSmokeWallpapers
I also delete the LatinIME.apk after I install the Google Pinyin IME, because I need to input Chinese characters, I don’t use the native input method.

3. Boost the hardware speed.
CM9 support processor overclock feature, speed up the maximum CPU frequency can make X8 response faster. I have overclocked the CPU to 748MHz (the new ICS custom kernel seems more stable, my phone can not overclock with other custom kernel, even if I set it to 629MHz, the graphic will offset by half screen then I have to reboot the phone.). The overclock menu is in the system settings -> performance -> processor.

It doesn’t need to restart the phone for applying the change, besides, with higher maximum CPU frequency, the phone will become more unstable, so you can begin with 652MHz, then test the phone for a while, make sure it won’t restart by itself or have any unusual troubles, then you can try a higher CPU frequency, until you find out the highest maximum value. I suggest don’t set it higher than 748MHz.

The next thing is get more RAM. In “memory management”, I enable the “Allow purging of assets”, and I set the zRam value to 10%, which default is 18%. The reason I use 10% zRam is I am think of the X8′s CPU performance, it can not handle to much RAM compression, if we set 18% zRam, it will take more time to zip memory. I think it is better to clear the RAM of background application than compress it.

That all I have done to make CyanogenMod 9 running faster on Xperia X8.

The post How to make CyanogenMod 9 for X8/W8 Run Faster appeared first on Chrom Loop.

I Installed the MiniCM9 3.0.1 for X8 about 3 weeks ago, I unlocked my X8′s bootloader, flashed the ICS nAn kernel, installed MiniCM9 using CWM recovery. everything goes well, it takes about 5 minutes during the first time boot up. compare with the previous version of MiniCM9 which was released at April 2, the new MiniCM9 3.0.1 is much more smooth and faster response, the transition of the screen color is back to natural, some useful functions were working fine except video recording. [update] now I have updated it to MiniCM9 3.0.2, bug fixed and performance improved.

I don’t use the default launcher, it eats more than 14MB memory, it is terrible on an 256MB device, I choose launcher pro, which takes about 7MB memory, I don’t want to wait for 5 seconds when I back to the home screen. Android ICS needs more resources to run, fortunately X8′s screen resolution is 480*320, it still has enough memory to handle the graphic hardware acceleration. I have to say that the new graphic hardware acceleration feature give us a very smooth feeling and better quality when we scroll the screen. Android ICS can make your phone or tablet full of the sense of science and technology, it is ture.

If you asked the comparison of CM7(Android 2.3 gingerbread) and CM9(Android 4.0 ICS) on Xperia X8, it is not easy to say which one is better, if you ignore the problem of limited memory and you prefer the new features of ICS, CM9 suits you. if you prefer high performance and no lagging operation, CM7 is your wise choice. I don’t deny the advantages of CM9, but occasionally get lagging, for example, dial panel, settings, sometimes I open one of them, it may stuck for 2-5 seconds, and this won’t occur in CM7.

Another thing that everybody concerned about is the battery usage. here is my recently battery history details.

As battery draining bug was fixed in Mini CM9 3.0.1, now it takes about 20% more battery.

Summary of the improvements in Mini CM9 for X8

1. entirely new user interface, new transition animations, the sense of science and technology has increased significantly.
2. when the phone is standby, light up the screen, you can pull down the notification bar without unlocking the phone, direct control the shortcut buttons or check out the messages.
3. In the lock screen, time doesn’t show up in status bar until you unlock the phone, it can save the space of the notification bar.
4. To tack screenshots, press the power button and the Volume Down key at the same time by about one second, this operation also has an animation.
5. Animated gradient rotating the screen.
6. This is the the CM9 improvement, CM settings have been decentralized to the related menu items, such as “automatic backlight” feature appeared in the “display”.
7. Automatic backlight finally repaired in MiniCM9 3.0.2
8. the New CM cartoon
9. Power consumption increased when the phone get signal, but battery usage is still very small if you open the flight mode.
10. Wifi can be individually setup for each network, such as a static IP, this is praise, and if you setup a static IP, the Wifi connection speeds will be much faster.
11. You can set it to send a SMS after you refuse to answer a phone call.
13. Even if you turn off the accounts sync, background data is still on. But if your android market set to only update with WIFI network, it will not consume too much traffic.
14. You will have a little trouble when setting up the wallpapers, but now it can tell you both portrait and landscape screen viewing area.
15. More bright LED indicates light, also you can set up the LED color for different apps.

if you want to install MiniCM9, then you have to unlock the X8′s bootloader, but it is not 100% safe and you will probably brick your phone, I heard about that Xperia X8 with the serial number newer than 11W29 has a big risk of bricking the hardware-you can unlock bootloader but your phone will brick after reboot. so look before you leap, MiniCM7 is still a good rom.

The post Android ICS 4.0.4, MiniCM9 3.0.2 for Xperia X8 Review appeared first on Chrom Loop.

Thanks to Motorola that they released the Android 4.0 official firmware for Xoom, and CM9 rom development continued, Motorola Xoom joined CyanogenMod team after such a long period of time.

Official CM9 For the Motorola Xoom (Stingray & Wingray)

Nightly build for Wingray(Wi-Fi only)
Nightly build for Stingray(4G)

Stable build is not available in the present.

Change log of CM9 for Motorola Xoom

Wingray Nightly Changelog (Wifi-Only)
Stingray Nightly Changelog (4G)

via [ROM][NIGHTLY] CyanogenMod 9 (Wingray/Stingray)

The post Motorola Xoom (Stingray & Wingray) is Officially Supported by CyanogenMod Team appeared first on Chrom Loop.

We send SMS, emails, input web address, we often need to deal with the screen keyboard. There are more than 20 input method on Google Play(Android market), maybe you will install more than one input method on your phone or tablet, the question is how to manager these installed input method. Go to settings -> language & input, we can select which input method to be the default one, also we can choose which one can be switched when we typing text.

We have known that pressing finger on text box for a few seconds, a input method menu will pop-up for us to change input method(keyboard type). But in Android 4.0 ICS, tap and holding your finger on the input area will NOT make the input method(keyboard type) menu pop-up anymore, even if you press and hold for one hour. I was confused at the first time, finally I found out that the right way of change input method(keyboard type) is pull down the notification bar, you can see the “select input method” button hidden in there.

Android 4.0 ICS is improved a lot more than the older Android system, I will show you more interesting things in ICS.

The post How to Select / Switch Input Method in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich appeared first on Chrom Loop.

We can use Wi-Fi network to visit Internet, view web pages, download things on Android devices, and with this small application: the FTPServer, we can transfer files between your Android phones and your PCs. FTPServer is an Android application that can make an Android device become a FTP Server, you can transfer files to/from android device by any FTP client.

1.FTP account settings

The above picture is the screen of FTPServer when the first time you open it, you need to setup the FTP username, password, you can enter any words which is easy to remember, it will be used for authentication when you connecting to this mobile device. The next thing is connection port, you can just set the same port as my setting. Now you need to setup the default file location after building the FTP connection. let’s set “/sdcard” for located your SD card.

2.FTP network settings

The above picture shows the other settings of FTP Server. the default value is good for the first two options, the first one can wake up this device if necessary, the second one can let the system rebuild the media database, that is useful when you are going to transfer some media files to your device.

In FTP Server you can define which Wi-Fi network can access your device, or you can just active the “accept any network connection” options as you prefer.

After finishing setup all the options, tap the “save and restart service” button. FTP Server will running if everything goes well. Sometimes you maybe forget to open Wi-Fi connection, it’s fine, just stop the FTP service, connect to Wi-Fi and start FTP service.

Screen of succeed in running FTP service.

Tips: You can open the setting menu by tab the menu key.

How to connect to Ftp Server with a computer? that is easy, just open your computer explorer, enter ftp address: “ftp://” + the username + “@” + the string of numbers in the brackets, for example, my username is “123″, my address is “ftp://123@192.168.1.50:2122/”. you will be asked for the FTP password after press enter key.

You can do the common file operations after connecting to your Android device, like copy and paste, it is so easy and convenient, isn’t it?

Tips: remember to stop FTP service and close it when you finish doing your job, or your phone won’t go to sleep mode, battery will drain very fast.

Download FTP Server on Google Play

The post How to Transfer Files to / from Your Android Device Without USB Cable appeared first on Chrom Loop.

And more, now you can find out nearby Google Offers in United States.

As I just update X8 to MiniCM 9, I noticed that Google Maps and some other apps has different view, see these four screenshots of Google maps, the above is on Android ICS, the below is running on Android Gingerbread. you can see the differences, like translucent tool bar and menu with ICS.

Download Google Maps for Android on Google Play.

The post [APK] Download Google Maps v6.7, New UI with ICS Style, Indoor Walking, 360° Panoramas Inside appeared first on Chrom Loop.

Btw, Devs are also working on enabling zram function on Milestone, this new feature can help a lot in limited ram situation, more details can be found here: https://code.google.com/p/compcache/

Download link: CyanogenMod 9.0 RC0 for Milestone A853
New gapps: https://milestone.immaterium.de/div/gapps/gapps-ics-4.0.3-20120302.zip

The post CyanogenMod 9.0 RC0 for Milestone A853, Working Camera Except Video Recording appeared first on Chrom Loop.