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Root List of Apps to Safely Remove & Tips

Problem report:

I got 4 text messages last night from someone trying to rip me off.
The message reads "To stop these messages simply reply to this one (charge may apply)"

....Like I would even consider replying. :)

Makes me wonder if the VZW-sms-filter-service app I removed may have filtered this for me? Who knows.
 
No I don't think we need separate threads. I think it is best if most, if not all info are found quickly and easily. I think that if more people see the list they will try use and maybe then improve upon it.

Actually once I get a little more time I will probably go through and cut and paste more tips that you and others have given in other threads to my second post on this thread. lol kinda like the one stop shopping store idea. Who knows maybe someone who has even more knowledge than all of us together sees it and says hey they've done a lot to those phones maybe I should get one and help out. Could be a side project for someone that does work on more mainstream phones. Or for in cases like RJglenn, they could program a combination of hard buttons to press to make it manually reset, so that we can all load it on to our phones before going any deeper into changing things. Can't hurt to hope and I may be totally mistaken that any of this is even possible but that would be very cool if it happened.

Wishful thinking anybody??
 
Oregon2 said:
I have had Pico TTS removed for well over a week and can find nothing it hurts.
Click to expand...

I don't know what it works, but I was playing with my settings to see what each menu does and when Pico TTS is frozen and I go to settings/voice input & Output/Text to Speech, I get an error message " process.com.android.settings has stopped unexpectedly" .

I unfroze Pico and it worked. Refroze to guarantee that it was causing the error, and it was.
 
Rafael said:
That sucks.

What is this DSP?

Both Oregon2 and myself have removed apps that put our phones into endless error loops, but we manged to get them back to normal with some fiddling. It is no fun trying to race a force-close screen so you can make a correction.

Try removing the battery? It can't hurt.
Click to expand...


It is the android digital signal processor that is used on the cyanogenmod ROM. It really improves music playback quality. Its packaged & installed as an update.zip, which is useless on these phones. When it installs it installs the app & a different libaudioflinger.so file. I had read that you can sideload the app and then rename the default libaudioflinger.so file and put the libaudioflinger.so file from the package into /system/lib folder.

So I did, and when I rebooted there I was, stuck in a bootloop. The one little file broke it. Not a real big problem for most android phones, just go into recovery and fix it. Not so with this phone. Recovery is useless because although you can adb to it, once there nothing works. None of the recovery menu items can be accessed.

ADB works for the brief moment between when the os starts and it figures out its broken and reboots. I thought I might be able to fix it with adb, but unfortunately I was not able to write, delete, or rename any of the system files. I would always get: Permission Denied.

I could pull the file, I could veiw the directory, but I couldn't push or remove.

So I bought a new one and have started over. I will not, though, be messing with the system files. No recovery = certain death...
 
Expensive lesson!
Thanks for the detailed info.

You gonna dissect the bricked phone?
I would certainly save it for parts.
 
Nope, I'm going to eBay it. I'm sure somebody who knows a lot more about this stuff than me and has access to the factory tools will buy it and restore it.
 
Oregon2 said:
Tip #2: Make a quick voicmail button. First make a contact named voicemail and enter the number as *86,,1234 (that is star 86 comma comma and then YOUR four number voicemail passcode.) This will call voicemail and enter your passcode for you. Next find an empty spot on your Home Screen and long hold, click on Shortcut, click on Direct Dial, then scroll down and select your voicemail contact.
Apps you may want to try:
Click to expand...

This did not work for me. I double checked, then triple checked that I entered everything correctly. Only difference was I put it in my little swipe menu, and not the home screen.
 
No one claimed it worked in the snap-out menu, though I suspect it should.
Many of us have changed to a different launcher so we no longer have the snap-out menu.

I suggest you try it as directed. If that works, and it does not work in the snap-out menu; then you know what went wrong.

To be clear, the VM contact you create should contain *86, the number you call to get voicemail, one or two P's for pause, and your pin. Thanks to callmecolt for correcting me; I was using commas for puases. Comma's do not work.)
 
Rafael said:
No one claimed it worked in the snap-out menu, though I suspect it should.
Many of us have changed to a different launcher so we no longer have the snap-out menu.

I suggest you try it as directed. If that works, and it does not work in the snap-out menu; then you know what went wrong.

To be clear, the VM contact you create should contain *86, the number you call to get voicemail, one or two commas for pause, and your pin.
Click to expand...

I tried it on the home screen as well. At first, I had it as *86,,1111 (1111 not being my real PIN, but just using that as example.) Next I put my phone number after 86, still no luck. Tried putting # after the PIN, no luck.

Went back to the original input, but instead of the ,, I added a PP (Pause on the dialer) and it now works. :) The changes worked as well in the slide out menu, but you have to erase the old icon, and put the new contact in with the updated info.

I will be good at this phone stuff in no time!
 
I am the one wrong on this!
You are correct on the "P" pause characters.
While I set mine up with "P"'s, my old Droid used commas for pause characters.
I have messed with so many things on this phone, I fortgot about it.

My apology is tendered.

Thanks for finding the problem!
 
We are all here to work together and find out how to make our phones a little better. Glad that I finally was able to contribute a little something.
 
Big thanks to you guys for this list. My commando is so much faster now. I didn't remove everything on the list but I'd say atleast 50 or 60 of them and my commando is so much faster now.
 
Oregon2 said:
Tip #1: Install GO Launcher Ex from the market and set it as default. It will get rid of that annoying snap-out menu and allow you to set the magnifying glass button to Google Search (you must download Google Search and Voice Search by Google from the Market)
Click to expand...

How exactly do you set the magnifying glass button to Google Search? I have both Google Search and Voice Search installed. I just installed GO Launcher Ex and when I hit the magnifying glass, nothing happens. When I press it and hold, voice search comes up and it uses google.
 
After uninstalling the Voice Control VSuite my message read out widget stopped working. Probably not a big deal to most of us, but this app is pretty convenient at work.
 
McAnally said:
After uninstalling the Voice Control VSuite my message read out widget stopped working. Probably not a big deal to most of us, but this app is pretty convenient at work.
Click to expand...

I just noticed this myself last night. I didn't really use the widget, but was fooling around with what was on my phone.
 
Rafael said:
You can also delete XT9 keyboard, IF you load another keyboard app. I have not yet found one I like.
Click to expand...

I tried like 10 different keyboard apps and the one I like best is SwiftKey X. Its a pay app but you can download a free trial to check it out. After you use it for a while it gets really good at predicting what you are trying to type
 
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