I was just looking through Running services and I noticed "ScreenCaptureService" running. Anyone know what it does or what it's for? Also...is there a way to take screen caps manually without an app? I actually wanted to take a couple screenshots of some things earlier but figured I'd need an app for that...
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Help What is this ScreenCaptureService that is always running on our phones?
- Thread starter MetroPOS
- Start date
I'm pretty sure its running because if you have the SDK installed on your PC you can connect the phone to the PC and grab screenshots.
there is no way to take the screenshots from the phone without a 3rd party app. This is also something that I really would like to have as well.
Yeah there are a bunch of screenshot apps but like I said before there is no built in screenshot function or button combo in the android os.
ardchoille
Android Expert
Google is working on making screenshots accessible without the need for root privileges. I believe that screenshot service is part of the code that needs to be in place for that to happen - they added code now for future use.
That's my theory anyway.
would be nice if android ran in more of a plug n play type way where maybe the phone kernal could differant for each phone depending on the phones hardware but the core OS remained the same on all phones, then give the manufactures a way to put things like addons, drivers, and added features in a separate directory/partition. so that then the core android OS from google loaded up and the manufacturers addons and drivers get loaded on top of it.
Then Google could release the android updates for all. We could all then update to the latest android OS version and the manufactures drivers and such would just get loaded on top of whatever new version OS the phone is running.
The manufacturers would then just be pushing out device updates and not an entirely new OS with there stuff baked in.
Then Google could release the android updates for all. We could all then update to the latest android OS version and the manufactures drivers and such would just get loaded on top of whatever new version OS the phone is running.
The manufacturers would then just be pushing out device updates and not an entirely new OS with there stuff baked in.
ardchoille
Android Expert
There are reasons it doesn't work that way, and most of those reasons can be blamed on the manufacturers. I'll give a good example. Frameworks is part of the system core, it provides things like the notification bar and its icons, checkboxes, radio buttons, and many other images that the system cannot function properly without. The vanilla android versions of these images are often very different from what ends up on the device when the customer purchases it due to "manufacturer add-ons" - and then it's different from manufacturer to manufacturer.
For instance, the notification bar on my phone (Samsung Vibrant) is dark grey while the one on an htc phone is black and the vanilla android version is a gradient white. This is part of the skinning that the manufacturers do before the phones/upgrades are released. If I were to replace the core files on my phone with that of a vanilla android release, it would change the look and feel of the phone considerably.
It gets even more different than that with custom ROMs because the ROM developers often theme everything so that the phone is has a completely different look than it had when it was purchased.
What I would like to see is Google disallowing manufacturer skins. One of the reasons the cliq XT won't get anymore upgrades, as per what motorola told us, is that Motorola went to deep in integrating their blur skinning and now it's too difficult to upgrade to newer versions of android without devoting too much work on re-skinning it. If manufacturer skins weren't allowed, we'd get upgrades faster because the manufacturer wouldn't have to devote so much time in skinning android before pushing it to our phones.
I'm saving up for a Google developer phone because it has vanilla android and I won't have to wait for the manufacturer to re-skin it before getting upgrades.
they could make it check the manufacture partition for frameworks before defaulting to the vanilla android frameworks.
I dont care what they do, but they need to do something so that phones capable of running the latest OS don't have to go a year or two before seeing an outdated update or nothing at all.
its in goggles interest to sort this out. Just think of Microsoft Windows without Microsoft monthly updates. I forsee the android OS becoming a huge male-ware/virus target. Whats better to attack then an OS that you know does not get frequent updates/patch's.
I hate to throw the apple name out there, but when an issue with iOS comes up, apple just pushes out a quick update to fix EVERYONE.
OK enough of that, back on the topic at hand.
Would be nice to see a button combo for screenshots like whats available on iOS.