If you’re running LiquidSmooth on your GNex and it is constantly “Searching for GPS” when using the built in Google Maps or Navigation apps, something is hosed! Flashing this patch fixed my issues instantly, and has remained fix up to the latest LiquidSmooth 1.5MR1 update:

LiquidSmooth Galaxy Nexus GPS patch

I’m anxiously awaiting the new LiquidSmooth Jellybean 4.1.1 update to come out! I tried Jellybean the day it was announced, and it was noticeably smoother (like “butter” baby!). But it was missing all of the customizations I had gotten used to in LiquidSmooth, including the all-important [to me] Profiles Settings.

LiquidSmooth Jellybean 4.1.1 Beta, plus restoring apps with Titanium Backup

Update 08/06/12: For the past few days I’ve been trying out the Beta 2 build of the Liquid Jellybean 4.1.1 rom. It works and is complete, for the most part. Some things (for me) are broken:

• Voice Dialer quits when accessed by my Bluetooth headset
• GPS wouldn’t lock (fixed with GPS patcher above)

This was also the first time I used titanium Backup to restore my apps and settings. After a few attempts, I think I’ve figured out how to do a successful restore. The main issue I found was restoring Apex launcher (either from its own saved backups or through Titanium Backup). Every time I restored it, my Camera and Gallery apps broke. They both said “App isn’t installed” when I tapped them.

To fix this, all you have to do is remove the apps from your homescreen, then re-add them from your Apps drawer. Presto, they both work now and both have the correct icons (previously they had generic, green Android icons).

To restore apps with Titanium Backup, just select the schedule to “Restore Missing Apps with Data”. Then, deselect the apps you don’t want restored. Another option is to restore all system data along with it, but I chose not to do this option. Maybe next time I’ll try it.

A new ROM with Profiles! AndroidME CM10 4.1.1

Found a new ROM today, that also has the Profiles Settings app. It’s called AndroidME and is available here.

Turns out, the Profiles setting I require was developed by the team at Cyanogenmod, but released as open source to the Google AOSP (Android Open Source Project). That basically means that Google can use it in a future build if they like it enough, and so can other ROM modders if they choose to build off the AOSP source and include it in their ROMs.

AndroidME CM10 is based off the latest Cyanogenmod 10 build, and therefore contains the Profiles settings built in. While CM10 is still in development, it seems pretty stable so far. The GPS also didn’t lock, but the above flash fixed it yet again. Bluetooth voice Dialing also works now, which is great for driving! I’ll be sure to report back with my next ROM of the day…

I recently discovered that the Gmaill app on my ICS Galaxy Nexus wasn’t actually syncing properly. When I would mark an email as archived, it wouldn’t reflect in my desktop browser, or worse, if I sent an email from my Android Gmail app, it would get stuck on “sending” forever, and never actually send the message. Rebooting wouldn’t fix this either.

Basically what happened is Gmail app is messed up and the only way to fix this is to delete the app data associated with the program. This will essentially reset the app so it gets a fresh sync again. Note: You will lose any messages stuck in “sending” mode. You will also have to add back any account specific customizations like label-specific notifications and custom ringtones for the app.

Go to System Settings > Apps > select the ALL tab > locate Gmail and select it > click the Clear Data button. Reboot for good measure. Fixed.

And for my 3rd installment on Making Android like a Blackberry, I’ll share with you some tweaks I’ve discovered in the past month or so to make my Galaxy Nexus behave more like the Blackberry I was used to.

Autotext

Blackberry users should know what this is. It’s a way to add typing shortcuts for commonly used words or phrases. For example, on a Blackberry you can add shortcuts to your custom dictionary so they can quickly be recalled later by typing just a few characters.

For example, you can set up something like ‘lmk’ and when you type those characters followed by a space, it will automatically input “let me know”. I used this for things like my signature, my phone number, my address, etc. Very handy!

Turns out, there is an app for that in the Android Market. It’s aptly named “Auto Text”. The free version is good for up to 10 shortcuts, which is just about what I need. The paid version is a bit pricey at $9.95, but is unlimited. I’ve been using it for a few days now and it seems to work pretty well. Not exactly like a Blackberry, but totally acceptable. The only issue (that hasn’t become an issue yet), is that I think it replaces the default ICS keyboard with its own. The default ICS keyboard supposedly has many improvements over the old 2.3.x keyboard. And from my experience of trying several 3rd party market keyboards, it’s the best. Auto Text appears to be modelled on the older 2.3.x (gingerbread) keyboard, but so far my typing seems to be as accurate as it was with the default ICS keyboard. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this for accuracy the more I use it.

I did find another keyboard in the Market that has the Autotext feature, but haven’t used it just yet. It’s called Smart Keyboard Pro. If Auto Text fails me, I’m going to try this one next.

Blackberry Sounds

IMO, the notification sounds on Android suck. If you miss your Blackberry sounds, there’s no reason you can’t have them on your Android device, too! just download the sounds and copy them to your Ringtones folder of your /sdcard. You will then be able to select them in whatever app you want:

Download Blackberry Sounds

Following up to my oh-so popular post about making Android more like a Blackberry, I’ve found a way to create notification Profiles that do what I want.

After fiddling for about a week (seriously), with probably 20 apps and runaround forum threads, this seemingly basic functionality couldn’t be done in Android ICS.

To recap, what I wanted was:

• The ability to disable all notifications at “Night”, except for the phone ringer and notifications for incoming email to one email address that I use to alert me of server-type mishaps.

No matter what app I tried, I wasn’t able to find a way to do this. Many of the apps out there can whitelist contacts, but many required that they be from a phone number and not an email address. I even tried an SMS alert from my monitoring service, but that app just plain didn’t work at all.

The solution? Flash the ROM of my ICS Galaxy nexus to the latest nightly build for Cyanogenmod 9.

Cyanogenmod 9 (and earlier versions), has a built-in setting aptly named “Profiles”. This feature allows you to control notifications for various situations, such as “Work” or “Car” or “Night”. Additionally, you can control the notifications for specific apps. Default apps include Gmail and Email.

What I did was set up all of my email accounts in the Gmail app, and the server-alert account in the Email app using Exchange (per my related post). Once this was set up, I could then use Profiles to override the notifications for the Gmail app when set to the “Night” profile, and subsequently pump up the volume for the Email app and its server-alert email address.

Seems so simple, right? I think the problem I had in finding an app to do this was that Google apparently changed the way apps can be accessed by other programs, basically disallowing the type of control I wanted. Flashing a different ROM removed this restriction.

Anyway, I’ve been using the mod for a few days now and it’s been very stable. It also has a lot of nice and seemingly obvious tweaks to the stock ICS interface that I really think enhances the usability of the OS. Another nice touch is that the changes are relatively transparent; there’s no bloatware or gratuitous interface skinning here. It still looks like stock ICS, but with some welcome tweaks.

Let me try and sum up how to Flash this ROM in my own words:

1. Install the Galaxy Nexus Toolkit (This allows you to root, unlock, install Clockworkmod recovery, everything, in one step)
2. Install ROMManager from the Google Play store
3. Assuming you successfully installed the Toolkit, you can now download the latest CM9 build and also the Google Apps files to your PC (I don’t know if you can do all of this on a Mac, but luckily my Mac has Bootcamp and Win7 on it; it won’t work with Fusion or Parallels)
4. Create a directory (folder) on your GNex called “cm9”, and copy the above two files in .zip form to it. (I like to keep the ROM files in one place rather than loose on the root level /sdcard)
5. Launch ROMManager and select Reboot into Recovery (this will reboot into Clockworkmod recovery)
6. Continue from Step 6 in the article above

Note: This will wipe your device of all user data, but not photos or media type stuff. Just your apps and your account setups like Gmail, etc. Once you are up and running again, you can just restore most of this stuff easily once you sign into your Google account again.

Update: Updating to a new build on CM9 is also easy:

1. Download the latest nightly build from Cyanogenmod.
2. Once downloaded, launch ROM Manager, (optional: select Backup Current ROM" if you want to be safe and have a restore point), then select “Install ROM from SD card”. “Wipe Dalvik cache” is selected by default. Proceed.
3. When your Nexus reboots into CWM Recovery, use the volume buttons to select “install zip from sdcard” (press Power button to select), then navigate to your /Downloads directory to select the new ROM build.
4. After installation, reboot the device and allow Android to finish updating itself.
5. Done!

YAR (Yet Another ROM): LiquidSmooth

I found another ROM that also has the Profiles settings. It’s called LiquidSmooth (I think they may have just ripped it off from CM and integrated it into their own ROM under CM open source license). I tried it for a couple days, but went back to CM9 because of one issue: I couldn’t get my notifications to remain persistent in my status bar until dismissed. For example, an email is received, and it dings me and shows me a little email icon in the status bar. It remains there until I slide down my notification and dismiss it. For some reason, in Liquid Smooth the icon showed up but went away on it’s own after about a second or two. It remains in the notifications panel, but not visible in the status bar, so basically you don’t really know if there is an email by glancing at the status bar area. It’s probably a setting somewhere that I missed, but I didn’t want to deal with it.

On the plus side, Liquid Smooth fixed two bugs I have been experiencing with CM9: 1) YouTube does not launch at all and 2) Using DoubleTwist in CM9 results in really bad wifi performance. I’ve since uninstalled DoubleTwist and I don’t use YT anyway, so no big deal there.

Notification Fix: A helpful tip fixed my notification icon issue with LiquidSmooth. At some point I must have changed the notification color to Black, making it essentially invisible. To fix this, in the main section of Liquid Control under Statusbar: select General. Scroll all the way down to the bottom selection (Notification Color). Open that up and change the color to #fff (white). Now just back out and all your notifications should stay  "visible" until you dismiss or check them.

Hence, I am back to running Liquid Smooth for now. It seems to be generally more compatible with various apps. For example, Youtube and Doubletwist work fine for me. Another thing is Bluetooth Audio to my car stereo works, but with CM9 it doesn’t. I do find it faster than CM9 as well, supposedly one of the selling points of this ROM.