Database Info

Thank you & Merry Christmas XDA! Whats your FAV iPhone feature?

...well my personal MOST absolute favorite feature about the iPhone is that I can always wear this logo...
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hahaha! Sorry to be so crass but whatevs. This stuff is so perfect I had to post it plus I'm surprised we're JUST now seeing a print like this one. I actually think even the iClones will like to wear this print anyway since they're usually into whatever is trendy. This way, its completely outspoken and I never really have to say anything. I can be on a bus, in an elevator, at the grocery store...ummm, AT&T Store, anywhere! Its AWESOME!!!
So Merry Christmas to my XDA fam, ant-iPhonies, and iCloners alike!! This is legit. I know the guy and they're doing pre-orders now, so I know I'm getting one.
Anyway, I thought I'd put it out there for my XDA fam. I've been following for hella, but I rarely post, and keep a pretty low profile. Usually I figure things out my dang self but I'm always turning people onto the community. I mean how many times have you run into someone with some HTC phone and its still got the protective shipping plastic on the back about to fall off (like your grandmas' 40 year old plastic covered couch) and you can tell they haven't even begun to use it?! Yeah, I know...what a waste right. And thats why I am very grateful for this gash darn community.
Ya'll Rule, XDA!!!
HTC -4- LYFE biiiiiiaaaaaaaaaa...*cough**hack*...umm, well at least after this Samsung Captivate goes out of style THEN I'll be back to HTC...cool?!
ps...to be truthful, it doesn't have much to do with iPhones or Mac's to me. I'm sure they technically do their jobs well. However, its the "greater-than-thou" attitude that seems to inhabit people once they "wield" a APPLE device that enrages me. Some one gets an iPhone or a MAC and all of a sudden they apparently 1) know calculus, 2) speak 3 languages, 3) can locate Tanzania on a topographical globe, 4) and wear Birkenstocks?! EEF all that madness. Its more the big corporate One-Size-Fits all mentality that enrages me.
pps...any thoughts?

Very nice but off topic have to go

Phone deleting apps and Google Play Services by itself

So I've never seen this happen before but my phone started to delete random apps. At first they were ones I didn't really need so it didn't bother me but then a lot more went missing and when I went to use Paypal it told me that it couldn't work because Google Play Services wasn't on the phone. I had a (soon to be justified) panic attack/flashback to when my friend and I accidentally deleted Google Play Services by mistake and the ****storm we dealt with for two days straight until we were able to track down the correct odin version of her phone's firmware (she had a rare version of Sprint's S3, the Triband one and it was nigh impossible to track down her correct firmware). Any apps that get "deleted" show up in the app drawer/homescreens as having a generic grayed out picture with an "SD" logo on the bottom as if they were sent to SD...but they aren't in the Applications list in settings so I think it's the OS not understanding they're gone and the links still being stuck there.
Questions to you all:
A) Have any of you experienced this random app deleting? Is it a sign my phone's NAND is going bad?
B) Should I just odin the firmware back on and reroot or is there a way to simply to reinsert the correct version of Google Play Store/Services if one of you would kindly provide them (I'm on QG5, newest for G930T)
Thank you!

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Bump, nobody else have this issue?

Not here. The only thing I have seen that is similar is when I restarted in safe mode, so all my user apps were disabled. In this case, are the apps deleted or just disabled?

primatebuddy said:
Not here. The only thing I have seen that is similar is when I restarted in safe mode, so all my user apps were disabled. In this case, are the apps deleted or just disabled?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No they were deleted, it was so weird. Again, I wouldn't really be that concerned if it didn't delete something as important as Google Play Services which limited a lot of functionality. I found some Play Services version to have it kind of work while I was in Ireland but things like Location/GPS and many apps wouldn't work right or not at all. It's a real pain in the ass how reliant so many things are on that one service.
I'm doing a full re-image on it now, just hope this was one time thing :-/

Should I keep using these Chinese phones? (Doogee, BlackView)

I bought 2 Chinese smartphones: One is from a company called "Doogee", and the second is called "BlackView"
The Doogee one came with many weird apps preinstalled, so I installed Malwarebytes, and it detected 2 malwares. Both removed. After a day, Malwarebytes prompted me that a malware app is trying to install itself (one of those I removed!) - So I stopped using this phone. Hopefully did not risk too much of my personal information (passwords, emails, etc).
Meanwhile, the other Chinese phone I ordered has arrived. Knowing about those security issues now, I immediately installed Malwarebytes, and it detected that the Sound Recorder app is a malware, and is actually using data(?):
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T

@TroyGuard I would recommend to search for a custom rom build from source to get rid of that stock spy roms :good:

@TroyGuard
personally I wouldn't use them but as you have bought phones you probably want to.
Though on twitter recently Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y was asking for such phones to analyse, he'd probably be happy to get one!
So If no custom ROM then you should be able to freeze those apps, system or preinstalled, that are risky or unknown (though they often come back, so freeze normally better). If you read the recent threads you will find links to a number of ways to do this, eg using TWRP, ADB, apps like Debloater etc which may work on those phones
WARNING: be careful freezing system apps, freezing an essential app can make your phone unusable, check online first if in doubt
Change all your passwords after this is done, to be safe.
(though there is still the possibility of a hardware backdoor , but I've not seen any reports of this.)
(Note: you probably won't get automatic OTA updates anymore as the ota updater is often part of the problem, besides you would have to refreeze apps after new install, but might be worth updating manually if it gives you important security patches)

Freedom phone

Anybody heard of this new phone to be released in August? Just asking because I would like more details on it. Such as hardware details, OS details etc. And the possibility that the bootloader is unlocked and maybe someone is already working on root method?
Freedom Phone
Freedom Phone
freedomphone.com
Thank you

AFAIK the phones offered by Freedom Phones are Pixel 4 and Pixel 4XL running GrapheneOS.
More info here

jwoegerbauer said:
AFAIK the phones offered by Freedom Phones are Pixel 4 and Pixel 4XL running GrapheneOS.
More info here
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Thank you for the information but I think we may be talking about 2 different organizations. The link you provided is .net and the one I posted is .com. Not only that but the freedom phone from your post has graphene OS while the one from my link uses freedom OS.
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I saw that on the NTD channel on YouTube (it's a conservative news channel that YT would never recommend)
https://www.youtube.com/c/ntdtv/videos
They were saying that the Freedom Phone is a plan by a guy who become a millionaire by his age of 18, because he invested in Bitcoin. So, a prejudice warning right there.
Next, they said that his main concern was that it is hard to source the hardware (really?), because the big names in cell phone business do dominate the industry, while none of them interested in privacy. (True).
So, he had figured out how to get the hardware and his new freedom phone is flying off the shelves, because it is a revolutionary new concept where the phone has his own store and doesn't allow the network location scanning and so on, so basically it is a de-googled phone.

TRexombo said:
Anybody heard of this new phone to be released in August? Just asking because I would like more details on it. Such as hardware details, OS details etc. And the possibility that the bootloader is unlocked and maybe someone is already working on root method?
Freedom Phone
Freedom Phone
freedomphone.com
Thank you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Conservatives are touting this phone to be patriotic, etc... but there are articles claiming its a cheap chinese knockoff with huge security issues, likely built in to the phone at the request of the NSA for snooping purposes.

Is there a shadowban on Google Play? Has anyone experienced this?

Hello! I have a lot of apps on Google Play. Some of them have more than 500.000+ downloads, one even about 2.000.000. Since there is a war in my country (I'm from Ukraine), I haven't been developing apps or monitoring my Google Play profile for a long time, more than a year.
During this time, I received one suspension of an unpopular app because of a double interpretation of a phrase in the description of the main page of the live wallpaper ("Saves maximum battery" - I meant that it was a resource and energy-efficient app, but the Google Play administration decided that this is a function that cannot be implemented physically and suspended the application according to the Deceptive Behavior policy), and several removed applications, because I placed links to my other Google Play applications in the settings and did not notice it as advertising.
Now that I have the opportunity to work again, I looked at the statistics and was shocked - my top apps that had more than 5,000+ installs per day don't even have 10.
I also finished and published two apps that I had started to develop before the full-scale Russian invasion. But unfortunately, in two weeks they don't even have 500 installs, and almost all of this traffic is from users of my other old apps.
Has anyone else experienced something like this? Is this a shadow ban or just a natural process when you don't pay attention to apps on Google Play for a long time?

IMO there is no way to tell for sure if Google Play has imposed a shadowban.
That's what ChatGPT states:
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Why not directly contact Google in hope to get your question answered?
Slava Ukraini (Слава Україні)

Героям Слава!
Thank you for your response.
I haven't really contacted Google support yet, but it's unlikely that it will help. Instagram and TikTok also do not officially recognize shadow bans, but they definitely exist.
xXx yYy said:
IMO there is no way to tell for sure if Google Play has imposed a shadowban.
That's what ChatGPT states:
View attachment 5937035
Why not directly contact Google in hope to get your question answered?
Slava Ukraini (Слава Україні)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

AlisonT said:
Героям Слава!
Thank you for your response.
I haven't really contacted Google support yet, but it's unlikely that it will help. Instagram and TikTok also do not officially recognize shadow bans, but they definitely exist.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ghost, or green mode. You can test it... depending on the site it will be detectable in various ways. Not undetectable
Gookill does this crap wholesale with their search engine so I wouldn't doubt they do it whenever they like. Especially for money.