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[Q] Near Field Communications

It seems like Near Field Communications (NFC) is going to be the next big sensor for portable devices. Is there any way to retrofit NFC to a device or does it need to to be on-board (literally).

It requires hardware we don't have.
This doesn't belong in accessories , please post questions in Q & A from now on.

gdbassett said:
It seems like Near Field Communications (NFC) is going to be the next big sensor for portable devices. Is there any way to retrofit NFC to a device or does it need to to be on-board (literally).
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Yup.
TYFONE PUTTING NFC IN MICROSD CARDS

jasonsf said:
Yup.
TYFONE PUTTING NFC IN MICROSD CARDS
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Except for the minor detail of them not being available (yet).

063_XOBX said:
Except for the minor detail of them not being available (yet).
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He didn't ask if there was a way to do it TODAY

Good to see there will be an accessory to bring this capability to our phones, even if it is in the future. (I don't live in salt lake city so no NFC here yet anyway.)
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Personally I think this is a bad technological improvement as it just opens up more access to our personal data for a minimal increase in the ease of our daily lives.
My plastic RFID-free credit card suits me just fine.

063_XOBX said:
Except for the minor detail of them not being available (yet).
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This is a development forum, 90% of anything discussed here isn't available yet.

As I understand it NFC will be supported natively in Gingerbread, which is in the works for the Epic right now. As far as the hardware goes, there are cradles or adapters available for some phones right now to support NFC. Since Sprint announced recently they will be making a big push this year for NFC, I would expect they would release an NFC adapter for many of their phones.

Yeah........ I do live in SLC... and I'm not looking forward to NFC.
Anything that increases the ease of transferring sensitive personal information or money to random people worries me.
Look at all the security holes RFID has.

I can't see this taking off for at least another year and by then I hope to be looking at what new phones are available. Bought a G1 on launch and I've learned my lesson in early adopting.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Glonass GPS available in Sensation

It seems that the sensation already has functionality for the newly released Glonass satellites. According to a Dutch website the Qualcomm S2 and S3 chips already have support built in. Thus the phones already having support are HTC Desire HD, Incredible S and all Sony Ericsson Xperia phones from 2011, as well as recent BlackBerry's like the Bold 9900 and Torch 9860. Most importantly so do the HTC Sensation series and Evo 3D.
The Russian GPS alternative can only be used in conjunction with GPS
Manufacturers and operators must however enable Glonass. On which phones this already happened and how that will happen with updates is unclear.
What benefit can we get from this thinking about gps lock an accuracy since it's already in our sensation but probably not activated yet.
Here is a movie from Qualcomm explaining about Glonass and smartphones with their chipset.
Video
and a link to the site (it's in Dutch)

This is interesting, certainly, but even if the functionality is "available" in a chipset it's not necessarily usable. It probably requires a different antenna design or something, similar to how you need a different antenna for LTE and GSM because they're on different frequencies.

I've contacted @SnapDragon on Twitter, and they've said that it's indeed on our phones but it all depends on HTC on unlocking it for us to use. I'm guessing it's all in the radio, Devs gotta look it up and hopefully enable it?

Usually if something's disabled on a hardware level it requires more than just clever rom hackers to enable it, and even then it's not perfect. HTC would need to release official drivers or something.

xdviper said:
I've contacted @SnapDragon on Twitter, and they've said that it's indeed on our phones but it all depends on HTC on unlocking it for us to use. I'm guessing it's all in the radio, Devs gotta look it up and hopefully enable it?
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Haha, I just read your tweet. I don't think HTC will go out of their way to enable it, but we'll see.
Here's a link to Qualcomm enabling GLONASS in English.
http://androidandme.com/2011/12/news/qualcomm-enables-dual-core-location-on-snapdragon-phones/
http://www.qualcomm.com/blog/2011/12/15/gps-and-glonass-dual-core-location-your-phone
The official Qualcomm article on it says that the T-Mobile S2 has it enabled, maybe we can port their drivers to our phone?

qualcomm made best gps chpisets in mobile phone and im happy i have perfect position accuracy thanks qualcomm (my friend with sgs2 have poor accuracy and must wait every time few minutes to lock gps - with turned off data)

Any news on this? I bought an XE a couple of weeks back and I was just reading about GLONASS, ending up in this thread...

Rubman said:
It seems that the sensation already has functionality for the newly released Glonass satellites. According to a Dutch website the Qualcomm S2 and S3 chips already have support built in. Thus the phones already having support are HTC Desire HD, Incredible S and all Sony Ericsson Xperia phones from 2011, as well as recent BlackBerry's like the Bold 9900 and Torch 9860. Most importantly so do the HTC Sensation series and Evo 3D.
The Russian GPS alternative can only be used in conjunction with GPS
Manufacturers and operators must however enable Glonass. On which phones this already happened and how that will happen with updates is unclear.
What benefit can we get from this thinking about gps lock an accuracy since it's already in our sensation but probably not activated yet.
Here is a movie from Qualcomm explaining about Glonass and smartphones with their chipset.
Video
and a link to the site (it's in Dutch)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
xdviper said:
I've contacted @SnapDragon on Twitter, and they've said that it's indeed on our phones but it all depends on HTC on unlocking it for us to use. I'm guessing it's all in the radio, Devs gotta look it up and hopefully enable it?
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nawoa said:
Usually if something's disabled on a hardware level it requires more than just clever rom hackers to enable it, and even then it's not perfect. HTC would need to release official drivers or something.
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Great find Rubman. This is rather interesting.
I do hope HTC and our community can figure this out quickly!
GLONASS is very cool, the name alone is kickass. I love seeing new technology come out every day.

Sony Ericsson is gonna enable GLONASS on a bunch of of Xperia phones
Samsung is gonna do the same for the Galaxy Note. Hopefully HTC will wake up and join the trend...
//lys

This maybe due to the fact, that Russia is planning on forcing a increased tax on navstar GPS devices which are not capable of using GLONASS GPS:
To improve development of the user segment, on August 11, 2010, Sergei Ivanov announced a plan to introduce a 25% import duty on all GPS-capable devices, including mobile phones, unless they are compatible with GLONASS. As well, the government is planning to force all car manufacturers in Russia to make cars with GLONASS starting from 2011. This will affect all car makers, including foreign brands like Ford and Toyota, which have car assembly facilities in Russia.
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via "Сотовые и навигаторы без ГЛОНАСС обложат пошлиной в 25% [Non-GLONASS-capable mobiles and satnavs will incur 25% duty]" (in Russian). RBC. 2010-10-27. Retrieved 2010-10-27.
(Coppied that section from Wikipedia, would provide the source link, but don't have enough posts yet.)
The company I work for includes GLONASS GPS receivers in their devices (no phones) for this reason.

GPS is super accurate on my sensation, and Lock is within a few seconds. Way better than my n1 . Why would I want to further drain my phone? It would be cool as a hack, but nothing more to me.

mrbkkt1 said:
GPS is super accurate on my sensation, and Lock is within a few seconds. Way better than my n1 . Why would I want to further drain my phone? It would be cool as a hack, but nothing more to me.
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GPS reception had improved significantly from my Diamond HD to my Desire HD and then took another leap forward when I got me my Sensation XE (and my wife's Wildfire S, for that matter!). Much faster locking and quite accurate. Even locks from within the appartment!
That said, there are times where it shows some deficiencies, especially when I'm stopped. GLONASS is supposed to offer much higher accuracy - and let's face it, more is better
Who knows, maybe you can disable GPS and switch to GLONASS altogether...?

Although the Sensation id better than the Desire S & Desire HD. The HD2 is still WAY BETTER than the Sensation, even with all the GPS tweaks, the HD2 running old Windows Mobile can get a lock in a few seconds even if GPS has not been running for weeks, even without a SIM card & without wifi (no aGPS).

omar302 said:
Although the Sensation id better than the Desire S & Desire HD. The HD2 is still WAY BETTER than the Sensation, even with all the GPS tweaks, the HD2 running old Windows Mobile can get a lock in a few seconds even if GPS has not been running for weeks, even without a SIM card & without wifi (no aGPS).
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HD2? Better? Aw, come on, maybe if you live on a satellite

krakout said:
HD2? Better? Aw, come on, maybe if you live on a satellite
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Yes, also my good old HD (without 2 ) has a better GPS reception than my Sensation now. Sees on average 1-2 satellites more and the satellites it sees have on average a 10% better S/N.
So indeed, it would be highly appreciated from my side to also have GLONASS support on the Sensation. And as GLONASS is only "turned on" when GPS reception is poor, this would not mean too much additional battery drain...
As it seems that HTC will be forced to support GLONASS by the Russian government, I hope that it will only be a matter of time before this comes true...
The Whistler

+1 about HTC and Russia.
Who knows, maybe it was just me, with all my WinMo devices the experience sucked pretty often, with total blackouts. Even my wife's Wildfire S is able to lock in a couple of seconds and without having to hold it against a window as was the case with my older devices. Maybe it's geography-related? I'm in Greece...

krakout said:
+1 about HTC and Russia.
Who knows, maybe it was just me, with all my WinMo devices the experience sucked pretty often, with total blackouts. Even my wife's Wildfire S is able to lock in a couple of seconds and without having to hold it against a window as was the case with my older devices. Maybe it's geography-related? I'm in Greece...
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Based on your experience, I would say its "aGPS" related. As in "assisted GPS that is supposed to be enabled/featured by your operator. As I remeber, Windows Mobile never had "aGPS", so it would make sense that you Android devices are taking advantage of aGPS compared to the WM devices.
Try this, remove SIM cards & turn off wifi to make sure aGPS is not used, then try to get a cold lock.

WinMo did have aGPS. I remember actually downloading and updating the ephemeris manually in desperation to try and get something to show up...
Nice idea, just tried it; got 9 satelites within 4 seconds!

hi. nothing new about sensation and glonass?

omar302 said:
Although the Sensation id better than the Desire S & Desire HD. The HD2 is still WAY BETTER than the Sensation, even with all the GPS tweaks, the HD2 running old Windows Mobile can get a lock in a few seconds even if GPS has not been running for weeks, even without a SIM card & without wifi (no aGPS).
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Click to collapse
The Hd2 GPS really is phenomenal. I pulled out my old hd2 the other day. Or hasn't been powered up since October, and GPS locked within seconds. (And I was inside)I was thinking there was something wrong with my sensation, but now that I see this it makes me feel better. Hd2 just had awesome gps.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

forum dead?

Why is this forum for the G4 so dead? Because it's new and not able to root yet?

Yeah, it was a little early to split the forums. Things'll liven up when root is available.

Plus it seems the bootloader is still locked.

not dead, am hoping it just hasn't come to life yet.
o/

lol not dead

Who knows, but #10!

I'd say pretty dead. Might we be about to miss our "window" for having a heavily supported device?

gboybama said:
I'd say pretty dead. Might we be about to miss our "window" for having a heavily supported device?
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Possibly. There's still a chance if the pro or nexus 5 is somewhat compatible.
I think I'm giving up on anything but nexus devices in the future. It's obvious the carriers don't care about security or usability.
With the recent security issues I need a phone that I own completely.

phineous said:
Possibly. There's still a chance if the pro or nexus 5 is somewhat compatible.
I think I'm giving up on anything but nexus devices in the future. It's obvious the carriers don't care about security or usability.
With the recent security issues I need a phone that I own completely.
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You said it bub. I really didn't care whether I bought the M9, S6 or G4 and bought the G4 due reading that the Snapdragon was easier to dev on (so, no S6) and the 810 ran too hot (so, no M9). I pre-ordered at the first possible opportunity with the expectation of seeing a mass amount of custom ROMs and kernels in a couple months.
Performance has been fine, but obviously, the phone being so locked down is a total buzzkill. I'll never buy another non-Nexus device before it's broken wide open by our awesome dev community.

Why don't many of the OP7Pro-ROMs run on the non-Pro OP7?

Hi guys,
I'm a new owner of a OP7 in the non-Pro edition and I'm looking for how I can make it even work better - using a custom ROM.
First I was a bit disappointed that there are so few custom ROMs in the OP7-forum, but then I found out that some of ROMs over here will also work with my phone.
As I remember that the "hard-specs" are the same for both phones (instead of the camera and the display) I ask myself, why some of these ROMs will only work on the OP7Pro?
Shouldn't they run on both versions?
What is the main reason that I couldn't use the PE-ROM for example? This is really sad as I like this ROM a lot
Best regards and thanks to all devs for their good work!

Some of the specs may be similar but they are totally different phones. The OP7 is basically a OP6T with a upgraded processor not a downgraded OP7 Pro.

Thanks for your reply.
Does this mean, that OP6T-ROMs might run on the OP7? Maybe with a specific Kernel for the OP7?

Never buy the lower model if you want good support. I allways go for the highest model, and theres a reason!

Well, for Xiaomi this wasn't the fact, unfortunately. I just sold my Mi 9 because the lack of frequent updates und bugfixes for their flagship.

mikkis2k said:
Never buy the lower model if you want good support. I allways go for the highest model, and theres a reason!
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Which would be great if they supported the 5G version then!!! Lack of updates yet 4G gets the love and attention

chalmizzle said:
Which would be great if they supported the 5G version then!!! Lack of updates yet 4G gets the love and attention
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And 5g is only for a few places!

chalmizzle said:
Which would be great if they supported the 5G version then!!! Lack of updates yet 4G gets the love and attention
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Because devs didn't buy the 5G model.

But the model they're selling the **** out of and marketing 5g yet don't update it as often as 4g. To date no room supports 5g because of the difference in modems ??*

nrage23 said:
Some of the specs may be similar but they are totally different phones. The OP7 is basically a OP6T with a upgraded processor not a downgraded OP7 Pro.
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The non pro is far closer to the pro than 6t. Same processor, same GPU, same memory. The only major difference is the screen and pop out front camera. In theory Devs could make unified ROMs for both like they do with twrp. Have to say I'm very surprised about the lack of devs on the non pro, especially as it's 90% the same hardware wise. Arguably it's more in the spirit of xda and oneplus. Can only assume the main reason is because it's not available in the USA . I'm not the only person who swapped out the pro for non, as the size was more manageable and didn't have to suffer with the screen accidental touches as it curves round the body of the phone.

redbullman said:
The non pro is far closer to the pro than 6t. Same processor, same GPU, same memory. The only major difference is the screen and pop out front camera. In theory Devs could make unified ROMs for both like they do with twrp. Have to say I'm very surprised about the lack of devs on the non pro, especially as it's 90% the same hardware wise. Arguably it's more in the spirit of xda and oneplus. Can only assume the main reason is because it's not available in the USA . I'm not the only person who swapped out the pro for non, as the size was more manageable and didn't have to suffer with the screen accidental touches as it curves round the body of the phone.
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OnePlus doesn't have a unified ROM so there must be more to it then effort. My guess that the board layout and some of the other chips and sensors make the differences quite large. If processor, gpu and ram were the controlling factors then ROMs could cross brands, but drivers are usually very different between phones, even with similar specs.

Why is development so slow for realme 5 pro?

I mean it is a great device with cool specs, so what gives?
I was actually thinking of buying it. But lack of development really discourages me.

sssaini007 said:
I mean it is a great device with cool specs, so what gives?
I was actually thinking of buying it. But lack of development really discourages me.
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Maybe it's because ColorOS is different from other Android, especially security. Ported ROM, OS or other apps are not as easy as other brands of Android, there must be customization of scrips, drivers, etc.
Another factor is that more and more new devices are appearing at lower prices and better specifications make developers choose other brands.
there are many other factors that make developing this device feel slow.
but there is good news that there are developers like @BluBlu and other developers are starting to manage the Device tree, meaning that soon a stable custom rom version will appear specifically for Realme 5 Pro.

faisalxp said:
Maybe it's because ColorOS is different from other Android, especially security. Ported ROM, OS or other apps are not as easy as other brands of Android, there must be customization of scrips, drivers, etc.
Another factor is that more and more new devices are appearing at lower prices and better specifications make developers choose other brands.
there are many other factors that make developing this device feel slow.
but there is good news that there are developers like @BluBlu and other developers are starting to manage the Device tree, meaning that soon a stable custom rom version will appear specifically for Realme 5 Pro.
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Thank you for the reply. Can we expect a stable miui build for it?
And if you're using the device, what can you say about it's camera, performance, battery, charging and miscellaneous stuff? Should i buy it?

Another factor is that bootloader is not unlockable for EU version users.

sssaini007 said:
Thank you for the reply. Can we expect a stable miui build for it?
And if you're using the device, what can you say about it's camera, performance, battery, charging and miscellaneous stuff? Should i buy it?
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yeah, i heard in several groups that someone has tried ported MUI Rom but it's not stable yet, there are still a lot of bugs. I think if there is already a stable OS version, the others will start to catch up. related to the camera is very good I have never gotten a quality as good as this device for the same price especially when using gcam. The performance is a little lag, but with a little tweak or using a custom ROM, the problem is resolved. battery is very economical if it is not rooted, if root only lasts a day depending on your activities. very fast charging using VOOC and miscellaneous may be related to privacy / security better than other brands.
tonibm19 said:
Another factor is that bootloader is not unlockable for EU version users.
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If using Msmdownload and equalizing the partition size with other Region (which can Unlock Bootloader). can't the Flash Stock Rom Region do and unlock? or maybe even can flash vbmeta and TWRP?

Well in my opinion, the reasons for the slow development could be
- the amount of to be supported devices:
Currently there are ~18 devices which need maintenance and support. This is a huge task for such a new company. And there are more devices to come.
- Support request from "unsupported" regions: Realme devices are being sold in Europe "official" in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Portugal. But you can buy the devices e.g in Germany by ordering over Ebay or Amazon and inofficial resellers. These user might have problems with current "locked" features, like VoLTE/VoWifi in Germany and request support from realme which might leads to a "support flood".
- maybe small developer team?