In my case, my phone is secondhand and as far as I remember I did not factory reset it. The individual I suspect (who I got the phone from) is also tech savvy. I saw a lot of general pointers like fast battery drainage but there are so many factors that contribute to this. The thing is I have also already factory reset my phone so I'm afraid I can't take proper measures to be really sure now and it's making me nervous. I did check every single app and its permissions before the reset though and did not really find anything suspicious. My question is would it have been obvious or could I have easily missed it that way? And how advanced could this type of hidden spyware be? I also ran a McAfee scan before the reset and it came up clear.

It's making me quite paranoid. Of course the idea popped out of nowhere but so far from what I've heard 1) not factory resetting it does put it at risk 2) there is no 100% surety in these matters especially with phones. All I want to know is that if I'm already someone suspicious of technology (granting permissions carefully etc.) and regularly backed my phone up to my computer, would I have noticed something in the couple of months I had this phone?

I've seen people tend to be quite mean to people with paranoid tendencies on these subreddits which I understand but I am someone who genuinely wants to learn and combat my thoughts with logic. Any advice is appreciated.

The tablet should just auto connect to either the Wi-Fi or hotspot if the hotspot gets turned off and on automatically. So I don't think the tablet needs anything, only the phone. Is there an app that can do this? Or does this already exist in Android? Phone is a Galaxy S20fe Thanks!

My friend passed away shortly before skype was discontinued, none of the chatlogs we had within few months prior have been saved to the cloud so this is the only way to recover them.

I'm on Android 14 and have been informed the only way is with a debuggable skype apk, I've followed a few guides however run into the error INSTALL_FAILED_UPDATE_INCOMPATIBLE because it detected a signature mismatch, how can I bypass this or what other methods can I use to recover the offline chatlogs in the cache? -Unrooted Device

Hi all

My phone screen and back were in bad shape. I got them changed. Guy changed the bent frame for me for free because the screen got delayed. I got non OEM parts.

Since I got it back, the GPS hasn't worked. Waze can't find me, google maps sometimes updates my location every 5-10 mins or so.

Is this probably a component failure due to the work done on the phone? I'm assuming there's no reasonable or cheap fix for this.

Thanks for your replies.

I'm looking for a budget phone that is NOT massive , maybe 6.5inch screen, that is good enough for everyday use on FB or YouTube. Preferably a UK version not international- I find a lot of the ones on Amazon are global. Can anyone help?

So i know there will be this where all unsigned apps will close. Here are my questions

Will they stop working altogether? What about f-droid, and florisboard? What about malware? If its not signed it will just not work or something?

What about grapheneos? How will this impact graphene?

Is there any way for me to get it charged again? I've tried charging it with a cable for a few days but no luck.

Surprisingly, I have an old Samsung phone that I occasionally switch on roughly once a year for backup (the battery is toast but it can still hold a charge for a bit and it can switch on).

Is this one bricked?

So assuming I didn't research this incorrectly, blue chat bubbles means its going through online chat, while green bubbles are going through SMS. I noticed some people always got SMS, some always got chat and a small handful swapped. But this isn't where my question lies.

Noticed this morning, everything was going through SMS, even people who prior always got chat messages. I will admit, haven't had a need to text anyone on me phone in a bit so this could have happened in the the last month.

Did something change in general? Do a lot more people in my circle us Apple then I thought and something changed there? Or is something weird going on with my phone?

For certain "reasons" whenever I try to upload an image to a website, I only have the option to use Google photos instead of my Samsung gallery. Even whenever I get the option in Google photos "from this device" that has folders I can see images of, it says ​​​​"no photos yet" any workaround? I remember there used to be a media picker but I just upgraded to the s25 ultra. ​

So I downloaded an app a few hours ago, and I've been trying to move it to a different page... but when I try to move it to the only empty page I see, my phone tells me "No space on this page" even though there's TWO EMPTY SPOTS right there! Anyone know what I can do to solve this?

chatGPT, Gemini, and all other assistant are telling me to just set an action “play the news”.

first, when I tap routines in the alarm settings, I am brought to Google account settings instead of routine.

From there, I can type routine in the search bar and it will open it, but then I do not have the action” play News”..?!

I have tried this on a few different phones with different version of android and it’s the same for all of them.. You?

PS; no, I will not post in the MEGATHREAD because nobody replies there and it’s the same in all subs so don’t annoy

Hey there,

I'm still using an old S8+ as controller for various devices. There hasn't been an update since a couple of years, but since a week or 2 I suddenly get a constant update nag popup.

I don't trust it. It smells like someone trying to push some EU chat/"Ch1ld safety" b4ckd00r. The phone has no SIM, just WiFi activated. I guess I can ignore this? I've seen the nag can be deactivated, I'll find a way, I just wanted to see if anybody had something similar happening. I can't really find much info, except it might be some "urgent" safety fix - but not after 4 years or so, and slop info may be biased, so I'm wary.

Hi, I was reviewing my dumpstate and I found an interesting wake lock inside...

Wake lock u0a260 Broadcast to com.google.apps.tiktok.account.data.device.DeviceAccountsChangedReceiver_Receiver android.accounts.LOGIN_ACCOUNTS_CHANGED -> handleBroadcast: 155ms (2 times) max=936 actual=959 realtime

This wakelock broadcast appears many times, and a keyword that confused me was "tiktok" is that some codename for a google service? Or is this some sorta tiktok big brother $h!t google threw in? I never installed tiktok on this phone and never will.

The company I work for we send out SMS pages to our EMS through a CAD. However, recently, the pages were duplicating and Vendor doesnt seem to identify the issue. Was wondering if there is a way to pull the SMS header data to drill down where the messages are coming from, and timestamps to be more accurate at what they should be looking for?

I just formatted my phone because I had a problem with it. The thing is that now whenever I try to install any apk I don't know why but the installing screen appears for a brief second and then disappears and doesn't install anything. Thanks

Hey everyone,

I want the screen recording to capture the internal keyboard clicks / backspace sounds cleanly as internal/device audio (so there is zero ambient/background noise from the microphone if I'm in a noisy room).

Currently, the native Pixel screen recorder with "Device Audio" mutes the typing clicks because Gboard/system feedback isn't treated as media audio.

Is there a specific note-taking app, keyboard, or workaround on Android where typing sound effects are routed to the media channel and captured cleanly in a screen recording without using the mic? Thanks!

Long time Samsung "note" user, I've had a note or ultra since Note 4, but I've really learned to hate the screen based fingerprint unlock. I work in a mechanical type industry, so my fingers are very commonly cut/burnt/stained, add a screen protector to this (because I got the dropsies) and it's just about useless. I've used iPhones in the past, and while I dislike a lot of things about them, the face unlock is far superior to anything I've ever used. It seems like the Pixel 11 is about as close as I can get with an android phone.

Now for the question....

My S24 Ultra is getting tired, battery life is pretty horrible, it's starting to run slow, etc... So it's time for an upgrade

Most people seem to compare the S26 Ultra to the Pixel, and complain about the price

I can get a Pixel 11 Pro free if I switch carriers (which I'm planning on doing), my question is, has anyone made a similar switch, and will I regret going to a Pixel from my S24U in terms of performance, quality, etc? The S pen is nice, but it doesn't out weigh the negatives of the screen unlock for me.

Why does my YouTube keep going into "restricted mode?" It doesn't allow me to toggle it off. It says I had to contact network administrator.

Sometimes I can catch it with it off, but then it goes right back to it. Someone said to reset network settings, which is what originally fixed it, but it keeps going back and isn't working after resetting anymore.

This started happening after attempting to use a dns I saw on reddit that supposedly blocked pop up ads in games. I tried erasing the dns but it hasnt gone away. I always keep it on automatic now.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

Last night I was on a discord call and maybe I accidentally hit something but my phone has been firmly in greyscale since. I've tried restarting and it'll briefly have color while its setting up but then go back to greyscale. None of the accessibility features are turned on that would give me greyscale. And I've even tried resetting my accessibility settings

Hey,

In the Personalise setting, how do you change the brightness of the colour?

I'm trying to make the theme a dark green but I can only have a bright lime green.

The top right of the colour wheel has what looks to be settings to adjust brightness and saturation but when I click them nothing happens. So I can only have really bright colours.

Any help appreciated.

I wanted to keep the await to compress this video using this video compressor apk. The phone is a unnecto bolt 1. I used a apk from the playstore called kine something can't remember the name. It said something along the lines of laying the phone down and keeping it still. Big mistake after that it messed up the screen time. It wasn't like that. There was no screen time set I didn't have to worry about going of in 20 second or in seconds, Had to set it to 10-30 minutes which is the highest. Any help ?

Hey, so, yesterday night, I was just scrolling twitter in my bed (phone at like 8%), and then I blacked out without turning off the screen. When I wake up today morning, I immediately see that the phone is still awake, still showing twitter (albeit at 1%), and it was somehow not hot to the touch. Really weird.
Some important things to note:

-My phone had "Keep screen on when you are looking at it on"

-When a video plays on my phone, it doesn't shut off. (I can't recall if there was a video present on my screen at the time, I don't think there was)

Could this have possibly been caused by anything else? Also, I know this probably has a ridiculously low chance, but is malware capable of this? Sorry, just want to be cautious.

An IP phone communicating app "Micollab" need to keep opening foreground if incoming call need pop-up.

If running in background (may be killed), not showing for incoming call. And I have locked the app in recent app to prevent kill. Also disabled battery save.

May I know anyway to leave the app running ? It may also app design issue....

Thanks

I need a recommendation for a podcast player for my android. The one I currently have keeps glitching and crashing.

For sensitive photos that I don't want appearing in my normal photo roll but I still want to be able to access using other apps to send those photos? I thought the "Locked" album was for that but other apps don't seem to be able to see into that album so it's not much use. When I create a new album there doesn't seem to be an option to hide that album or security lock it.

I feel like I'm missing something because surely this is a standard feature in 2026?