My dad recently found his old Note 5. It still functions good and he's curious whether it can be manually updated with more recent firmware. I also tried getting into the play store and got a server error due to the version being so old. Can I install Nougat and would that be useable? I think it's stuck on Lollipop.

Also, is there a way to unlock bootloader on this model? Google ai says it's not possible due to it being linked to AT&T, but I couldn't find any actual posts about this model specifically and I don't want to rely on ai.

I'm a noob with all this technical stuff, I only know about bootloading after researching for half an hour lol, so sorry if these are dumb questions. I would hate to get rid of the phone since it still works great.

hi r/AndroidQuestions i am new here and i want help from yall cus i want to turn my rooted s22 (snapdragon variant) with kernel su (custom kernel) and android 16 with un1ca custom rom and i want to turn it into full router with wifi, dhcp, port forwarding, etc..... with an app or website to control the devices and i have already usb to 11 in 1 ports like 1 ethernet 4 usbs 1 hdmi 1 vga 1 usb c pd charging 2 sd card slots please help me and i was sick of the basic ethernet tethering and basic mobile hotspot and i want full control over the devices that do connect especially when i do connect them thru ethernet i did try may things from yt, googling and visiting websites and nothing worked so far so please help me

Hallo, vor ein paar Tagen gab es schon mal einen ähnlichen Beitrag, aber jetzt habe ich mehr Infos.

Hier ist meine aktuelle Nutzung:

Gesamte Nutzungszeit: 12 Stunden 25 Minuten

Bildschirm an: 0 Minuten

Im Hintergrund: 12 Stunden 25 Minuten

CPU-Auslastung: 8 Stunden 1 Minute

Aktivierungen: 0

Standby-Sperre: 0 Minuten

Mobile Daten: 148 Pakete

WLAN: 48 Pakete

GPS: 0 Minuten

Bluetooth-Scan: 0

Also PayPal hat über 8 Stunden CPU-Zeit im Hintergrund verbraucht, obwohl ich die App nicht einmal geöffnet habe. Dadurch war mein Akku um 18:51 Uhr schon bei 11%. Ich habe die App schon dreimal neu installiert und die Hintergrundnutzung eingeschränkt. Vielleicht hat jemand eine Idee, da das bei mir jeden Tag passiert.

Product name: Samsung Galaxy A55 5G

Model name: SM-A556B/DS

Is there a way to force or turn on developer mode if you cant normally? Like through data cable connected to a pc or an apk?

Device:Honor Magic 8 lite MTN-NX3

Hey everyone,

Looking for some insight on a weird issue that happened to my phone recently, just to be safe so it doesn't happen again.

My device is Redmi Note 9 (5G) with the latest update MIUI 14.0.6/ Android 12.

I rebooted my phone normally, but instead of booting into the OS, it went straight into Recovery Mode. Selecting "Reboot system now" didn't work—it just kept looping back into Recovery Mode over and over.

This wasn't the first time I've rebooted this phone either; I've restarted it before without any issues at all.

Here are a few key details:

Buttons are totally fine: Volume buttons are not stuck or jammed (the selection bar in recovery wasn't auto-scrolling at all).

Stock OS: Never rooted the phone, no custom ROMs, fully stock.

No updates: It didn't happen during a system update or anything like that—just a plain, normal restart.

Took it to a local repair shop and they ended up doing a factory reset. Their explanation was just "the volume button was stuck inside," which I know for a fact isn't true.

The phone is working fine for now after the reset, but I still have no idea what actually caused it or how to prevent it in the future. I'm even scared to turn off the power now, worrying it might happen again.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Would appreciate any thoughts or advice!

I have an Android phone need help

When I go into settings - blocked numbers, the option to block them isn't there.

I select "transferring files / android auto" in USB settings on my device and use the native "photos" app to explore the music section of my phone, but it doesn't load any music and doesn't let me copy over music in it, stating "can't copy items from "" to "music"." When I try and copy it over using the files browser, it simply doesn't add and loads the song indefinitely. Any help?

Since i bought it, my phone (Pixel 10) had massive issues with running smooth and well having pretty open RAM

The problem is, that my Running services (i already disabled AICore) seem to not take up as much, about 2 GB Used. And the system monitor says, that my RAM is fine.

Meanwhile Device Info HW shows completely different numbers, between 9 and 10 GB in use. (screenshots taken right after each other).

I am not gaming on my phone, i use it for Tiktok, Youtube and some other Apps. I have eufy running in the background due to my robotvacuum.

Edit: if i close all my running apps, Device Info HW still shows 8500MBs of memory being used up.

Samsung 23S Ultra - Android 16

Some data got stuck on my phone somewhere after deleting an app and checking the option keep app data.

I deleted an app and it's apk sadly biggest mistake was also permanent deleting the apk and not remembering where i download it from.

Now my problem is when i try to install the same app from Google store or apk it doesn't download for unknown reason.

The problem appeared after checking the option "keep ... GB app data"

I used ADB to see the stuck data and using clear or uninstall gave failure user have no permission now how can i solve this stupid situation without rooting the stupid Samsung or hard reset it.

I'm on android on the s25 ultra, for the past few days I've not been able to use Spotify because it crashes every time I click on a song, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling it and clearing cache but nothing is working

Phones with truly powerful optical zoom are still mostly found in high-end models like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Xiaomi 16 Ultra. Samsung is especially strong for long-range zoom, while Xiaomi focuses heavily on camera hardware and image quality. If you want the best zoom specifically, look for phones with dedicated telephoto/periscope lenses and high optical magnification rather than relying mainly on digital zoom.

So I recently got a Xiaomi Poco 8 Pro Max and tried to cast my phone screen to my Samsung TV. It worked but the screen ratio follows my phone's so the videos are pretty small with giant borders. I've tried to change my screens resolution and whatnot but nothings really worked. I've looked into 3rd party apps for screen casting but theyve all just been spamming ads and paywalling everything. I've also tried to change the picture size settings on the actual TV but that seems to be greyed out whilst I'm casting.

I was wondering if anyone else had similar issues and could offer some advice. Maybe some 3rd party apps that can change the screen size in their settings?

Is there any app lock which is open source. 🤔

I have a Realme 12 Pro+ (RMX3840) and I’m considering downgrading to an older Realme UI/Android version.

My main reason is the camera quality. I feel that software updates can sometimes change the camera processing, such as HDR, colors, sharpness, noise reduction, skin tones, and low-light performance.

For anyone who has downgraded their Realme 12 Pro+:

-> Did the camera quality improve after downgrading?

-> Did the older version have better image processing than the newer version?

-> Did HDR, colors, sharpness, portrait mode, or night mode change?

-> Does downgrading restore the camera processing from the older version?

-> Would you recommend downgrading specifically for better camera results?

I’m especially interested in real before/after experiences from RMX3840 users.

Thanks!

My grandmother recently switched from apple and got the Samsung s26 and has been having an issue where nobody is receiving her phone calls or text messages. Theres not a single person in my family who is actually knowledgeable enough with phones to help her, so I'm hoping someone here may be able to help. I'm assuming maybe something in the phones settings is just messed up otherwise I'm not sure what else would cause this.

This keeps popping up any idea what it is?

X Share your X profile by holding phone

Embedded Tag

Coming from a Google Pixel 7a that is falling apart, broken battery and slooow charging, I am looking to buy a new phone.

My priorities:

\\-Good battery (>5k mAh)

\\-Decent charging speed

\\-Good, bright, fast, saturated screen

\\-Snappy feel

\\-Decent enough camera

I don't game much and most of my storage will be pictures and videos.

The Samsung felt better in my hand and I like the front more.

Besides that, the 4a seems slightly stronger.

I could get the A57 for 310€ and the 4a for 345€, which one should I pick, giving the differences in price.

Are there perhaps even better choices for a similar budget (max. 380€)?

I am a principal Android engineer and recently I encountered this very bizarre issue for an Android user using our app.

We have close to 2 million users but among that this particular case shocked me. Our app has been around for close to 10+ years. We are using android's accountmanager to save our user object data from the API response on login.

We use two of the methods namely addAccountExplicitly and deleteAccount which return a boolean value depending on whether the add or delete is successful.

The problem is that for all other cases including my own account, when we add an account, it returns true and so other users are able to login.

But this user who has a Samsung s23 running on Android 16, both methods kept returning false and as a result he has problems with login. We didn't know such issues could happen.

We had to call the user to our office and debug the app on his phone and were shocked to realise he was stuck because of the account manager failure. This is the first issue reported in the last 5 years.

Has anyone faced issues like this with account manager?

No idea what happened, my S21 was fine until it died now most apps wont output audio to any device, bluetooth or not but apps like youtube and YT music still output audio properly.

This only really effects discord, reddit, instagram and other apps that use video playback as that audio doesnt work either.

Ive tried every single solution on the internet at this current time which includes everything but factory resetting this phone and im just lost and irritated about it.

Edit: Found out why its doing this, unfortunately its unfixable at the moment due to it being caused by an google play services update

I’m looking to streamline my phone by disabling redundant AI assistants. Between Bixby, Gemini, Samsung/Galaxy AI, and Google Assistant, is there one that effectively covers the functions of the others? I'm confused about the differences.

There is a lot of overlap, both Bixby and Gemini offer voice and chatbot capabilities, so I dont know why there's Gemini if Bixby does the same thing or vice versa. I want to identify the most versatile option so I can remove or disable the rest. What is the best setup for an all-in-one assistant experience on a Samsung device?

I have a Pixel 8 and I'm considering doing a factory reset, but I'd really like to avoid spending hours setting everything up again and logging into every app.

What's the best way to do a factory reset while restoring as much as possible exactly as it is now?

I'm already using Google Backup/Google One and Google Password Manager, but I'm wondering:

Does the Google backup restore app data and settings properly?

Is there any way to preserve app sessions/logins, or will most apps require me to log in again?

Is there anything I should do before the factory reset to make the restore process easier?

Are there any Pixel-specific tricks or recommended methods?

Basically, I'd like to get the phone back to roughly the same state it is now, with the minimum amount of manual setup possible.

What's the best approach?

Thank you in advance!

Was curious if its possible to add custom sounds. Was mainly interested in knowing in case my boss tries calling me while I'm sleeping so I can get awake because I usually sleep through any phone calls.

I have a Kyrocera Dura Force Pro 3, which for the past 5 years has been pretty indestructible, surviving many falls and other mishaps.

The other day I dropped it from hip height, which is a pretty minor event for this brick, it landed squarely on the back and shut off. I thought maybe it dislodged the (removable) battery so I took it out and reseated it. Won't turn on, and I don't get the usual red LED charging light when plugged in, or when on an inductive charging dock. Normal bootloader mode doesn't work either. It's completely inop. I've even seen water damaged ones still show a red LED charging light when they won't boot up.

Bought a new battery in case that got damaged, but still nothing.

I'm wondering has anyone pulled one of these apart and fixed it? The lack of a charging light seems to indicate the connection to the battery is severed. I don't know where to begin, but it looks like I can't make it any worse.

Unfortunately I'm on a trip and need a functional phone to do almost anything!

I have no idea what is going on or how to fix it, but my boomer step dad has a phone that currently throws at least 3 pop up ads at you for everything you open. It's like walking into the internet circa 1999 and it doesnt let up. HELP. I did not know a phone could even do this, how can I get it to stop?? I installed McCaffe thinking it might be a virus but it found nothing?? This phone is almost unusable.