What a Difference 2 Years Makes

Two years ago, I was using Talkatone to make calls with Google Voice on Wi-Fi while traveling abroad to avoid roaming fees with my cellular carrier.

One year ago, I was using Talkatone as a standalone service to make Wi-Fi calls while on vacation in the mountains - a veritable carrier dead zone - after Google pulled the plug on third-party apps using the Google Voice API.

Now, two years after the first go around, one year later in the same mountain getaway, I changed my "Forward Unreachable" setting to my Google Voice number and could receive calls from anyone on my carrier number via the Hangouts app - provided I was in the cabin where Wi-Fi was strong.

Two years is an eternity in tech and waiting for this Google Voice / Hangouts integration was frustratingly long; however, the pay off was worth it. Next stop, carrier Wi-Fi calling on AT&T ... any bets on how long that one will take?

Defeating Lollipop Longing with KitKat Kustomizations

Even with a third-party ROM, I won't be getting Lollipop on my long-in-the-tooth Samsung Galaxy S3. It runs fine, doesn't give me any real troubles, gets app updates from the Play Store - just no operating system updates.

And of course, that's the issue.

Some of the new features of Lollipop - most notably notifications and smart lock - are missing from KitKat (4.4.2 is what my GS3 is running). And I need them!

Developers to the rescue!

Notifications

For notifications, I looked at a few options and first settled on Heads-up notifications. It was easy to set-up and use, offered a clean and smooth user interface and did what I wanted - mostly. It didn't offer multiple notifications, only the latest one. Feature requests were made but it seems the developer doesn't want that in this app. From the open-source repository:

"I ran a poll on my website a while ago, where over 1,000 users voted. Roughly 50% of the users wanted support for multiple notifications. [...] (this option should probably be implemented in a separate app as it kills the whole point of non-intrusive notifications)."

Since "Android app developer" isn't on my resume and my limited programming chops couldn't make heads or tails of the open source code, I needed to find something else.

Enter Floatify. This app does the same but allows for multiple notifications. However, you'll need the ProKey ($2.49) to enable all features. I sprung for it and am pretty happy so far.

Smart Lock

Like notifications, I looked at a few options and settled on Dislock. This allowed me to set up my home WiFi network as a trusted location and disable the lockscreen while at home. I previously used the pattern unlock but this app (and most others of this kind to be fair) only supports PIN and password mode. So I had to switch and get used of using PIN to unlock; not a big deal.

This app too has a paid-for mode ($2.99) with an in-app purchase to allow more than one trusted "device". Since I've set up my home WiFi, I can't set up my Bluetooth headset or car Bluetooth also without the purchase. For now, skipping the lockscreen at home is fine.

Another note is that when this app installs and activates, it changes the default lockscreen security to "None" when on the trusted network. This means pressing any button on my phone (power or home) activates the home screen. This can lead to accidental app opening or other issues since there isn't the intermediate swipe to get to the home screen. I tried setting the default lockscreen security to "Swipe" and it WORKED! Now, at home, pressing a button activates the swipe to unlock screen (no security). And when I'm away, PIN to unlock appears to maintain security in untrusted locations. Works a treat!

Trick or Treat - KitKat Halloween Candy

I didn't get a new Nexus 5, nor do I have Android KitKat 4.4 on my Samsung Galaxy S3. However, others have managed to get the APK's for some new Google apps off the Nexus 5. I didn't venture to load the Google Experience Launcher - I use Nova Launcher Prime in favor of standard Samsung TouchWiz. But I did have to test drive the new Hangouts app - now with integrated SMS.

At this point, the Play store did not have the updated Hangouts v2 (only version 1.2 which I had loaded). I grabbed the APK, did the standard side-load procedure through ES File Explorer and tested it out.

At first startup, it notified me that it can handle SMS and asked if I wanted to enable it. Hell yes! And 'BAM', there it was - all my existing SMS threads showing up (including MMS messages) in the Hangouts interface. I tested with some texting to/from the phone and received messages in both the Hangouts app and the default messaging app - as I expected (they're pulling data from the same store).

I did not get the standard messaging app notifications when texts arrived - only the Hangouts notification in the notification bar - excellent! So no double notifications, but message counts is the only thing missing. As I mentioned, I use Nova Launcher - more specifically, TeslaUnread - to put the unread count overlay on things like GMail and messaging. It never worked for MMS messages, and now it doesn't work for SMS either. No unread count overlaying the Hangouts icon in my dock. Not to worry, with the notification bar working, I'm sure I won't miss any texts.

So even though no KitKat (bars or software) were received for Halloween, I still did get a treat! Now just waiting on Google Voice VoIP calling so I don't have to use Talkatone.

I've Been Busy ... Box

I recently had a client where I did some wireless scanning and aside from the heavy PC tools, I used Wifi Analyzer on my Android phone. It's a nifty little tool, but didn't always show the detailed information I wanted. So I also installed Network Info II to get the detailed network information.

What I thought would be really helpful would be a terminal to access the Unix command line and I found that with Android Terminal Emulator. While a stellar app that provides a direct command line interface, it relies on the system installed commands - so we have some file manipulation tools (e.g., ls, cd, cat). It does not provide text manipulation tools (e.g., awk, cut, grep) and handy networking tools (e.g., nc, telnet, ssh). For that, you need to install busybox.

A lot of searching indicated most busybox installations for Android required root and I did not root my phone. This seemed odd since once installed, most command line utilities don't need root to run (except things like 'ping' which only required suid). I finally found some instructions to install a "non-root" busybox and tried it. I'm not linking to it because it only partially worked - the network tools couldn't perform name resolution; a partial success.

The solution I used was BusyBox Non-Root. This little application installs busybox, creates the necessary symlinks and provides a shortcut to copy/paste the install directory into a Unix $PATH statement. You can paste that into the "Initial command" under "Preferences" in the Android Terminal Emulation app. Now, from a command line I have access to working versions of 'nslookup', 'telnet', 'ssh' and many other text manipulation tools.

The only puzzling thing I found was netcat (nc) wasn't available. Running buxybox from the command line showed that 'nc' was available in the package, so a quick 'ln -s ./busybox ./nc' solved that problem. Of course I tested it and 'nc' works too!

Android Update Brings IPv6

I was disappointed with AT&T not providing the Android 4.1.2 update when other US-based carriers made it available, especially since we got the 4.1.1 update pretty early. Even more disappointing was when this was finally available - around the beginning of August - my device never upgraded. A Google search the other night showed it was available and when I manually checked for updates - sure enough, it was.

I will say I'm pleased with the update. Multiwindow is pretty cool even if not standard. It doesn't support all apps - and even some common ones I use that would be nice to use in multiwindow mode - like Google Keep.

The best part is that IPv6 now seems to work! At least over WIFI. I have IPv6 running at home and was (again) disappointed when my wife's iPad and iPhone could get to IPv6 sites and my Android couldn't. But after the update, I tried What Is My IPv6 Address from my Android and got an IPv6 address back (you'll see your IPv4 address if IPv6 isn't working)! I confirmed with my favorite IPv6-only site Loops of Zen.

Smartphone Snacks

Last night I fed my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S3 some jelly beans - that is, the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update. AT&T / Samsung announced availability earlier this week. However, they also said there would be no over-the-air update. So this was a manual process - first installing Kies from Samsung.

The Kies install on Windows 7 x64 was kludgy. I started the install and it kept looping at "Installing Hotfix". I pressed "Cancel" and it warned me it hadn't completed the install and asked for a confirmation. I canceled that and allowed the install to continue and that seemed to skip out of the loop as the install proceeded and completed successfully.

The next step was to connect my GS3 to the computer with USB and Kies recognized it. I got a pop-up for the new firmware update and allowed it to go forward. A few confirmations and a very slow loading and update process followed. But again, SUCCESS!

I've only been exploring / using Jelly Bean for a few hours but it seems nice and smooth. I see I have an explicit "Driving Mode" (although I don't know what it does) even though I already side-loaded Google Car Home. I already had loaded Chrome as my default browser so that remained. I didn't like that the Accounts under "Settings" are now all listed in the main Settings menu rather than a sub menu. The previous sub menu had an icon regarding sync status for each account. Now you need to click into each account to see the sync status.

I haven't had a chance to try IPv6 yet. Previously, I would get IPv6 addresses via SLAAC on my home network, but I didn't have access to the IPv6 Internet. I'll do some testing in the next few days when I find the time.