I need to ask a small favor from the good people of Lemmy.ml Community.

In short, I accidentally wiped the metadata partition on my Poco F3 and now I can't boot into the OS and access my data. I have a lot of pictures, videos and other stuff that I would hate to lose, because of a mistake. But all that is still on the phone, I just can't boot the phone to access it.

Thankfully, there is a way to fix this by creating a full backup of the phone with adb, then using a HEX Editor to manually look through that gigantic file and try to find the files that were in that metadata partition.

A huge thanks to bluet33th, a user from XDA Forums, without whom I would be helpless and couldn't do any of this. It might be a bit complicated and manual process, but it is possible. He explained everything in great detail here, so check it out, especially if you are facing the same problem, this will help you tremendously: https://xdaforums.com/t/how-to-recover-data-if-metadata-partition-was-deleted.4686789/

In order to find these files and put them back where they belong, I need your help, because I have to know their names, exact sizes and at least part of their content, so that I can search for it. Because I'm searching for a specific text in a text file that is 128 GB in size.

I have already tried this on another Xiaomi phone, to make sure this procedure works on Xiaomi phones and it does, but that phone had HyperOS with Android 14 and since every phone and android version is probably different, in order to be sure, I need this information specifically for Poco F3 with Android 13.

It doesn't take long, but if you don't have the time to look inside your metadata partition and tell me which files are inside of that partition and their sizes in bytes, you can just make a backup of the metadata partition and sent it to me, and I'll do the rest of the work.

Here are the steps on how to create a backup:

1. Turn on your phone and boot into TWRP, then connect your phone to a PC, type cmd inside Windows search and run cmd, then position cmd into your platform-tools folder (if you flashed your ROM, you should already have the necessary drivers installed for the next steps to work). For example, if your platform-tools folder on Windows is inside C:\platform-tools, all you need to type into cmd is: cd C:\platform-tools

You can also just go inside your platform-tools folder and type cmd in the address bar and the cmd will start already positioned inside that folder.

2. Then type adb devices and you should see your device, if you do, that means that all the drivers are successfully installed and your phone is detected.

3. Type adb pull /dev/block/by-name/metadata

4. After that, you should see a file named metadata inside C:\platform-tools. That is the file that I'm looking for and as you can see, it takes just a few minutes to get it.

You can skip the next steps (5 and 6), but I'll explain them, just in case someone wants to extract these files for themselves, so that you have them in case something like this happens to you. Of course, you can also proceed to extract the files and tell me their names and sizes.

Here is what you need to do:

5. Extract the content of the metadata file, you can use a software like 7-Zip. Go inside that extracted folder, then into vold > metadata_encryption > key

6. Inside of that key folder, you should see a few files. These are the important files and save them somewhere safe in case you ever need them. Since I don't have them anymore, in order to recreate them, I need to know their exact names and sizes in bytes. You can check the size of every individual file by right clicking on the file and choosing Properties. Then look under Size, not Size on disk, and in parenthesis, you should see the size in bytes.

Please, if you could check the size of every file and write down which file has what size. I would really appreciate it.

I'm specifically looking for someone who has a Poco F3 with Android 13 and MIUI, because I'm not sure if HyperOS changed something, so maybe the number of files or their size is different. But feel free to post the information even if you have HyperOS, but please mention that, so that I am aware of it.

Thanks a lot for your help, it really means a great deal.

Hello, I bought my first used phone (Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro) and was wondering what are the best practices taken before using it. I've read the reviews of the merchant selling the phone, looked into ratings and asked some questions about the condition of the phone, so I'm sure of my purchase on that end.

What about after receiving the phone? I know I would run a factory reset, aside from that, is there anything else to do?

Across the world, the biggest smartphone manufacturers are Apple (28%), Samsung (24%), Xiaomi (12%), Oppo (6%) and Vivo (5%). However, there are geographic patterns in popularity, with Apple dominating North America and East Asia, while Samsung leads in South America, Europe, Africa and West Asia in addition to its home turf of South Korea. Xiaomi is the most popular phone brand across South Asia, Spain, Venezuela, Ukraine, Madagascar, Kyrgyzstan and Palestine, while Tecno is popular in West and Central Africa. Oppo, Vivo and Huawei lead in Indonesia, Bhutan and Togo respectively.

Do you keep lists of your favorite things, such as movies, books, recipes, or music albums? You might keep list(s) that looks like this:

• Network (1976)
• Lone Star (1996)
• Devils (1971)
• The Seventh Seal (1957)
• ... Many more films

But how do you rank these?

You might be tempted to order them by preference, but this could quickly get overwhelming for long lists.

A much easier method is to use pairwise comparisons, which shows you single head-to-head pairs, and has you choose which one you like best.

After doing a small number of these matchups, Rank-My-Favs can confidently create a ranked list for you.

Under the hood, Rank-My-Favs uses the advanced Glicko rating system, to determine how many matches are necessary, and for ranking.

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Android 15 Beta 4 is available today as the preview cycle nears its end.

Hey all, so I used Blokada (5, I think) for a long time but then when they forced an upgrade I moved on to AdAway. AdAway is great, it's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

I decided to give ProtonVPN a try, due to recent state legislative website laws. I like it, it's cool but it doesn't block ads in the free version and AdAway can't run at the same time, afaik.

I've heard lots of people talking about how great FF with ublock is and I only recently switched back to Firefox so I'm considering giving that a try but I'm getting overwhelmed.

What is the right combination to block most ads as well pretending to be from another state?

I have a Pixel 6 Pro (fully stock) who's wallpaper was migrated from an old S series Samsung. The wallpaper is a photo I took many years ago that I can't seem to find, so the wallpaper is the last remaining copy that I have. Where can I find the photo and/or how can I extract it so that I cam back it up?

cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/1033120

on my last post I wrote device is a redmi 9c. Turns out it's a redmi 10c and the custom ROM I wanted to install https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-13-unofficial-lineageos-20-0-unified-for-redmi-9a-9c-10a-blossom.4609367/ won't work.

Anyhow, to unlock the device the official way I have to identify to their services through a phone line, not internet, and purchase a sim card, which I'm not going to do to experiment with this device.

I have no use for the stock software in the device and I'd rather have anything foss that works or kinda works.

If you ever experimented with this particular model or know what could work, feel free to post an answer.

debian 12.5

A good video to share with those who refuse to leave their bubble.

I want to start learning android dev and I understand that I’ll need the android sdk and cli tools. I want to try it in a kvm because even though it is open source, I would like to keep it separate from my main system. Which distro and vm settings do you suggest I use? Any other tips or your experience with android development on linux would be helpful as well.

Hi everyone,

I have a problem where the alarm on my Google Pixel phone is dismissed after about 10 minutes of ringing, causing me to miss my alarm.

Is there a way to make the alarms ring indefinitely, or at least for 1 hour before it's automatically dismissed?

Awesome Android Apps

AAA

Hi all,

for 2 years, sporadically, I've been adding awesome FOSS apps with the following:

Rules

• Open Sourced
• Free of charge (on F-Droid and source code repository releases)
• Free as in Freedom
• Ad-free
• Installed and tested by me or by contributor
• Privacy-friendly aware
• Easy to use
• Still in development or polished experience
• Does not lack features compared to proprietary app
• Does not need an account (the only exceptions are self-hosted) apps)
• Has dark theme

...tested by my and then later by contributors. I think many of you will appreciate this simple README.md repo, and I would love some help with it.

🏔️ Codeberg version

I hope you will find it useful! 🤩

I really love solitaire, and I'm looking for a good looking FOSS app. Ideally it should have Klondlike and Napoleon's Tomb. I currently am using the Simple Solitaire Collection( link found here ), which is good but doesn't look very modern.

Hi, I recently experiment by installing vscode and nix on an Android tablet. What do you think about it ? Have you used an android tablet to create a simple development environment?

Another weather app for android. Modern design, take a look. 👀

I want to set up a 'home phone' network for the kids in a couple of different households. The kids are too young to have their own phones, but are currently dependent on parents to contact each other in the way we did when we were kids

My idea at the moment is to set up an old Android phone on the wifi in each house with messenger or similar, then uninstall all other internet apps and lock down the play store

Does this sound like the best option? If there a better tool that is still cheap/free and will be relatively safe for the kids to use unattended?

https://github.com/LawnchairLauncher/lawnchair

I'd like to harden my device and put some of my apps (mail & chat mostly) behind an additional layer of security. I found this app, that comes pretty close to what I had in mind.

However, it hasn't been updated in 5 years and some options in the app are still flagged as in development. Anyone know of a maintained alternative?

I am using Insular and create a work profile.

In the Work profile, say I want to install a modded version of an app; alongwith it I also want to install the normal version in the Home profile.

When I install the second app, it doesn't installs and a message appears that sort of says, "Another user has already installed this app which is different from this and is of some other version".

Till now, i always thought work profile makes a complete another instance and no corelation with the Home Profile. I want to know was am I wrong somewhere, or had not doing the setup properly.

Hello, I just switched to Android 13, and I am wondering what is this toggle doing on top of the 3 options? A bit confused.

Edit: on Asus zenfone 10, in case it varies from vendor to vendor

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/10113624

what's a reliable way to determine my device's battery health? something like Coconutbattery for macOS - charge cycles, health, factory/remaining mAh, etc...

tried CPU-Z, says health is "Good". gee, thanks... out of what, "Excellent" through "Shit" or what?

backstory, I got a Samsung Tab S6 used, wiped it and installed LineageOS 20 and I'm using for a couple of months. the battery kinda sucks. granted, I have like 3-4 hours SOT/day but a 7000 mAh battery should last a couple of days; pure guesstimation, I had an iPad some years ago and that thing lasted for eons.

if I leave it overnight with 10ish% battery remaining and battery saver on, it's dead by morning. that sort of drain can't be normal? on the other hand, I don't have google services so every app has its own running service - syncthing, KDE Connect, Allcast, Jellyfin Player, etc.

there's the stuff I can read from /sys/class/power_supply/battery/ but nothing useful in there; like charge_full and charge_full_design are the same (70400) and other promising sounding items are unset or nonsensical.

tried the same on my Redmi phone w/LOS, completely different files there and equally useless.

I don't wanna go through sourcing the battery, prying the thing open and replacing it, only to find out that's how it's supposed to work. any ideas?