Tag: Google

Adding Arabic support to Nexus One

After my return from Canada and getting my Nexus One Mobile, I decided last Saturday to add the Arabic support to Android 2.2, after 10 mins of hard work and scary moments :D, I restored all my apps and data to my N1 with Arabic.

I don’t take any credits for this quick guide, all information were gathered from here and their and I’m not responsible for any bricked devices or data lost and this procedures will void your warranty.. I am warning you

Please note this article is just for Nexus One (Google Phone) with Froyo (Android 2.2) Version.

Ingredients:

Procedures:

  • Unzip the Android SDK in whatever folder you like
  • Go to your Mobile, from Settings –>Applications –>Development –> Enable USB Debugging
  • Connect your mobile to the USB then to your PC
  • Wait until Windows recognized your mobile if not (the normal case 🙂 ) go to My computer, right click properties then to device manager, look for the N1 mobile, right click –> properties, update drivers and choose the android SDK folder, then USB Driver for your windows version. This should make your windows recognize your mobile.
  • Go to Run and type cmd and hit enter
  • Go to the Android SDK folder then to Tools
  • Type this command: adb devices and then hit enter
  • Wait for a second the system should return to you a number like HT123P143456 this is your mobile serial number, and if it didn’t work check if your windows recognized your mobile, if not.. Kill yourself or Google it for a solution 😀
  • Go back to your mobile and do a backup if you care about your data like call history, sms, etc.. don’t backup your Google calendar and contacts because Google already do that for you
  • Now turn off your Nexus one
  • Hold the track ball and press the power point for few seconds and release it
  • You should end up with a white screen with three green android at the bottom of the screen
  • Go to Run and open the command again (by typing cmd)
  • Go to your Android SDK then to Tools
  • Type: fastboot devices and hit enter
  • It Should give you the same serial number as before if yes then you are on the right track
  • Now to the scary part type: fastboot oem unlock , read the screen carefully if you don’t agree the rules you can choose that and return back to your Froyo without Arabic support, if you want to have a little risk choose unlock the bootloader and press the power button
  • Now you should have unlock sign at the bottom of the screen :D, restart your mobile in recovery mode (same as before track ball and power button)
  • Move Amon_RA’s recovery image to your Android SDK folder\Tools
  • Open your command (Run –>cmd) and hit enter
  • Type the following command: fastboot flash recovery recovery-RA-nexus-v1.7.0.img
  • It should take few seconds and give you writing Recovery
  • Now you can boot directory from the menu to recovery image
  • From the recovery image choose to Connect to USB and copy both files the Nexus add-ons 0.1 and the Froyo with Arabic support
  • Return to the Recovery image and choose flash zip from sd card
  • Choose the nexus one add-ons and flash it
  • Once the process is finished (congratulation your mobile is rooted 😀 ) Flash the 2nd zip file with same steps
  • After all is done, disconnect your mobile from USB and restart it
  • Wait until it open, sign in with your Google account, restore your backup and install your apps
  • Voila…you have Arabic support with your Nexus One (go and check it what you are waiting for )

New comers to browser war, Google (Chrome review)

Yes I was expecting this long time ago after one Firefox engineer are moved longtime to work with Google. Now it become real, Google is entering the browser war according to their official blog, after viewing the comic cartoon demo for the browser, I guess these guys know what they are doing and it is true, IE and Firefox prepare for new strong browser on the way… They don’t start from scratch, they took ideas from others, tweak them and build their browser. Today they will release the 1st beta for Windows and we will see…

Update: I convert the Google Comic Book to PDF File, get it from Google Comic Book

Update 2: Now I am using the Chrome and writing from it, my 1st impression, 1st you have to install it from here, about 450 KB file, then you have to wait until it finished the installation and importing your data from Firefox (didn’t asked me to import from IE 🙂 ). I like the idea for putting the tabs above the address bar, when you just open new tab it will open most visited sites. if you open your task manager, you can find that different process based on how many tabs you are opening. You can drag the tab outside the main window to put it on another window. if there is a popup it will show on bottom of the browser so if you like to open, the Omnibar like bowrrowing the awsomebar from Firefox but with merging the search box within. It seems we have serious comers at least for IE because I still love my Firefox

Update 3: I installed it on my PC at work, even on the import process it didnt mentioned the IE even if it is my default browser, but if you go to the bookmark options you can choose IE but the default is Firefox. After I run it, it asked for a password for the proxy, I checked the proxy settings, Chrome is using the same dialouge for IE, the settings correct but the Chrome still asking me for password, I entered the password, and I browse the net. One of great idea I like is Chrome Task Manager (You can open it by pressing shift + Esc) you can close any tab or plugins (thanks to multi thread concept. I did a small comparisone between Firefox and Chrome in Memory usage, I opend 3 tabs with same sites, and I checked the total memory usage Firefox (72,044 K) Chrome (74,041 K). You can get more info about memory by typing about:Memory on the address bar for Chrome but I should mentioned that when you just close one tab Chrome return the whole memory to the system but Firefox not (72,720 k for Firefox, 46,500 k for Chrome).