[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] xxhorseriderxxx:
Yay my first post, lol.

So anyway, I've decided to move over from the iOS platform because the hardware simply does not stay up to date with Android anymore. I'm quite tired of worrying about jailbreaking; that aside I want to know how I would go about doing the simple things that I got out of iOS, even though I had to be a hacker to get my way.

Restoration (If I screw something up)

How do I restore my phone with a complete firmware file that will recover me from my own stupidity/adventures? With iOS I simply just entered recovery mode and pressed restore in iTunes. How does one download a stock i9100 restore firmware file for future use?

Themes

In iOS, I made my own themes and applied them into the rooted filesystem with no problems. I simply just replaced the files and rebooted, no problems. I've been lurking for a while now seeïng that people need to deoxdex files in order to view them or flash them or whatever. My question is this: can I simply replace system files and expect them to work? As for the many xml files in the apk's that I've been examining, I cannot seem to get a standard format of them. When I view them in various code applications, I get a load of garbage with a faint outline of what could included in the xml file. How can I convert pulled xml files to "normal" readable ones? (or do I need to use a special application that reads binary/encrypted xml's for me?) What is the proper way to replace system files for a theme (what is deodexing?), and is it possible to package my theme and put it on the android market to share with others?

Music

Do any of you guys use iTunes for your music? My iTunes library is meticulously managed to make sure that all my song info and album art are correct. Is it true that if I drag and drop from iTunes (on a mac) into the music folder of my sd card, I will copy over all the song data aswell? I highly doubt it because I cannot get this to work between my two iTunes libraries on different computers. Is there a way to make sure all my id3 tags and album art are added to all my songs so that I have an organized library in my SGS2/android?

Tapping the status bar to reach the top of a long page/form

Does this exist in android either through a tweak or android market app?

Deleting System apps that I no longer need

Is it okay to just delete apk's on my phone's system that I do not need? (Reader's hub, blockbuster, exe) I would assume that would work, but eh, I'm not making any assumptions on a completely different platform.

Launch Dæmons

On iOS, there was a folder in the system that housed all the plists of startup dæmons at booup. By deleting one, the service would completely stop and would free up RAM after the phone got rebooted. Does android have a similar place to house a bunch of services that are optionally deleted/stopped entirely to improve system performance? Things that come immediately to mind are things like debugging, syslogs, android developer tools, and other garbage that is unnecessary to certain users. (A famous example is the "CommCenter.plist"(baseband startup)/"DataMigrator.plist" (move contacts using SIM card) that always run in the background on iTouches despite not having a baseband and SIM card.)

System Button Mapping

Is there any tweak or android app that lets me set certain actions to different button presses or behaviors? For example in iOS I can use "activator" to let me swipe my statusbar horizontally to enter the camera app. I can also long press volume keys to skip/restart music being played in the music app.

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I know that's a lot of questions, but atleast try to help a newbie out =] When fist started out in iOS 4 years ago, I was the same way in nagging looking for ways to make things fit my workflow. Honestly, it doesn't take long before I start to help people out and grasp all the skills needed for a particular platform.