yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Kannibalism:
I prefer to play with my phones using the manual method and I have made use of the toolkits available to understand how they work and they are very easy to use for a non-experienced person.

The main and only problem i see with tookits is that some people who make use of them have no idea what is going on in the background processes of the toolkit which are fastboot, adb etc... so when a software fails and as a developer i can say all software can fail at times the non-experienced people have no idea what to do since they lack information from the manual method.

NB. i am not ripping on toolkits as i said before as a developer i respect what the devs of the toolkits have done for the community.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
Toolkits are great for an educated community, but with the newb influx, I believe it does more harm than good.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Beamer9408:
I personally think everyone should at least try to unlock and root manual and fastboot the stock images at least once. In most cases this is all that is needed to fix these Da ToOlkIt broke my phone threads. I think a lot of people don't realize you can change the name of these files to and get discouraged by long file names. For example twrp_toro_3_3_1.img can simply change the name to twrp_toro.img

so fastboot flash recovery twrp_toro.img

Looks a lot more simple than the other. Or simply name it recovery.img. Although that can get confusing if you have 2 different devices to fastboot img to. I usually do twrp_toro.img and twrp_grouper.img.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Zepius:
using tab also makes it easy to where you dont have to rename. just type the first couple letters and tab will finish off the naming (in windows at least)

also,

another satisfied toolkit user: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1953630
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] El Daddy:
I like how the first suggestion to fix is was "did you try the toolkit?" :(
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
I gave up trying to help in there, clueless helping the clueless, good luck.:rolleyes:
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] thephantom:
Saw what you did there. You think he finally got toast? :D
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
Just bought some tuna to go along with the toast:D

The toast wasn't intentional lol, just happened to mention toast as I'm thinking about some coffee and toast:D

Beamed from my Grouper.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] JediNinjafication:
Come on now...you know they just scrolled to last post without reading anything!

Actually, I talked to that guy in another thread. He was in q&a day before yesterday. Told him he smoked he smoked the serial number on it cpl weeks ago. Also told him I have all the carrier codes and he needs to get spc/msl so can edit fields. Bet with CDMA workshop he's using the free trial version that states no editing ability unless purchase. I don't know anything about developing but I do know my dialer and carrier/manufacturer codes! Been playing with them for years. Doesn't matter what he does. No toolkit is gonna program his ESN. Don't even think adb can do that.

*Step Away From The Toolkit And NoROM Gets Hurt*
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] herbert1:
The problem is not the tool kits or the one click root methods.

Remember, in 2008 and 2009 there weren't so many Android devices and at that time XDA-developers was essentially targeted for HTC and Windows Mobile hackers and powers users. Cool people had Iphones and the coolest were jailbreaking theirs. Just geeks (Steve Wozniak for example) had Android phones.

Now everyone owns android devices, artists, traders, kids, women (even early apple customers) ! :eek:

They know they can do much more things with their device than what some manufacturers, providers or ebook sellers are ready to accept: you said it, some eared you and are willing to try... And so they do !

4 years ago, how many registered users here ? Compare with the actual number 4,5M ! More peoples, more noobs, how surprising is it that some of them do silly things ? There were some also in the old good days !

True in theses days it wasn't everyday, but the number of peoples here has grown much more rapidly than the number of days (there is still something like 365 days in one year). Think about it :silly:
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] JediNinjafication:
I think I was cursed/blessed and got first android, a Cricket Zio, off craigslist and was already rooted. Hoooollly! I messed it up GOOD! Out of memory but couldn't uninstall or install cuz played in system apps and messed up package installer. Really didn't have any apps on it yet so couldn't figure out why no memory. And that's not all I did either. Never even heard of xda ACS or android central. Some can't view links unless register...can't post...etc. I remember signing up here and still not able to post and didn't quite understand wtf the deal was. Had to Google my way out the mess I made.

Now I'm so petrified to touch anything I'll spend a week on Google trying to find out what ...getprop for example is before I even think of opening it. I try to stick with fonts and other stupid stuff.

*Step Away From The Toolkit And NoROM Gets Hurt*
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Zombeezy:
I agree with the others. Not frowned upon, just can be frustrating to answer questions from those that press a button, can't figure out how to fix the phone when it didn't do what they want, want lots of fixit advice, and then go buy a new phone instead or get a buddy to do it for them.

Just the fact that you recognize these are automating certain sequences to accomplish various things and have been an Android user for awhile, as well as being here asking questions is a big plus. It's like a website that has batch files to format your PC hard drive, or to delete all duplicate files, or that automates some registry hacks - if you are aware of what they are doing, you'll be fine. And if not, at least you won't be surprised when you've corrupted the OS, ha-ha. But you'll also probably know how to mount the drive to get recover files back, or already have the OS on its own partition.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
No idea how he did it...

Will the next nexus have a longer screen?

---------- Post added at 02:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:56 PM ----------

I know one of my friend who put a iPhone skin in her HTC One V..

Will the next nexus have a longer screen?
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] JediNinjafication:
Guys...we have a genius in the house. For real. Psssword protected zip files. Wont flash until you go on a treasure hunt in the OP to locate secret word. Only have to do once cuz when future passwords get updated, it will be included for those that already read have the original. Oh I was MAD and it took me forever to locate. Had to read dam* thing 4x! But I read the op. Every freaking bit of it!!! Genius. Pure and simple!!

*You Gotta Want It*
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] jugg1es:
I thought it was a perfect idea, made you read the op though. That was the point.

:thumbup:

"When it comes to thought, some people stop at nothing".
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] JediNinjafication:
Yeah, and they permanently closed his thread. Dumb. Not coming back either, far as i know. It was brilliant! Complain about all the dumb threads and someone finds a fix, and they shut him down! Lamesville

*You Gotta Want It*
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] El Daddy:
Thank You!

Hey Everyone,

I'll be leaving the Galaxy Nexus forum in a few days when my Nexus 4 arrives. I just wanted to thank everyone for their continued support. Since writing this post I have seen a growing number of people try to nudge others to use the "manual" method of unlocking and tinkering with their phone. I've seen a vast improvement around here with more people using ADB/Fastboot instead of the Toolkits, less OMG ITZ BRIK'D! posts, and generally more people willing to help others in need. Frankly, it puts a smile on my face. :D

I'm sure most of you, like myself, will be leaving here soon when you get a new device. I'd just like to ask you to show others there are alternatives to the simple methods like Toolkits and that there are safer, better, more educational ways to go about things. Link to this thread and some of the great guides eftant and Jubakuba have put together. I will be doing the same in the Nexus 4 forums. It will make XDA much better in the long run!

Thanks again,

El Daddy
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] gnustomp:
The thing with toolkits, you don't know what they're doing.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] brando56894:
I usually don't use tool kits because I like to know what's going on behind the scenes, yet they are useful when you are doing a lot of things. I actually wrote one for de-bricking my N7 in Linux. I remember the days of manually rooting a phone like you were talking about because when I got my OG Droid I had to do everything manually via the terminal on the phone itself. I had to go through 300 steps to get from stock, to root, to flashing a custom recovery, performing a nandroid, then flashing a rom and other mods. The problem is that most people don't want to take the time to learn anything, they just want instant gratification.

It actually kind of annoyed me that I couldn't see what was going on behind the scenes when I S-Off'd my Incredible and later my Rezound.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
Unfortunately I will still be here..

Unless a Nexus 4 drops out of the sky.

Beamed from my Maguro.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] JediNinjafication:
:(

* #resistance*
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] beekay201:
Sorry to disappoint you guys, but i will still be here too! :)

Sent from my i9250
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] vicstarman:
I see your point here El Daddy. (other readers: I'm on another thread with El Daddy right now going through exactly this situation).

And believe me, I can see your frustration with newbies and moderates like myself! I can relate because I can run circles around pretty much anyone on classical old world fermented beverages. Yet all day I have to answer "what's a good merlot???"

I'm having to crash course on bootloading, though I did not mess my phone up with a tool kit. I messed it up because Adroid's 4.2.2 push update simply wouldn't work on my rooted phone so I made some crucial mistakes in the background while trying to force it on. I flashed a kernel that was designed for a ROM I was not running. My biggest mistake was attempting this late at night after a long day at work and a couple beers. :-/
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] qnc:
Thank you for your post. I'm coming from iPhone world to android. I have dabbled before, but taking the full plunge this week, N4 arriving soon.

I appreciate you taking the time to help those that are new and truly want to learn.

Following directions on this forum, I brought back to life a galaxy inspire just by reading and searching, but knowing what the tools do behind the scenes helps me understand better what he response should be. Once i get my N4 I will be using you tutorial and learning about the phone not just clicking a button.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] tarroyo:
Well said, READ READ READ before doing any kind of modifying to your device.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] RohanM:
Well i done everything manually but used a toolkit just to install drivers...so toolkits are handy.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
The problem here is not about toolkits, it's the complacency it breeds, newbs often don't read up and just want to press buttons to get through the process. When they screw something up, they create loads of "WHALP" threads in the Q&A, worst still, in the general section..

Beamed from my Maguro.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] efrant:
So do you know how to install the drivers yourself now that you've used a toolkit to do it for you? I would bet not, so the act of using a toolkit to install the drivers has prevented you from figuring out what you were doing wrong when you tried to install them yourself.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] RohanM:
I tried installing them first. But in adb always gets blank msg after entering command adb devices. So finally installed toolkit from ur post only... :D
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] efrant:
So, you didn't figure out what you did wrong, and you still don't know... all because of a toolkit... :D It proves the point in the OP.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] RohanM:
Yup i agree. But i used toolkit because of lack of time. But i am not gonna leave it until i figure out why those drivers were not installed or what went wrong. In this weekend itself. ;) my bro always uses toolkits for his neo v i told him to do manually but he said why to take hassale if there are toolkits available. One of my friend also said same but later he stuck at some process and confused so i suggested him to use old faithfull manual way for his xperia p. :rolleyes:
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] jordanishere:
Toolkits suck. Fastboot is easy to learn too.

Every android device should come standard with fastboot and freely available online factory images.

Sent from my Xiaomi MI2S
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Terrell1433:
I've rooted my phone both ways and flashed stock firmware both ways. While the one click method is way easier I've had the problem where I unplugged the phone at the wrong time and screwed everything up. I took to the forums to seek help and was basically bashed for not learning. I spent hours reading websites and books, unrooting, and re-roooting phones so I was no longer a noob and now I help the noobs because I was in the same situation they are in.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] segv11:
Now when 4.3 comes around and breaks everything, it will be those who DIDN'T use the toolkits that will have enough clue what's going on under the hood to understand and implement the workarounds posted on the forums...

Sent from my stock 4.2.2 manta.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Mach3.2:
It's handy, but I always fall back to typing my own commands as it's just faster than pressing numbers and typing yes..

Beamed from my Grouper

---------- Post added at 06:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:05 PM ----------

I won't say people who uses the toolkit are clueless, but people who don't bother to read up on the background process and enjoy typing in numbers and pressing yes. This are the bunch that always make gazillions of threads when a new version of android is released..

Beamed from my Grouper
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] savanakbari:
thats only two cmd commands so no need to download 75 md exe file.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] handofdark:
agreed
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] z_extend_99:
Sometimes, I write VBScripts or shell scripts in order to automate some of my repetitive tasks at work. I can compare toolkits to that.

"Blackbox" use of toolkits is dangerous. I think this is the point of this thread. You can't just throw everything into it without knowing what's inside. A press of a button performs several commands in an order. You have to know what is the required input and status of your phone before performing one.

I do manual flashing of images and zip files, but sometimes I use toolkits. Some toolkits are written well like mskip's unified toolkit.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] androidfreak70:
[MENTION=962867]El Daddy[/MENTION] Thanks. Now i feel like my brother and advices me :high-five: but some people specially "newbies" are needed this for some reason and they don't know another way/right way to do it and with all of us we should root or brick our devices to know how to fix it. Maybe 85% members here are bricked there devices and already fixed them . that happened with me and you too! (maybe)

No one will know whats the ROOT if didn't tried it!
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] Vladgina:
I agree with this. I never had my own phone until a few months ago. I am not stupid and would enjoy learning the ins and outs but I had no experience in this area and when I set out to root my phone and do other modifications, everything I found pointed me to a toolkit. I didn't even know XDA existed when I rooted my Nexus 5. Upon further reading here and there I see many people using terms I've never heard of and I occasionally google/xda search for the term and try to learn about it. I'm a pretty quick learner, but, from my findings, the information is spread out and there's a TON of stuff to read on this site. For example, I got the gist of fastboot. I downloaded the Android SDK. I haven't touched it yet but if I ever plan to do anything else to my Nexus 5 I will look up more on that... but I still don't know what adb is and how it works. I've been meaning to go read up on that next but I've been busy with other things.

There should be a suggestion before any toolkit instructions that urges users to learn about the procedures/terms in the "better" ways before using the toolkits or even just using the other ways, ditching out on the toolkits. I, for one, would've felt more accomplished.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] afraaa:
completely agreed . unlocking and rooting is about going beneath the android layer .. its about learning , its need research spirit that this kind of tools kill . and exactly when error occur they are panic ... ohh whats that ..why ? because of lazy attitude !

---------- Post added at 02:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:34 PM ----------

yeah pretty simple ... its not hacking ! just follow instructions . its nothing compare to what hackers and programmers like chainfire do !
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] AgentSmith:
You are basically talking about the people who don't have the time to learn and who are used to the click and go nature of Windows. While I partly sympathize with what you're saying I like to go back to a statement of myself as to how far we are willing to go in our daily lives in understanding the universe. That is everyone has a black box, a box with a part of reality that we don't understand. As a learning process we tend to make this box smaller throughout our lives. But no matter how much effort we put in it there will always be a black box.

In computer terms for some it stops at mouse clicks, for others at written commands. In the end for many users the terminal or command prompt itself is a black box and very few of us know and understand what lies beneath. Of course the more you know the more you are capable of solving or preventing problems. But we cannot know everything about every topic so there will always be laymen and there will always be experts on every topic in life.

I consider myself between the mouse and command level. I know quite a bit more about computers than the average Joe but I'm far from a nerd or a wizkid. I am lazy though and I love those toolkits that others put so much time and effort in to enable the majority to use their phones as they like. Toolkits are huge time savers and although I don't know exactly what is going on I understand the concept of what it does and in case a problem arises I can still look online for the solution.

I completely get your concerns but in the end the user himself is responsible for following instructions and reading about precautions such as making nandroids. It's like wearing a safety belt in a car. We put up all these laws and sending out so many policemen just to make sure that people don't hurt themselves. Doing the same for end users and their smartphones goes a bit far in my opinion. We're not talking about human lives here and despite the popularity of this great website it's still a small minority that installs modded roms.

In the end it's up to you how far you want to go with helping people who choose to be ignorant and I'm not only talking about xda visitors here. Don't misunderstand me here because I value your opinion. (:
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] megaghostgamer:
By all means this is a good post, although many people (such as the op) are tired of wasting their time to sit there and go through all the trouble wasting half hours to an hour just to find out someone sits there and and report their phone as stollen, just to get a new one because of their mistake. I've seen stuff like this happen before and its more or less wrong to do it. If you're going to sit there and do that, then don't message me period. I'd rather have you go on ahead and do something like that instead of wasting my time when I could be doing something else important. I know many of you are probably like "just don't reply to help", I help everyone at best I can but when stuff like this happens it makes you want to stop. Helping people and working together is a big part of XDA in which many people seem to not get.

As for countless threads with same question /problem, it happens on every forum. Its sad. They really need to make it to where you search in Q&A first and if you don't find the answer, then you can make a new thread. I understand many don't have the time to look and all but you also have to take into consideration of what others have to go through looking at the same question over and over.

Since you related to a car I will as well ;D. Many people are used to automatics nowadays (toolkits) that when you need to use a manual in emergency (command prompt) , you don't know what to do anymore because you've used the automatic for so long. I get it though, manual is good but why would users want to use it when you have automatics and don't have to manually shift (command prompt lines) all the time? Like i said earlier, its always a good thing to know just in case of an emergency. Accidents do happens regardless if you're a user or even a developer.

People should generally learn the basic lines of a phone before going into the root/ROM world. There aren't many command lines as for basics, but there are a lot when it goes in dept with things. Simple thing like "fastboot flash recovery file.IMG" should be well known by now. I know drivers and OS's sometimes don't like to play nice with such things but its a risk that you have to take. Just a search of drivers is a simple fix instead of a new pointless thread.

I know a lot of this didn't relate to your post, I was putting out to everyone as well, its a hassle for many of us at XDA who want to help but give up in the long run because of stuff like this.

Sent from my Dell Venue 8
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] AgentSmith:
I admire your will to help others. I too love to help but people can only be helped if they allow you to. When people aren't even willing to help themselves - "can you fix my problem for me?" clearly doesn't fall in this category - I usually don't go further than giving them a direction where to look for a solution. From then on it's really up to them. Just remember, it's their problem not yours. I helped too many people IRL in the past who didn't really recognize their own mistakes and that started to drain so much energy I basically stopped being the help in need. That doesn't mean I stopped helping people in general. I simply became more careful in choosing candidates who I believe are 'helpable' if that is even a word. ;)
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] mzheng086:
I just want to point out that electronic devices have huge environmental footprint. So love your device, save it while you can, and refrain from buying a new one unless you absolutely need to.
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] quickdraw86:
Major agreement with the OP. I see posts of bricked nexus devices every day. I agree that toolkits can be useful in responsible hands, but feel more that they enable perpetually ignorant (not only lack of background knowledge, but also unwilling to exert the effort to learn) users to cause potentially irreparable damage to their devices. I saw one guy the other day that deleted their bootloader by mistake... I'd at least read and reread the basic instructions for something before attempting it on my own daily device...
[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] MidnightDevil:
I agree 100%. I always prefered the manual solution to be aware of the process and know exactly what's happening behind the screens.

The condesncence of this thread can easily be removed with the notice "This text is for your own good, we just want you to learn and don't act stupid".