[Motorola Droid RAZR] Ohmster:
Wow, that is some pretty bizarre stuff you got going on there, [MENTION=6309629]dtiger1138[/MENTION]. I am using the latest and last snapshot with the stage fright fix installed. The cm11-20150901-SNAPSHOT. Before that I was using the final snapshot 06/26. You can find all of these roms at the CyanogenMod ROM Download page, click "stable" as your rom type and the listed snapshots will be at the top of the list. I keep a copy of both roms on my PC in the event I need to reinstall them someday.

So far as installed apps, icons, settings, etc., all of this stuff is stored in your data partition. And that is a mighty important partition to protect. All system files are stored in the system partition. So, if you wanted to, let's say, downgrade to a previous rom but keep all of your updates, apps, and settings, you could wipe dalvik, cache, and system in Safe Strap, then flash the older rom. When you reboot, all of your stuff will be there and you will have effectively downgraded your rom. You can also upgrade this way, that is what happens when you take an update from the /Settings/About Phone menu. You get the upgrade, keep all of your stuff, and do not have to reinstall gapps.

What you are describing sounds like a damaged data partition. The best protection you have for your phone, rom, apps, and settings is to make and keep a nandroid backup of the system. For us we use Safe Strap. Other nandroid backups are CWM Rom Manager and TWRP. I use TWRP on my tablet but used to use CWM, which took up too much room on my sdcard so I switched to TWRP. Only Safe Strap gives us ROM slots so we can use more than one rom at a time. Once you get a good, working system installed, making a Safe Strap backup is the most important thing you can do. After you install all of your apps, arrange your desktop, and get things pretty much the way you want them, make another Safe Strap backup! Give each backup a name you can understand. I use the rom date, underscore, key word such as "GOOD", underscore, backup date.

Apps do not just "disappear" or go away by themselves. But a damaged data partition can cause all sorts of very serious problems. Nandroid backups like Safe Strap backup each partition you have; system, data, and android secure, we do not use webtop. Then to restore the backup, Safe Strap will wipe the entire rom slot, recreate the partitions, and then restore all of the data to each partition from which it came. If you have a good, recent backup with Safe Strap, this would be a really good time to restore it. Then you can easily upgrade back to the 09/01 snapshot without losing anything. There is an app you can get from play store, Stagefright Detector, to see if you are vulnerable. I installed and tested, everything is fine.

I cannot stress enough how important having a Safe Strap backup of your up to date phone is. Make the backup and even send a copy of it to Dropbox or your PC with a USB cable so you will always be able to restore what you had. Download the most recent snapshot and gapps, put your rom and gapps on the ext-sdcard, then delete the rom slot, recreate it with the recommended partition sizes in the handy guide in my sig, and then install the new rom and gapps. Go through the setup wizard and you would be wise to backup right now in Safe Strap. Now allow playstore to restore your apps and/or use Titanium Backup to restore what you want, rearrange your desktop, and make another Safe Strap backup! These two backups are very important. The first one is a bare bones working up to date cm11 install. The second one is a working up to date cm11 phone with all of the apps, updates, and settings you want. Since there will likely not be anymore cm11 roms released, these two backups will become very, very important. Of course as time goes by, you update, uninstall, and install more apps, make a fresh backup so you do not have to go back so far in the event that you have a catastrophic rom failure. That is the best advice I can give you my friend.

About ebooks. I am using the Kindle app because it was free, but what I do not like about it at all is that Amazon has a hand in your wallet every time you use it. A typical recent book, "Gone Girl" at Amazon costs $8.43 but the Kindle ebook is $9.99. This makes no sense at all. An ebook is a file. The author submits his manuscript to the publisher who in turn uses that digital copy to produce an ebook, a computer file. These files cost practically nothing to copy over and over, yet they cost more than a paperback book which requires tons of paper, ink, delivery trucks, shipping, and handling. If I get a book elsewhere in the epub format, I must use a free program like Calibre to change it into a mobi file that the Kindle will read. And I have to sideload that new mobi book because Kindle does not want to make this easy. Kindle for PC is absolutely horrible, but the tablet version is okay, pretty good actually because it will sync with the phone or any other Kindle app and take me to where I left off on a book.

Calibre is an awesome ebook manager but comes with a terrible reader. I might look into this Moon Reader to see how it is. I have issues getting to sleep at night and my doctor wants me to turn off the TV and computer at 9:00 and read a book. That might and does work, but 9:00 is a bit early for me. I have already tried the Kindle app on the tablet and it is not bad, I just have to get my own books, convert them with Calibre, and then sideload them into Kindle by putting the mobi files into the /sdcard/android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files folder. Next time I open up Kindle, the books are there. But they will not show up on my tablet Kindle if I install them on the phone. I would have to sideload on each device where regular Amazon books show up in any Kindle you log into. Not ideal but it works. I will look into Moon Reader. Thanks for the tip! :good: