yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] JonW434:
Hey guys..

It's so great that this phone is still getting updates, and that there are still discussions that take place. I'm not a big Android/phone person and have used this phone for years (not even knowing how to use it properly).. but in the last few days have looked to upgrade/improve on it before eventually getting another one. So I've dived a bit deeper into the whole Android world. I have 2 of these phones to work on at the moment (one is a family member), and will likely do the same mods to both. I may get a new phone eventually and keep this as a spare/backup. Either way, it's cool to unlock and update it and get the best out of it.

I was able to read a whole bunch of stuff from here (for hours and hours) and get it rooted and run a custom OS image with it. I'm currently using OctOS 20170331 version.. with TWRP 2.8.7.0 and SuperSU 2.78 and it works incredibly well in terms of being reliable and stable. While using AndroidSDKSlim for the commands from windows. I didn't have luck with other versions or the official SDK. It's been a very busy 3 days to learn all this stuff (and a bunch of mistakes or versions that didn't work). Or having to put into different USB ports or hubs. I even had a bootloop at one stage, but was able to fix it pretty quickly. Thank you recovery/TWRP for being so easy to fix.

I might be curious to try the latest LineageOS version here at some point. But I had problems getting it to work (the same ones people have talked about on the last page or two). My Y550's are L02 B249 version. I used bitunlocker to unlock the phone successfully. Rooting was tricky, because I had it rooted on 4.4.4, then installed OctOS.. and then lost root, and didn't get it back until installing the specific version of SuperSU that is 2.78.

Just two quick questions.. in terms of the modem firmware driver.. is it correct that you need Huawei stock firmware for 4.4.4 and then once going to Android 7.0 or 7.1.1 that you need to use the driver posted around the place, with filename 4xqwt_lp_modem.zip? Is there a link somewhere, that has all of the modem firmwares in one place or in one post? I would need to install the stock Huawei firmware again if I ever did a factory reset, is this correct?

And also.. if I did a factory reset to convert to L01 B239.. would it be a lot easier to install these latest Lineage OS versions? And if I did, what would be the advantages? I noticed the version of OctOS I'm using has CPU overclock and it works great (in terms of performance and temps). But these later updates are more focused on security updates?
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] szty0pa:
Thanks a lot for keeping up the great work! Happy to hear that your build system is working again. On a side note have you considered running both distros in say a KVM-based virtual config instead of dual-booting yet? The downside is that you have to use the same kernel for both distros but you won't have to reboot to switch and there should not be any penalties in performance that way.

Hello :)

You are using a seriously outdated recovery and OS! Please update first the recovery from https://twrp.me/ - Y550 has official builds!

1., There you go: https://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=67893946&postcount=2 If you plan to use the factory firmware later on it is probably best to save your current modem firmware and flash that back later on. You supposedly can do that in twrp though it involves "command-line-sorcery"(R) :)

2., L01 and L02 are different regional variants of the phone probably with different modems or modem firmwares, I don't think it is possible or at least straightforward to switch between them. For me OctOS was never stable enough to use (though I'm using L01 and tried only two or three versions of OctOS), vanilla LineageOS is more about being up-to-date and close to AOSP than eye-candy. You can overclock it with separate apps (like Kernel Adiutor), though be careful with it as some settings can make your phone misbehave! Tweaking the GPU is such think in my experience: it can make your phone stuck with a black screen only helped by a reboot sometimes.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] JonW434:
About the modem thing, I have a second phone completely stock, I guess I can get the stock modem firmware from there. I'll have to search around to learn how to do that. But since I have root access, I guess it just means copying some files around using a file explorer.

I'm mainly in a learning stage at the moment.. in other words, prepared to format and wipe at any point and start from scratch again. I've kept notes of everything I've done, in order to not repeat any mistakes again. My main thing is, 4.4.4 is the only Android/Linux I've ever used. When it comes to computer stuff, it's been Windows only for 20 years. So I've been trying to figure out different approaches of how to use the OS and what it's benefits are.. and embarrassingly.. just trying to learn about how to use Android properly. I've only ever used phones as phones, rather than as some kind of laptop/Ipad kind of thing.

But it's been pretty exciting in the last few days. Like discovering a new world. And I finally understand what some of the functions and buttons can do.. hahaha. But yeah.. I'm sort of experimenting a lot. It's not like a final build of my OS that I'm using.. just trying to experiment and learn. And at some point, do a final installation that will be a long term use.

Right now, I'm stuck on trying to make up for the fact that the hard drive space is so small. I got a 64GB 100MB+ micro SD the other day, but can't get the phone to install the apps on there. It's still complaining about the hard drive being full and not letting me transfer them over. This seems lame. What's the point of converting it to internal then?

I've tried many approaches.. under 4.4.4 with root access, I tried Link2SD but couldn't get the 2 partitions working properly. Now in 7.1.1 Nougat, I let the card become an internal drive card.. and it still won't send the apps over. There's no option to "link to SD" card or anything like that. And just now, I was looking at play store apps and some of them say that it works better to have the SD card as portable. And then to use their app to "force" the phone to use the other card (with 2 partitions). Any advice about this would be appreciated.. as I have 60GB overall free space.. and the phone won't use it for the stuff that's on the main internal drive.

Also, is there a way to increase the volume via Root Explorer with editing the mixer_paths.xml, or does that method not work for the Y550? I saw that sometimes Huawei phones don't use that file. I'm trying to iron out all of these kinds of things, before using a final version of a ROM.

---------- Post added at 10:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:17 PM ----------

I saw this and tried this version but it gave me the same error, perhaps if I successfully switched to L01 B239 it would work. With L02 B249 this version of TWRP wasn't enough. I think I tried a few other versions as well. I have around 7 versions of TWRP in my AndroidSDKSlim folder, so far 2.8.7.0 is the only one I've been able to get a ROM installed.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] fwiep:
No, not yet. But I have read about KVM and Qemu.

Sadly, I think my system has not enough RAM to host the virtmanager, one guest's Debian desktop and another guest Ubuntu.

It barely builds when I reboot to Ubuntu and then start the procedure - on the text console (no GUI login).

Maybe a future desktop PC will have 16+ GByte of RAM... We can dream, can't we? ;)

Kind regards,

FWieP
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] JonW434:
Sorry, I brainfarted, I've had my mind on 5 things at once lately. I started all of this about 4-5 days ago and read.. read.. read.. tried things while restarting or flashing, and read some more. I've had some spare time lately. I'm supposed to be preparing for a Ryzen Windows 7/Windows 10 dual boot system (with Linux as well maybe one day).. and preparation for that is nearly finished. It involves a lot of similar things in some ways, boot disks, modified drivers and things like that.. it's just with a different OS.

So I was already in the mood for this stuff over the last few weeks, but the Android stuff has been a new adventure. It all started because my batteries life suddenly seemed to become 25% of what it once was. I'm still not sure what happened because with this new OS.. the battery seems ok (despite 1.8ghz OC). But yeah.. I found some new batteries on ebay and thought.. why not, let's try and get a newer OS on it. And unlock some hard drive space for some more apps. Because it's been limited in stock form ever since I got it.. so it sort of discouraged me from going deeper into Android. And I've never been a big enough fan of smart phones in general to want to get a super high spec one.. until they became really cheap. It's inevitable I'll have a powerful one eventually.. but I wanted to hold on to Y550 as long as possible. And these recent changes seem to have breathed some life into it.. which is nice. Refreshing to see a 600 page topic on here that just won't die!!!

What I meant to say was dc-unlocker. Sorry. It was dc-unlocker2client_1.00.1429. I've read a lot of great posts, it's just easy to lose them or forget about them, and it all becomes a bit of a blur. So it's nice if you can quote the post numbers again, thanks for that. I'll reply more when I've had a chance to digest more of your post. It's quite late here, so I'll probably reply tommorow.. I have a feeling it's going to help me a lot when I get a chance to try these things.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
Haha, thanks. (Bitunlocker in Google search seemed unrelated...)

Great news that at least some Y550 phones updated to B249 can still use established methods to unlock bootloader!

Understanding which models in which regions have this ability broken thru OTA updating XLoader is still difficult and confusing... Or, maybe DC people have now worked out how to get past this problem with later bootloader! (Recovery from hard brick thru DC Phoenix may also work in this case.)

I've used DC Unlocker Service myself (-hope you never need DC Phoenix but! :( ). What is the current fee? Was unlocking painless w/ B249 stock?

All best, PW.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
Removed duplicate post. PW

(XDA Labs said 'Post failed' (in error), so I copied and reposted from browser. It hadn't failed, so I've left the post following and removed this one.)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Jstamey5:
tennlaw2019

Would any of you know of an alternative to PPP Widgit 2?

It was discontinued and the PPP Widgit 3 is not compatible with devices that work on Kernal. Any suggestions would be great.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
Looks like you missed Australia Day (Sunday)... But the Gov's given you Monday in addition cause they know you need it. :)

Some friendly advice:

Try to keep thoughts / queries concise on XDA threads... Condensing these to essentials makes these threads much more useful to those searching for answers later, as well as for those following / replying. :good:

Often SD card is the culprit, even SanDisk.

Try backup excluding system and data to get your critical partitions

Don't compress.

https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/sandisk-extreme-64gb-microsd-card-sd64gbexme

You may need to do this for Apps installed prior to AS setup. Later Apps should go to SD when flagged by dev for this. If you move them, they should stay where you put them even when updating.

You need to watch App behaviour when 'Force allow on SD' is set

Not sure what Launcher OctOS packages. LOS includes Trebuchet. I much prefer Smart Launcher 3 as stated. Try it.

Interesting. PW
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Saint_13:
recently i used ADB to partition my SD card in 2 partition: 6 GB adoptable and 24 GB portable. the method is fairly simple.

1- You need to enabled Developer Options.

2- Enable the USB Debugging option.

3- Make sure your SD card is formatted as portable, then download the adb executable (it is also part of android sdk).

4- Connect your device to your PC and run the "adb devices" command (without "). If your device is connected correctly you will see your device listed in the output.

5- Run "adb shell sm list-disks" adoptable. This will show you the list of disks that can be used for what we want.

6- For my device it showed me disk:179_64 so i ran "adb shell sm partition disk:179_64 mixed 80" on my 32 GB AS card. It gave me 6 GB as adoptable storage and the rest for other uses. (This will format your SD card.)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] GotoDengo:
Thanks so much! It's great seeing your support for this little but useful phone! :)

No problems found so far after a dirty flash, sweet!
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
Hi [MENTION=10478307]JonW434[/MENTION]

To flash kernel only, generally you need boot.img which includes kernel. Flash .img, not .zip, from TWRP.

These days MagiskSU is best root solution (especially because of the large systemless mod repo available. Cleanup from SuperSU manager settings first.

Not sure why simply flashing whatever TWRP you need from TWRP itself would require changing ROMs to get back USB debugging mode. I imagine that it can just be retoggled on if it goes off. Anyhow, I swap between latest official and latest unofficial regularly to get functions I need, with no problems.

How do you know a Super Intensive site from Low Intensive? PW
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bahram360:
Hi , i gonna move free space root system to internal storage ?

Because not here option move app to sd
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] GotoDengo:
Just set your SD card as adoptable storage, it can then be used as internal storage for your apps. ;)
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bahram360:
I not doing this method , Because the phone speeds down and gets stuck , even with a memory card class 10
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Saint_13:
you must develop new ROM with smaller root partition size and bigger home partition size. and i think there is also limit on minimum root partition size. so i think it's impossible to change root partition size.

you can do the trick that i mentioned above to partition your SD card. i'm also using adoptable SD card, and there is little effect on performance if you use good SD card (mine is U3 SD card) (normal class 10 is not recommended).

our y550 is an aged smart phone and we cannot expect more. just a usable phone with basic functionality. that's it, the truth to be said.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
Class 10 has been around a while now, and earlier class 10 cards are now comparatively slow.

Try latest batch with Rated UHS Speed Class 3 (U3), eg SanDisk Extreme microSD UHS-I cards with read and write speeds up to 170MB/s and 90MB/s.

[Nb. We won't get boosted A2 or even A1 speeds as our SD 3.0 device does not support these enhanced protocols. We will get the native UHS-I 104 MB/s transfer rate. Still not bad! - see post #6642]

These cards can "deliver the fast recording and playback you need to capture 4K UHD and Full HD video".

SanDisk Extreme 64GB seems best value, is pretty cheap (AUS $19.41), works well with Y550, and you may find it actually faster than Internal. PW
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Saint_13:
and there is just 500 MB on root partition, i wonder what you can do with that?! just my Spotify data is more than 1 GB !!!

in addition pndwal post, also make sure you have choose performance in : Setting > Battery > Battery saver and performance > performance profile : performance
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] GotoDengo:
I use this method and have not noticed slow speeds. Try using a different SDHC card to see if that makes a difference.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] szty0pa:
[MENTION=7866480]fwiep[/MENTION]:

Oh, I see, a VM is not a good option in your case then for sure. But you don't need the separate Debain system just for building android images either (if you don't use it for anything else - Debian and Ubuntu have very similar codebases anyway), it might be enough to shut down the GUI while you need the memory for the build process. Ctrl+alt+f3 (say) you will get a command prompt, if you log in there and write "sudo service lightdm stop" or "sudo service gdm3 stop" depending on your window manager - it might be something else too(?) - you shut down the GUI and free up some memory that might come handy. If you are finished you can restart the gui the same way just with start instead of stop.

[MENTION=10478307]JonW434[/MENTION]:

Great to see new people having the interest and courage to start hacking their phones! Welcome to the club and keep up that interest and courage, this will be a steep and bumpy journey at first but a very adventurous one! ;)

[MENTION=10478307]JonW434[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6726815]Saint_13[/MENTION]:

It is possible to repartition your eMMC (4GB internal storage) from the recovery or probably from your PC through adb as well, I used to do that. The downside is that you have to resize every new ROM image you flash as well to fit, which is very tedious.

I used to have roughly 800MB for /system and roughly 2GB for /data which is a more sane setup than the original Huawei one. It was working great for my needs (not that many apps installed). I propose to change the partition layout of the ROM image accordingly if everyone using it agrees knowing that it will break compatibility(!) with other ROM images, even with previous builds of the same ROM image - unless those images are manually resized.

If you use an SD card though it can be partitioned, fomatted and mounted as /system and/or /data to give you more space - be aware that your class 10 SD card will probably be slower than the integrated eMMC though! Partitioning, formatting and mounting is probably easiest from the recovery command line and is the same as in any other linux distribution. If anyone is interested (and brave enough) to give it a go if my time allows (probably not before spring) I will help with that - probably to write a tutorial would be best.
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
[MENTION=6951289]szty0pa[/MENTION]

Thanks for input!

I'm interested in partitioned SD if it can work flawlessly with native Adopted Storage.

I recall from past (days of Apps2SD and Link2SD)

that 3rd party partition tools, incl. Minitool Partition Wizard and inbuilt Apps2Sd tool, gave issues. I remember block multiples used being critical, and these tools didn't necessarily choose correct sizes. However, inbuilt TWRP SD Partition tool always worked beautifully / simply (for 2 or 3 partitions) for me.

Any thoughts on value of using swap partition now? Settings?

Also, do you know of any way to activate Mass Storage for FAT partition in 7.1 (LOS 14.1) or above these days? Regards, PW
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] szty0pa:
[MENTION=7550078]pndwal[/MENTION]:

No worries. :)

Sorry I don't know android well enough yet to dare to give advices, I only know linux. (And I don't really trust tools like Apps2SD, Link2SD to do dangerous things to my storage, more so I don't know what they exactly do. I trust the command line only for these kind of things.)

Block sizes are important if your phone uses NAND (or NOR) memory - which is very rare - because they don't have the abstraction layer on top to hide this detail from your OS. eMMCs, SSDs, SD cards have this in the form of a microcontroller so your OS should not care about block- and erasesizes. I don't see why it is critical for these tools, maybe apart from the blocksize setting of the filesystem, but that should only matter for performance not at all for usability.

I don't know about swap usage. It will be painfully slow, especially if you set it up on the SD card as I imagine. Plus it will significantly shorten the lifetime of that card! It really depends on the memory requirements of your apps. I myself use pretty much all the apps I need (which is not too much: always-on-VPN, social media/messengers - pretty much all of the main ones though, microG. These are the ones that run constantly, but there is browsing, navigation, occasional music production(!), it can handle anything if you use light versions of the apps if you can. Please note though I don't use my phone for gaming! - apart from chess) :)

I don't know what is Bulk Storage, but android can read-write FAT partitions. I don't think you have to specifically enable that, it's pretty much a basic feature in all major OS-s.

I just found this though, it might give some insigth of how storage in android works:

https://source.android.com/devices/storage/config

https://source.android.com/devices/bootloader/system-as-root
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
These were fantastic tools, especially for low-memory likes of Y550, in their day. They automated process of moving apk, odex, dex, lib, data, cache etc to 2nd partition of your SD card and creating a Symbolic link at the original location, and were all we had till Google finally decided to do it natively with Android M. Link2SD broke ground, Apps2Sd being a latecomer which became far more refined, an 'all-in-one' tool housing many utilities that are still useful.

https://xdaforums.com/android/apps-games/apps2sd-partition-sd-card-link-apps-to-t3122919

These utilities were once also basically the only reason many rooted low-spec devices, incl Y550, as these were otherwise crippled by inability to install even one large app! (Of course sym-link could also be created thru command line, and many did this especially before Link2SD.)

Yes, sorry, I was unclear - I meant 'block multiples', not 'block size multiples' (edited!). I recall only TWRP tool gave partition sizes in proper increments.

Yes, I got little gain using swap on SD, or adjusting swappiness setting. Just thought you may have tried. I abandoned this partly due to concerns re. SD life too.

Again, sorry for lack of clarity. Bulk-Only is the transfer protocol. I should be saying 'Mass Storage'. This was, of course, the original android PC connection protocol, now not supported in android due to problems when phone loses access to whole SD in this mode - phone retains access in newer MTP mode.

However, I miss old Mass Storage ability. I could (with stock) plug phone into a set top box, and play files from it as if it was a USB stick for example.

Mass storage is still implemented by some OEMs (eg Lenovo), and can be activated in other devices with mods, eg using MS Enabler (Universal) v1.6.apk - as long as ROM has USB Gadget support in kernel.

https://xdaforums.com/android/apps-games/app-universal-mass-storage-enabler-beta-t3240097

- Chess is the only game I have also. Nice to have time for music production (no USB OTG for sequencer keyboard here but :D ). PW
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bahram360:
I found Sandisk extreme pro A2 u3 64Gb , but Y550 device just until the support 32Gb microSDHC support :laugh:
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] pndwal:
Not true!

I have a couple of these cards (but not 'pro'), and can confirm they work even on stock 4.4.4 B247 ROM.(Spare phone still on stock.) - possibly didn't work on earlier / initial releases.

As has been confirmed here previously, SDXC 64GB cards work fine on Y550. Probably larger ones do too, but I haven't tried this.

SDHC has nominal max 32GB, and I guess SDXC cards were either not available or common in 2013 / 2014. Original (old) specifications are most likely based on available cards when tested. QCom's Snapdragon 410 hardware is compatible and has no problem with SDXC spec however.

The real specification for our device is:

SD 3.0 (UHS-I)

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-processors-410

Nb. Ultra High Speed, Phase I (UHS-I) bus design for SDHC and SDXC cards was added in SD spec 3.0.

Huawei probably choose to give tested card size instead because the real SD hardware specification might mean little to the average user. PW
[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bahram360:
I read some content on the website digikala mag