[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lin_ux:
Things to do after rooting

A few comments now that I've rooted one of my Y550 phones:

First thing I did was to permanently nuke the file restrictions on writing to the SD card, this was easily achieved in seconds. Now everything can read/write to the external SD card just like in every other release of android.

*This was the main frustration and reason pushing me to root the phone.

Next was to change the screen DPI to make everything look less blobby.

After going through settings of 230, 220, 215 and 210 I've found that on the default Huawei EMUI launcher anything lower than 230 looks odd, although 220 is probably usable.

With a setting of anything less than 220 the desktop icons are shifted into strange positions which is quite off putting, and having only 4 rows of desktop icons looks kind of odd when the icons are shrunk, there is easily enough room for 5 rows, on Nova launcher mine is set to 6 rows and it looks great.

As always Nova cures most of the visual ills that appear in the supplied manufacturers launchers, so no problems...

Anyone considering the Y550 should disregard any the negative comments from those who proclaim the screen is crap..!!!

Obviously it is very slightly lower resolution than some models, but if you don't hold it next to another phone with a higher resolution screen to compare against then I can't imagine anyone would know.

Running MX Player Pro the Y550 can easily play H.264 1080P videos scaled to full screen.

*In MX Player Pro I set the sound playback for S/W Audio, the volume can then be increased to 200% which is great. I set the video to playback using H/W+ decoder which is impressive. The Y550 quad core combined with a better GPU obviously helps with smooth media playback. Using AllCast to playback video through the LAN to a big screen is also very smooth, it works a treat.

And to top off my first round of rooting fun I installed AdFree to get rid of the nasty adds that appear in many apps, together with an old favourite called BatteryCalibration which is always worth running after installing CWM or TWRP.

:good:

---------- Post added at 01:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:08 PM ----------

A quick "How to" describing the method for removing the stupid KitKat write restrictions on the External SD card.

Perhaps a disclaimer first to say that if any of the following seems like techno-babble you should NOT do this, just leave it the way google intended it to be, or find a local droid geek to assist you...

Out of habit I use ES File Explorer to edit my android system files directly on the device, it has a decent enough text (note) editor and also has the easiest way to visually confirm that the file permissions are correctly set after you have edited/moved/copied files.

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WARNING: Incorrect file permissions are your biggest danger, the phone will probably not boot if they are set incorrectly.

Whatever happens you should proceed with extreme caution! Recheck everything several times before rebooting...

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In ES File Manager toggle the "Root Explorer" to on, and then navigate to the following file:

/system/etc/permissions/platform.xml

Note: You deserve to have problems if you don't make a backup of the original file first, so make a copy of it in the user memory space or on the SD card.

Then open the file in the ES note editor and scroll down until you find: android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and android.permission.WRITE_MEDIA_STORAGE lines.

In the ES text editor click the top right menu and chose the pen, this will give a cursor to allow you to write text.

These are XML sections, you need to make them look exactly like the strings below:

<permission name="android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE" >

<group gid="sdcard_r" />

<group gid="sdcard_rw" />

<group gid="media_rw" />

</permission>

<permission name="android.permission.WRITE_MEDIA_STORAGE" >

<group gid="sdcard_rw" />

<group gid="media_rw" />

</permission>

Save the platform.xml file (do this by hitting the back hardware button once, it'll then ask if you want to save changes.

Then exit the editor and refresh the directory listing, chose view and select "small detail" and make sure that platform.xml file permissions are set to "-rw-r--r--" (in geek speak it needs to be 644) before rebooting your phone.

*Don't forget to turn off the "Root Explorer" toggle in ES File Manager after you have edited the file and confirmed the file permissions.

That's it.

Once again, if any of the above seems too hard then DON'T do it.

*In the past I've tried apps from the playstore to perform this tweak on other devices, but none of them worked, so now I just do it myself, it only takes a couple of minutes to edit the file.

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DISCLAIMER – THERE ARE ALWAYS RISKS WITH EDITING SYSTEM FILES, IT WORKED FOR ME, BUT I BEAR NO RESPONSIBILITY IF IT DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU, BRICKS YOUR PHONE, OR TURNS YOU INTO A WOMBAT.

---------- Post added at 01:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:14 PM ----------

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I hope the above posts are helpful for those who've never edited system files before...

It's bit scary the first couple of times, but it you take it slow and steady it is not hard at all.

It's basically the same method for changing the display DPI, you'll need to edit the /system/build.prop file and look for this line:

ro.sf.lcd.density=240

and change the "240" to anything between 240 ~ 200 then reboot.

Simple as...

Just remember to check those file permissions before you reboot :good:

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Don't forget to press the THANKS button if any of this helped you ;)

---------- Post added at 01:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:19 PM ----------

Yours was an interesting post, I would never have considered trying to set a non native resolution on the device. I imagine this would cause all sorts of problems that could be hard to solve.

If your intention is only to increase the information shown on the screen, then I think it is a much better idea to change the display DPI rather than setting a totally different screen resolution. The chances of upsetting the system are far less and there is no need for busybox, or soft keys because everything still works as it should...