Technology – Sunish Issac's thoughts on the Web

Moto E Restarts after latest update

UPDATE: I got my MotoE mainboard replaced from Rhidham Service Centre Calicut, it took around 3 weeks for the replacement to arrive. They did not ask for any more details as its a known problem for the service guys. Even though it was a once rooted phone, had no issues with the service centre. No more restarts. I gave it to the service centre when there was just 2 more weeks for warranty to expire, as I noted some comments that even after replacement, the issue has started again for a few users.

So, the point is don’t waste your time trying to install 3rd party software or wait for the warranty to expire. Just get the board/power switch replaced in warranty. Its a hardware problem that got triggered after a period of use which is present in the initial batches.

Moto E for what its worth was supposedly the best Mobile in the value for money category. I got it on launch day from Flipkart and was pretty happy about everything except for 2 major limitations. 1) Lack of auto focus camera, yet there is enough resolution but you can’t use the camera as a scanner because there’s no auto focus. 2) No USB OTG , something which I wanted for all my experiments.

Now to the restart issue. It started after the KitKat 4.4.4 update and I happen to be one of the first to receive the update. Nothing was wrong during the test phase. Then I got this idea of rooting, yes you can do it officially which is a great thing. You get a message stating that Motorola is not responsible on bootup and everything was fine. Then all of a sudden I started encountering frequent restarts at random. There was not a single automatic reboot till or after the update. It looked weird for phone that was supposed to be “Made to Last. Priced for All”
First I suspected 3rd party apps, that too with rooting. I did a hard reset and still there were reboots. It used to happen while unlocking and tried changing from pattern lock to number lock to just plain slide, but invariably the reboots happened sooner or later.

Then on searching the net I reached this thread. Yes the problem was not mine alone, many many users having the same problem. The exact reason is still not known but it was found that restart happens when power button is pressed to turn on the phone from sleep mode. It happens one or 2 seconds after power button is pressed so I initially assumed it happens when when we are unlocking. Thanks to forum members we have a temporary solution using tap tap app, which lets you unlock the phone using proximity sensor. Just tap the sensor area twice and the phone powers on.

To keep track of the reboots I have started using Reboot Logger.

In a recent forum posting somebody has indicated that if wifi tethering is enabled there’s no issue restart issue even with the power button. Too strange and too bad that Motorola is not able to solve this problem since the first report in July.
I assume the problem is there only for the initial batches as a friend of mine whoc bought it recently, even with the latest update has absolutely no issues.

Here’s the Quora link on the same issue http://www.quora.com/My-Moto-E-automatically-restarts-What-can-I-do-What-are-some-service-centers-in-Chennai-that-will-claim-its-warranty

Get Free Flipkart Discount Coupons as Voucher

As an online shopper you might already know that flipkart doesnt provide coupon codes. Buts they have an affiliate program. I just thought of becoming one so that we can both benefit. As a user you get 50% of what I get. Just search for the product that you want in the toolbar widget on the right of this site.(Note it doesn’t work with Ad Block Plus enabled) and buy the product from Flipkart. Current commissions for May are as below. Please send me your order id and email address using the contact form. Once my account gets credited, I’ll send you flipkart vouchers equivalent to 50% of the percentage that I get.
The affiliate commissions for May is given below.
Books 10%
eBooks 15%
Large Appliances 4%
Cameras & Accessories 4%
Laptops & Computer Accessories (except Storage) 4%
Computer Storage (Hard Disks & Pen Drives) 3%
Mobiles, Tablets & Accessories (except MOTO phones) 3%
MOTO phones 4%
Audio & Video 4%
Gaming Consoles 4%
Games & Gaming Accessories 10%
Sunglasses 10%
Clothing 10%
Watches 10%
Perfumes 10%
Grooming, Beauty & Wellness 10%
Bags, Wallets & Belts 10%
Footwear 10%
Home Furnishings 10%
Jewellery 10%
Luggage & Travel Accessories 10%
Home Improvement Tools 10%
Home & Kitchen Appliances 10%
Toys 10%
Baby Care 10%
Music, Movies & Posters 10%
Software 10%
Sports & Fitness 10%
Stationery & Office Supplies 10%

Overcoming the flash limitation of Moto E with Rs.10 – Not POSSIBLE

Update : Its impossible to have flash on Moto E as it doesnt support USB OTG, the hack was tried on Moto G before Moto E was available assuming it has OTG like Moto G. This post is just for reference.

With a pricing of just Rs.6999 Moto E beats them all. Okay Moto E is out, with just one major limitation. It doesn’t have an LED flash. So here’s an idea to have flash on Moto E with just 10 Indian bucks if you have a USB OTG connector. Just solder an LED with a series resistor to USB connector. See the result on a Moto G …Same applies to Moto E.

All you need is an LED, resistor and USB OTG cable.

Here’s the flash powered by Moto USB port.

The same technique can be used on any Android Phone or tab without flash. Practically we use the LED intended for camera flash more as a flash light in the dark. And yes if you have the USB OTG cable and led fixed you have it. Limitation is that we are taking the power for the LED from the battery directly through the USB connector using hardware. Battery can be drained fast based on the current drawn by the LED.

More than marketing ploy and to have product segmentation, companies get rid of the LED flash. I guess its not the cost.

Search all online Indian shopping portals in one go with my google custom search engine

Search all Indian shopping portals in one go with google cse (Custom Search Engine)

Its always easy to google up everything but tried searching for buying something from one of the Indian shopping portals ? There is no easy way to search just the Indian portals and that is where google CSE or Custom Search Engine helps. I have added all the main shopping portals so that you just give the name of the product you want to search . If you want to exclude some site use the “-” operator. Of course there are sites and toolbars like compareraja this is more reliable for an example try searching nexus 2012 on both…

The shortened url for my cse is http://bit.ly/indianshoppingsearch (its longer but easy to remember)
The raw google link is https://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=001138685502448049082:izwx1tqzqsg

ICICI Mobile security vulnerability with imobile application activate mobile banking or loose your money..

Disclaimer: I don’t endorse any cracking or stealing activity. I had sent a message to ICICI regarding this issue on 9/8/2011and got the reply as below

Dear Mr. Issac,

We value your relationship with ICICI Bank.

Thank you for your feedback. We appreciate the efforts you have taken in order to improve our service standards and processes.
Your suggestions will go a long way in helping us improve the features on our website and security measures.
We look forward for more opportunities to be of service to you.

Sincerely,
X XXXXXXX
Account Manager
ICICI Bank Limited

—–Original Message—–

Subject: RE: Password Related Issues

Ok received and changed password.
Its too bad that spaces are not allowed in passwords as its easy to create tough passwords with spaces in between.

BTW I have found a serious security flaw in your ICICI bank mobile application for android. Who should be contacted for security related issues ?

Sunish

I tried to use contact option on ICICI web site to report the issue, but could not find any link nor did I find any link related to reporting security issue on a site wide search. The contact option forces the customer to use messaging system of internet banking whenever the option ‘other’ is selected.

Now to the real issue :
You don’t need ATM pin or any external authentication tools to activate iMobile app but just ICICI bank debit card (PIN NOT REQUIRED). The danger is when you have an ICICI bank account and you have not started using iMobile.

It should work on all platforms, be it android, iphone, windows mobile or symbian.

Scenario 1: Somebody steals your mobile and wallet containing ICICI bank debit card

The thief can transfer money and perform all transactions possible within the iMobile application by following the process below.

Steps to activate imobile and do whatever including tranferring funds using IMPS, shopping, mobile recharge, air ticketing and whatever.

Install imobile on the victim’s phone or another phone with the victim’s SIM.
Run the application and it will ask for a 4 digit pin for registration. (Yes the thief can put whatever pin he wants to use iMobile)
It will go through the grid based authentication for which all you need is the debit card .

That’s it the thief has full access to iMobile with all transaction permissions with the daily limits through App.

The process of activation is explained here http://www.icicibank.com/mobile-banking/download.html#down. Step 3 without ATM pin is the problem step.

Essentially the grid based security is useless without asking for atm pin and that’s the flaw which was there ever since ICICI had the mobile apps released.

If you are already using iMobile app then nothing to fear as you got to enter the application PIN to start the app. If you have registered your mobile number for mobile banking but not yet activated iMobile, then if you loose that SIM with ICICI debit card, man you can get into trouble if you have big balances Smile

Search All Indian Electronics and Embedded Shopping Sites

Searching to know whether a particular component, module or board is available in India can be daunting. I made a google custom search engine (CSE) with all the main online embedded/electronics sites.

The URL for the search is
http://www.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=001138685502448049082:odwaxexu1te

The current list of sites included in the search are

http://www.mgsuperlabs.co.in
http://www.ventor.co.in/
http://extremeelectronics.co.in
http://ventor.co.in
http://nex-robotics.com
http://sunrom.com
http://simplelabs.co.in
http://www.robokits.co.in
http://probots.co.in
http://onlinetps.com
http://embeddedmarket.com
http://tenettech.com
http://rhydolabz.com
http://bhashatech.com

Among these I have bought products from
http://www.ventor.co.in/
http://probots.co.in
http://rhydolabz.com
http://nex-robotics.com

and I was satisfied with the overall experience .

BSNL post paid GPRS,EDGE,3G raw configuration for bluetooth and serial modems

My post at https://sunish.net/2007/10/25/bsnl-gprs-configuration seems to be one of the most popular pages in spite of the fact that the site was not updated for a long long time.

The most important parameter to be set is the APN or Access Point Name.

The settings are as follows
APN : bsnlnet
Username : Not Required
Password : Not Required
Dial up number : *99#

If you are using the software provided by the phone manufacturer like nokia suite and if its updated it will automatically update the settings with the correct apn which is now bsnlnet and earlier was bsnlsouth for southern states.

On windows to connect to the internet using bluetooth or usb drivers has to be installed and configured. Once the drivers are installed, going to device manager(type devmgmt.msc and click OK at the run prompt obtained by pressing Win+R ) will show the corresponding modem installed under modems, similar to Standard Modem over Bluetooth link shown in the screen shot below.

Click on Properties of the Modem, click on advanced tab.

Enter extra initialization settings as AT + CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”bsnlnet”

Click OK.

The above steps are required only if you get a PPP link error message with error code 734.

Now create a new dial up connection, on windows 7 open Networking and Sharing centre

Click On Connect to the Internet and click next.
Select Dialup in How do you want to connect and click next.
Enter *99# as dialup number and leave username and password as blank.

Use this connection to connect to the internet.

Time taken to download for various Broadband Speeds

A recent business proposal required me to calculate the time taken to download huge files. Being a BSNL Dataone user, I was comparing it with various plans including the Home unlimited plan for Rs.900.

1 MB = 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 bytes

= 1048576 bytes

= 1048576*8 = 8388608 bits

Bandwidth in K bps (Kilo Bits Per Second)	Speed in Kilobytes per Second	Time taken to download a 1MB(1024Kilobyte) file under ideal conditions in seconds
256 K bps = 256 * 1024 bps = 262144 bps	256/8 = 32 KB/S	8388608/262144 = 32
384	48	21.33
512	64	16
1024 (1Mbps)	128	8
2048 (2Mbps)	256	4
4096 (4Mbps)	512	2
8192 (8Mbps)	1024	1

BSNL offers 256Kbps guaranteed speed with a maximum of 2Mbps. So you can theoretically download a 1Mb file in …well under 4 seconds. So that’s under ideal conditions. I have seen download progresses for my 256Kbps connections at the range of 200KB/s. A lot depends on the server’s bandwidth too.
So how much does a 1GB file take to download with a 1 Mbps connection ? From the above table, 8 seconds for 1MB = 8 *1024 for 1GB = 8192 seconds = 136.53 minutes = approximately 2 and a half hours..

Update as on 14-3-08
I’m getting a download speed of 312Kb/s on my home 500 plan which means the speeds are crossing the 2Mbps speeds.

Opera Mini on Treo Review

My idea was to write a complete review from my Treo, using Opera Mini. After writing couple of sentences or even more, I tried copying the content that I wrote to the clipboard using FieldPlus’ Shift- Enter keyboard shortcut. Oh! what a bad decision that was, everything went off and I was with a blank screen. Looks like since Opera Mini run’s on top off Java VM, it has problems with the standard Palm OS keys and perhaps it will have problems with any mobile OS.

I was using Treo’s Blazer browser for quite some time. That used to work for most of the sites, but failed miserably on Google adsense login. It could be due to the time taken for the AJAX interface to load on my slow GPRS connection, I don’t know for sure. I had tried Opera Mini earlier and it was crashing, required too much RAM and was not all like my Opera on desktop. I was a bit apprehensive in trying out stuff, but I had time and installed IBM Java VM. The download is free from palmone’s site and is a prerequisite in running Opera. On installation on the VM (version J9 2.2.14 ARM 20070207_1505_IHsCmV), you can adjust the settings from the Preferences applet. Also a MIDlet manager appears among the list of applications. Next was the Opera Mini installation which went fine. No glitches what so ever. The Opera about ( taken from Menu -> Tools -> Help -> About ) show the version number as 4.0.9800 20071113(should be the build date). I’m a fan of having the build date on the version information, I usually do that and it can really tell the age of the software.

Features Overview

Fast, yes its really fast, the VM clumsiness is overcome by the proxy I guess. Opera does not render the site directly. It uses a proxy server cluster for doing the rendering and then transferring the data to a format supported by Opera Mini. On researching I’ve found that the rendering is done using an ultra compact binary language (OBML) that reduces the page size by 90% and the result is sent to the mobile phone.
Shortcut key support, could be very useful for mobile devices without QWERTY keyboard.
Speed dials feature is akin to the desktop opera. In Opera Mini you enter * followed by a digit from 0 to 9 to open the set speed dial web page.
Context menu is available on keeping the stylus pressed, with options for enabling and disabling mobile view, reloading and Information.
Fetch title and icon feature is a cute feature, that’s available for speed dials and Search links. It lets you retrieve the icon and page title and that’s reflected in the UI of the bookmarks of speed dial lists.
Opera defaults to yahoo search, but like its desktop counterpart you can add any search provider like Google. Management of the search providers is relatively easy.
Feed support is native within the browser, you don’t need any feed reader. BBC News,Sport, Guardian, Opera Community News and Opera Mini Blog are the default additions.You have the option to view by feed or view by time which sorts by Feed name and most recent feed entry respectively.
Opera Browser sync is touted to sync between opera desktop bookmarks but I have not tested it.
Its 100% FREE.
Know the transferred bytes for a session or total from the about screen. Looks like its not retained during a soft reset.

The default keyboard shortcuts for Opera Mini is given below

#1	Enter Web Address
#2	Bookmarks
#3	Goto top/bottom/text start
#4	Start Page
#5	History
#6	Page Information
#7	Add Bookmark
#8	Settings
#9	Search
#0	Reload
##	Forward
0 to 9	Speed dial
*0	Feeds
**	Change Window Size

Limitations

Cannot use the OS default key functionality, limited by the JVM. Keys like the context menu key not working is really irritating.
When there’s an Internet connect request, it pops up the OS’s dial-up screen which states To complete the request you must connect to the Internet. Connect now ? This does not appear correctly, its visible only partly on the screen and would be confusing a new user.Even the service connection progress window goes outside the screen. Its probably another JVM issue or due to the memory preference setting. Update: On increasing the JVM memory and
Much stable than the previous version of Opera Mini, but still crashes, with a soft reset being the only solution.
No password remembering options, well that’s not there even in Blazer
Feed management and Bookmark management UI lacks the option of deleting multiple entries at a time and I don’t know why it shows ‘connecting…’ to delete an entry.
Asking each time whether Opera Mini has to connect and use airtime is another minor irritant.

Blazer comparison

On the Treo 650, the default browser is Blazer. It was good enough but its far behind in comparison to Blazer. The UI of Blazer is more Palmy and can get the Palm user feel at home. Opera Mini 4 is really different.

Features missing in Opera Mini when compared to Blazer

Cannot copy the web address to clipboard or paste it to address bar from clip board. You cannot send a link as SMS or email easily.
No tool bar buttons, for a device with stylus, its much easier to click a button than to press a shortcut key. Screen estate is actually wasted for displaying time. Yes there’s one option ‘back’ in the status bar and there’s enough and more space to add buttons for basic stuff like refresh,homepage,bookmarks, next and signal strength .
Blazer allows to connect via VPN but I couldn’t find a similar option in Opera.
No option to view passwords while entering, it’s very much there in Blazer
No address bar.
No auto complete of previous site addresses.
No way to disable cookies or JavaScript.
Tap and drag – Blazer has an option to select between text selection and scrolling.
Not that its needed with the proxy, but option to disable CSS is present in Blazer.
Selection of a custom proxy is set from the IBM Java VM preferences. Not very intuitive.
Option to clear Cookies and cache on exit is not present in Opera.
No option to get back to previous page once you exit Opera Mini.

The proxy at http://server4.operamini.com:80 is what makes Opera Mini fast. You can find whether the proxy address is the same from the the About screen of Opera Mini. Out of curiosity I set this as the proxy server for my Internet host and I got a message stating that its’ plugin content. So this proxy can’t be used for your normal browser on a slow connection. Another thi
ng that I tested was trying opera:config,opera:about. opera:help etc in the address bar. It resulted in an invalid address except for opera:about, which showed Version 10.00, Build 217, Platform Pike v 7.6 release 92 and long list of 3rd party copyrights and miscellaneous info. Its probably the server cluster version number and information.

Conclusion

Overall I like Opera Mini as much as Opera on my desktop I’ve started using it as my primary browser on my Treo and yes to to check my adsense revenue..
Even with its quirks with clipboard and without auto completion. The speed compensates for most of its limitations and then I believe Opera will definitely come out with a more feature complete product soon. I wanted to put some screen shots but couldn’t get PDA Reach working.

Tips on checking and fixing HP Laptop Remote Control

I have a HP dv6395 laptop (should be applicable to the whole HP dv6000 series) and it comes with a remote. Once in a while it just stops working. The ultimate problem solving technique of resatrting windows doesn’t solve this problem. Usually whenever there’s a problem with any IR remote, I use the digital camera technique to ensure that the IR light actually comes from the remote. In this case the RC was actually woking and I couldn’t find anything else wrong. The related services were working, but none of the functions were actually executed by the OS. Powering off and removing the power supply too didn’t work.

Finally I had this logical intuition, where I thought that since the remote can power on the laptop even if its powered off, unless I remove the battery the IR sesning circuit will not be reset. That worked, removing the battery and then inserting it back restored the IR functionality.