downsizing android

i have been on a continuous quest to reduce resource requirements. i think this is affecting my personal life too - simplifying my own demands is making me live happier :) but, back to the topic on hand - android!

rom downgrade (Android 2.3.5)

have you ever downgraded? was it too painful to switch from more to less?

i believe, less is more! more than what you really need or actually consume is inefficient & wasteful. i keep learning from experience... bloatware (in any way, shape, or form in life) cripples us!!

android app cache

i do quite a bit of fiddling around inside the internals of android. i have noticed that occassionally rebooting helps to stabilise the system. although i could never work out the need, as android is essentially linux. but sensing what google wants to do it, i suspect it might be heading the microsoft windows way.. becoming bloatware (it probably already is)!

the next step is to clean out the cache. though you could do so by manually clearing the filesystems, i find it simpler (and safer perhaps) to do so from the recovery. i used clockworkmod. there are two caches - the dalvik cache and the system cache. both can be wiped from recovery. you might reclaim some diskspace too. android will create the required caches from scratch, on the next reboot. this boot will take a rather long time - be warned! watching the phone doesn't help. find something else to do and come back in good time. patience is of essence here.. :-)

there are some other ways to hack out some more space in /data, which is where all user apps are installed.

we can move some app caches to sdcard. this might make those apps slower, if your sdcard is not that fast. for some apps with huge caches, we might be more concerned about reclaiming disk space and sacrificing some speed. note that caches might not necessarily be a bad thing.

let's identifying the apps with the biggest caches. do this after you have been using the phone regularly for a few days without any reboots/cleanup, for best results.

$ du -s /data/data/*/cache | sort -n

if the above command didn't work for you, enable superuser mode and try again.
$ su

the next step is to move some of these caches to the sdcard. we need to decide on some rules to identify the best candidates. i have focussed on the biggest caches where this process actually makes a noticable difference. for me the two apps are market and browser. you need to consider the security implications, as chmod permissions don't work on sdcard fat filesystems, i.e. your sdcard content is world readable.

now move each of them to sdcard, like so

$ mkdir -p /sdcard/cache/browser
$ cd /data/data/com.android.browser
$ rm -r cache
$ ln -s /sdcard/cache/browser cache


note that the app should not be running, not even in the background. go to settings -> applications -> manage applications and verify whether they are running. force close them if necessary. it might be far simpler to boot into recovery and do everything there!

reclaiming android foss

i am gradually removing google apps, as they continue to bloat.

if you are looking to buy a new phone, i will only recommend those phones which have a sizable open-source developer community behind it. if you don't want to end up with a paperweight, do not buy any phones, which can't be openly hacked!

android roadmap?

i'm not sure which way google are going, but they seem to want to turn the android into a desktop os, rather than a handheld os. google are doing to android, what microsoft did to windows.. make it bloatware & proprietary locking everyone out, till people give up and move to alternatives.

stock apps

http://android.modaco.com/topic/318375-how-to-manual-mod/page__view__findpost__p__1412213
stock apps

I found stock apps from elsewhere. Refer post# 8 from starkos for the contacts apps.
Contacts.apk
ContactsProvider.apk
Gallery_1.1.30682.apk
Music.apk

Resource Utilisation & Capacity

http://android.modaco.com/topic/318375-how-to-manual-mod/page__view__findpost__p__1412212

capacity & utilisation
It is very important to understand the capacity & utilisation! This is mine, with ~100 apps that I've added, including CoPilot Live. Previously, I couldn't even install the CoPilot, which was supplied included in my t-mobile contract. Now, I can install another similar humunguous app, and still have some free space...