Backup & Restore HCL Me X1

If you are planning to experiment with any Android phone/tablet, the first thing you would like to do is take a backup of it just in case things get messy. Typically in such situations you would like to take a backup of not only the user-data but also the operating system.

In this post I will be discussing on how to create a backup and restore the backup. You don’t need to root your device for this since adb already has root access in HCL Me X1. But you will need fastboot which can be obtained by compiling the Android source code.

Remember that the source code can be built only on a Linux distribution, so make sure you have one (I would recommend Ubuntu 11.10). fastboot will be available at <source_code_dir>/out/host/linux-x86/bin/fastboot after the compilation. If you don’t want to compile the source, you can try a compiled version of fastboot from the link specified at the end of the post; I built it on Ubuntu 11.10.

Rooting & Unrooting HCL Me X1

Android is primarily an operating system based on the Linux kernel. So similar to other Linux based operating systems Android has a special user account known as the root or super-user. Unlike other user accounts which have limited control over the operating system this account has complete access to the system.

However several (almost every) carriers and manufacturers don’t allow users to access this account mainly due to security concerns. Few carriers and manufacturers also do this because they don’t want users to access features for free when they can sell them :). Rooting is a process that allows users of phones/tablets to gain this privileged control (the root access). Here is an article with the Top 10 Reasons To Root Your Android Phone.

Though rooting your device is not illegal it might void the warranty of the device. So think twice (make that trice) before rooting your device and make sure you have a good reason to do so. Read these articles on The dangers of rooting your Android phone and What is Rooting on Android? The Advantages and Disadvantages

The process of rooting a device changes from device to device. It usually involves using an exploit to either gain temporary root access or to flash a custom recovery image to attain permanent root access. There are popular exploits like GingerBreak, psneuter, etc. and applications like GingerBreak.apk, SuperOneClick, etc. for rooting a device.

If you have read the articles and still want to go ahead let me remind you once again that trying to root your device might brick the device. I am not responsible if you brick your device, so proceed at your own risk.

A Primer To Android Development

As most of you know, Android is a mobile operating system initially developed by Android Inc. and presently being developed by the Open Handset Alliance led by Google. Android consists of a modified Linux kernel and software built on the Apache Harmony framework (an open source Java implementation). The best thing I like about the Android platform is its versioning. The code names are released in alphabetic order of dessert items - Cupcake, Donut, Éclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean.

I am a newbie myself when it comes to Android, so the past few days I was trying to understand the various development models of Android. During my search I came across several good tutorials. This blog post is primarily to consolidate these tutorials for beginners like me.

Android, like most open source Operating Systems allows developers to look at development from two different perspectives - working on Android (Application development) and working with Android (Operating System development, not possible with proprietary Operating Systems). Google understands this and therefore has two different sites for Android developers - Android Developers (has the Android SDK to build applications) and Android Open Source Project (has the Android source code).