Quick Overview of Box as Cloud Storage on Android mobile

Google Play Store : Box

Box will gives you 5GB-50GB of free storage. I've got 50GB when I signed up and signed in on my Nexus 4. If I invite people, they will also get 50GB if they sign up. Send me your email for the invitation if you want.

This post gives a quick overview of what I know on Box on Android.

Below is what you will see when you first login. Just a list view of the files and folders.

The red circle below is the app settings. Once click it will pull out the setting drawer.

Below is the setting drawer. Click on the email account in the red circle below where it will shows the account info detail.

Here's the account information. Nothing much of interest for me except the storage used.

To go back to folder view, click on the setting drawer again.

Then click on "All Files"

You will be back to folder view

Now what are those top right, 3 or 4 icons ?

Those are short-cuts to the storage activities you can do.

Below red circle is to search for file. Orange circle is to add file or folder. Pink circle is to see different view.

Below is the view when you click on the orange circle

Below shows the settings of the storage.

This is the view of the storage settings and the activities you can do

That's it, that's all I know on using Box. Coming up will be how to automate the upload of files such as photos or specific folder to Box.

If you wish to have the files on your desktop, install this Box for Windows Desktop on your Windows Desktop and it will create a folder and once completed sync all your files/folders will be here too.

Titanium Backup : Create Label and Filter Apps

Why do I need this? So it's easy for me to filter those app/data and see what are the apps I am backing up.

Below is how you create a new filter label. 

Eg. for Chrome to Phone app which is not available in my region play store, I need to do a full backup of it for ease of restoring after I factory reset my device.

Long press on the app and it will show you a list of activity. Click on "Assign labels ..." 

Create a new label name, in this case I named it as "primary". Click on color if you would like the label have a color for easy identification later and then click on Save button. 

Once created it will show a list of labels I have created. Make sure you put a tick on "primary" label then click "Save label assignments"

Once done, it will go back to your list of apps and you can see that there's a yellow color mark on the app indicating that this has been assigned to a label.

Android Device Backup Storage Repository

If you are just a normal consumer and not really particular with what applications or data is on your device, then just make sure you have the below settings set, so when you use a new android device, it will restore all your settings, applications and data onto it. I'm not sure about non-Nexus devices, but for sure it works on all my Nexus devices.

Note, for media files like video and images, it will not restore if it's local to your old device, unless you backup them on SD card or use cloud services. I will talk more about why I don't use SD card or any media storage on another post.

If you are like me, who is selective of what settings, applications and data restored to a new device, then proceed reading.

Why am I selective of stuffs restored?
Some of the applications installed are not often used. Eg. after playing "Angry Birds", it become stale to me and I don't often open it anymore. So I normally do a full backup and don't install it on my clean android device. Only if when time comes where I have the urge to play it again, then i will restore it back.
Check it yourself, how many percentage of the apps you installed, you use it every day. week and month?
Another thing, some of these apps, do consume resources in the background thus I try to minimze the number of apps. You can see the difference between when you initially had your device clean and after months with 100+ apps.

So where do I store my stuffs?
It's mostly on Box, but I do store some other stuffs spread among Google Drive, Dropbox, Google Music and Google+ .
Box : 50GB, alot of stuffs you can store
Dropbox : 5GB, this size is normally not enough for current usage. So I use this for temporary files
Google Drive : Good collaboration if you want to share your doc files with friends
Google Music : 20,000 songs free upload. Store your music files.
Google+ : Store photos but I believe it will lower your file resolution after xx number of uploads. Need to find out more
(Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos give you 15 GB of storage space for free, so you can keep your files, emails, and photos accessible from any device, anywhere.)

With regards to privacy, I try to minimize use of Google services as much as I can. It's kinda scary to see Google knows alot about you just by having photos and videos about you. So photos and personal videos are not uploaded there.

Even if you have cloud storage, it's also a hassle to do manual housekeeping and manual backup.
Next coming post is how to automate these backup.

Using Titanium Backup to convert app between System App and User App

Why do we want to switch app between system app and user app?

First of all let's understand what is system app and user app.

If you do a factory reset or intial bootup of your android device, some of the app will be there by default  such as Google Calendar and Google Current. These are called system app.

While those apps you installed from Play Store are called user app since these will be wipe/delete if you do factory reset.

So for advance user who normally does factory reset or wipe of their device, it will be good to switch those often used user apps into system apps while those system apps which you seldom use to be converted to user app. Take note, some of the system apps are tied to the OS so be careful and make sure you know what you do. I do not take any responsibility of what may happen to your device.

The app which I use is Titanium Backup (TB) . I used the Pro paid version.

In TB below, it shows the Movie Studio app in red which indicates it's a system app.

Right click on Movie Studio and it will pop-up a list as shown below. Select "Convert to user app".

Once clicked, it will convert the app into a user app. You can see the name "Movie Studio" text colour changed to white as shown below. That's it.

Below shows the list when you want to convert a user app to system app.

Android Device Refresh I

My android devices (Nexus 4 & 7) been cluttered with so many stuffs and now almost left with less than 1 GB of space. Time to wipe them clean but first I need to ensure all my photos and media been backup.

- ensure all photos, media, apps, and data been backup to cloud

- helium : partial backup of apps that is available in play store

- helium : full backup of apps not available in play store

- dropbox or box : cloud storage for backup repository

- take note of apps/data that is not able to backup using helium such as "Data Usage"

If you always like to try new custom roms or update custome roms, good investment to get the paid version of helium and titanium bkp  .

Not available for tablet n require full bkp+ 

• + Profile flow 
• + camera (Nexus 7 2012)
• + wechat
• + whatsapp
• + permission manager
• + Monopoly Hotel (Not available my play store region)
• + Chrome to phone (Not available my play store region)
• + movie studio (Not available my play store region)
• + sun beam (Not available my play store region)

No need backup (good to do partial bkp as it will be easy during restore from helium)

• + ROM manager
• + busybox
• + supersu
• + helium
• + Titanium bkp
• + Google apps
• + drop box
• + box
• + es file explorer
• + Facebook
• + quick boot
• + screen off and lock
• + superbeam
• + Titanium bkp
• + world mate
• + tripit
• + Candy crush
• + photo grid
• + spy camera
• + Starhub guide
• + touch controls

Require partial bkp

• + foldersync
• + iquran
• + live score addict
• + pages manager
• + prayer time pro
• + pulse
• + show nearby
• + smart WiFi toggler
• + battery monitor
• + news loop

Backup of data usage in titanium bkp 

- right click on data usage and send latest bkp to cloud

Cyanogenmod Guide

Cyanogenmod ROM is one of the first few ROMs which I played with when I first started to root my first android phone Nexus S. There are tons of tweaks you can play with on this ROM functionally. I don't remember there's any good guide on changing the settings thus I have to give a try on each setting to see the differences. However today I came across a good guide to share here. 

As of current, I am using paranoid android ROM, maybe I should give CM a try again.

Android App : Floating Touch

Found an interesting android app today. It's called "Floating App".
If you use iPhone assistive touch feature, where there's a floating circle, then this is similar but better.
Look at the video below.

I am using Paranoid Android where I am using the PIE control which is similar to floating touch, so I don't think I am going to use this much. Going to play with this app just for a few days.