Disabling phone APKs without rooting your Scroll

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Disabling phone APKs without rooting your Scroll

Postby Whitebeam » September 1st, 2011, 7:23 pm

Reposted from obscurity in the Help Requests section, where I answered my own post after a little more research.

The following shows how to disable the power gobbling but useless phone apk's on the scroll (mine's the Capacitative one running Android 2.3.1) without rooting it. It relies on the fact that access through the USB debugging interface has root privileges from the start without relying on exploits - as such I'm guessing that this won't invalidate your warranty (no liability accepted if it does!)? This amalgamates several snippets from other posts on here - my thanks to those giants upon whose shoulders I stand!

On Windows 7 (other, much better operating systems whose names end in an x are also available ;) ):

1) Download and install the SDK from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.

2) In SDK Manager, Install the USB drivers from Available packages/Third party Add-ons/Google Inc.

3) On the PC, edit the android_winusb.inf file in Program Files/Android/android-sdk/extras/google/usb_driver and add:
Code: Select all
; Scroll - recovery
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01
;
; Scroll - bootloader (fastboot)
%SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_D00D
;

after [Google.NTx86] and again after [Google.NTamd64] (yes, I know only one of these is necessary depending on your Windows architecture - I'm just covering the bases here).

4) Edit the PATH environment variable to include the location of adb.exe.

5) Plug in the Scroll USB lead with USB debugging enabled on the Scroll.

6) From a Windows command prompt type
Code: Select all
adb devices
adb shell

You should now have a # root prompt in your Windows command window

7) At the # prompt type:
Code: Select all
mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock2 /system

to make the system directory structure writable and then type:
Code: Select all
mv /system/app/Phone.apk /system/app/Phone.old

8) Reboot your scroll.

9) Repeat Stages 6 & 7 above.

10) At the # prompt type:
Code: Select all
mv /system/app/Mms.apk /system/app/Mms.old
mv /system/app/TelephonyProvider.apk /system/app/TelephonyProvider.old
ls -la /system/app/*.old

You should see something similar to:
Code: Select all
-rw-r--r-- root     root       885995 2011-04-28 15:12 Mms.old
-rw-r--r-- root     root      1672701 2011-04-28 15:12 Phone.old
-rw-r--r-- root     root        57880 2011-04-28 15:12 TelephonyProvider.old


Job done. Reboot your Scroll and your battery drain should now be a fraction of its former self.

Hope there aren't too many typos in the above. Please point them out where they exist.

Peter
Last edited by Whitebeam on January 9th, 2012, 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Whitebeam
Junior Scroller
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Posts: 14
Joined: August 23rd, 2011, 6:14 am
Scroll Version: 7" Capacitative, OS 2.3.1, May 2011 Firmware

Re: Disabling phone APKs without rooting your Scroll

Postby suggsy89 » September 13th, 2011, 3:15 pm

good guide, well done
User avatar
suggsy89
Trusted Developer
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Posts: 971
Joined: June 28th, 2011, 4:33 pm
Real Name: John
Scroll Version: Scroll Excel - Jellybean 4.1.2
Yarvik Go Zetta - Scroll Extreme Jellybean 4.1.1


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