By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Tips on setting up Android mobile phones?
A girl I know dropped her phone and it broke. So I offered her a loan of an old Samsung phone I have.
But.....I forgot the phone was bought in HK. So, after doing a factory reset everything was set to go through Google by default. The phone was pretty much useless for her to use. I tried to tether it to my phone's VPN. No joy.
I could not find a setting on the old phone to change the search engine. I went to the web on my laptop to get the bing apk file. My VPN is not working at all.
Eventually I got it going by using an app on my android phone called " Clean Master". It allows me to get other applications .apk files. Then using a laptop, I copied them to the "crippled" phone and installed them. The HK phone is ok now. It does what she wants.
This Google ban is a right royal pain.
Does anyone have any tips to get phones crippled by the crippled by the great firewall working?
Where to get .apk files, where to get apps etc without going through the game store. That sort of thing.
9 years 13 weeks ago in Web & Technology - China
To be fair, this is every bit as much Google's fault.
Centralizing the applications distribution market is as unnecessary as it is dangerous.
One company shouldn't put itself in charge of everything you can do with your phone. And this is true by the way for every machine out there, except for Apple products, because people who chose Apple's toys had it coming.
But Google did it anyhow, because they are every bit as much a control freak as the ruling government of this country.
ScotsAlan:
To be fair to Google, they did make Android open source....... oh wait..... then everyone used it.... and...
Clever business model.
It's interesting that Apple this week posted the biggest profit in history. Largely thanks to China not pushing the apple shaped button on the great fire wall.
Different corporations with different business models. I doubt very much that Apple's profits from China are going through Ireland to limit their tax exposure.
It gets worse. My old Android works for wechat etc. But the speaker is broken. So I got an old Chinese market windows phone out. Factory reset etc.... but the create new hotmail/ live.com account to use the thing is now blocked.
China thinks this protectionisim is good for Chinese Industry. No its not. If I was a guy trying to run a multinational company I would go elsewhere now.
China is shooting itself in the foot with this nonsense.
royceH:
The game is afoot, Al. By the time the Middle East sorts itself out and starts operating as one, China will be long shut.
The question is, where will you and I be?
To be fair, this is every bit as much Google's fault.
Centralizing the applications distribution market is as unnecessary as it is dangerous.
One company shouldn't put itself in charge of everything you can do with your phone. And this is true by the way for every machine out there, except for Apple products, because people who chose Apple's toys had it coming.
But Google did it anyhow, because they are every bit as much a control freak as the ruling government of this country.
ScotsAlan:
To be fair to Google, they did make Android open source....... oh wait..... then everyone used it.... and...
Clever business model.
It's interesting that Apple this week posted the biggest profit in history. Largely thanks to China not pushing the apple shaped button on the great fire wall.
Different corporations with different business models. I doubt very much that Apple's profits from China are going through Ireland to limit their tax exposure.
It sounds strange to me.
I was until recent using my old Samsung bought in Europe and faced no trouble in China.
Of course could not use Google Play but used Chinese applications for downloading apps. Otherwise all worked quite fine - used Wechat, QQ, E-mail (except of Gmail of course) etc.
For web search she can download Baidu and use it as app - not going via web browser.
Basically all (including built in) applications you may disable - it will post the warning that it can effect the functionality but if you concentrate for Google connected apps only so it shall work fine in China.
ScotsAlan:
Yup. If the phone had the apps loaded before the ban there is no problem. The problem began when I done a factory reset. Everthing was being directed through the google servers.
