Google Nexus Sound Mute Problem

So, my Google Nexus 4 suddenly went mute. I did a quick check to find out that it's only video and applications which have their volume stuck at 0; the phone itself was ringing fine; even the alarm function was working. This relieved me because it meant that the speaker itself wasn't faulty.

As with all software problem, a complete reboot came to mind. Unfortunately, that didn't help either. I even tried rebooting it to Safe Mode but with no luck---games, videos stored on the phone and Youtube all seemed to be completely silent.

The next idea was to check the phone with headphones, and to my surprise, things were fine if I plugged in a headphone. It was just the speaker which wasn't being used!

Some interesting articles on the web told me about similar situations where the audio which previously worked fine had stopped working; although all of these cases were a little di
fferent from what I was facing:

Similar Android Problems

Android Bug: Volume for "media" stuck muted until device is rebooted is a bug reported for Android 4.2.1, which seems to remain unfixed till June 2013 (from the comments in the bug report). Interestingly, this one is an Android bug and effects all phones, including Galaxy SIII. The problem here seems to go away if the device is rebooted but that was not the case with me.

Another problem reported on Google forums is a sound problem which affects both speakers and headphones. You can see in the comments that people have different variations to this and no solution has been posted by anyone.

Many people suggest that if you face this problem, you have a third party application which is not letting your phone restore the volume. If reboot doesn't work, perhaps you should uninstall any recently added mobile phone applications?

What finally worked for me!

And then I came to know about SoundAbout. This nifty application allows you to redirect your sound forcefully to one of the many audio output devices associated with your phone: external speaker, wired headphone, HDMI, Bluetooth, etc. There is a PRO version too, but the basic, free version was good enough to fix the issue for me.


The screenshot from Sound About on the right shows you the relevant screen in the application. By default, things are set to let the application to decide where to send the sound output. I changed it to "Speaker" and then played videos---Voila! Everything was back to normal! I changed the settings back to "Let App Decide" and things were still normal. I uninstalled Sound About, and yet the phone was still behaving as normal.

On Getting A "Special" Phone Package

I picked up the phone today to get my Porting Authorisation Code (PAC) so that I could switch from Vodafone to 3. The contact centre guy asked which network I was switching to and what they were offering. He started talking of coverage and signal issues, which wasn't unexpected.

Now, I am tried of such advice as I usually have already made up my mind when I ask for something. I tried to cut the story short by telling him that it's only because 3 was cheaper and I didn't mind the drawbacks, and guess what? He made a counter offer! He not only matched 3's package; he offered 2 months free usage! Of course, this was a custom package as Vodafone doesn't have any package comparable to 3 in terms of price.

Now at 66% of my PAYG cost, I could get three times more minutes and text messages from the same provider with 2 months of free usage.

I wonder how much profit margin is in there for the mobile companies!

Programming Your Sony Ericsson Mobile Phone

My W610i doesn't have an OS, which could have made it a smart phone. However, it supports Java Micro Edition (aka J2ME), as do most of other phones in the market. When I thought of programming this phone, I was happy to know that I already had J2SE 6 in my PC.

Instead of downloading Sun's Java Wireless Toolkit, I recommend getting Sony Ericsson's SDK for Java ME, which includes device profiles for most of the SE phones as well as a nice Device Explorer.

Below is a quick start guide to writing your first J2ME program and deploying it on your Sony Ericsson mobile phone. But before that, I'd recommend you going through deploying a pre-written application as described here using Sony Ericsson Toolkit.

Your simplest Hello World! midlet would be as follows:

import javax.microedition.midlet.*;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.*;

public class HelloMIDlet extends MIDlet {
   private Display display;
   private TextBox t = null;

   public HelloMIDlet () {
      display = Display.getDisplay(this);
   }

   public void startApp() {
      t = new TextBox ("Hello ", "Howdy!", 256, 0);
      display.setCurrent (t);
   }

   public void pauseApp() {
   }

   public void destroyApp(boolean unconditional) {
   }
}

The toolkit comes with KToolbar, a tool preconfigured to build and test (using an emulator) your midlets. We must create a new project using KToolbar. Let's say you call the project "Greetings" and the MIDlet class name as "HelloMIDlet". By default, the Wireless toolkit will create a folder named "Greetings" under C:\SonyEricsson\JavaME_SDK_CLDC\PC_Emulation\WTK2\apps. You can browse to Greetings\src and create a HelloMIDlet.java file containing the source code shown above.

Now return to KToolbar and click "Build" button, followed by "Run" button for testing it on an emulator. Once done you can prepare a JAR for deployment on your real phone by going to Project -> Package -> Create Package. Once done, you can install the jad and the jar using the Device Explorer.

Of Hardware and Software

I recently purchased a Sony Ericsson w610i set. If you know me, despite being related to IT, I am not a mobile phone/ gadget freak. This is the first set that I have bought (earlier ones were gifted). A good review of the set can be found here.

Many features of the phone remind me of the early days of personal computers -- of the difference between the electronic circuits and the interpretation of the electrons running through them.

Hardware manufacturers come up with a very well-thought product range; each variation is given a meaningful model number. For example, the "w" in w610i probably stands for "walkman", indicating the dominating music features of the phone. (By the way, do you know "walkman" is Sony's trademark? Walkman's history tells you that the initial attempts to market the product met with little success.) Whenever you see a hardware model, be assured that there is a rationale behind the model numbering. See, for example, how Intel numbers its processors.

Comparatively, I feel ashamed how vague is software versioning and packaging. On the brighter side, software continues to push hardware to its limits. Just like early days of PC, amateurs continue to write software for PDAs and mobile devices. They hack stuff to provide you with more than what comes out of the box. Two very nice examples for Sony Ericsson sets are Float Mobile Agent (Fma) and My Phone Explorer (see the screenshots below). Fma is open source and My Phone Explorer is freeware.






These software let you do amazing stuff like taking complete control of your phone from your PC; take backup of everything in your phone and later restore it; etc. MyPhoneExplorer additionally lets you install .jars into your mobile phone.

Coming to the software side of the Sony Ericsson mobile set, it runs Symbian as its operating system, and of course Java ME. Sony Ericsson has a very nice Developer's Forum for their products.