Removing "Whats New" app from Sony Xperia Android smartphones

Sony Xperia smartphones come with a number of Sony crapware, one of which is the "What's New" app that runs in the background and popup from time-to-time as a notification, which is just plain annoying for some of us. Worse, unlike the other crapware, this one cannot be disabled in "App Info" (the "Disable" button is greyed out).

After some research, I found a way to disable this app. First you need to have a working ADB in your system. The trickiest part is to install the correct ADB driver. I referred to this post for help. On my Win7 x64 system, the AdbDriverInstaller method worked for me.

If you don't have adb.exe yet, you need to get it into your system. The official way is to install the Android Platform SDK, but a minimal install of ADB can be found here.

Anyway, to verify that ADB is working properly (both EXE and driver), at the command prompt (with the device connected to the PC via USB cable), type:

adb devices

This should display something like:

List of devices attached
YT91152XZY device

i.e. there must be at least one device attached.

So much for the prerequisite. The rest is simple. Simply execute the following commands:

adb shell
pm hide com.sonymobile.entrance
exit

That's it!

Older posts on the web recommends pm block com.sonymobile.advancedwidget.entrance, which does not work anymore. So this is a note to myself (and others) to hopefully save some time in case I reset the phone and need to perform this step again in the future.

Comments

Cooling mod for the X96 Air #2

Previously, I added a USB cooling fan to the X96 Air TV box . The problem with this mod is that the fan is always running, and it runs at full speed. Ideally, the fan should kick in only when the CPU temperature is above a certain threshold. It would be even better if there is a way to control the fan speed. Dan McDonald left me a comment pointing to his project on Github . He basically connected the fan to a USB relay that can be controlled by Python script. His project inspired me to make a similar mod that would make use of the spare D1 Mini boards I have lying around. The plan is to hook up the fan to a MOSFET (2N7000) and control it via PWM. Here's the very simple circuit: The code simply reads a single character from the serial port (0 - 9). 0 will turn the fan off, while 1 - 9 will generate a proportional PWM to drive the fan, with 1 being the lowest and 9 being the highest. Here's the Arduino code: #include <Arduino.h> void setup () { Serial . begin ( 9600 ...

Installing and customizing CoreELEC in X96 Air

I previously installed CoreELEC on another TV Box ( Ugoos X3 Pro ), which unfortunately died after only 9 months during the summer (due to the unit overheating, which I learned is a common problem for cheap Android TV boxes). So this time I purchased a X96 Air (4GB/32Gb) and had to do the whole thing again. So this is a note-to-self in case I ever have to install CoreELEC again on some other device. Installation of CoreELEC is simple enough by following this guide . Basically, it involves downloading and writing the firmware to a microSD card using usbimager . Then insert the microSD card, reset the unit and hold the reset until the logo appears. The unit will then proceed to boot into CoreELEC. First thing is to connect to WiFi, then enable SSH. This allows me to login via ssh and execute: ceemmc -x from the terminal. This writes CoreELEC to the built-in eMMC storage, after which I am able to remove the microSD card and reboot the unit into CoreELEC via the built-in sto...

DC-DC Buck Stepdown Converter for ESP8266

I am working on a project that requires a step-down converter from 12V to 5V, that will then power a WeMOS D1 Mini. I saw this new mini buck converter based on the usual LM2596 MP2307 , so I thought I'd give it a try. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Although it is supposed to be able to supply up to 1.8A, the D1 Mini was not able to boot up. The 5V pin was being properly supplied, but the 3.3V pin measures at only ~1.3V. So I had to go back to my usual LM2596 module, which is much larger, but works to power the D1 Mini with a 12V source. Here's a great review of the mini buck converter I found while trying to figure out how to make it work. The fact that it has high quiescent current (~60mA) is also mentioned in a few other sources.

Random Sequence

Search This Blog