Watch out for flying pigs

I wouldn't be surprised if pigs started to fly soon, because guess what, Spotify no longer looks like this on my tablets...

...and Google Play can no longer be unsecured by clearing it's data:

The Samsung Galaxy S4 that I first pre-ordered and then canceled after trying a Nexus 4 because I realized how much I missed using Android the way it was supposed to look without any Touchwiz, Sense or other manufacturer added crap^H^H^H^Hmodifications will soon also be sold with an non-modifed Android.

And HTC follows with their flag ship model HTC One making me actually consider a HTC as my next phone (No offense Samsung but having had an S3 recently before switching to a Nexus 4 makes it feel a bit boring to get a new Samsung that looks almost the same as the last one I had).

Now let's hope more manufacturers follow Samsungs and HTCs example...

... and if it isn't to much to ask for, a flying pig? Or at least an Android 4.3 release soon?

How to check if an app uses binary translation

Binary translation is used by Intel based Android devices in order to run apps that are uses native ARM code. This is good for compatibility but bad for performance as native x86 code in the app would be a better solution.

So how can one tell if an app uses binary translation instead of native x86 code? Well, first you must have an Intel based Android device like the Asus Fonepad or this would be rather pointless. Second you need to have a way to read the android logs. I use the command logcat but there are also apps that can be used for this.

Luckily the Asus Fonepad includes a busybox binary that has the "grep" command built in. That saves a lot of time and I'm using an adb shell connection and this command "logcat | busybox grep houdini".

shell@android:/ $ logcat | busybox grep houdini
logcat | busybox grep houdini
D/houdini (11555): [11555] Loading library(version: 3.1.3.43168 RELEASE)... successfully.

Here we can see that an app with PID 11555 has activated libhoudini.so which is the lib that does the ARM to x86 binary translation.

So let's find out what app is using PID 11555 (once again I use grep to save some time).

shell@android:/ $ ps | busybox grep 11555
ps | busybox grep 11555
u0_a117   11555 128   1034944 45356 ffffffff 00000000 S com.spotify.mobile.android.service

It turns out Spotify uses native code but only includes ARM code.

Dear Spotify developers...

...why does Spotify still look like this on my Tablet?

When all it takes is a 2 minute hack with apktool to make it look like this:

At least the recent versions does not contain broken landscape layouts that needs removing like the ICS preview and the first releases did so now all it takes is a search and replace in the manifest, build new apk and the sign it. (This however does not feel right and I've seen there are already self-signed versions floating around on the net (no I did not make any of them). Modified and resigned apps are a security problem because unless you modified it yourself you cannot know what else has been changed.)

However, while missing landscape support was irritating but acceptable in the preview version you have pushed many new versions since then and landscape mode is still missing. Why?

If it looks stupid on my tablet, then imagine how it looks when I connect my Motorola Xoom to my 42 inch plasma.

So please, for me and for all the other Spotify premium users that runs Spotify on other devices than just phones, FIX THIS NOW!