Root Installing Droid X apps on Droid

[drfsupercenter]

Alright, so here's the thing. I have a Motorola Droid, rooted, running 2.2 (Froyo).

I was recently at a Verizon store and thought the Blockbuster app for Droid X was pretty nice, especially because I HAVE Blockbuster's service (not Netflix like most people), but I was annoyed that you couldn't use it on the Droid.

So I found a backup of all the Droid X apps and got Blockbuster.apk. I also got Mynet.apk, since I wanted to try the mobile hotspot feature to see if it would work on my Droid.

When I opened it in the App manager, it appeared to install and then just said "Not installed" where most of them say "Installed". I even used Root Explorer to copy the .apk to /system/app, and nothing.

I'm trying to figure out why this didn't work and if there's some way to make it work. I was able to install some other Droid X apps, like Motorola's FM Radio app - even though the Droid doesn't have an FM radio tuner (or at least, it's not enabled)... it obviously didn't work, but it opened and just tried to start the tuner forever. So obviously the Droid X APKs *will* work on the Droid, but not the two I want. Does this have to do with DRM Storage? Or what?

Has anybody actually done this? Or am I crazy for thinking it would work?

 

[rustymcbain]

i think the problem is that the Droid x is still on 2. 1 so the apps will not work untill they have been updated to froyo. that will of course be done in time when the x is updated. if you drop to 2. 1 you should be able to run them. kinda of a trade up or down.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Hmm, can anyone confirm this?

I do have ROM Manager (it's how I updated to Froyo), I can try restoring a ROM of my 2.1 image and see if they manage to install. Though that's quite a waste of time IMO, if anyone else has tried what I'm trying to do, I'd be interested in hearing the results.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Nope. Just tried it - FAIL.

Same thing happened. "Application not installed".

So... anyone else have any theories? In the meantime, restoring 2.2. (ROM Manager is exceedingly useful for this, I have a 2.1-right-before-I-updated ROM that I can restore for testing purposes)

 

[OMJ]

The Droid X runs a variant of Blur. Ninja Blur or something like that. These apps are probably tied to the blur framework and simply wont work on the droid unless someone cracks them.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Blur... is that the same as MOTOBLUR?

So would it be possible to install Ninja Blur or whatever on the Droid? Or do you think that's a bad idea? As for cracking them... know anybody who's up to the challenge?
I want Blockbuster movies on my Droid

Also, know any third-party apps that can make my phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot like Mynet? I *heard* that 2.2 had that built in, but all I see built in is USB tethering, not wireless.

 

[OMJ]

Blur... is that the same as MOTOBLUR?

So would it be possible to install Ninja Blur or whatever on the Droid? Or do you think that's a bad idea? As for cracking them... know anybody who's up to the challenge?
I want Blockbuster movies on my Droid

Also, know any third-party apps that can make my phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot like Mynet? I *heard* that 2.2 had that built in, but all I see built in is USB tethering, not wireless.

No one has ported blur to the droid yet so you cant install it. Honestly I dont think anyone will either as there is not much demand.

On the market is wireless tether for root users. That will make a wifi hotspot for you

 

[drfsupercenter]

I tried that, it didn't work. It gave me some error. Any idea why?
On second thought, I tried it again and it's working. They must have updated it. Not bad. Is that better than the one on the Droid X? (As I heard something about having to pay $20 *more* a month to use that anyway?)

As for porting it... I couldn't just run the .apk that the Droid X uses?

 

[OMJ]

I tried that, it didn't work. It gave me some error. Any idea why?
On second thought, I tried it again and it's working. They must have updated it. Not bad. Is that better than the one on the Droid X? (As I heard something about having to pay $20 *more* a month to use that anyway?)

As for porting it... I couldn't just run the .apk that the Droid X uses?

I have no experience with the one that the X uses but I honestly dont know how it could be better. And if you could use the X version it would be quite a flag to VZW to start charging you.

Its not an APK that would need ported. Its the entire version of android that needs to be ported. Someone would have to make a Blur rom.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah, I've never really used the X version either, I just walked into a Verizon store and tried it - never actually saw how the speed worked or anything.

And OK, I don't really have any experience with Blur or anything. Is there a way to see the log files of when it tries to install and where exactly it fails? As it might have something to do with DRM also (seeing as how you can stream movies)

 

[OMJ]

Yeah, I've never really used the X version either, I just walked into a Verizon store and tried it - never actually saw how the speed worked or anything.

And OK, I don't really have any experience with Blur or anything. Is there a way to see the log files of when it tries to install and where exactly it fails? As it might have something to do with DRM also (seeing as how you can stream movies)

you could run a logcat. Either use adb logcat or download alogcat from the market

 

[drfsupercenter]

Here's what aLogcat has to say:

D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 7885 objects / 368976 bytes in 62ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 3168 objects / 193560 bytes in 46ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 4 objects / 168 bytes in 43ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 9 objects / 320 bytes in 43ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 11 objects / 384 bytes in 44ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 8 objects / 240 bytes in 43ms
W/PackageManager( 1808): Failure retrieving text 0x7f070036 in package com.motorola.Blockbuster
W/PackageManager( 1808): java.lang.NullPointerException
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread$ResourcesKey. (ActivityThread.java:2200)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread.getTopLevelResources(ActivityThread.java:187)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread.getTopLevelResources(ActivityThread.java:246)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ContextImpl$ApplicationPackageManager.getResourcesForApplication(ContextImpl.java:2188)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ContextImpl$ApplicationPackageManager.getText(ContextImpl.java:2385)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.content.pm.PackageItemInfo.loadLabel(PackageItemInfo.java:106)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ContextImpl$ApplicationPackageManager.getApplicationLabel(ContextImpl.java:2430)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at com.metago.astro.model.PackageData. (PackageData.java:32)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at com.metago.astro.PackageDetails.onCreate(PackageDetails.java:227)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2627)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2679)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2300(ActivityThread.java:125)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2033)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4627)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:868)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:626)
W/PackageManager( 1808): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
I/dalvikvm( 1808): Jit: resizing JitTable from 8192 to 16384
I/ActivityManager( 1079): Displayed activity com.metago.astro/.PackageDetails: 525 ms (total 525 ms)
I/AppSecurityPermissions( 1823): Ignoring unknown permission:android.permission.LOCATION
D/dalvikvm( 1823): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 3897 objects / 226768 bytes in 46ms
I/ActivityManager( 1079): Displayed activity com.android.packageinstaller/.PackageInstallerActivity: 521 ms (total 521 ms)
D/dalvikvm( 1717): GC_EXPLICIT freed 76 objects / 3832 bytes in 174ms
I/ActivityManager( 1079): Displayed activity com.android.packageinstaller/.InstallAppProgress: 319 ms (total 319 ms)
D/PackageParser( 1079): Scanning package: /data/app/vmdl16012.tmp
I/dalvikvm( 1079): Total arena pages for JIT: 11
D/dalvikvm( 1079): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 28353 objects / 1798360 bytes in 145ms
D/PackageManager( 1079): Scanning package com.motorola.Blockbuster
D/dalvikvm( 1079): GC_EXPLICIT freed 5194 objects / 244368 bytes in 127ms
I/InstallAppProgress( 1823): Finished installing com.motorola.Blockbuster
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 10066 objects / 524624 bytes in 60ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 3246 objects / 218928 bytes in 76ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 562 objects / 29704 bytes in 46ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 10 objects / 360 bytes in 43ms
D/dalvikvm( 1808): GC_EXTERNAL_ALLOC freed 13 objects / 440 bytes in 43ms
D/alogcat ( 1872): stopping ...
D/alogcat ( 1872): resumed
D/dalvikvm( 1872): GC_FOR_MALLOC freed 10857 objects / 1245296 bytes in 52ms
W/KeyCharacterMap( 1872): Can't open keycharmap file
W/KeyCharacterMap( 1872): Error loading keycharmap file '/system/usr/keychars/qtouch-touchscreen.kcm.bin'. hw.keyboards.65538.devname='qtouch-touchscreen'
W/KeyCharacterMap( 1872): Using default keymap: /system/usr/keychars/qwerty.kcm.bin

I'm not good at reading logs. Any idea where it failed?

 

[OMJ]

Just quickly looking at it these lines jump out

W/PackageManager( 1808): Failure retrieving text 0x7f070036 in package com.motorola.Blockbuster

I/AppSecurityPermissions( 1823): Ignoring unknown permission:android.permission.LOCATION


There is probably more than that but I cant look more in depth now.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah, I saw that line about AppSecurityPermissions too... any idea what that means?
I think it might be a DRM thing...

 

[vincentp]

Yeah, I saw that line about AppSecurityPermissions too... any idea what that means?
I think it might be a DRM thing...

Looks like it's just ignoring a permission, probably related to the app being given permission to use geolocation or something that is different on the DX. I assume since it's being ignored that it is not causing a problem with the installation. It proceeds fine after that and it's not an actual error. Probably something else going wrong there.

The only actual error appearing during the install seems to be the issue with the character map, which is probably due to the lack of the DX keyboard on your system. I don't know why in the world this would cause the entire application to not work, but you could try installing the DX keyboard to system if you can get ahold of it.

I don't know about that null pointer exception at the beginning of the install, but it didn't seem to stop anything, and it also appears to be an internal error in the app itself. It's trying to pull some data out of the APK but can't find it. Not sure why this would be unless the file is corrupt or linked to another file on the DX that you do not have.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Hm, I can try that... I have a backup of all the .apks that are included on the Droid X, so the keyboard *should* be in there somewhere, I just have to find it.

So, I stopped at a Verizon store during my lunch break and tried out the Droid X again... I used the wireless tethering feature, then connected my Droid to it and ran a speed test... it was an impressive 100kbps. With the wireless tether for root users, I got the full speed of the phone, something like 800kbps. So I'm hugely disappointed with Verizon's app, especially since it's $20 a month. The root users one is great! (And looks cooler too, it's not just boring black like Verizon's)

 

[vincentp]

$20 a month for 100kbps? Yuck, no thanks. I'm not surprised that root does it better.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Agreed.
I figured from their ads about it being "powerful enough to fuel all your devices" it would be better, but apparently it caps the speed. As it was almost exactly 100kbps, which screams "usage caps" to me.

Not impressed at all. The Droid X is vastly overrated, in my opinion, the large screen is cool but it's not worth the price over the original Droid. Same goes with the Incredible.

 

[drfsupercenter]

That's what the speedtest came up with. In case anyone's interesting. That was my Droid connected via Wi-Fi to a Droid X's wireless tethering.
That 500kbps upload is pretty nice, but I care more about download speed...

 

[drfsupercenter]

Alright, so here's the update.

I tried both Swype.apk (the Droid X keyboard taken from the Droid X), and the ported version called Multi-Touch Keyboard, both failed on 2.2 and kept force closing.
So I tried 2.1, Swype failed but Multi-Touch Keyboard worked.

With that installed, Blockbuster still failed to install. So I dunno how to fix that problem with the keyboard.

Is there a way to edit the APK and just remove the reference to the touchscreen keyboard? (Seeing as how I use the physical one anyway...)

 

[vincentp]

That would probably require more skill than I have. You might want to try posting this question with the log over at AllDroid (or even XDA) just to see if any devs familiar with the Android platform can pick out the problem. I was just kind of grasping at straws for a solution.

 

[drfsupercenter]

Hm, I might do that later... it's not that big of a deal, I just wanted to see if it was doable at all.

I thought there were enough Android hackers here that somebody might have figured it out LOL