Android: Disable camera sound

This is the most "stock" way of disabling the camera sound. The easiest way by far is to just download a camera app which takes photos silently.

I quite like the app which comes with my Samsung Galaxy S, so I figured I'd keep using it and just change the settings instead.

First of all, you need a rooted phone for this to work.

Second, you'll need "adb.exe" to manage the files.

If you're running Linux as your operating system, you can just mount the system drive and just access it as normal.

Disabling the camera click

• To copy "default.prop" to your computer, type in: "adb pull /system/default.prop"
• Now edit the file and search for "ro.camera.sound.forced"
• If it exists, change it to 0.
• Otherwise, add this to the file: "ro.camera.sound.forced=0", and remember to leave a blank line at the end
• Save the file
• Now copy the file back onto the phone using "adb push default.prop /sdcard/"
• Connect to the phone: "adb shell"
• Type in "su" to gain super user access.
• Type in "cat /sdcard/default.prop > /system/default.prop" to replace your system settings
• Optionally you can clean up by deleting "default.prop" from your computer and phone "/sdcard" directory.

Some extra reading

The magic line in this method is the "cat" method. Using the usual "mv" command to move files will fail with the error "Cross-device link" as Unix will not allow you to move files mv from device to device. Kudos to darkxsun from androidforums for that one!

Sources

• How do I disable the 'click' sound on the camera app?
• Not sure how to or Where it is

Samsung Galaxy S: Wifi no longer detects any networks and unable to scan networks

My Samsung Galaxy S decided to chuck a hissy fit and ignore WiFi networks. I believe it's because I entered in a blank password with the WP2 encryption method.

The WiFi mode comes on temporarily to scan, decides it can't, displays an error message then turns off by itself. Sadly, to fix this problem you have two options.

Factory reset

The first is to do a factory reset. I personally think this sucks because I customise a great portion of the phone to maximise battery life.

Rooted access?

The second is to root the phone and delete the existing WiFi settings.

• Root your phone
• Move or rename "/sdcard/data/wifi/bcm_supp.conf"

To move or rename, you can use "adb shell" and request superuser access with the "su" command.

Another way is to use a file explorer such as ASTRO file explorer which can be downloaded from the market place.

Once the file is removed, just do a WiFi scan again and it should work.

Happy go lucky?

According to skeerthy who posted in the second source link on androidforums.com, he was able to remove the file using "ddms.bat". Search for "SOLUTION - WITHOUT ROOTING" to find his post.

I didn't have any luck with that because the phone would not let me browse the "data" directory.

Sources

• wifi turning itself off, "Unable to scan"
• Default Unable to Scan for Networks