A Dummies Guide To Android Terminoligy & Lingo

Sam Fisher

Member
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
66
Reaction score
0
I just wanted to take it upon myself to create a well organized post providing abbreviations and terminoligy so that any one, droid master or droid noobie, can have a quick refrence guide to all things droid. I myself do not know everything but i do know some things and i believe with some help from the moderators and contributing members of this amazing site, we can throw together a one-stop-shop for droid info... And who knows, maby it will be sticky worthy ; )

ADK: Android Development Kit, What people use to develop anything for the droid such as ROM's

Baseband: In communications and signal processing, the baseband describes signals and systems whose range of the frequencies measured from close to 0 hertz to a cut-off frequency, a maximum bandwidth or highest signal frequency; it is sometimes used to describe frequencies starting close to zero

Boot Loader: State in which the droid can be flashed from RSD with an appropriate .sdk file that reprograms the phone into a specific ROM or update. This is typically a last resort when the recovery screen cannot be reached to make a much simpler and less risky solution

Boot Loop: simply means something is preventing the phone from completeting it's boot cycle and is stuck between the boot animation and the unlock screen, creating a looped animation. This is often fixed by either reloading a Nandroid, or Reflashing a rom from the Boot Loader.

Brick or Bricked: Jargon for a completely unrecoverable device, (no more than a brick or paperweight)

Bug or Software Bug: an Error or flaw in software that produces a failure or enexpected/unwanted result. Typically created from incorrect code, this is why some ROMs are better and smoother running than others because certain developers have taken the time to input "perfect" code

Busybox: BusyBox is a single multicall binary that packages the functionality of most widely used standard Unix tools, BusyBox provides a fairly complete environment for any small or embedded system.

ClockworkMod: A recovery program that is often used to apply updates, ROMs, or create a back up or restore a backup file

De-odex: Apk files have respective odexes that devs use to supposedly save space. Deodexing means you convert it back to a .dex file and put it back inside the apk. This allows you to easily replace files (not having to worry about odexes), but the main point was to deodex services.jar so that you can change all text to different colors (such as the clock color to white) and to deodex services.jar, you need to deodex everything.

Dev. or Developer: An individual that creates, or allters a file in such a manner as to advance the program

Flash or Flash Memory: a program technology that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed

Kernel: The govenor of the CPU useage and Battery output, one can upload certain Kernals to achieve greater performance speed of their device at the cost of some battery life

Root: Common word associated with giving a user "super user" access to their phones programming and other various asspects that would normaly not be possible, also known as "Jailbroken" for iPhone's

Nandroid or Nandroid Backup: A file typically created in the custom recovery program, such as SPRecovery, that is a carbon copy of whatever state your phone is in before a drastic change is made. the file then can be moved onto or off of the SD card for later use in case something should go wrong in the ROM or Update, or a Boot Loop occurs

OS: Operating system, I.E. Windows Vista or MAC or ANDROID

Overclocking: Speeding up the CPU past the factory presets to achieve a faster and more responsive device

ROM: Read Only Memory, a program used to make changes to anything from the look of the home screen, to icons to custom boot animation

RSD or RSD lite: Remote Software Download, Motorola's own tool in flashing virtualy any type of program, (so long as its in .sbf form) to the Android OS

Shell or SSH: secure shell or ssh is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged using a secure channel between two networked devices

SPR or SPRecovery: A recovery program that is often used to apply updates, ROMs, or create a back up or restore a backup file

Stock: Simply means an un alltered state, such as when you first purchase your phone from verizon, or when you do a factory reset to "go back to stock 2.1"

SU: "Super user", or root permissions

Theme: A set of icons, backgrounds and app trays that change the ascthetics of the overall look of the droid and its applications

TUN/TAP: Refers to a network TUNnel, opperates within layer 3 packets, or ip packets. Packets sent by a system via a TUN/TAP device are delivered to a user-space program that attaches itself to the device. A user space program may also pass packets into a TUN/TAP device. In this case TUN/TAP device delivers (or "injects") these packets to the operating system's network stack thus emulating their reception from an external source.

Underclocking: Slowing down the CPU mainly to limit battery usage

.sbf: Summation Briefcase File

.apk or APK's: An .apk file extension denotes an Android Package (APK) file, an .apk file can be opened and inspected using common archive tools

.tar: Similar to a zip file, a tar file archives multiple files into one file

.tgz: TGZ files are commonly used as install packages for Slackware Linux.


Well this is all I can think of off the top of my head but as i think of more i will edit them in here and i encourage the mods to put things that i either forgot or just simply am not aware of.

Thank you and happy hacking
 
Last edited:

gszeman

Member
Joined
Apr 8, 2010
Messages
502
Reaction score
0
Location
Novi, MI
Good idea!

This would have been helpful to me when I first got my phone! Something that I was confused about when I first started looking into rooting my phone was the difference between and the definition of the following:

ROM
Kernel (might be good to include this in your terminology)
Theme

Thanks for putting this together,
Glenn
 
OP
Sam Fisher

Sam Fisher

Member
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
66
Reaction score
0
no you can get a theme from the market place stock. you need to be rooted for a ROM
 

christim

Super Moderator
Rescue Squad
Joined
Jan 23, 2010
Messages
5,036
Reaction score
1
Location
New England
Nice list of terms Sam, thanks for putting this together. I had the thread moved into the RS section here as discussed.

To apply themes you do need to be rooted. The apps are installed on the phone, not the card, and you need root access to modify the images. The various app's graphic files are read-only and need to be made temporarily Read-Writable to swap them out. Root has that ability to alter the file's permissions. Stock phones do not.
 

hookbill

Premium Member
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2009
Messages
19,368
Reaction score
9
Location
N.E. Ohio
I like it Sam. But it's not in alphabetical order. I'm picky.

Not knocking the effort, but if you got some spare time.....:)
 
OP
Sam Fisher

Sam Fisher

Member
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
66
Reaction score
0
i was waiting for more people to post some stuff i might have missed but ill just go ahead and do i now i believe... on 1 condition, STICKY IT!!! im just joking, but no realy.
 

hookbill

Premium Member
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 30, 2009
Messages
19,368
Reaction score
9
Location
N.E. Ohio
i was waiting for more people to post some stuff i might have missed but ill just go ahead and do i now i believe... on 1 condition, STICKY IT!!! im just joking, but no realy.

I'll stick it if you alphabetize it.

If anybody has other stuff to enter you can do that easily.
 
OP
Sam Fisher

Sam Fisher

Member
Joined
May 5, 2010
Messages
66
Reaction score
0
thank you very much sir and i will continue to edit as i think of things. I think i will also start a thread on rooted and busy box applications and what exactly they do, and i might need you and christim for that big time. thanks again man:icon_ banana:
 

jntdroid

Super Moderator
Premium Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2009
Messages
6,436
Reaction score
312
Location
TX
This is a great idea - it should be helpful to anyone new to the wonderful world of customizing the heck out of these phones. Typically instructions are written for those that know already, so it takes a lot of reading (which is good) to figure it all out! But when you don't even know the meaning of the words, it can slow you down.

The deeper you get, the more you know... so I ask this, what does it mean to deodex your phone?? :icon_eek:
 

teddyearp

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2010
Messages
1,816
Reaction score
12
Location
Pinetop, AZ
Current Phone Model
Motorola Razr 5g Rooted
If I may humbly point something out about your "Boot Loader" section. For the droid the extension of the file(s) we've been using with RSD Lite 4.6 is .sbf not .sdk. In the past for the dumbphones is was also .shx.
 
Top