Samsungs always had a problem with BBS unless the OP specifically targeted the issue with them and solved it. But every new iteration brings its own problem.
[APP][2.2+][11 Dec. 2022 - V3.1] BetterBatteryStats
- Thread starter chamonix
- Start date
I think you might be right. I'm using a S22 Ultra with OneUI 5.0 and BBS is crashing on startup for me. I've carefully checked the permissions and they're all correct.
Confirmed, this the known issue where Samsung has broken the battery_info service. I had a working hack around this so I will try the update an old S8 I have and try reproducing
Maybe in handy for you to know while trying to reproduce.
On my Flip Z 4 Android 13 the app behaves as expected when it's idle overnight.
But during the day it crashes (so while the phone is use) and it will never work again until i clear entire app data.
Tested this while using the default One UI and with Nova Launcher
On my Flip Z 4 Android 13 the app behaves as expected when it's idle overnight.
But during the day it crashes (so while the phone is use) and it will never work again until i clear entire app data.
Tested this while using the default One UI and with Nova Launcher
@chamonix not sure if it helps since you seem to know already what the issue is: on my S22 Ultra (Android 13, OneUi 5) I receive the previously mentioned error "Inconsistent tx state length" only after granting all permissions and allowing access to the hidden API WITHOUT restarting. After restarting, so I assume when the API access really works, the app crashes as written by others already. This happens both versions (playstore, xda) but I assume they're identical, so no big suprise. Thanks for looking into it. Looking forward to continue using the great app on my new phone
Not exactly a "good" thing - But at least I know that I'm not losing my mind - My S20 Ultra Snapdragon variant just updated to One UI V5.0 & I was trying to figure out what was going on with BBS .. At least now I can understand 
Yes both apps are identical except the signing key and the package name.
There has been issues with Samsung in the past (permissions related to Knox) and I will try these first. The issue is to reproduce and I hope I can on my old S10.
There has been issues with Samsung in the past (permissions related to Knox) and I will try these first. The issue is to reproduce and I hope I can on my old S10.
This is odd - BBS seems to be working now - After a day or so & I haven't changed anything since when it was crashing on opening.
Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Snapdragon variant running One UI V5.0.
Attachments
Well, BBS wasn't working - Then it was & then it wasn't (immediately force closing) - now it's opening but no data collected.
I'll send the logs - hopefully with some useful information
via PM 
I'll send the logs - hopefully with some useful information
via PM 
Hi, I am using Oneplus 9Pro with Oxygen OS 13, and the app is crashing (sometimes just disappears) when I scroll thru Partial wakelocks. Based on my tests it is the only place where it crashes and when there are a lot of wakelocks in the list. I collected some logs and shot video. I will send them via PM. It would be great if you can have a look.
New builds coming in: Google (again) is nagging me about the app permissions. I had to remove QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES that is used to retrieve icons and info about apps. Please let me know if anything breaks by removing these permissions! I have no choice than comply since this would cause the removal of BBS from g-play (again!)
I am seriously fed-up with Google's policies. Yes I understand privacy but since BBS is not a banking app (that of course shoud be able to sniff app "neferious" apps) I have to remove a permission that may have a negative impact on user experience. I am seriously think of pulling from the app store since I have spend my weekend working on that Google warning instead of trying to understand the Samsung issue.
I am wondering what you guys think: would you accept and understand and accept a Paypal (or any other patreon) model if I would drop G-Play alltogether to focus my energy on fixing user issues instead of navigating Google's?
Please let me know what you think!
I am wondering what you guys think: would you accept and understand and accept a Paypal (or any other patreon) model if I would drop G-Play alltogether to focus my energy on fixing user issues instead of navigating Google's?
Please let me know what you think!
V3.1-493 is Force Closing instantly on my S20 Ultra Snapdragon variant running One UI V5.0. as was the previous version updated today.
I can't say anything about whether or not you want BBS to remain on the Play Store, and I don't know if removing any permissions is the reason, but if it is not working.. I don't know
Thank You for your time & efforts!
I was typing at about the same as you I think, but I didn't want to suggest pulling it from the Play Store, as I feel like that would have been a bit too presumptuous on my part. But yeah I agree with your thinking!
PayPal, Patron whichever works for you
To say I'm not fond of Google is an understatement but since I have devices that are registered to a Google account I do find it procedurally easy to pay for apps that are in Play Store. That being said, some very good apps are not available in Play Store and for those (which would include BBS) I'll follow the app out of Play Store and be willing to pay by other means. That's easy to say, but there are probably are many users who prefer a Play Store update path - something I've seen even for apps which are also available in outside Play Store.
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First of all, latest version is working fine for me on my Pixel 7 Pro (Android 13). Thanks for the update!
I think you should do whatever is best for you. Users can adjust. The amount of time you have to spend dealing with Google's shenanigans is ridiculous. First and foremost, be good to yourself
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Unfortunately I do not maintain the F-Droid BBS entry: it has been added there without my consent, without takling to me or even asking. The most annoying is that the entry is a 1:1 copy of the google play entry, that names me as the supported.
If anyone knows who owns the F-Droid entry I would be very happy if this person could contact me. I am not going to sue (even if that entry breaches the license) but I am really fed-up having unhappy people reaching-out to me and not being able to do anything about it!
If you want my support please use the g-play version or the (always free) version distributed through XDA7An update on the Samsung A13 nightmare:
1. I have a S20 lender on A13, thanks to my brother in law. I will probably end-up having to buy one because I am under the impression that this issue can only be fixed by Samsung, and it may take a while
2. I am able to reproduce the error
3. Samsung is not running the core/java/com/android/internal/os/BatteryStatsImpl.java implementation from any android 13 branches or tags I could find on https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base.git (I am not judging)
4. From all the call stacks I could parse the issue is related to accessing the modem counters that do not align. My unproven theory here is that the error is caused by some missing permissions that are not visible since the code does not throw any SecurityException.
Here is the complete call-stack. Please let me know if you have an idea:
0 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl$ModemTxRxCounterImpl.<init>(BatteryStatsImpl.java:4309)" 1 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl$ModemActivityCounterImpl.<init>(BatteryStatsImpl.java:4420)" 2 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl.readFromParcelLocked(BatteryStatsImpl.java:21430)" 3 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl.readFromParcel(BatteryStatsImpl.java:21271)" 4 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl.<init>(BatteryStatsImpl.java:14149)" 5 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl.<init>(BatteryStatsImpl.java:14136)" 6 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl$10.createFromParcel(BatteryStatsImpl.java:21900)" 7 = {[email protected]} "com.android.internal.os.BatteryStatsImpl$10.createFromParcel(BatteryStatsImpl.java:21898)"
Call to action:
- if you know where to find the Samsung Android source tree please let me know
- if you know someone who has access to Samsung's Android source tree please try to connect me4
I suggest to discuss this in a "Battery Historian" wherever it might exist as this would be off-topic in the BBS thread.
Regards
Oswald Boelcke
Senior Moderator1
First of all, try the latest version linked in the second post. Please note that the adb commands are different for the XDA version of the app. If you still encounter issues in running the app, please post a log with details of your device, android version etc.
If it runs, please save an idle dump file as detailed in the first page of this thread and post it here so that someone can help.1
This is last version what can work without that issue
betterbatterystats_xdaedition_debug_3.0-485. Even if I updated on top is same problems so I think is bug. -
5468I started BetterBatteryStats because I was missing the great battery history that Spare Parts allowed to call on Froyo. It has been a long journey since the first version. BetterBatteryStats provides an insight in following categories:
- General "other stats "overview: Awake, Deep Sleep, Screen On, Phone On, Wifi On, Wifi Running ratios
- Kernel Wakelocks
- Partial wakelocks
- Alarms/Wakeups
- CPU States
- Network stats
- Process stats with User and System CPU time
Use so called references BetterBatteryStats shows data for different samples over time:
- since boot
- since unplugged
- since charged
- since screen off
- custom references
- any combination of the above (e.g. from screen off to screen on)
BetterBatteryStats is calling the "batteryinfo" service of Android to retrieve data already lying there without generating overhead. Since Kitkat Google has revoked the permission for normal apps to access these stats (without valid reasons IMHO). You can read more about that here.
Fortunately and thanks to @Looki75 there is a way to work around the restrictions intruduced by google in Kitkat and run BBS on non-rooted devices. Please see here for more details.
BetterBatteryStats has been tested on Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb (3.1, thanks to daveid), ICS, JB, Kitkat and Lollipop on different ROMs and Kernels.
What are wakelocks and why should you care about them?
When it comes to Android the most discussed and commented topic that I know is battery drain / battery life. I'm a quite heavy user because I spend a lot of time on the train every day reading my mails, surfing and listening to music but still my phone is off for a long time during the day and while I accept the battery being drained while I use the phone I care about it draining slowly while "doing nothing".
Wakelocks or to be more precise partial wakelocks is a pattern than helps devs to make sure that important pieces of their code do not get interrupted. Wakelocks are not bad per se, they are a tool. There are many poor implementations that make use of wakelocks and BBS helps making that transparent.
Caution: do not use and wakelock supressor tools. They will cause an erratic behavior of your phone, causing more harm than good.
Basically the phone has (simplified, kernel devs don't shoot) three states:
1. awake with screen on
2. awake
3. sleeping (that's you phone favorite state)
The transitions are from (1) to (2) and finally from (2) to (3). Now as long as you use your phone it's in (1) and does not leave that state as long as you keep using it interactively. If you stop using it the phone is aiming to go to (3) as fast as possible.
And here's where wakelocks are important: as our phones as smartphones they tend to do background processing. Some of this processing is important like e.g. making a phone call, listening to music or synchronizing your contacts.
As the phone wants to go from (2) to (3) and on the other hand you don't want to hang up while you are in a call the app keeps hold of a wakelock to prevent that transisiton. When you hang up the partial wakelock gets release and here we go (the phone goes to sleep).
So partial wakelocks is a tool and it's not something that we should forbid for obvious reasons. Now there are cases when the design on an app is not real life proven (conditions of poor of no converage) and the wakelocks have negative effects because they are held unnecessarily or for too long.
BetterBatteryStats identifies these wakelocks and using your expertise or the once from our users here you can understand what happens and find a strategy to change that for the better.
And what about wakeups?
Wakeups (alarms) is a pattern to be used when an application should to something after a certain period of time (or at a certain time). Again, an alarm is a tool and is nothing.
On the other hand there are a lot of poor implementations that BBS can help you discover:
- alarms waking up the device when all the app should do is refresh the screen: in such cases the app uses the wrong type of alarm, there are alarms that are specifically to be used only when the screen is on
- to frequent alarms: in case of e.g. poor network conditions some apps may use alarms to repeat failed network operations. Doing this too often will cause too many wakeups (and wakelocks for doing the handling)
- apps that wake up your device when you did not expect any activity while screen is off: you can use the info provided by BBS to contact the dev about such issues
Try it yourself
If you need help
Always add the whole context when asking for help. Most of the times a dumpfile is helpful, sometimes screenshots showing your observations may help as well.
Before posting a dump please make sure that the references for kernel wakelocks and alarms were processed correctly. Reading a dump takes a few minutes and it would be great if you could not waste the time of whomever studies it, aiming at helping you.
Generally a dump "since unplugged" is better than "since charged". When you start your analysis make sure to follow following procedure:
- enable watchdog processing in BBS settings
- verify from/to references is checked under custom views
- full charge device then let it run down to ~95%
- put device to sleep for at least 6 hours (no touchy!)
- wake device and launch BBS
- adjust from/to references to 'screen off' and 'screen on'
- save dumpfile from share menu
- post resulting log to this thread (or provide cloud link)
I will not reply to posts with incomplete dumps
Reporting bugs
If you want to report a bug please make sure:
- that you can reproduce the problem
- explain what the problem is, how you could reproduce it and what is going wrong (a sentence lke "xxxx does not work for me" is a waste of your time and wil be ignored)
- enable debug in advanced prefernces
- post a logcat
A good read about reporting bugs
Translations
Starting with 2.0 BBS is getting multi-language. Currently following languages are included:
- en: main language, maintained by me
- ru: translation thanks to @gaich
- cz: translation thanks to @mag01
- es translation thanks to @vldesco
- it translation thanks to @code010101
- hr translation thanks to @seky2205
- fr translation thanks to @xavihernandez
- de translation thanks to @Minty123
- tr translation and other language improvement by @Eleo
If you want to contribute with a new language please feel free to offer you service and contribute to BBS, by submitting a pull request to the github project with the translated strings.xml. But please be aware of the fact that translation is a continuous work: even if the initial effort is higher there will be unavoidable changes to the english master XMLs that will require regular updates of your translations.
If you have a recommendation for a free croud-translation service that you would prefer I am open for suggestions.
Thanks
To nobnut for donating me a Nexus S for testing
To nobnut and brandall for their support, encouragements, testing and constructive feedback in the early stages of the development.
To @Javinotfound or the new icons / logo
To suku_patel_22, jeremysherriff, Karpfenhai, Tungstwenty, It_ler, Perseus71 and mag01 for their help in this thread and their systematic testing my betas and RCs
To Entropy512 for providing support and insights about kernel wakelocks and helping making BBS a better tool4845Release
Edit 2021-06-13: Google has pulled BBS from GPlay. The given reason is that I use a library (HockeyApp) that allows installations by other means than the GPlay; that is correct except that library is a) deprecated and does not have backend anymore and b) the GPlay edition does not use that library, only the xda-edition does. Anyhow, I am working on a fix
BetterBatteryStats is available on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asksven.betterbatterystats) for what I believe is a fair price. If you like my work and want to support me please fell free to show your gratitude by buying the app.
Google play users can register to be part of the public beta programme. Selected Release Candidates will be released to google play as part of the beta programm. You can enroll to the beta programme here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.asksven.betterbatterystats
Follow me on Mastodon to be notified of updates and get insights in new features/developments.
xda edition: for xda-dev members I provide an always free and fully featured version of BBS (please play fair and do not redistribute the app without my consent).
Current test-release:
I have moved to an automated build system (older releases are still attached here) and do the distribution using AppCenter.
Privacy note
Access to the downloads does not require you to register to AppCenter (you still can to benefit from neat features like notifications when new releases are available)
Get release candidates here
I maintain A list of features to be implemented and bugs here.
Below you can find older releases.
If not required I do not recommend using these as they are not up-to-date with the most current development, features and fixes.763How-to and FAQ
How-to
I have created a GitHub project for the Knowledge Base where the online and in-app help will be maintained as well. You can find the information here:
The online help: https://better.asksven.io/betterbatterystats/help/
The how-to: https://better.asksven.io/betterbatterystats/how-to/
A good how-to by Chris Hoffman published by How-to geek
Online Hilfe auf Deutsch: http://asksven.github.com/BetterBatteryStats-Knowledge-Base/help_de.html
How-To auf Deutsch: http://asksven.github.com/BetterBatteryStats-Knowledge-Base/howto_de.html
The repo: https://github.com/asksven/BetterBatteryStats-Knowledge-Base
The Knowledge Base Project: http://asksven.github.com/BetterBatteryStats-Knowledge-Base/
FAQ
1. Q:Will BBS be fixed to support Kitkat (I get "Services could not be contacted" errors?
A: Kitkat is supported by BBS starting from version 1.15
2. Q:Why are partial statitics not available on Kikat?
A: If you have a rooted phone enable the advanced root features and all will be fine. If you have no root unfortunately you are stuck without Partial Wakelocks as Google has made changes to prevent apps to access that data (see also here)
3. Q:Why installing BBS as a system app as everything works with root?
Deprecated: BBS does not require the system app anymore
A: Starting with Kikat BBS has 3 modes: without root a limited mode provides a minimal set of stats. With root the set of stats is complete but some stats (other, partial wakelocks, processes) still use a workaround. Finally with the system app BBS is fully featured without any workaround.
4. Q:I have high wlan_rx kernel wakelock. What is it and how to proceed?
A: This kernel wakelock is caused by Wifi waking up your device. To avoid it you should turn your Wifi off if not using it, use a tool to control your Wifi state or try to find and remove the cause. More here
5. Q: Google Maps is causing a lot of overhead. Must I freeze it?
A: no, Karpfenhai wrote step-by-step instructions on how to configure autostarts and the location service to avoid that
6. Q: Are you aware of the bug in BBS causing SuperUser to ask for su-permissions over and over again
A: As you said, SuperUser is asking over and over again, it's no BBS bug as BBS only requests su rights. More here
7. Q: BBS shows "no ref since unplugged"
A: Starting from 1.9 is is mandatory to plug/unplug after boot to get a "since unplugged" reference to be created. Starting from 1.10 there is anew reference "since boot" and a preference to fall back to that reference if no other is available.
8. Q: Why can't you just skip deleting the references at boot?
A: If I could I would. In a nutshell: BBS is a passive monitoring tool; this means it does not cause any overhead collecting data but compares snapshots. Now the disadvantage of this is that it makes no sense to compare values of counters between two references (e.g. "since unplugged" and "current") if the counters were reset in between. In fact that would potentially cause negative values, in every case wrong values.
9. Q: But is used to work before. Why did you change it?
A: It didn't work, you just didn't notice. The kernel and Android reset their counters at boot. That means that there is no way to compare counters from before the boot with counters from after.
10. Q: What do the widget colors / graphics mean?
A (new round widgets): the legend is displayed if you resize the widget
A (legacy widgets): For the large widget it's pretty simple. The colors represent the values "Since" (blue), "Deep sleep" (green), "Awake" (yellow), "Screen on" (white), "Kernel wakelocks" (magenta), "Partial wakelocks" (cyan). The 100% is the max of those values.
For the small widget see here
11. Q: Where are the dumpfile and logcat saved / how are the files named?
A: Both files are saved to /sdcard, their names are BetterBatteryStats-.txt and logcat-.txt where timestamp is of the format "yyyy-MM-dd_HHmmssSSS" (starting from 1.12 there is an option in advanced prefs to save those files to the private directory /sdcard/Android/com.asksven.betterbatterystats/files).
12. Q: Are you aware of the fact that BBS does not work properly for secondary users (Android 4.2)?
A: BBS works fine for secondary users as long as you don't enable root features. The reason is not BBS but the lack of support of the multiuser feature in the superuser/supersu version you are using.
13. Q: What is *overflow*?
*overflow* is a sign that one stat counter was overrun. This may happen if you have not boote your phone since long or if some wakeup/wakelock is very frequent. The only way to see what is hidden behind *overflow* is to reboot and take a fresh reading.
14. Q: Why is 'screen off' reference not being created?
A: You have to enable the watchdog for that reference to be created
15. Q: Even after plugging/unplugging my phone no reference except 'boot' is shown
A: something is preventing the unplug event to be passed to BBS. You should check for tools like greenify or stamina mode that mask such events and make sure that BBS is whitelisted. On newer Android versions please also make sure that BBS is not "optimized" by Android, under "Settings - Battery Optimization"
16. Q: What is the watchdog and how does it work?
A: The wachdog is a feature to help you in analysing when happens when screen is off. When the watchdog is turned on a reference 'screen off' is created. You can also configure the watchdog to create a reference 'screen on'. Opionally the watchdog will notify you when screen is turned on and the awake ratio was bigger that the configured threshold. In order to avoid too much overhead in processing a threshold can be set to disable the computing for short screen off times.
17. Q: my logcat is empty and says "Unable to open log device '/dev/log/main': No such file or directory"
A: Check if you have a custom kernel that turns off logging. If not some file permissions may be broken: use the repair permissions function from your recovery
18. Q: How can I get rid of GSF wakelocks
A: GSF (google service framework) can not be avoided and in no case it should be frozen. Here are some settings that can help reducing the overhead.
19. Q: The other stat is wrong. It shows "No data connection" and "No or unknown signal" while was online with Wifi all the time
A: "No data connection" and "No or unknown signal" refer to your cell data (2G/3G) service. As you have had Wifi on for some time the cell data was turned off, consistent to what the stats say: work as designed
20. Q: I can not install BBS as a system app. What can I do.
A: BBS does not require the system app anymore
A: If you are on a version older than 4.4 you don't need to install BBS as a system app. If you are on 4.4+ you should first try the in app installer. If for some reason it fails you can use the CWM scripts attached to install / uninstall BBS as a system app
21. Q: I am suffering from a high NLPWakelock time. Is there something I can do about it?
A: Here's a good summary of what NLP is and how it can be positively impacted (thanks to @Perseus71)
22. Q: On CM12 based ROMs the launcher crashes when placing a widget. When will this be fixed?
A: I can not find anything wrong with BBS code and the crash occurs in the launcher, not in BBS. After spending quite some time trying to understand the problem I must conclude that the problem is with CM12 (other ROMs on Lollipop do not have this problem)
23. Q: I can not or do not want to root my devices but would like to use BBS to gain insight. Can this be done?
A: The answer used to be "no" but this has now changed. See post #4 for a detailed description on how to proceed.
24. Q: I can not get BBS to work. How should I proceed to find out the cause
BBS has no dependency to any root-tool and does not require root to work, it only requires specific permissions that can be granted by:
- using ADB as described in the FAQ
- letting the app grant itself the permission if root is available
25. Q: BBS Shows a permanent notification. Can I remove it?
The notification is due to the android app model having changed and now requiring apps that run in the background to show themselves. I have put the "background app" notification into a separate channel named "BBS Event Processing" so you can disable it if it bugs you: no other vital notification will be send to that channel
26. Q: What is this popup saying "Detected problems with API compatibility"?
For Android 9.0 Pie users getting the "Detected problems with API compatibility (visit g.co/dev/appcompat for more info)" popup error please see this post.
When diagnosing / analysing there are a few important things to know:
- the app (advanced settings) shows you whether the permissions were granted or not
- when checking if any acition had a positive result you should always use raw stats as the default view does a diff between two snapshots, i.e. if one snapshot is missing it may show no results
- logcat may give you some info about what is going wrong, e.g. the app not being able to contact the battery_info service414Ref, Hints and blacklist
Litterature
Article from the Android PDK about Power Management: http://www.netmite.com/android/mydr...s/power_management.html#androidPowerWakeLocks
Other useful tools
The default battery usage (Gingerbread): Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Usage
The most interesting data is shown when clicking on the graph (bars below the graph). Unjustified "awake" times when display is off is an indicator for rogue apps doing stuff in the background when you think your phone is asleep
Battery Monitor Widget
Has a great stat on battery drain over time. I use this tool regularly after leaving my phone alone for 1/2 hour to check how the battery drain looks like against my benchmark of 2-10 mAh average (optimal for my SGS2).
[android backup service]
(http://code.google.com/android/backup/index.html). It is a service that offers cloud backup/restore of your settings and offers an API for other apps to do the same (http://developer.android.com/guide/t...ta/backup.html).
You can turn it off (but will lose the automatic backup) under Setting -> Privacy ->Back up my data.
Backups are useful though but no need to do it in the cloud, I'd recommend scheduling a regular backup using titanium instead (that's my setting).
[DataTracker-FD] is fast dormancy. Find the 'secret' codes for your device to turn FD off. *#*#9900#*#* on an SGSII. (contrib. by nobnut)
[syncmanagerhandlesyncalarm] That service is documented here (http://www.kiwidoc.com/java/l/x/andr.../c/SyncManager) and is responsible for updating the accounts you have under Settings -> Accounts and Sync. High values may come from bad settings (sync too often, huge amounts of data) or poorly written providers.
[reserved for misbehaving apps]166
I hope i don't forget a thing
-------- -------- -------- -------- --------
Silencing maps (preventing non user caused wakelocks)
1. Sign out and /or freeze latitude.
2. Disable all location based services:
3. Deny all maps related autostarts using a certain app like Gemini app manager or autostarts from playstore:
That's it!
Additional information:
-manual startup of maps will work anyhow, don't worry,
-navigation still works
-toggling gps on will show your current position on the map.
If you do it right, your alarm after almost 2 days can look like this:
As you can see, maps does not exist!
Hint: preventing all autostarts from maps should be enough, you probably don't need to get rid of the other stuff, try to start from point 3 in the beginning.
-------- -------- -------- -------- --------
Okay with this Sven?
Tapatalked from my Samsung GT9100
