Acer Iconia Phone Disabler

Extend the battery life of your WiFi Acer Iconia A500 tablet with this handy utility that will disable the processes that constantly look for a 3G data connection. Acer uses the exact same firmware on both wifi and 3g models, which leads to uneeded battery drain on the wifi version. There's no 3G radio, so why have a process running that's constantly checking on it? This utility effectively disables those processes leading to longer battery life per charge.

In the screen shots below (see in android market), you can see how "Cell Standby" uses a significant amount of battery power. After using this utility to disable the "Phone", that process no longer uses any battery power, resulting in longer run time.

DISCLAIMER: This utility is only for the Acer Iconia A500 Wifi version. Although it would probably work on the 3G if you just wanted to completely disable the 3G data connection.

This utility requires root access. (Acer Iconia)

** USE AT YOUR OWN RISK **

DOWNLOAD FROM ANDROID MARKET

USB Mount All v1.1 beta 2

Try the TEST version before purchasing. If the TEST version lists your devices and shows you the disk types and sizes, then it's working perfectly. The TEST version will not let you mount anything for use (see link below).

Mount multiple drives and drive partions on your Honeycomb tablet. Makes all your data available.

Supports ext2, ext3, ext4, ntfs and fat32 filesystems. Can access primary and extended partitions. You can select which volumes you wish to mount, or mount all volumes with a single click.

Also allows you to mount the exernal Micro SDCard in the above mentioned formats.

STAR FEATURE: Allows you to mount the drives inside the internal sdcard directory. Allowing access to the external sdcard and usb drives to apps that normally can't access them!

Tested on Acer and Xoom. Please test your device using the TEST version mentioned above. If you don't see disk types and sizes with the test version, then this version will not work either.

This utility requires root access and BusyBox app.


DOWNLOAD FROM ANDROID MARKET
DOWNLOAD TEST VERSION

How to root Acer Iconia A500 Tablet

* This process was taken from a thread on xda-developers.com. Credit for this goes to them and the author of Gingerbreak.

Rooting an android device allows you to customize it beyond the manufacturers specs. There are several apps on the market that require root access to give you special features. The steps below will guide you through the process of "rooting" your Acer Iconia A500 tablet.

Warning: Rooting may void your manugatureres warning.

  1. Turn on USB Debugging. Goto Android Settings, then click Applications, then click Development, and put a checkmark beside USB Debugging.
  2. Make sure you have a micro sd card insterted. The process will not erase anything from the card.
  3. Turn the tablet to portrait mode and lock it with the switch to fix in portrait.
  4. Download and execute GingerBreak-v1.20.apk. After downloading, you'll need to use file manager to navagate to /sdcard/Download and click Gingerbreak-v1.20.apk to install. AndroXplorer works well.
  5. Once Gingerbreak is running, click "Root device"
  6. Wait... and when the device auto-reboots, you should have root access.
You can download Root Checker to test if you have root access.
To read the full thread on rooting, please visit xda-developers.com