ADB the easy way? Guides and GUI tools with adb power

[yann2]

** Obligatory disclaimer follows.

Beware that ADB is a powerful tool, and you CAN do damage to your phone/tablet/device if you use it mindlessly.

As someone said in our irc channel, with careless use and a nice front end, you might brick your device, and be a Noob forever.

Just be careful and you will be fine. Respect is good. /disclaimer off. **

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Been learning how powerful the ADB (Android Debug Bridge) tool is; it allows recovery from even nasty situations that would have you pulling your hair out.

It's basically a command line tool, you need to be versed in it's options, and type carefully (there is a good guide for it HERE at AndroidTablets.net. Another, longer, in-depth guide at XDA Devs forum post here).

I had seen a GUI front end for ADB a couple of days ago, and am adding this thread as a reference, so anyone interested can try it out.

- A really good review of the program, screenshots and all, can be read here : QtADB Is ADB (Android Debug Bridge) For Beginners With A GUI.

A very small snippet of their page sums up QtADB well :

QtADB is a cross-platform application that offers a graphical user interface for handling most common ADB functions. This tool, developed in Qt, uses the ADB for communicating with the device and lets a user perform common tasks with easy to understand menus and simplistic graphical windows. It offers a file manager, application handler, backups/restores, screenshots, ADB shell interface and more.

- The program itself, QtADB, has it's homepage HERE.

A video showing it running (under Linux) :



Hope this is helpful, i want to install and try out some of the features. The screenshots function, specially, seems very useful for Gingerbread Beta users at this time, since we can't save native screenshots to SD card atm.

Any comments, suggestions? Chime right in.

 

[yann2]

I just installed the QtADB program, got some nice screenshots from my tablet (and from the Qt app as well) and can share my install experience, tips.

It's working now, I used these files :

- the QtADB installer for Windows from their Downloads page.

- the Windows drivers for the TC970 which DerKock shared at XDA Devs rooting thread. A copy is here - mirror, direct download link.

- the ADB files from inside the SuperOneClick installer DerKoch made. [mirror here - direct download]

You don't even need to install SuperOneClick. Just open the .7z file, I used WinRAR. From there, extract only the ADB subfolder.

- If you want to be able to do Apps management in QtADB (yes, you do ), you need the 'aapt file' - they included it in a bundle with their recommended adb.exe version. From the QtADB, it's listed as 'Binaries for Windows' - direct link.

I downloaded and extracted them, but only copied the aapt.exe to the other ADB folder where I placed the DerKoch-provided adb files.

I used a simple path, right off the root of my d:, to make it easier to get there if needed via command line. So, my QtADB folder is d:\QtADB.

Inside it, you will find :

The ADB folder at the top of the list is where I placed the D.K. adb files. So, the path to it is d:\QtADB\ADB, which is typing friendly. Folder contains :

I left that 'SuperOneClickv2.2-ShortFuse-modForTC970' subfolder as a reminder to myself of what those files are (which version). It's not needed, and is empty, just a reminder.


About the installation :

- Windows drivers are not signed, and therefore you will get the usual Microsoft warnings. Install them. They should load right away.

- To get the program to work properly, I think a reboot after drivers install is a good idea; I did that. After reboot, it picked up the device easily when I started QtADB.

Here are some QtADB screenshots, showing some of the panels in the app. Here's the device's partitions and free space on each :

...and the Apps list and management screen:

There are some Tablet Screenshots, my TC970 running CM7 Beta1, taken from inside QtADB - all are REDUCED size images, as the originals (1024x768 pixels) are too large for Forum use.

Click on each image to see FULL SIZE, sharper, original screenshot image.

The Gingerbread Apps screen:




And one of the Apps included in CM7, Developer Tools :



This is a cool tool, and I am just getting started on it. Lots to learn and explore. Thumbs up.

 

[yann2]

Quick update on original post, added an appropriate disclaimer.

The QtADB tool is really nice, and I would recommend trying it out still. It could help you in many ways, including apps management, recovering from boot loops, etc.

Le Pan II drivers are available - so it can work with either model. (All driver details on posts above are for LP 1; ask here if you need pointers for LP 2 drivers.)