I just got a new Galaxy Nexus at Google IO and installed all the apps I had on my old phone. The annoying thing, however, is that I would have to start from scratch again as the game data (which levels you completed, how many coins you got) isn’t stored in the Play store per device. To me, this is a real lack of functionality in Android and annoyed me. So here is a hack how to transfer both the game data of Cut The Rope and Temple run from one Android phone to another:

Here are the steps to take:

1. Backup your old phone via USB to your harddrive, just create a folder and copy everything in there. In my case this was a ICS phone and you had to connect the phone, say yes to “turn off USB storage”, get the phone as a HD in OSX and go wild)
2. Download Android Filetransfer and install it (on Windows, this is not needed)
3. In Android File Transfer, create a folder called “Cut the Rope” and copy all the files from your hard drive backup there (remotesavefile and remotesavefile.experiments – if you also played Experiments)
4. When you start Cut The Rope on the new phone, it will ask you to restore a previous state. Say yes.
5. For Temple Run, go to Android/data in Filetransfer and create a folder called com.imangi.templerun
6. In there, create a folder called files and copy both ALT_recordmanager.dat and recordmanager.dat from your hard drive into this folder
7. Temple Run automatically detects the old state

This probably works for many other tools, too. Sadly not for Angry Birds – it seems.

This cost me far too much of my time yesterday night: I had reconnected my Android Tablet (Galaxy 10.1) after running out of battery for quite a while and connected to my wireless and surfed the web – all fine – except for “certificate errors” on a few pages. This is nothing new, SSL is broken far too often sadly enough.

When connecting to the Market to download new apps or get my Google Mail or Reader items it always told me though that I was offline. Looking at Android forums I got a lot of wrong advice like “Going back to Best Buy”, “Deleting cache and force-stopping Market and rebooting the device” or “doing a factory reset”.

The fix is simple:

If your Android tablet throws certificate errors when surfing and can’t connect to the market, your time and date are wrong and set in the past. This breaks the SSL negotiation. Simply fix time and date and it works without you losing data.

This should be part of the error message when you get certificate errors.

When I went to California last I was lucky enough to meet some friends from Google for lunch at their office and as a surprise on the way out I got a Nexus One as a present:

I loved it immediately. It is a very slick phone with a real “developer touch”. This means:

• To get data on or off it I connect it to a USB port and copy the stuff – no need to fire up some “Media Explorer” or iTunes.
• The handling was wonderful – even though I never had a touch phone before I had no issues with it at all (except when I tried to type German SMS with the English dictionary on)
• The geolocation stuff, Google Goggles, Google Maps, Point by Point navigation and all the other stuff that only runs on this platform beat the pants off the iPhone (at least for me)
• The camera is amazing and the display is crisp as can be

That is until yesterday night. When I gave the phone to someone at the Future of Web Design after party to have a look at it he dropped it. I didn’t check and just pocketed it and this morning I found the display to look like this:

It has a bit of a Eastman Colour vibe to it but makes it impossible to use. Funnily enough the touch stuff still works perfectly but outside of artificial light you cannot see anything on it any longer.

Now I am busted:

• Where can I get a free Nexus One repaired in the UK? This is a no contract phone.
• What can I do about my Jewels and Layar addiction?

It is a great example how being a very, very early adopter can bite you in the bum if something as simple as gravity messes with you :(.