Database Develop

so i have a lot of questions

so to start off, ill say i know absolutly nothing about linux, but i managed to root and flash modacos custom rom to my phone. i have no idea what any of the commands i used to do it mean, or how to use any of them to do anything else (other than removing a bunch of the crap that sprint puts on the phone, i managed to do that with the help of one of the other threads on here). anyways, ive got that done and am wondering what to do now. i came from a titan and am used to when im done flashing things, everything is totally different. like going from stock rom to having m2d and it being super sweet. with the new rom it seems like there isnt a lot of new stuff going on or a lot of changes. wifi tether works amazingly though. anyways, im done with the pointless ranting and heres what im trying to figure out....
1. are all of my contacts really saved to gmail? like all of the stuff from all of them? so if i hard reset, and just sign into my gmail account, will it reload all of my contacts? im used to pim backup and knowing that its all gonna be there after im done doing stuff (ive never used gmail before and am not sure how it works)
2. if i do a hard reset, do i need to redo everything like root and re-flash the custom rom or will all of that stay intact? will all of the sprint garbage like nascar be back on there after doing the cmd propmt remove of it or will i have to do that again? im not nessicarily worried about the apps that i have installed already so im not worried about that at all, i can find them later.
3. is there anything usefull that i can do with root that will increase performance or anything. like i said earlier, i dont know anything about linux , so is there like a list of comands somewhere to look through that might help me out?
4. does a2sd see your programs and automatically move them to the sd with the proper formatting of the sd card? i did the fat32, ext2 and swap. since i didnt know if it moved them over, i manually uninstalled everything and reinstalled them. after uninstalling everything i had 104 free and after reinstall i had 101.
5. would it be benificial to go ahead and do a hard reset, if the sprint crap is back on on all of that other **** that can be erased is back, get rid of that, and start from scratch to install all of my stuff i want. i dl a lot of **** that i uninstalled before. i hear linux is really good at installing and uninstalling things, but if ive dl'ed 75 things then uninstallled them, is there gonna be any garbage left on my phone from it? i know there was a lot of garbage left on the sd before i formated. actually, there was **** on there (on the sd) from progs i dl'ed and uninstalled awhile ago, even after formating so im thinging a hard reset would be helpful.
im sure ill have a lot more questions about this whole linux/android stuff sooo.....if people are trying to be helpful and help me out that would be awesome. if your going to be an asshole and blast me for my nubbish questions, dont bother.
thanks in advance
ix3u

The super-custom ROMS are on their way, they just take some time (we only got root this past weekend afterall!)
1.) Some contacts are saved to your phone, but I believe the default is to save it to gmail. You can check by going into the People App, click menu->View and the numbers should show you how much is on google and how many are on your phone.
2.) I'm afraid I'm not sure on a hard reset...I use Nandroid and if all else fails, the RUU to recover (Nandroid is just a snapshot in time...it will be however it was when you backed it up when you restore....while the RUU puts it back to true "factory", as if you just pulled it out of the box).
3.) There's a few things you can do to the UI settings that can increase performance, but the real performance gains are pending the release of the CDMA Kernel by HTC for us to play with and port some of the performance changes that were done to the GSM Kernel (Google for Teknologic's Kernel 1.8...it's included in MoDaCo 2.9). Teknologic kept a very good changelog and site describing some of the things he did and why.
4.) I have no experience with A2SD, but there's a bunch of threads about it...hopefully one of them will have teh answer you seek?
5.) I suppose a hard reset couldn't hurt...it would certainly rule a lot of things out when troubleshooting. I download a lot of apps too only to find I didn't like them enough to keep them and removed them. From what I can tell, it does clean up the application files pretty thoroughly on the OS partitions...the SD card I believe most apps leave alone on uninstall just to be careful not to delete too much because the SD card is designed for people to access and drop files onto, whereas the OS is meant to be managed by the OS...so it's just being careful to leave data on the SD card to play it safe rather than risk deleting someone's favorite picture of their kid or something.
Xda has been one of the more gentle forums I've seen in a long time. You're in good hands here. Hopefully some of that info was useful...if not, someone else will likely be along shortly to give better/more complete answers. ^_^

Is Android supposed to be stable?

Maybe im expecting too much:
When I press gallery, almost 1/3 of the time only 1 or 2 categories come up and no thumbnails. Then i exit and press again and a few more things show up. Then i exit again and usually the 3rd time or so the app opens properly.
Also, about once every 2 weeks i press an app and it opens a different app. And this happens with multiple apps. The only way to fix it is to reboot.
I dont use a task manager
I reboot the phone every couple of days
I wipe the phone about once every 1 or 2 months
Is one of the above practices ruining my device?
I bought the phone and i havent done anything custom to it. Why does my polished 2.1 firmware work like a 5th grade science experiment?

Have occasionally noticed that the gallery app does not pick up all images and categories... something with the media scanner... try using the media scanner in the dev tools app or unmount and remount ur sd card...
Never had any problems with apps opening wrong apps... this is very strange... I have no idea why this is happening and quite frankly, I can;t think of anything which would serve as a possible solution!

Occasionally I've had the latest picture taken not show up in the gallery, but that's it. Stock O/S is great.
Never had it open the wrong app.
I don't run a task killer, don't reboot & have never wiped.

About the app opening the wrong app thing I guess its good news if I'm the only one. Is it possible that I've downloaded an app that is causing it? Or is it more likely an OS issue? it seems a little cheesy that the phone does this, if I could fix it without rebooting that would be a step in the right direction...

Likely an app you downloaded, or just something a little off about the flashing of your update, or a bad RAM memory block at the wrong place.
As for the gallery, I thought I had that issue a bit too, but I noticed that more than anything it just takes a really long time to open fully if it has been kicked out of the cache.
As for the original question posed in the thread title, Android is still Beta in a lot of ways. 2.0/1 is a huge change in many ways from 1.6. It sounds like 2.2 is going to be a bit of a change as well, but instead of changing nearly everything, it is going to build of 2.0/1 plus add in some changes. I am willing to bet that until the release after Gingerbread (the OS after 2.2, aka FroYo), not sure what the "H" release will be codenamed will we see an OS that isn't "Beta" in enough ways for me to call it non-Beta personally... then again, so far Android is less buggy than windows mobile, better than Blackberry even, and on par with iPhone OS, if not better in these regards.
Just like an OS for a computer, same holds true for a smartphone, there are going to be bugs, there are going to be bad programs/apps, and so forth.
I think you should wait for FroYo, if Android still doesn't meet your standards, root and flash some of the custom ROMs. Enom is very stock like, but fixes many of the little bugs, as does Cyan, although with Cyan you do get a few more bugs in some of the development apps and what not.

Just a thought, but maybe you're suffering from the occasional wacky touchscreen issue?
So it's not that it's just opening the wrong app, but the screen is registering a touch in a different place, it's usually most noticable when typing. If it is that, then a simple lock/unlock will solve it, no need for a reboot.

[ThinkTank] How to speed up Market after wipe (Partial fix)

Okay, this has been bugging me for a long time. I've been around since the beginning of G1 and have never seen a solution to this. I'm out of town on vacation, so my updates and responses may be slow. I've found a partial solution for this. If you don't want to read the fluff, drop down to Partial Solution sections, but be warned, this is not perfect (yet). Below is a quick spilling of my guts on this. Please excuse any grammar mistakes and fragmented thought. I posted this in DEV because more research needs to be done by someone that knows how this stuff works. If we get this worked out, I'll update this post with whatever information is necessary.
This post takes for granted the reader has some knowledge of file management and manipulation, so I won't get too detailed with how to copy/move/delete files. There is a lot of information here and I know most won't read it all, but I'm trying to get all the detail into this I can think of in hopes others have ideas that we can share.
I DO NOT KNOW THE RAMIFICATIONS OF WHAT THIS DOES! ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOUR PHONE IS YOUR FAULT, NOT MINE! Etc... Etc... Etc...
Issue: After flashing/Odin/wiping, sometimes the Market takes about a minute to load as does the app and security info screens. The Top Paid button is missing and all that's available is Top Free and Just In. Installing an app takes quite a bit of time. It eventually clears up, but it may take up to a week.
If you restore Market preferences via Titanium Backup or similar app, it can speed it up, but in the long run, you may get cross referenced apps over time or Market problems in general. For example, I install app1 and when it's finished, I select it in notifications and it takes me to app3. Some apps are also missing from Downloads and have to be installed again for them to show up. I also experience Titanium Backup not linking the Market correctly if at all. How to fix that is below, also.
How I Tested: I renamed /dbdata/databases/com.android.vending which reproduced the problem reliably and gave me a working set of databases and .xml's to look at.
Partial Solution: Save a copy of /dbdata/databases/com.android.vending/shared_prefs/vending_preferences.xml and put it back after you've restored your apps and opened Market once (just to lay down the directory structure). There are other files that will get more "stuff" back, but because of issues I've had between vending.apk versions, I choose to restore just this one file. It doesn't seem to change much. You can look in it and find some interesting things, but I've found changing it does very little if anything. Changing local_db_sync_required didn't do anything and it just reverted back to "false" for me.
What you will find, is Market will run quickly again BUT, you have no links so none of your apps show as installed. Although it will probably sync over time, the point of my messing around was fairly instant gratification. Thus the next section.
New Problem: Market speed is normal, but no apps are linked. Hey, I use Titanium backup! Fix Market links works, partially. I have 226 apps backed up in TB (Yes, this is why I wanted to get this working) and when I fixed Market links, it found 167. I fixed them again and it found 9, then 17, then 6 etc... It repeated some apps and never detected others. I checked and some of the "fixed" apps did not show in downloads... So I started looking. Menu -> Legend showed me part of the issue. Smiley face -vs- green M. For some reason, some of my apps were not linking properly. Here's how to get that part working.
Partial Solution: Here's what I did in TB. I filtered by Status: Backed up and Type: User. Starting at the top of the list, I long pressed on the first "smiley face" which means it didn't back up the Market link and if it was "Attached to Market", I Detached it. View in Market and installed the app. When it was done, I backed the app up again and viola, green M showing it backed up the Market link. I did this many, many more times to fix my links. It worked in all occasions as long as I could find the app in the Market. Of course, some apps installed outside the Market cannot be fixed (duh), but all others worked fine.
I still have a problem getting everything attached in one shot. If I fix Market links in TB, I still get strange results, but this is as close as I can get and I found quite a few apps that have not been linked for so long, they were a few revs behind, so I'm happy with how far I've gotten.
Questions that will be asked:
- Why didn't you force attach to Market with TB? Because it didn't work. Some indicated it did, but they didn't show up in Market as installed, they didn't back up as linked and some even reverted back to not being attached and the forced button was available. The above is how I got around all of that.
- What about the other cool DB's and .xml? I didn't find that it was worth any possible issues to restore anything else except this file. That is probably what got me into this in the first place. Your mileage may vary. DB's usually need an update script if any changes are made. If that doesn't happen and the schema doesn't match, that's usually bad. That's why a lot of ROM's require a wipe. The old doesn't match the new...
- Why can't you backup Market with TB now that it is working well? I could and it would probably work, but I know it won't work forever because it didn't before. It also won't help someone else who is in a similar situation. I've been using TB (paid) since it came out and I love it. But, it's not perfect.
- Why should I mess with this instead of waiting for it to fix itself? You probably shouldn't. I've found that if I did a restore of apps, some NEVER go back to the Downloads section without a re-install. That's my concern.
- I don't have any of these problems, why are you posting this? Because I and others have. The universe does not revolve around you. Please move on.
- Why did you post this in Dev? As I said in the beginning, because we need someone who knows how this OS works so maybe a reliable workaround can be had for all. I didn't post in DEV for exposure, I posted here because I started it and I don't know where to go. Maybe a fix can be turned into an app or incorporated directly within a ROM. Who knows? I'm not a DEVing, but I am troubleshooting an issue within the OS.

One thing I've found that helps, is I kinda ignore if it shows up in Downloads in the market after a restore. I check for updates using AppBrain app, it finds all the apps on the phone whether they're in the market or not. Then, whenever an app is updated, it directs you to the market download page. If the market link was broken, that will say "Install" instead of "Update", but an install at that point will update properly, and you'll now have a working market link.
The main goal of having apps show up in the market, IMHO, is updates and uninstalls. Use the system uninstaller rather than the market for uninstalls, and use AppBrain to find updates. Works for me.

Thanks a lot for putting this up! I was banging my head against the wall last night, as I ran into this issue again and couldnt remember how I fixed it on my G1

zimphishmonger said:
Thanks a lot for putting this up! I was banging my head against the wall last night, as I ran into this issue again and couldnt remember how I fixed it on my G1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yw
lotherius said:
One thing I've found that helps, is I kinda ignore if it shows up in Downloads in the market after a restore. I check for updates using AppBrain app, it finds all the apps on the phone whether they're in the market or not. Then, whenever an app is updated, it directs you to the market download page. If the market link was broken, that will say "Install" instead of "Update", but an install at that point will update properly, and you'll now have a working market link.
The main goal of having apps show up in the market, IMHO, is updates and uninstalls. Use the system uninstaller rather than the market for uninstalls, and use AppBrain to find updates. Works for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I rarely uninstall via market. Have an app that throws me straight to the system uninstaller from the apps icon. I like appbrain, but it exhibits the same issue as the Market for me as far as detecting installed apps in some cases. I use the Market for updates and it works fine for me as long as the apps are linked. I think it has something to do with the hash getting messed up in the assets.db

Captivate boots slow, issues. How to troubleshoot?

So, a little history...
I'm on my 2nd Captivate (unrelated issue). The boot problems didn't arise until I restored my data onto it. The first time I tried restoring system data along with my apps (which I figured was safe since I was going from 2.1 stock to the same) but that had lots of issues. So I did a factory reset, and started over. This time I just restored apps and their data, and a few specific pieces of system data (contacts, wifi APs, etc). That worked better. But later I got too aggressive with what system apps I "froze" (using Titanium Backup), and it got into boot loops I couldn't break out of. So I did another factory reset.
This time, first I carefully froze only apps I was to confirm were safe to freeze. I didn't proceed restoring my apps until I was done freezing and ensured it was booting fine. I then restored all my apps (and their data). The problem is now that it takes forever to boot... in fact, it'll go into a boot loop if I just leave it be. It seems the only way I can gain access is to try and unlock it before it's done booting, clear any "Force close" errors (sometimes takes a few tries) and given enough attempts, I can get in. But the boot takes an unbelievable amount of time, and even with my original apps is many times longer than before on my previous Captivate. Once I fuss my way in, it seems mostly fine, but something is obviously wrong and I want to get it straightened out.
Aside from doing another factory reset, and reinstalling all my apps (which takes like a day without troubleshooting after each, since batch restores in TB don't seem to work well on the Captivate so I have to do them one by one), I'm hoping there's a way to troubleshoot it in its current state and try to fix the problem surgically versus erasing and starting over. I looked at the logcat logs but got in over my head... there are so many errors and warnings and I don't know what's normal and what isn't... too many to know where to begin with searching Google.
So... advice? What tools are available? Even the logcat doesn't seem to kick in until the boot is mostly done, so I'm not sure if it can catch the problem while it's happening. One frustrating thing about Android is that is seems to have no "safe mode" or other diagnostic boot or full logging where you can methodically look at what's happening and experiment with the config. If this was a Windows, Linux or FreeBSD box I'd be in my element and able to get to the bottom of this, but on Android I feel even more crippled, locked-out and helpless than even on Windows. Urgh.
There's got to be a better way to troubleshoot and fix than endless random factory resets. This is something us anti-Windows people scold PC makers for, with all their use of "Restore CDs" for every minor and trivial software issue.
Thanks!

I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.

newter55 said:
I can't help but think you are still disabling some essential system apps. Either that or one of your apps is causing major problems. Please list what you have frozen in tibu. Btw, the batch function works fine and is what most people on here use.
Also, what is force closing after you restore your apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, thanks for taking a stab at this.
My frozen apps are:
* AllShare
* AT&T FamilyMap
* AT&T Hot Spots
* AT&T Maps
* AT&T Music
* AT&T Navigator
* AT&T Radio
* Daily Briefing
* Days
* Instant Messaging
* Media Hub
* Mini Diary
* Mobile Banking
* Mobile Video
* MobiTV
* Where
* Write and Go
* YPmobile
I also tried removing my MicroSD card, as well as switching back to Touchwiz (from LauncherPro). Didn't help.
Yeah the batch problem in TB is very frustrating. I'm using the pay/donate version so I'm missing out on a feature I paid for. I've been exchanging emails with Joel (the author) and we haven't figured it out yet. Batch backups work fine. Batch uninstalls also work fine (update: phone just spontaneously rebooted after about 50 or so uninstalls in a batch). It's the batch restores that seem to choke it. It's not corrupt backup files... a verify runs fine, and I can individually restore the same handful of apps one by one that will choke and hang/reboot the Captivate if attempted to restore in a batch.
The FC error I get is on boot-up, as I try to unlock the screen prior to the boot finishing. I often see "Process system is not responding".
I have aLogcat installed, if that's any use. A few questions about that:
- What's the best logging level to view on? In other words, do I care about "Warnings"?
- What errors are common, harmless, and safe to ignore?
Currently I've tried uninstalling everything down to just a few core apps. Certainly boots fine now, but I get plenty of warnings and errors in logcat.

Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?

diablo009 said:
Are u restoring just the user installed apps+data, or system apps too? Or restoring system stuff like contacts data, accounts prefs, etc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did not do a "restore system data" or any batch/bulk option in TB that restored all system data. As I recall, the only system data I restored a-la-carte (by selecting the individual item from the TB list) were:
Accounts
Bluetooth pairints
Bookmarks
Calendar
Contacts
Wi-Fi Access Points
These were all items in green in TB. I don't believe I restored anything else. Possibilities I suppose are wallpaper settings, "Country, Launguage, Time Zone"... but I definitely would not have restored anything not green.
Are these items safe? Is there any system data definitely not safe to restore? I have to wonder though, if "system data" is unsafe to even restore to the same stock OS version... why back it up at all?
I'm not a long distance from doing yet another factory reset I suppose, if it must come to that. But I'd love a way a bit more analytical/exacting to try and troubleshoot this other than "reinstall one app, reboot, see what happens" as that will take me a week to get back to where I was. I also suspect it's not just one single app that would suddenly show a huge difference after installing, but instead might be the cumulative errors from several apps and knowing how to identify that and clean them up would be useful.

Using adb logcat you can view what is occurring while the phone is booting and possibly see where it is hanging or what is causing the slow boot times. I have seen problems from restoring data such as accounts and contacts with titanium backup but does not seem that it should be an issue when using the same system though I have very little experience with the stock firmware. I know it is not an answer to your question but it seems that you are wanting to remove all the att/Samsung BS so why not flash a rom that does this as well as much more?
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

Thanks for the tip about adb. I've actually not needed adb for anything yet so I've never set it up or used it. I wasn't aware that the service would be active early enough on the phone's boot process to allow it to log boot logs... nor was I even aware it could do this. I'll definitely check out how to set this up... however, if you have a free second and can point me in the right direction (FAQ, instructions, etc) it'd certainly be appreciated otherwise I'll search around and try to find it.
I could probably find other ways to restore contacts and could set my accounts up again manually but I really doubt that's the cause and the other ways are sort of a pain and imperfect. Since neither of us is really convinced that'd be it I won't bother yet until/unless you really suspect it.
I wondered how long it'd take before someone would suggest a custom ROM, this being XDA and all. Short version is I'm not really sold on the concept, as they are all based on the buggy beta leaked ROM, or 2.2 ROMs from other devices that have been hacked up to sort of work as well as possible on the Captivate. All seem to have issues... enough that I'm not really left feeling confident about them. Seems every release unleashes new issues despite addressing old ones, and all seem to have at least a handful of gremlin items that just don't work quite right. Don't have a warm fuzzy feeling, and I still feel like Samsung is going to release an official 2.2 for the Captivate within the next month or so, so I'm interested to see what comes of that. If nothing else, it'll give a better baseline for custom 2.2 ROMs. Then there's the 2.3 being worked on... now that might be interesting.
I don't really think my issue here is related to me running 2.1.

On my phone so it is a pita to search and add a link for you but search for android sdk and you will find what you need to get adb up and running.
And as far as the rom issue goes..it is your phone and I respect your concerns I just had to ask

I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.

smokestack76 said:
I would think its media hub that slows it down. It will search your SD cards on every boot. I would start there first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one of the apps I've frozen though.

For me the longest process while booting is the stupid media scanner upon bootup. Takes FOREVER for the phone to finally "boot" all the way up.
Been looking for a way to disable it (not really lol) and only have it scan manually to see if the boot time will improve. I'd start searching there.
Also - from what I've read nothing you did should have affected the phone. BUT - if your using Google for your Calendar and Contacts.. and they all get synced up to Google? Why bother doing the restore for those? After you sign up with the Market they get pulled back down to your phone automagically

It's definitely more than just the media scanner. I watch that. When everything is loaded up, it actually reboots in a loop unless intercept the FC. The media scanner will rerun over and over each time... far more than the standard two times.
And I use Google Calendar for my events, but I keep my contacts locally on my phone.

So what is the FC again?
Yep.. my media scanner will run at least 3 times before it stops checking everything.
Very frustrating that the software does this EVERY time I boot back into my phone - you'd think a programmer would put a check to see if it had run before or make it user configurable to scan when you want it to.

avgjoegeek said:
So what is the FC again?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
See my second post (reply #3):
"Process system is not responding"

LOL sorry not enough coffee and a lil' guy that decided to wake up at 4a.m. = not a good mix.
Well.. did the ol' wise search of Google and came up with:
Might be a permissions issue. Easiest way to fix it is to run ROM Manager and have it fix permisions.
Run the command yourself in ADB:
Code:
Open terminal and
>su
$mount -a
$fix_permissions -r
The -r is optional, but necessary if you find orphaned apps (the app not found please reinstall message)
And reboot. That may help.
And it was also stated that you might have an errant widget/application causing the issue as well. That will be fun trying to figure out what it is.

And.. from my non-dev/non-professional experience - I have checked the logs on my phone and do see a large number of warnings on the phone - but never hindered performance.
So.. 99% of the time you can probably ignore them.
But back to the FC issue - I would try doing a restore of your apps/data again (I read where you have it back down to the "core) and then run the permission script or have ROM Manager do it for you and see if it returns.

Just an update that I think the "fix permissions" thing solved most (but perhaps not all) of my issues. Thanks so much for the tip. I've been reinstalling apps in batches and it's much better, although I see it getting bogged-down bit by bit and I can't pin down what or why.
Thing is, the apps I'm installing in these later rounds/batches shouldn't be resident all the time, shouldn't be auto-loading, and don't come up in things like Startup Cleaner or Advanced Task Killer. Nor do the various process monitors I've tried seem to have the granularity/ability to catch them while they're happening.
So things are better, but I still have some issues without a suitable means to diagnose. I don't get why just having more apps installed, but not running, should affect boot time so much. Hmm...
An inability to troubleshoot certainly rains on my love-affair with Android... not that I'm jumping to another platform anytime soon, but I really want this to work well (as well as be a good salesman to friends and family who often turn to me to show off quality technology).

[Q] Samsung Galaxy S apps not remembering their settings?

So a friend of mine updated his T-Mobile UK Samsung Galaxy S to the official 2.2.1 JPY firmware using Odin a few weeks ago. This went well, and is the same firmware that I've had on my unbranded SGS since December.
However, he has an interesting problem. Some of his apps (Handcent, Dolphin HD, plus a few others) seem to forget all of their settings every time the app is exited. For example, every time he goes back into Dolphin it enters the setup wizard as it it's being ran for the first time. This doesn't happen on every app, and it doesn't happen every time.
I noticed there are a couple of other threads on here with people reporting similar issues on custom ROMs (with no solution), but this is a stock ROM from samsungfirmware.com and certainly doesn't happen on my SGS, so it's not the ROM to blame.
Anyone know of a fix?

This question posted in the last few days .
jje

As I said in my post "I noticed there are a couple of other threads on here with people reporting similar issues ... (with no solution)". I wasn't being lazy and just starting another thread without doing some research first. I've read the other threads and they do not contain a solution that will work for him.
I'm assuming you're referring specifically to this thread? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=992335 In my friend's case, rooting is not an option, so this solution won't work for him.
However, based on that it looks like a factory reset may fix it. If I don't come back people reading this can assume it worked.

Hello
I experimented the same issue.
Looking at some log traces event it reported some permissions errors on intestinal filesystem like database location access write errors. This can explain setting persistence trouble.
After various workaround, bypass or others kind of fallback I did a full reinstallation of filesystem including a wipe data of the system. Take care to backup application and sensible data SMS, photo...
Since all is working fine and no more problems with settings
I don't know if it's helping you.
This is just my personal experience on this same problem.
Perhaps more simple solution is possible
Regards
Gilles

Thanks. So far so good after a Factory Reset. If it were my phone I'd be looking at Logcat, etc, too, but it's a bit hard to do remotely.
It's odd how some apps saved their settings fine, but some don't.

A factory reset did fix it... for a while. But then other apps started suffering from the problem.
So I've been researching this a bit more today. Here's what I've discovered:
The problem is unique to Samsung Galaxy S phones, and appears to be only ones running 2.2.1 (but maybe 2.2. too?).
Samsung have renamed /data/data to /dbdata/databases, and shared preferences for applications are persisting in this folder even if the application is uninstalled. If you install the app again, the app becomes a different user from the one that owns the shared preferences.
For example - If you install some random application and you look at its process running with the ps command, it will show as "app_XX", where XX is some number. For our example here let's say it shows as "app_55". When it then saves its settings in /dbdata/databases the folder the settings are saved in will have owner (shown by ls -l) as "app_55" too. That's fine, and normal.
The seed of the problem is sewn when you uninstall the app. Those shared preferences are not removed. Even using the "Clear data" option before uninstalling doesn't seem to help. If you then install the app again and look at the output of ps you'll see the new app is "app_56". The shared preferences are still there from last time with owner "app_55", hence the permissions error when it tries to save its settings, as user app_56 cannot modify user app_55's files.
A factory reset obviously cures it as this, at least temporarily, as it wipes the data in /dbdata/databases.
If you're rooted, you can go into /dbdata/databases and delete the relevent folder for the application that's having the problem. It will be recreated with the correct owner next time the app saves its settings.
I didn't try chown to change the owner to the correct one, but maybe that's a way to keep the old settings and correct the problem.

Bingo. No wonder my titanium backup is not remembering the preference settings.