asked 2015-09-28 11:19:31 +0200

Axel
31 ●1 ●3 ●5

updated 2015-09-28 11:24:55 +0200

About this procedure

This procedure is for those who have a Clash of Clans village on their Jolla phone and wish for their village to be linked to a Google account. Sadly this seems to be the only way that Supercell (the editor of Clash of Clans) gives us to retrieve a village from another account. For me, this was a way to ensure that in case my phone breaks or get stolen, my progression in the game would not be lost.

One might also want to use the Google sign-in to buy gems from Supercell, with real money. This makes the game faster, and is unavailable to non-synched villages.

I am transcribing all this from memory, so please let me know if I botched a step, or messed up the ordering :-) Also, some of these steps might be superflous. It's just what worked for me. But same here, let me know if you find some steps to be unnecessary.

Note: all of this procedure also applies to the game Boom Beach.

Prerequisites

• A working installation of Clash of Clans on your Jolla phone
• Access to a Linux shell on your Jolla phone. You might want to use the Terminal application from the Jolla store, or a connection via SSH, using a computer on the same network.
• Basic knowledge of Linux shells.
• A Google account. Any Gmail address works.
• Optional : the ES File Explorer application for Android.

Note: it seems that having a Google account registered into the Jolla settings is irrelevant.

The Procedure

Installing the Google Play Services

To install the required Google services onto your phone, this guide from coderus is very well detailed.

Installing Google Play

• Head to http://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/ and download the APK for com.google.android.apps.plus
• Install this APK.
• Restart Alien Dalvik : systemctl restart aliendalvik.service as root.

Note: one might think that the GMS app is necessary, since it has been known to help with paid apps. However, it turns out that I did not need to install it.

Binding a Google account to your village.

Now if you got to this point without bumps, you might notice that Clash of Clans no longer starts. Or rather, that is closes spontaneously when the progress bar completes. The solution to this, provided in a comment by nix, is to re-install the Clash of Clans APK.

Warning: here it is important to re-install only, without uninstalling first! This would lose you all your progress.

To re-install the game from its APK, you just have to click the APK and confirm that you want to re-install it. In case you do not know where to find it, the ES File Explorer can produce a backup of the APK into /sdcard/backups.

The game should now work again, and you should see your village when you start it. Now head to the game options. You may notice the "Link a device" button. Although it might be relevant here, I have no idea what this button does, and did not actually need it. So, ignore it for the length of this procedure. Click the "Google sign-in" button. You should see some Google GUI asking you for a Google Account. This GUI might be slowish, but don't worry : we won't use it for long.

Give yout Google account login and password, and validates any authorization requests. If all of this goes well, then congratulations! You are now back to your village, and it is synched to a Google account. Your progress is now safe!

Optional: remove Google from your Jolla phone

This is for those who only wish to use the Google sync as a backup, and do not care much for Google otherwise.

• Start Clash of clans, and log out of Google into the options. This is safe now that your village and your Google account are bound together.
• Head into ES File Explorer
• Uninstall any Google apps that you find. This may include Google+, Picasa (also named Photos), Google Settings.
• Go back to a Linux shell as root. Change to the /opt/alien/system/app directory. Using the rm command, remove any remaining APK files from Google, including Phonesky.apk if it's still there.
• Restart Alien Dalvik : systemctl restart aliendalvik.service.
• Start Clash of Clans and play. It seems that re-installing it is not necessary after getting rid of the Google apps.

Credits

• coderus for the awesome post about the Google services.
• nix for the discreete, but life-saving, comment about re-installing the game.