Friday, May 27, 2011

Android Phone Fans

Android Phone Fans

Motorola Pushing Software Fix for Atrix Mobile Banking Compatibility

Posted: 27 May 2011 03:04 PM PDT

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When Motorola issued the 4.1.83 update for the Atrix 4G on AT&T, the devices ability to properly communicate with the mobile apps and websites of several financial services broke. Never fear, Moto is pushing forth a small update to remedy the problem as we speak. You’ll need to grab the Atrix Certificate Updater from the Android Market and follow the simple instructions to get everything in working order. Remember, you’ll need to be on the latest version of the Atrix software for the update to stick.

[via DroidMatters]

Amazon Taking Memorial Day Sale to Next Level: Nearly Twenty 4G Phones Will Be Free Monday

Posted: 27 May 2011 02:31 PM PDT

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Amazon may have slashed prices on their selection of 4G smartphones for the holiday weekend, but they aren’t done yet. On Monday, the same selection of phones will drop to the sweet price of free when purchased alongside a new two-year contract. Phones included in the free-for-all Memorial Day sale include the HTC Thunderbolt Nexus S 4G Samsung DROID Charge and the newly released LG Revolution If you’ve been on the fence about committing to a 4G device, the decision may have just been made for you.

[via MobileCrunch]

Mysterious New Asus Tablet/Phone Finds A Name: PadFone

Posted: 27 May 2011 01:44 PM PDT

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It was only last night we found the teaser pic for the mysterious new tablet/phone from Asus and I immediately dismissed the device as the Eee Pad MeMO but could I have been wrong? (Gasp)

Well, we didn’t have much to go on, just assumptions and speculation but now it appears we have a name. Thanks to PocketNow, who did some sleuthing around in the FCC archives, we now have a name to give the Asus hybrid phone/tablet. In the aptly named Padfone (not to be confused by the iPad or iPhone), Asus has brought together their most brilliant, creative minds and delivered this title no doubt bestowed by the tech gods. (Sigh)

Well, besides the name of the tablet/phone, the FCC filing also shed new light that the device will be compatible with a capacitive stylus, adding more fuel to the fire that this is indeed, a rebranded Eee Pad MeMO (with an even sillier name). We’ll give you more details once this Tablefone, er- Padfone is unveiled at Computex next week.

But what do you guys think of the name? Bad? Good? Its not like a name could really hurt sales, I mean, just look at the Asus Transformer. I’m curious to hear what you guys would have come up so leave your ideas down below.

[Via PocketNow]

Motorola Droid X “Soak” Test Starts Tonight, Gingerbread Coming to Limited Users

Posted: 27 May 2011 01:42 PM PDT

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It turns out the announcement that the Gingerbread update for the Motorola Droid X won’t begin rolling out to all users today, after all. Word has come in that tonight the “soak test” we caught wind of earlier in the week will begin rolling out to select members of the Motorola support forums. Chances are that the soak will be the initial wave of the update, and if all things go well all users will start to see the update following shortly.

The update won’t be pushed until late tonight, so many may not find it on their phones until morning. Rooted users will have to go back to your standard signed Droid X software.

[via DroidLife]

LG Revolution Is Rooted, Bloatware Can Take a Hike

Posted: 27 May 2011 12:26 PM PDT

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That was easy. While other manufacturers are busy foiling the exploits of modders and hackers everywhere, LG left their brand-new 4G LTE handset wide open to established root methods, leading to the phone being broken wide open by the folks over at RootzWiki just a day after release. The rageagainstthecage method was all that was needed to easily crack the code and gain super-user access, a necessary first step to ridding the LG Revolution of all that carrier bloatware (Bing, yuck!).

[via DroidLife]

Ziilabs Shows Off New Jaguar Tablets – Hoping OEM’s Will Take Notice

Posted: 27 May 2011 11:28 AM PDT

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With the Computex tradeshow kicking off soon in Taipei, Ziilabs has put together a couple of Android based tablets they’re calling the Jaguar. This family of Honeycomb tablets is built specifically to showcase their new ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 StemCell processors and they’re hoping manufacturers will take notice.

The tablets will come in 2 flavors, a 7-inch (1024×600) and 10.1-inch (1280×800) displays with both featuring front and rear facing 5MP cameras. But the real bread and butter is in Ziilabs’ StemCell processors. Both are based off of  the ARM Cortex A-9 platform and come in a dual-core (ZMS-20) and quad-core (ZMS-40) flavors. Would be interesting to see these tablets running some high-end benchmarks. And by high-end, I mean Angry Birds.

We’ll have more info once these tablets are unveiled at Computex nextweek.

[Via Engadget]

All Clear: Verizon WILL Allow Unlocked Bootloaders on Their Network

Posted: 27 May 2011 10:22 AM PDT

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Remember that article I posted a couple of hours ago about a Verizon rep who said that phones with unlocked bootloaders weren’t allowed on their network? Yea, they said that was a mistake. Stand down, folks.

Buy.com Listing Lenovo’s New IdeaPadK1 Honeycomb Tablet

Posted: 27 May 2011 09:36 AM PDT

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Apparently Lenovo is scheduled to launch their new IdeaPadK1 (LePad) Honeycomb tablet next month and from the looks of it, Buy.com is one of the retailers ready to sell with a listing of the device already in place.

In case the IdeaPadK1 is news to you (I never heard of it until now) this is Lenovo’s 10.1-inch, Android 3.0 (also lists as 3.1?) Honeycomb device with 32GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear/2MP front facing cameras and in an interesting turn of events, an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. What’s also nice to see is a micro sd card slot for memory expansion, SIM card slot and micro HDMI out. I’m still trying to find out if this thing has a proprietary usb connection (always a deal breaker for me). Still no word on pricing from Buy.com but another online retailer, Krex, is listing the tablet at $510.

Overall, the tablet looks a bit like a chubby iPad and its one of the few tablets that will actually feature Lenovo’s custom UI over stock Android but we don’t know to what extent. I should also mention that in China, they offer a 16GB version but that was no where to found on Buy.com – yet.

I know Lenovo has quite the following here in the states and it will be interesting to see how this performs in the already growing Android tablet market. What do you guys think? Could this be a potential buy for any of you? Or do you have your hearts already set on something else?

[Via NotebookNews]

What If I Told You Microsoft Was Making More Money on Android Than on Windows Phone 7?

Posted: 27 May 2011 09:34 AM PDT

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Yep, you heard that right. Microsoft makes more money from Android’s success than they do the success of their own platform. A lot more. You had to guess that in a world of an ineffective patent system, someone somewhere would try to bank off of Android’s fast-growing success. And you had to guess that it’d be one of their biggest competitors (as far as their name goes, anyway) in this space.

Microsoft gets at least $5 for the sale of every HTC phone due to patent infringement settlements that were agreed upon in courts. Doing some quick math, one analyst took the amount of Android devices he estimates HTC’s sold to date – 30 million – and came up with $150 million. He did the same with Microsoft, taking their 2 million units sold to date and multiplying that by $15, the cost for OEMs to use Windows Phone 7. That came out to be just $30 million.

And that’s just HTC alone. Microsoft is looking to get the same break from other Android manufacturers to get anywhere between $7.50 and $12.50 per license. It’s amazing and does well to exploit the problems with today’s patent system. All you need to do is stake your claim to fame on a certain technology and wait until someone hits homerun on it.

I won’t deny Windows Phone 7 is great in its own way, but it certainly hasn’t been as successful out of the starting gate as everyone thought it’d be. Android wasn’t immediately successful right away either, but Microsoft had years of experience and marketshare under their belts. Only time can tell if they’ll just continue riding the coattails of Android or if they’ll really break into their own as far as mindshare and market share go, but as it stands, they need Android to make significant amounts of money in mobile licensing. [Business Insider via BGR]

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Display Defect Sees Glass Protruding from Chassis

Posted: 27 May 2011 08:55 AM PDT

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The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 that was given to Google I/O attendees a couple of weeks ago is a fantastic piece of hardward – I’ve said as much in my review. I also said that nothing is without its problems and it seems another big hardware problem has risen from the depths of, well, Android tablet hell.

Some users are seeing their Tab 10.1′s glass rise up from the chassis in which it sits. Our tipster says trying to push the glass back in lightly doesn’t do anything but expose the feeling of the glue trying to grasp onto it, while pushing it in hard will usually do the trick, but only for about 10 minutes or so.

He says he saw this problem as soon as he received the device at Google I/O and had them swap it out for a different one. The device he received after that suffered the same defect. Only the top two corners of his device are affected, while the other two remain in place.

It’s clear as day in the photos above and below, and a beneficiary of Android Community’s is also experiencing the same. Upon contacting Samsung about it (the poor soul lives outside of the United States), he was told to contact Samsung America as the device was intended to be used and supported here.

These are the only two accounts we’ve heard of the problem thus far. I should note that my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has not displayed these issues or any signs of it waiting to happen. This is obviously a huge concern for anyone who experiences the problem, and will be a huge concern for anyone looking to buy the consumer version of the device when it launches June 8th here in the United States. We’ve contacted Samsung about the issue and hope to hear back from them soon. We’ll update you if we hear anything. [Thanks Aaron!]

Verizon Support: A Device With an Unlocked Bootloader Cannot Be Activated on Our Network

Posted: 27 May 2011 08:24 AM PDT

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[Update]: All’s well that ends well, folks. Disregard everything you see below and click here.

Following some good news from HTC’s Peter Chou that states they’ll no longer be locking down their bootloaders in future phones, one curious soul sought to clarify something with Verizon on Twitter – can we use phones with unlocked bootloaders on Verizon’s network? Their answer was quite odd, to say the least:

No, a device with an unlocked bootloader cannot be activated on the Verizon Wireless network. *RB

Funny, that, considering the HTC Incredible (the original), the Motorola Droid (the original), the HTC Eris and the Samsung Fascinate have both had their bootloaders unlocked and those who’ve done it are using those devices on Verizon’s network just fine. Of course, trying to fit an answer inside 140 characters is difficult and some packets could be lost in their need to cut down on ze words.

Verizon could be saying a couple of different things here, for all we know. They could either mean devices will not be sold unlocked out of the box or they could mean they won’t carry devices with unlockable bootloaders. In any case, it’s always important to discern between locked, encrypted bootloaders, and locked bootloaders with encrypted keys.

We’ve contacted our Verizon rep about this one, of course, so we’ll try to get the clear and complete answer from them. Sit tight, folks. [Thanks Bryan!]

Don’t Trust the Time on Your HTC Android Phone Today

Posted: 27 May 2011 08:11 AM PDT

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What a great way to start off memorial day weekend. Ahead of the “unofficial official” kickoff to the summer, folks are seeing some strange goings-on with their clocks. Namely, those with HTC phones seem to be experiencing time offsets anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Some fix them with manually setting the clock and rebooting, others claim the clock just fixes itself on its own after some time. And we’re not exactly sure how widespread this minor anomaly is. But whatever you do, don’t leave work ready to barbecue all weekend without confirming that the time on your phone is actually accurate. We wouldn’t want you folks getting fired for leaving early or anything. [AndroidForums.com, Thanks Matt!]

SwiftKey X Beta Released, Takes Word Prediction and Error Correction to Another Level

Posted: 27 May 2011 06:59 AM PDT

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The folks at SwiftKey have released a new beta version of the popular keyboard, named SwiftKey X, and it brings with it some very interesting and powerful features. For starters, they’ve refined the installation process to make it easier for new users to set up the keyboard. They’ll be taken through the process step-by-step, setting up their options and personalizing the keyboard as they wish.

As far as personalizing that keyboard goes, SwiftKey can scan your SMS messages, Twitter timeline, Facebook statuses and Gmail conversations to learn the users’ writing style. None of this is enabled without your permission, of course, so you security paranoids should ready easy.

SwiftKey lets you choose between two typing styles – careful and accurate or fast and sloppy. The former is just as it sounds. Users will go about their every day typing habits with limited assistance from SwiftKey. The latter, however, adds another layer of word prediction and correction. As a sloppy typer myself, I tried this out and it was pretty much dead-on accurate.

Under the hood, a new heat mapping feature will, over time, learn a users’ tendencies in spelling mistakes and typos and will use this to even further tailor the word prediction and correction system to your specific needs. We’re not exactly sure how it works, but it definitely sounds cool. They’ve fixed and added a whole slew of other things, too, but I’ll just forward you on over to the Android market so you can try it for yourself.

How’s Your DROID X2 Treating You?

Posted: 27 May 2011 06:32 AM PDT

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So the DROID X2, Verizon’s first dual-core DROID, is out and you guys have had a bit over a week to play with it. How’s it working out for you thus far? Taking a look at the DROID X2 section of AndroidForums.com, it seems a few of you are having issues with music skipping while multi-tasking.  It doesn’t seem to be a widespread issue, but more than a few reports have mentioned it. One forum-goer tried to circumvent the issue by playing his music over bluetooth and it didn’t present him with the issue. Anyone else experiencing anything like that?

Others are having overheating issues, with one user saying theirs was so hot they had to put it in the fridge to cool it down. In the same thread, others are mentioning the mp3 skipping issue detailed above.

On lighter notes, folks are loving that $20 DROID X essentials pack that gets you over $100 in merchandise for the cost of your daily food intake. And here, folks are talking about which original DROID X cases they now use on their (nearly) identical DROID X. The only incompatibility is that the DROID X cases will have slits for the camera key, but there is no camera key on the DROID X2. We’re sure you won’t mind for a quality case, though.

What about you guys? Is the DROID X2 going well for you? Having any issues? Don’t forget, Kevin has posted his review of the device so if you’re still on the fence about trying it, you may want to give that a look.

Samsung Galaxy S II Tops iPhone 4 This Month in UK

Posted: 27 May 2011 05:25 AM PDT

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The Samsung Galaxy S II was released earlier this month and it has already  passed up the iPhone 4 in the UK. Yay! That much is according to uSwitch.com, anyway, who monitors sales and mobile searches. Is this really a victory for Samsung, though? The iPhone 4 was released last summer to all regions and still sits in the top three list next to Samsung and HTC. To keep such a spot for so long is a victory in and of itself. I’m obviously playing devil’s advocate for Apple here (I know, how blasphemous) but facts are facts. Here’s hoping Samsung (or any other Android manufacturer) can stay on top for the long haul. [IntoMobile]
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