March 2010 Archives

Mar

Sprint HTC Hero Android 2.1 Update Delayed Again, New Tentative Release Date Is Now April 9th

Posted by Android Police Team in Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, News, Sprint

Rumors have been flying for the past few months that Sprint and HTC would update the Hero to the long awaited Android 2.1 Eclair today - March 26th, 2010.

These rumors have been shattered today by conversations with multiple Sprint customer service reps and a posting of an internal memo by Phandroid announcing the new update date - April 9th, 2010.

While the memo lists the 4/9/10 update as "maintenance", according to an alleged Sprint employee rkendle53 from the xda forums Sprint calls all updates "maintenance", even major ones. We are skeptical but hopeful at the same ...

Mar

Android Market Hits Another Milestone - Now Serving 40,000 Applications

Posted by Android Police Team in Apps/Games, News

The Android Marketplace counts over 40,000 applications and games as of today, at least according to the online Android Market tracker AndroLib.

This number is not inflated in any way by counting application updates - AndroLib includes only separate programs in the total.

A useful statistics page provides some insight into the daily growth for the curious.

At the pace the Marketplace is growing at the moment, it will reach 100,000 applications by sometime in September, as our math geek Artem reported yesterday.

Congratulations to Android on this important milestone.

...

Mar

MOTO Labs Team Hires C-3PO To Perform Screen Accuracy Tests. iPhone, N1, Eris Best; Droid, Pre, Storm 2 Worst

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Droid (Sholes), Droid Eris, HTC, Motorola, News, Nexus One (Passion), Videos

~~Did you know Motorola has a Labs team that does cool things and then blogs about them? They're pretty cool like that.~~ Correction: interesting piece of trivia - did you know MOTO Labs actually has nothing to do with Motorola? With a name like MOTO, one could think… well never mind, I apologize for the mistake.

The Finger Test

For example, in January they tested the screens on 4 flagship mobile phones by swiping a finger across the screen in a drawing app and recording the resulting patterns, complete with photos and a video.

The phones in the first test ...

Mar

Skype Mobile Launches Exclusively On Verizon, Does Not Work On WiFi, Makes Non-Verizon Users Irked

Posted by Android Police Team in Applications, News, Verizon Wireless

As promised, today at CTIA Wireless 2010 Skype launched its Skype Mobile application, available on select Verizon phones (Blackberry and all of Verizon's Android lineup - Droid, Droid Eris, Devour) because of an exclusive deal between the two companies.

Features

Here are the features of the new application:

make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to any Skype contact around the globe
send and receive unlimited instant messages with other Skype users
manage the Skype contact list directly from the mobile application
call international phone numbers at competitive Skype calling rates

Skype Mobile promises to have an Always-On capability...

Mar

Projection: Android Marketplace To Hit 100,000 Applications Sometime In September 2010

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, News

Last Updated: March 9th, 2011

Today I put on my wizard Darth Vader math hat and decided to figure out when the Android market is going to finally reach the 100,000 mark.

"Why 100,000?" you may ask.

Apple

Well, it seemed like a nice round number, and it also happens to be the same number a small company called Apple was obsessing over in November 2009:

CUPERTINO, California—November 4, 2009—Apple® today announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world.

The iPhone App Store launched on July 11th, 2008, so ...

Mar

HTC Continues With Its Plans For World Domination, Announces A Super Easy And Polished American Online Store

Posted by Android Police Team in HTC, News

HTC is simply unstoppable! On the 2nd day of the CTIA Wireless 2010, the company announced its own online store, available immediately at this address:

http://www.shopamerica.htc.com

The site, available to US customers, is very friendly and easy to navigate - in fact, we think this is its biggest advantage over other retailers, such as Amazon, that have complex and convoluted mobile shopping sites.

There are 4 sections on the HTC site:

Phone Finder/Quick Start - this is the home page, which allows you to filter by carrier, plan, and phone features, or just look at what's available in

...

Mar

Sprint CEO Confirms 4G On Your Phone Will Not Cost Extra

Posted by Android Police Team in News, Sprint

Yesterday we reported that Sprint will not charge extra for using 4G on your phone, based on the response from a Sprint customer service rep. Some people pointed out that customer service reps are oftentimes wrong, and while we certainly agree with that statement, the CSR was quite confident in her response. Additionally, a good portion of the news market nowadays is comprised of rumors.

Thankfully, we didn't have to wait too long for the "rumor" to be confirmed.

Today was the 2nd day of the CTIA Wireless 2010 conference, and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was the keynote speaker. In ...

Mar

Android Developers Take Note: Sprint Posted Dev Guides And Code For Supporting 4G/3G/WiFi Switching, Front-facing Camera, HDMI

Posted by Android Police Team in Dev, EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Sprint

Following yesterday's announcement of the first 4G handset for Sprint, the company earlier today posted a bunch of new helpful information to their Android Developers site to guide developers around the newly introduced features never before seen on an Android phone, or even *any* mobile phone.

Here is the new stuff that what we found there:

general documentation updated with references to HTC EVO 4G
4G Developer Guide - Sprint_HTC_EVO_4G_Developer_S_Guide

Sprint's developer guide for the HTC EVO 4G handset provides best practices on:
detecting different network types (4G, 3G, WI-FI) and handling transitions as they occur
utilizing HDMI output in

...

Mar

Samsung Introduces A Successor To The First Galaxy - A More Powerful And Sexy 1GHz Galaxy S

Posted by Android Police Team in Galaxy S, News, Samsung

Last Updated: May 12th, 2010

Yesterday was an incredible day for us consumers! After only the first day of the 3-day CTIA Wireless 2010 mobile conference we've already seen some amazing new phones scheduled for release in the upcoming few months, such as the HTC EVO 4G.

Samsung did not remain on the sidelines either yesterday and demonstrated its new version of the Galaxy, called Galaxy S model GT-I9000. S seems to stand for either "Smart Life" (sigh, another custom Android flavor?) or Speed, just like the iPhone 3GS.

Here are the specs at a glance:

1GHz Hummingbird CPU
a 4" Super AMOLED screen,

...

Mar

HTC EVO 4G/Supersonic Playing 720P HD Video Through HDMI, Without A Single Stutter. This Changes Everything

Posted by Android Police Team in EVO 4G (Supersonic), HTC, Videos

It's amazing how far mobile CPUs have gone in just 6 months. Here we have a video, courtesy of IntoMobile, of the newly announced HTC EVO 4G, formerly Supersonic, absolutely effortlessly playing a 720P HD video of Prince of Persia: The Sand Of Time.

HD video is more CPU intensive than plain standard definition, but the 1GHz Snapdragon processor is barely breaking a sweat. For comparison, the HTC Hero with its 528MHz processor can barely play average quality videos, even ones it itself recorded, and stumbles every few seconds.