September 2010 Archives

Sep

Samsung Epic 4G Receives Update, 3G Gets Faster, 4G Gets More Capable, We Wish It Were FroYo

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Epic 4G, Froyo 2.2, News, Samsung, Sprint

To offset the not so successful news of the Samsung Vibrant's supposedly (but not actually) GPS-fixing update, Samsung has just rolled out software version S:D700.0.5S.DI18 for the king of the Galaxy S ring, the Epic 4G for Sprint. It isn't FroYo, but it does introduce a number of important fixes, including:

an issue where the battery would drain as a result of the cell modem continuously searching for available networks while on standby
an issue with 3G upload speeds
an issue with Amazon not being able to download music over 4G
an issue where large emails would be

...

Sep

Verizon Device Roadmap Leaked: An LTE Tablet, And Global Radios Aplenty

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Devices By Manufacturer, HTC, LG, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

Having one device leaked is so last fiscal year, man. Verizon is hip to the new trend of leaking out details of all of your devices and giving people a heads-up to not buy phones that are out right now since they're just gonna get replaced anyway.

Androids aren't the only things on show, but forgive us for omitting those not relevant to the droid-heads (check BerryPolice.com, great site).

Motorola's got the lion's share of the devices. Starting with the Venus, a portrait QWERTY phone to be released this month that Engadget thinks may be similar to the Charm. ...

Sep

FCC Approves Motorola's New i866 Android Handset... Without A Touchscreen

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Motorola, News

Motorola may have brought us the original Droid - one of the most game-changing Android devices ever - but with phones like the Backflip, the Cliq XT, and the Charm, it looks like they want to back down into the days of the Razr once more.

According to a recent FCC filing, Motorola will soon introduce a device with the model number i866, which will feature:

a dual keypad design with a numeric keypad on the front as well as a full QWERTY keyboard when slid open
iDEN technology, meaning PTT support (Push To Talk)
Android (we've confirmed it by

...

Sep

Paid Android Market Support Comes To 20 New Countries

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Apps/Games, News

Last Updated: October 5th, 2010

A guest post by Eric Chu just went live over at the Android Developers blog, officially announcing the expansion of the Android market to 20 new countries. While we can't exactly say we didn't see this coming (and have an idea what countries it was coming to), it's nice to see nonetheless. It looks like Distimo's estimation was pretty dead-on, too: 11 of the 13 countries they listed are confirmed by Mr. Chu's post. The full list:

Support for paid application sales is now expanded to developers in 29 countries, with today’s additions of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,

...

Sep

Front-Facing Camera Hacked Into T-Mobile Vibrant

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Galaxy S, News, Samsung, Vibrant

All of Samsung's Galaxy S family have the same 4.0" Super-AMOLED screen, share a common iPhone-esque UI, and ... well, that's about it. The disparity between features in the SGS line has certainly caused some frustration with users; two have a flash, one has a keyboard and 4G, one has Bing (not really a feature worth crowing about), and two have front-facing cameras. Those two are the appropriately-named Epic 4G and the mothership, the Galaxy S i9000, which is mainly sold in Europe and Korea.

Considering the striking similarity in the appearance of the i9000 and the Vibrant, ...

Sep

Motorola Begonia, The Successor To The Cliq, Rumored To Launch On November 1, Feature WiFi Calling

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in CLIQ / DEXT (Morrison), Eclair 2.1, Motorola, T-Mobile

Those rumors about T-Mobile bringing WiFi calling capabilities to future Android devices are looking less like rumors and more like reality every day now; according to Engadget, a future Motorola Android device codenamed the "Begonia" will feature that capability as well as:

Android 2.2 FroYo (with MotoBlur)
an "interesting" keyboard design
3G hotspot capabilities
a November 1 release date

Engadget's tipster also noted that the Begonia will succeed the original Motorola Cliq, which was already long in the tooth at the beginning of this year and which won't be seeing an update to Android 2.1 until Q4. ...

Sep

Samsung Vibrant GPS Fix Through Kies Has Known Issues, T-Mobile Urges Customers To Avoid It

Posted by Nate Kimmey in News, T-Mobile, Vibrant

If you just can't wait one more day for a GPS fix for your Samsung Vibrant... you're out of luck, because the recent update through Samsung's sync app Kies, which was supposed to fix all GPS issues, is raising problems of its own, according to T-Mobile.

No word on what the new issues actually are, but hopefully T-Mobile delivers an OTA update "soon" like they've promised. Of course, if they don't, there's always the simpler solution of hacking.

Source: Twitter via Talk Android

...

Sep

[Android How-To] Make Your Own Ringtones, Notifications, And Alarms From Media Files

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Have you ever wanted to make custom ringtones, alarms, or notification sounds in Android but had no clue how to do it, even if you already put a media file onto your device? I can't blame you - Android is absolutely terrible about letting you do anything but pick one of the existing system sounds and offers no way of adding your own.

Enter Ringdroid. Ringdroid's sole purpose is to let you take an existing music file, crop it exactly how you want it, and then save it as either a ringtone, an alarm, or a notification. The end result ...

Sep

Pictures Of Samsung Continuum Leak - Verizon Branding, Dual Screens, Slick Theme

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Continuum, Samsung, Verizon Wireless

The Fascinate hasn't even been on Verizon's shelves for a month yet, and it looks like they're already planning on adding another variant of the Galaxy S to their lineup: the Continuum (SCH-i400). Technical details on the phone are light at the moment, but we can see in the images that it's rocking two displays - the main one (up top), as well as a small screen below the capacitive touch buttons. Engadget claims that both screens are OLEDs, with the bottom screen referred to as the "Ticker." Evidently, the Ticker displays date and time, as well as notifications and ...

Sep

PC World Conducts "Battle Of The Android Browsers", Finds Stock Browser Isn't Best

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, News

Well, the title says most of it, and what it doesn't is pretty easily expressed in a chart: the stock browser - even in Froyo - isn't the best option available. In fact, it's not even close, especially for sites that haven't been saved alread:Skyfire 2.0 is faster by 3.3 seconds. The gap for saved sites is less significant, with Opera Mini faster by 1.4 seconds.

Surprisingly, Mozilla's Fennec comes in last in both categories; then again, Fennec is still considered alpha, and it's a fairly safe bet that times will drop as development progresses. Skyfire's faster new load time ...

Sep

Researchers Create Taintdroid App To Monitor App Activity, Find A Surprising Number Send User Data To Advertisers

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Apps/Games, News

Researchers from Intel, Penn State, and Duke teamed up to study just how secure the apps in the Android market are. Specifically, they wanted to see what private data was collected by apps, and what the apps then did with said data. The results: 15 out of 30 "popular" applications sent geographic data, 7 sent unique hardware information, and a few sent info such as phone number and SIM serial to developers. Scary stuff indeed.

This isn't the first time we've heard that Android apps are insecure - in late July, Lookout released similar findings. However, Taintdroid ...

Sep

Samsung Transform And Sanyo Zio Android Handsets Coming To Sprint

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Kyocera, News, Samsung, Sanyo, Sprint, Zio M6000

Last Updated: October 6th, 2010

Assuming this leaked image is real, Sprint has got two new Android devices in store for its customers, although one of them is hardly new at all: the Kyocera Zio, which will be branded as the Sanyo Zio, and the Samsung Transform, which appears to be another Android device, perhaps even from the Galaxy S series.

The Zio probably won't fire anybody up; it was announced last March, and even then it was considered a mid-range phone. In the few shots that exist of the device, it appears to be running stock Android, and is still thought to launch ...

Sep

Sprint Launches 4G In Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN And Pittsburgh, PA

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Epic 4G, EVO 4G (Supersonic), News, Sprint

Sprint continued its 4G announcement marathon this morning with the official launch of WiMax service in Minneapolis-St.Paul, MN, also known as Twin Cities, and Pittsburgh, PA. Welcome to the fast lane!

This announcement follows the Nashville 4G launch 2 weeks ago, Orlando launch last week, and the introduction of Epic 4G in the beginning of the month. Sprint’s 4G service now covers 55 markets.

Users of the only 2 aforementioned devices capable of running on Sprint’s 4G network are charged an extra $10 "premium data" fee, no matter whether 4G is available in their area or not.

As Sprint’s ...

Sep

Eldar Murtazin Speculates On The Future Of The Samsung Galaxy S: RIP Super-AMOLED Phones?

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Captivate, Devices By Manufacturer, Epic 4G, Fascinate, Galaxy S, News, Samsung, Vibrant

If there's one man with an inside line in the mobile industry, it's mobile-review.com's Editor-in-Chief Eldar Murtazin. This guy has a network of informants rivalling any national security agency you'd care to name.

The latest subject of his (occasionally spurious) tweeting is Samsung's family of Super-AMOLED phones, namely the Wave and Galaxy S. Eldar seems to have some insight into the production and stock of S-AMOLED panels, leading him to think that neither of the two aforementioned phones are in production anymore because of S-AMOLED scarcity.

Murtazin goes on to indicate that the Galaxy S line does not have ...

Sep

Google Unveils "Phone Gallery", Aims To Help Us Discover and Compare All Android Devices With Google Services

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Devices By Manufacturer, News

Google promised it a fairly long while ago and today it finally got around to replacing the old Nexus One sale page with a list of all (OK, not all, at least not yet) Android phones with Google services (Market, Gmail, YouTube, et cetera). It may not be the most comprehensive list yet, but it's definitely a start.

Right now, the list only includes phones from manufacturers HTC, LG, Samsung, and Motorola, although it lists phones from several different carriers in multiple countries. If you see some phones (or countries) missing, don't fret: Google has already promised to add new ...