February 2011 Archives

Feb

Trademark Research Fail Or Balls Of Steel? ChaCha Suing HTC For Trademark Infringement While Xoom Corp Is Going After Motorola

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Chacha, HTC, Motorola, News, XOOM

You would think that large hardware manufacturers, such as HTC and Motorola, would dedicate at least a few hours to trademark searches before naming their products and investing millions of dollars into promotional efforts for said products. That would be a fair assumption, right? It seems like the answer sometimes is: not exactly.

HTC ChaCha

Last week at MWC, HTC unveiled 6 new devices, one of which was bearing the name ChaCha (that's one of the Facebook phones). Unsurprisingly, exactly a week later, on February 22nd, ChaCha Search Inc, which owns the trademark ChaCha in the U.S. and ...

Feb

Lookout Launches Lookout Labs And Its First Android App - The Ingenious "Plan B" [Hands-On Review]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Lookout Labs

Lookout Inc's Lookout Mobile Security app is one of the most popular and trusted security apps on the Market, and while the company is going to continue active development of its flagship product, today it is launching Lookout Labs - a separate Android Market developer account dedicated to "pushing the bounds of mobile apps."

Plan B

Introduction

The first fruit of Lookout Labs' labor is a brilliantly simple yet very useful app called Plan B. Plan B was only made possible recently, after the release of the official Android web Market. The app is designed to be the ...

Feb

Roseville Best Buy Thinks HTC Thunderbolt Is Delayed Till March 4th, But Can It Be Trusted To Use A Calendar?

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in HTC, News, Rumors, Thunderbolt (Mecha)

Last Updated: October 10th, 2011

Among all the Thunderbolt delay rumors, here comes the latest one from the Roseville Best Buy #129. Their Twitter account, currently followed by 372 people, tweeted a few hours ago that the launch has been delayed further than we were anticipating - till Thursday, March 4th.

If true, this means earlier rumors of the February 24th and 28th launches will have turned out to be false, arousing even more suspicion around the reasons behind such a disastrous release of Verizon's first LTE handset. Are there last-minute problems with the LTE network? With the device itself? We don't know, but ...

Feb

Motorola XOOM System Dump Now Available To Download

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Mods, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

This one's for you, developers: XDA user adub007 just posted a full Motorola XOOM system dump. What new and unprecedented goodies does it contain? That remains to be seen... feel free to download the 112MB (183MB when unpacked) file and start digging for yourself.

Android Police mirror

Source: XDA-Developers via Droid Life

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Feb

Gmail App Updated For Gingerbread To Include Long Press To Copy Text

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, Gingerbread 2.3, News

In a minor update to the official Gmail app, Google has addressed one of "the little things" that have been plaguing Android since the beginning. In this case, a lack of uniformity for copying text.

In all previous versions of the Gmail app, a user would have to press Menu, More, and then Select Text. Fortunately, this update fixes that issue by making copying text the same as in the Browser or a textbox: by long pressing it. It's not a huge addition, and is only available for those with devices running Gingerbread, but it ...

Feb

Xoom 4G LTE Upgrade Will Require A Shipment To Motorola

Posted by Nate Kimmey in News, XOOM

For anybody who is planning to buy a Xoom tomorrow, we finally have an idea on how the upgrade to 4G LTE compatibility will work. Instead of just being a simple software update, you'll have to send your device to Motorola, which, while free, will take "up to 6 business days." The process will be available approximately 90 days after the Xoom is released, and will remain available for six months. Be warned, however - this may result in some unpleasant circumstances, as users are warned to backup their device before shipping it. The details should be available officially tomorrow, ...

Feb

Cool Android Activations Visualization Shows Staggering Growth

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Android OS, News, Videos

We've heard a lot of numbers about the number of Android device activations per day in the past, but it's always nice to see it displayed visually. AndroidDevelopers has posted a very cool video that does just that, showing the number of Android activations throughout the world from the beginning - all the way back to the G1 - to January 2011. It's a nice reminder of just how far the platform has come. Take a look for yourself below.

Source: YouTube

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Feb

Photoshop Fail - Best Buy's Asus Windows 7 Tablet Runs Android, Looks Like Eclair

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Off-Topic

It's always fun to poke at Android-related snafus that retailers, especially as big as Best Buy, make in their promotional materials, and today is one of those days.

Android Police reader Marc forwarded us an email from Best Buy Canada sent to Canadian customers yesterday that shows this impressive Asus Tablet PC, powered by Windows 7. Except, it has an Andy peaking out from behind and is clearly running a build of Android (it's not Honeycomb or Gingerbread by the looks of things and resembles Éclair).

Surely, that's probably incomplete information and this tablet exists in 2 flavors or dual ...

Feb

Dell Streaks On Rogers And AT&T Finally Getting Froyo OTA

Posted by David Ruddock in Dell, Froyo 2.2, News, Streak

Last Updated: October 10th, 2011

The time for Froyo has finally come for Dell's first Android device - and I'm sure all 12 US and Canadian Streak owners jumping for joy. Dell announced today that it has begun a rollout of the long-awaited bump to Android 2.2 for its tablet-phone in North America, dragging only a few months behind its UK counterpart. The update, to be clear, is an OTA. The Dell release suggests rebooting your phone will detect the update if the rollout has reached you.

Dell originally promised the update before December 31st of 2010, so that makes this update nearly two months ...

Feb

Samsung Captivate To Get Froyo Update February 24th

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in AT&T, Captivate, Froyo 2.2, News, Samsung

Last Updated: February 24th, 2011

The final pieces of the Galaxy S Froyo puzzle are finally falling into place - AT&T's Captivate, one the two remaining GS devices still stuck on Éclair, is now scheduled to get the update to Android 2.2 tomorrow (2/24)! While you're waiting, be sure to check out AT&T's Q&A with Dante Martin video, which attempts to explain the delay behind Android software updates - let us know what you think of his excuses via the comments below.

P.S. Here's the complete changelog, as seen in the support page that leaked out a while back:

Home Screen:
New Home screen

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Feb

Honeycomb Wallpapers Ripped Out Of SDK, Now Available To Download

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Mods, News

Turns out yesterday's update to the Android 3.0 SDK introduced more than just finalized APIs - the folks over at Android Central have discovered seven completely new wallpapers as well as two higher-res versions of existing ones in the final SDK's Launcher2.apk.

At 1920x1280, the images are just the right size for showing off your Honeycomb love on any of your devices. If they catch your eye, be sure to grab them for yourself using the download link below.

Download Link

Source: Android Central Forums via Android Central

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Feb

Costco Now Selling The Atrix 4G For $119.99 With A Free Accessory Bundle On A 2-Year Contract [Internal Scans]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in AT&T, Atrix 4G (Olympus), Deals, Motorola, News

Even though we thought Costco would be selling the Motorola Atrix 4G for AT&T for $149.99, the mega-warehouse decided to sweeten the deal a bit and dropped the price to $119.99 on a 2-year contract (this includes customers upgrading their existing AT&T phones too).

And that's not all - according to our tipster, whose track record has so far been spotless, Costco will be throwing in a free accessory bundle consisting of a case, a car charger, and a wired earpiece. After about $15 in taxes, this deal is just as hot, if not hotter, than Amazon's, but benefits ...

Feb

Google Takes A Swing At Facebook: Removes Contact Syncing With Nexus S Update

Posted by Zak Stinson in Applications, Gingerbread 2.3, News, Nexus One (Passion), Nexus S (Crespo/Soju)

Today, Google got the ball rolling on Gingerbread updates for the two official "Google phones", the Nexus One and Nexus S. While this is exciting, long awaited news for owners of the Nexus One, the Nexus S crowd may have some reason for disdain.

One of the things that got me really excited when I bought my first Android phone was the ability to import the numbers and email addresses of all my Facebook friends to my contact list automagically. No longer did I have to look it up on the Facebook webpage or, God forbid, call them and ask....

Feb

[Breaking] The "Few Weeks" Are Finally Over - Android 2.3.3 Now Rolling Out To Nexus One And Nexus S

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Gingerbread 2.3, HTC, Nexus One (Passion)

It seems Google has a funny definition of "a few weeks" - the Nexus One has been waiting for an update to Gingerbread for almost three months now - but late or not, the update is finally rolling out.

It isn't just any update, however; it's the recently announced Android 2.3.3, which features API level 10 as well as enhancements to Bluetooth, Graphics, Speech Recognition, and Media APIs (sorry, the Nexus One won't benefit from NFC enhancements as it doesn't have the hardware).

Nexus S users should also be seeing the update, and they'll get an extra treat ...

Feb

MenuPages Enters The Android Food App Foray

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, News

Ever heard of MenuPages? I hadn't until today, but I guess I live in a cardboard box. The popular website now offers an Android app for your convenience - but what's MenuPage's big feature when competing against the likes of UrbanSpoon and Yelp? You may have guessed it has something to do with menus.

MenuPages indexes the (wait for it, it's mind-blowing) menu contents of any restaurant their service lists, meaning you can search by the exact food you want, as opposed to browsing through broad genres of cuisine. Pretty nifty for foodies like myself, and I can ...