Aaron Gingrich
Contributing since June, 2010
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711articles
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About Aaron Gingrich
Aaron is a geek who has always had a passion for technology. When not working or writing, he can be found spending time with his family, playing a game, or watching a movie.
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Samsung has been very good to us lately – yesterday, I came home to find the (pink) Intercept on my doorstep, and today they delivered a Captivate to Chris (yea, I got the short end of that stick.) This may not be the crown jewel in Samsung’s collection, but it serves as a phone for the masses.
The Pandigital Novel (which was pulled from store shelves last month) has been hacked. Rather than rooting the device, blogger Nate The Great from The Digital Reader took a few simple steps to modify the device as he saw fit, and in the process changed his home screen, enabled app installation, and changed the function of the volume buttons. As a result, he says the Novel runs smoother and faster, and he’s “a lot happier” with the device now.
As usual, Droid Life has come through with some Mr. Blurrycam photos. This time, they’re from Verizon and show that the Droid Eris will be receiving a software update on July 17th at midnight (ok – techincally, it’s July 16th at 11:59 PM – but for all intents and purposes, that’s the 17th). The update isn’t Android 2.2, but that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given that the phone has been discontinued. Still, when the 2.1 update rolled out to users, it brought a number of issues – most significantly:
There have been some reports around the web that Google is investing in Zynga, the company behind popular Facebook game Farmville. We’ve talked about just how miserable the gaming situation is on Android, especially in comparison to other devices, and it’s a good sign that Google recognizes that and is trying to remedy it. Still, I can’t help that feel the company behind a game that’s so love-it-or-hate-it (and annoying) is necessarily the solution. That said, they do offer a number of popular games for the iPhone:
Before the EVO launched, Matt Mastracci and the crew at unrevoked announced that the EVO and Hero had a serious security vulnerability. In turn, this made the phones easy to root – but they still recommended that people either hold off on buying the phone unless they were going to root, or an OTA update was released patching the flaws. It looks like the latest OTA did just that, as they’ve released details on their Wiki.
T-Mobile has been forced to lower the price of the Garminfone as a result of very weak demand - analyst estimates peg the number sold around 20,000. The phone was priced at $199.99, a price most reviewers agreed was too high for a phone with relatively weak specs:
Well, isn’t this interesting – the latest OTA update for the EVO (which patched the vulnerability that previously enabled root) has been cracked. The interesting part? It uses Adobe’s Flash Config page to gain entry to the system config.
During Google I/O, Google announced Google TV. Yesterday, the Logitech Revue – the first Google TV box – passed FCC approval, and as usual, the FCC was kind enough to provide some pictures of the unit.
Well, this is pretty exciting. Two ROM developers by the names of Maja and udK over at (where else?) XDA-Devs have ported FroYo to the Desire, and enabled 720p video recording – pretty neat stuff. The ROM (v1.0) isn’t quite ready for mass consumption yet – it’s still in testing (v0.3 is available for now, though). Still, it’s definitely something to look forward to, and we’ll be sure to update everyone once the FroYo/720p ROM is released.
Analytic firm Distimo has released its report for June 2010, and the results are interesting. This may not be a surprise to Android users who have spent some time browsing the market, but a whopping 57% of Android apps are free. That’s an impressive percentage on its own, but it gets even better when compared to other app stores:
The title says it all: Samsung has sold a whopping 200,000 Galaxy S’ in the first 10 days in South Korea. That may not seem like a lot in comparison to the iPhone 4’s 1.7m in 3 days, but keep in mind that the iPhone 4 launched internationally. South Korea’s population (as of 2009) was just over 50 million people – meaning they’re less than 1/6 the size of the US. A more accurate comparison? Sprint corporate sold 66.5k EVO’s in the first 3 days, in a country 6x larger.
It appears that Android is really hitting its stride, doesn’t it? Seems like we’re writing about a hot new Android phone just about every day. Today, LG has put out a press release to announce some new phones and an Android tablet. Details are scarce, but we do know a few things, including that it looks like they’ll be sporting a pretty slick UI. Other details: