Aaron Gingrich - 63/72 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

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.

Follow @angingrich

Aug

Cellular South Gets Motorola Milestone (a.k.a. Droid); Parties Like It's 2009

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Milestone, News

Looks like those of you on the regional carrier Cellular South can finally join the Droid fray... with a phone that’s a year old. On the plus side, it was (is?) an incredibly popular phone, and for good reason. On the downside, the device is now fairly outdated and overpriced. A reminder of the specs:

TI OMAP 3430 CPU @ 550 MHz
Android 2.1
512 MB ROM, 16 GB microSD Card
256 MB RAM
854 x 480 3.7” screen
5 MP Camera
802.11b/g

All in all, certainly not a poorly equipped phone in general, but compared to high-end Android phones that have come out recently, it’s a bit lacking.

Aug

Motorola Droid 2 Quadrant Score Leaked - It’s A Monster

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Droid 2, Froyo 2.2, News, Verizon Wireless

A picture of a Droid 2’s Quadrant benchmark results has been released, and its score is the best stock store to date at 1,458. This is especially impressive considering the phone is apparently straight from the box.

Compared to the Droid X’s score of roughly 1,100, it’s even more impressive. Because both devices sport nearly identical hardware configurations, the difference most likely comes from Froyo - while the Droid 2 runs Android 2.2, the X only runs 2.1.

Granted, a benchmark’s real-world applicability is questionable (after all - Linpack famously runs about 400-500% faster on 2.2 compared to 2.1, but that certainly doesn’t mean the phone is 5x faster).

Aug

Android Users Have Half As Much Sex As iPhone Owners; Stop Reading This And Go Get Laid

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News, Off-Topic

OKCupid (via Gizmodo) published an extremely interesting (but very in-depth) article detailing all kinds of smartphone and camera data. There were a number of interesting things in the article, perhaps the most relevant of which is that Android users have nearly half the number of sexual partners as iPhone users. Age bias is eliminated because the poll was conducted on 30 year-olds, rather than the mass populace. No real use for that information, but funny and interesting.

There are plenty of other good tidbits in the article as well. For example, the nicer a camera is, the more attractive it makes people look.

Aug

CyanogenMod 6 Continues Its Rampage, Launches Nightlies For HTC Aria and CDMA HTC Hero

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Aria (Liberty), Development, Froyo 2.2, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), News

CyanogenMod 6 is continuing its rampage: last night the first Nightly build of CM6 was released for the HTC Aria (a.k.a. the Liberty) and CDMA HTC Hero. This should make the users of these phones quite happy - CM is the single most popular Android ROM, and for good reason.

Mandatory disclaimer from CM6:

* Your warranty is now void.
*
* I am not responsible for bricked devices, dead SD cards,
* thermonuclear war, or you getting fired because the alarm app failed. Please
* do some research if you have any concerns about features included in this ROM
* before flashing it!

Aug

Mr. Blurrycam Provides Picture Of HTC Froyo Device - Could Be The Desire HD

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Desire HD (Ace), News

A blurrycam shot of an unnamed HTC Android device running Android 2.2 (presumably... my Chinese is a little rusty) has been spotted over on the Android Hong-Kong forums (the irony is not lost on me: the picture was taken with an iPhone).

Although the device doesn’t seem to have any physical HTC branding, there is an “HTC Confidential” watermark on the screen of the device, and it’s running an HTC kernel. Some technical details are provided - take them with a grain of salt though:

4.3” 480x800 Screen
8 MP Camera
1 GHz Qualcomm (most likely a Snapdragon)
720p Camcorder
Face tracking
4 GB microSD card in the box
“Aluminum body” - the front isn’t aluminum, but the sides look like they are.

Aug

RocketFish Android Tablet Spotted - Froyo And A Front-Facing Camera, Powered By Imagination

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News, RocketFish

Early last month, Robert Stephens, CTO for Best Buy, revealed via Twitter that the company was working on an Android tablet. The good news: he’s now tweeted a few pictures of a RocketFish branded tablet, and boy does it look good (actually, it looks startlingly similar to the iPhone 4). The bad news: Engadget says it lacks internals (although I couldn’t find that anywhere). Somehow, despite the fact that it evidently has nothing inside, Stephens claims it runs Froyo and has a front-facing camera for video calling over Fring.

The idea of a RocketFish branded Android tablet is pretty enticing - in my experience, RF products are good quality at a great price, and given how gorgeous this thing looks, it doesn’t seem like they’re looking to pop out another low-quality, slapstick tablet.

Aug

From The Horse’s Mouth: Samsung Epic 4G Pre-Order Not Starting Today

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Epic 4G, News, Sprint

Earlier today, Engadget reported that Sprint would begin taking pre-orders for the Epic 4G later today. Before running with the story, we wanted to fact-check with our Sprint rep, and we’re glad we did - his response:

No plans for pre-order today. As you know, people can however sign up to get additional information sent to them when it’s available - but not pre-order.

There you have it - as much as we wish it was true, looks like we have a bit longer to wait.

Aug

HTC Droid Eris On-Phone One Click Root Available

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, Eris, News

Yesterday we brought news of an on-phone one click root for the Samsung Galaxy S line of phones - which itself was based off of a similar root for the HTC Droid Eris (as mentioned in the post). Turns out we didn’t mention the Eris root the first time around - so here it is.

Android user/coder jcase has come up with an App to root any Eclair-running Droid Eris’. The process is nearly as simple as it gets:

Step 1) download and install this apk
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8699733/erisone010.apk - VERSION 0.1.0

Step 2) Run, read disclaimer, press button

Step 3) Reboot, once rebooted your phone should have Amon's recovery.

Aug

[Updated: Watch Out!] On-Phone One Click Root Available For Samsung Galaxy S

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Captivate, Development, Epic 4G, Fascinate, News, Vibrant

[Updated August 6 @ 10:15 AM EST]

Enterprising user rhcp0112345 over at XDA-Devs (where else?) has come up with an on-phone, one click root/unroot for the Samsung Galaxy S line of devices. It has only been tested on his Vibrant, but it should work across the line of devices.

There are no real details on the process yet - but it seems that you just install the app, hit “root” or “unroot,” and reboot your device. Sounds simple enough.

Full post:

Hey,

I just wrote this up.

Thanks to jcase for the information and his root for eris: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=742228

This will root/unroot.

Aug

DamageControl 3.5 Released For HTC EVO 4G, Packing Froyo And The Usual DC Goodies

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Froyo 2.2, News

Last Updated: August 7th, 2010

Damageless and TrevE have been hard at work for the past few weeks porting Froyo to the EVO. On July 24th, they released the first DC 3.5 (Froyo) beta. Today (in the wee hours of the morning) they released their final build - and users seem to be loving it. The guys have also set up a Google Code page for DC, which provides a wiki and bug database, in addition to the usual news/latest version page.

Full post:

DamageControl v3.5
Froyo with damaged goods

First of all, I would like to thank all of our testers that helped work on our port on the original DamageControl v3.5.