Android Police Team

Oct

Android Community Keeps Growing - Reddit.com’s Android SubReddit Now 20,000 Strong!

Posted by Android Police Team in News, Off-Topic

We couldn't help noticing that as of a few minutes ago, the Andreddit community reached a nice, healthy, round number 20,000. What this means is 20,000 of you clicked the little button from your reddit accounts and are regularly getting Android stories mixed into your front page.

You have helped a lot with our continued growth and have proven yourself as a great source of news, readership, and participation. In fact, some of you even went as far as joining our ranks - Brad Ganley and Brett Gmoser, we're looking at you (the door is always ...

Jul

[Updated] Want To Join The Android Police Team? We Are Looking For Quality Community Contributors

Posted by Android Police Team in News

Last Updated: October 18th, 2011

We here at Android Police love writing original content, scoping out and delivering news, and developing useful site tools and features. We also pride ourselves in taking time with our articles and maintaining high content quality.

We love crafting and sculpting our articles so much that it doesn't leave enough time in the day to cover everything we want and some news goes unpublished, some apps unreviewed, and some Android fans end up missing out on the info they wanted.

Android Police aims to be a community site, maintained and contributed to not only by the site founders but ...

May

TechCrunch Spies A Wrapped Froyo Sculpture At The Googleplex. Forget That - Here Is The Unwrapped Sculpture Caught On Camera In Its Full Glory

Posted by Android Police Team in News, Videos

So today TechCrunch apparently tried to send their reporter to the Googleplex and unwrap the wrapped sculpture that was sitting next to all the other Android related creations, all in the shape of existing Android version codenames - Cupcake, Donut, and Eclair.

When the reporter tried to unwrap the sculpture to peak inside, some Googlers threatened to call security (deservedly so, may I add).

What TechCrunch didn't know, however, is that the sculpture was already leaked to Youtube a whole week ago. Here it is, in its full glory:

Update: the video has been set to private - at ...

Apr

Samsung Moment Android 2.1 ROM Leaked, Available For Download

Posted by Android Police Team in Mods, Moment, News, Samsung

We just got word that the long awaited Samsung Moment 2.1 update ROM was leaked and is available for your flashing pleasures. Android Police seems to be the first Android blog to break the news.

Head over to this SDX-Developers.com forum post to download it. Here is the ROM download link, in case the forum goes down.

SDX forum members have tested the ROM out and found it working, with the exception of some of them not being able to log into the Market. A phone reset reportedly fixes this problem. Of course, proceed at your own risk.

The ...

Apr

Motorola Droid 2.1 Already Rooted, Get Yours Now (With A Catch)

Posted by Android Police Team in Droid (Sholes), Mods, Motorola, News

A day barely passed since the over-the-air (OTA) Android 2.1 update for the Motorola Droid was converted into a simple download installable without having to wait your turn in Verizon's rollout line, and we're already getting word on the 2.1 firmware getting rooted.

Speeddymon over at AllDroid.org forums, together with one Zinx Verituse have figured out a way to root the new version of the OS (2.1) by slightly tweaking the update.zip file that is used to upgrade the Droid from 2.0.1. to 2.1.

Note that this root method only works when updating from an unrooted 2.0.1.

If you already

...

Apr

HTC Posts an Evo 4G First Look Video - We Share It, Yawning

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

Last Updated: May 12th, 2010

HTC likes professionally shot videos - they've released at least one for each new phone announced in the recent history.

We have no problem with that - we can appreciate a good quality HD video showing this desirable beast up close.

What we do have a problem with is how boring this video is. Evo is flying around the screen to some lounge music in the most mind-numbing way possible; there is no voice-over - just a rundown of the main features.

The features are, as we already know, really nice. Here are the ones the video covers:

first 4G

...

Apr

Exclusive: Google Android 2.5 Froyo ROM And Upcoming Features Leaked!

Posted by Android Police Team in News

In the land of Android, things are really happening today.

Verizon continued to roll out Android 2.1, not without some smart folks figuring out how to skip the whole OTA business and install it without waiting in line.

A few confirmed reports of HTC Hero successful upgrades to 2.1 have surfaced as well, even though the latest rumored rollout date was thought to be April 9th.

But that was not the biggest news of the day.

Thanks to an anonymous tipster who works for Google, we now have a leaked document with planned Android 2.5, codenamed Froyo, features as ...

Mar

Confirmed: HTC EVO 4G Will Run Froyo - The Next Version Of Android

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

Last week, after the announcement of HTC EVO 4G at the CTIA conference, Sprint quickly dropped a bunch of developer documentation onto their Android dev site. Having dugg in a little deeper, we saw confirmation from the horse's mouth itself (Sprint) that the EVO 4G will be running on Froyo - the version of Android following Eclair (2.1).

Here is the relevant part of the developer document v0.10 (also unchanged in v0.11):

According to the above, TYPE_WIMAX - a constant used for dealing with WiMax connectivity features - should be added in the Froyo SDK. While developers can use ...

Mar

Don't Wait For Verizon To Update Your Droid To 2.1 - Do It Yourself And Do It Now

Posted by Android Police Team in Droid (Sholes), Mods, Motorola, News, Tips, Verizon Wireless

Yesterday, Verizon released the Motorola Droid 2.1 update schedule which turned out to be so drawn out that by the end of it, we would have seen Android 5.0 (OK, not really but it could take 2-3 weeks).

Who wants to wait this long? It didn't take long for some smart folks over at AndroidForums to figure out where the update was located on Google's servers and provide instructions on how to accomplish it in a few easy steps. Here they are:

If you have rooted your phone, the 2.1 update will unroot you back.

Download https://android.clients.google.com/updates/voles/signed-voles-ESE81-from-ESD56.fa406da6.zip onto your

...

Mar

Updated: Verizon Finally Starts Upgrading All Motorola Droid Users to Android 2.1 Today, Pinky Swears This Time

Posted by Android Police Team in Droid (Sholes), Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

Earlier today Verizon started rolling out the long awaited and repeatedly delayed Android 2.1 upgrade to the selected few Motorola Droid customers - 1,000 to be exact.

The Rollout

According to the internal document obtained by Android Central, the rollout schedule is the following:

the first 1,000 very lucky Droid owners should have already gotten their OTA (over the air) updates today, March 30th, at 9AM PST/noon EST.
If you are one of the lucky few, please share your experience with us, as soon as you stop calling all your friends to share the joy but right before you

...

Mar

Texas Wakes Up With Sprint WiMax/4G In Houston Today

Posted by Android Police Team in News, Sprint

If you're one of over 4 million people living in Houston, TX, your mobile connection options just got a lot better. Clearwire, the company providing WiMax/4G service for Sprint, announced today the launch of its 28th US metropolitan market in the Houston metro area.

According to the press release,

… coverage extends as far north as Conroe and northeast as Kingwood; as far west as Katy and southwest as Richmond/Rosenburg; as far south as Alvin and southeast as Clear Lake; as far east as Baytown.
CLEAR service will also be available in the city of Lake Jackson to the south

...

Mar

Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X10 Gets Reviewed, Touched, And Compared - Results Mixed

Posted by Android Police Team in News, Phone Reviews, Reviews, Sony Ericsson, Xperia X10 (es209ra)

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Today the Slashgear team got their grabby (and lucky) hands on Sony's first crack at an Android phone implementation - XPERIA X10 which was announced a whopping 5 months ago on November 3rd, 2009.

They go into a relatively in-depth discussion of the pluses and minuses of Sony's new child which I will summarize in a few bullet points for the busy crowd.

The Awesome Bullet Points

1Ghz Snapdragon CPU (same as Nexus One and HTC desire)
the 4" 480x854 TFT screen is beautiful
1GB internal storage
384MB RAM
8GB MicroSD card but only upgradeable to 16GB
Support for AT&T

...

Mar

Android Usage Skyrockets Across The Board In February 2010 - Apple, RIM, Palm, Nokia Fall

Posted by Android Police Team in CLIQ / DEXT (Morrison), Dream, Droid (Sholes), G1 (Dream), G2 (Vision), Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Magic, Motorola, myTouch 3G (Magic), News

AdMob, one of the world's largest mobile advertisement networks, posted a report (PDF) yesterday citing various mobile related statistics for the period of February 2009 to February 2010.

We've looked through all the boring stuff and pulled out the interesting highlights (you all like highlights, don't you?).

The Highlights

Here are the highlights that we've cherry picked out of it for you (the data is year-over-year where applicable):

AdMob currently serves over 15,000 mobile websites and applications and has received 14.1 billion (!) requests worldwide in the last year
The number of smartphones went up 13% from 35% to 48%

...

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.