Brad Ganley - 9/11 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Brad Ganley

An Android power user, Brad consumes most of his free time with unhealthy amounts of cell phones and cell phone related things when he isn't playing with his son. Brad is also an avid movie-watcher and tea-drinker.

Sep

[Update: Also Includes A GPS Fix] The Samsung Captivate Is Receiving An Update (But It Isn't The One You Want)

Posted by Brad Ganley in Captivate, News

AT&T has just started incrementally rolling out an over-the-air update to Samsung Captivate users. The update is 12Mb in size and is composed entirely of bug fixes. I would think that they would focus all their energy on getting Froyo out to the Galaxy S phones but, apparently, whatever this update fixes is more important.

Here is a snippet from the AT&T website that explains a little bit further:

Update: this OTA also includes a GPS fix, according to a Samsung email we just got:

An update to improve the Samsung Captivate's GPS performance is now available. Captivate customers will receive a notification on their device that an update is available and will simply need to download the file to update their phone.

Sep

Droid 2 World Edition To Make Droid 2 Obsolete? Already?

Posted by Brad Ganley in Droid 2, News, Verizon Wireless

The world of smartphones moves fast. How fast, you ask? So fast that a device that is just days over being a month old is already apparently getting phased out. The Motorola Droid 2 was just released in August but it's possible that this Droid lived fast and will die young.

You'll notice that underneath the words "Droid 2 by Motorola" it states "while supplies last," indicating that there are a finite number left. According to BGR, the word on the street is that this could be to make way for the rumored Droid 2:World Edition which, as its name suggests, is simply the Droid 2 with world capabilities.

Sep

Droid Incredible Gets Super LCD Early - New DIncs With Froyo On-Board Already Up For Sale At Best Buy

Posted by Brad Ganley in Incredible, News

It appears that Verizon got a little bit too excited about the "end of September" switch-over for the Droid Incredible's screen. As an internal memo revealed to us a couple of weeks ago, the Droid Incredible was slated to make the switch from an AMOLED screen to SLCD (Super LCD) at the end of September but, as these snapshots show us, the future is now.

You may not notice the difference but the SKU has changed. This only happens in stores like Best Buy (where these pictures were nabbed from) and other third party retailers for very specific reasons, the most notable of which being a significant hardware change.

Sep

HTC Sense Will Support Map Pre-Caching In Its Latest Upgrade

Posted by Brad Ganley in Applications, Desire HD (Ace), HTC, News, Videos

Yesterday, Engadget got some hands-on time with the brand new HTC Sense upgrade that will debut on the Desire HD and the Desire Z. It will support all kinds of crazy stuff we've been waiting for like remote wiping, phone location, and backing up to and restoring data from HTCSense.com. Another cool feature is map pre-caching, which means that the phone will have pre-loaded maps on it.

The end result is a much more responsive map experience, allowing you to zoom in and out and pan around with "no waiting". It also means that you don’t need a data connection to get around, a notable foible of the otherwise excellent Google Maps.

Sep

Control Your Music Player Using LauncherPro, Be Awesome

Posted by Brad Ganley in Applications, News, Tips & Tutorials

It looks like user Rock_Harder over at the XDA community has solved a problem most people didn't even realize they had. If you, like many people, are faced with the issue of where to put the music widget on your homescreen, he's got you covered.

Essentially, his dilemma was that he simply didn't have the real estate to place the music widget effectively. He uses LauncherPro and had some of those handy extra dock icons laying around so, using all of his cunning and wit, Remoter was born. Huzzah!

"What is Remoter?" you may ask, "and why do I need it?" Remoter is awesome, and you need it because it is a very clever implementation of Android's capabilities that saves you time and space.

Sep

Android Central User Makes A Great Tutorial About Theming Android

Posted by Brad Ganley in Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

There is talk of rooting and ROMs throughout this article. If you aren't familiar with the process or its pros and cons, you can check out our primers here:

Sprintgirl, a user in the Android Central forums, has put together a tutorial for people who want to start theming their rooted Android phones. While the process is a bit, well, ugly, to put it nicely, this tutorial should help to clear some of the fog from the process. The tutorial uses the EVO 4G as it's target device but, as we know, Android is basically the same across all different phones so the process will remain more or less the same.

Sep

Garmin Considers Exiting Phone Business-Yeah, Garmin Made A Phone

Posted by Brad Ganley in Garmin, Garminfone, News

Garmin CFO Kevin Rauckman stated on the 9th that Garmin may be leaving the mobile phone part of its business on the side of the highway. Garmin has released exactly one Android phone that was met with limited success, to put it nicely. They released the Garminphone with an outdated version of Android and put it on the 4th largest (out of 4) wireless carrier in the US (T-Mobile). The cards were definitely not stacked in their favor.

At one point in time, I'm sure this phone would have been a break-away hit but, now that every phone has GPS navigation, the Garminphone has become completely irrelevant.

Sep

ClockworkMOD Recovery Now Available For The Epic-It Was Only A Matter Of Time

Posted by Brad Ganley in Epic 4G, News

There is talk of rooting and ROMs throughout this article. If you aren't familiar with the process or its pros and cons, you can check out our primers here:

Well, SDX didn't waste any time rooting the Epic 4g, so it should be no surprise that they have now gotten a custom recovery running on it. Apparently it wasn't easy but, after much trial and error, the SDX devs finally arrived at this beautiful, beautiful screen:

They were even so kind as to create a one-click, dummy proof method, the hardest part of which is the installation of the Android SDK.

Sep

LG To Announce New Introductory Level Optimus Phones Today

Posted by Brad Ganley in LG, News

Back in April, LG unleashed the LG Optimus, claiming that it offers "Optimal performance for first-time smartphone users". What this means, essentially, is that the Optimus is on the lower-end of the smartphone market. Its software is engineered to be easy to use and the hardware is affordable. Well, now it has some new friends: The Optimus One and the Optimus Chic. The official announcement is set at 10am in Seoul and, while we don't know too much just yet, these devices do look promising, especially for the lower-end market.

Really, we’ve only been able to nail down specs for the Optimus Chic:

600Mhz processor
5 MP camera (no word on autofocus yet, but it is probably a safe assumption)
A-GPS
Wifi (b/g)
3.2" Display
Froyo

As for the Optimus One, the specs are assumed to be lower.

Sep

Verizon Decides To Make More Bad Decisions - VCAST App Market Is The Latest

Posted by Brad Ganley in News, Verizon Wireless

Well, Verizon is up to their old tricks again. Last time they did something worthy of a head-scratch was just a short time ago, when they forced Bing onto the Fascinate and abandoned the built-in Google bits and pieces for search.

Now they've decided that, in addition to Google Maps, Google Search, and Google Voice Search not being necessary, the Android MARKET is insufficient. Introducing the Vcast App Store!

Verizon seems to think that they are somehow more likely to persuade users to buy apps. While there may be some advantages (carrier billing being the only one i can think of), it is really starting to look like Verizon hates Google.