Brian O'Toole
Having learnt his writing techniques reading e-Books of Sherlock Holmes, Brian now spends his time /kicking, lurking, SSHing and encoding.
29
Sep
image

Maybe you're like me: you don't find Voice Search all that useful; you have an impenetrably foreign, non-Google-approved accent; you find yourself frustrated by the single-entry nature of Android's traditional clipboard.

If you deem yourself a match with any of those things, I'm willing to bet you find at least one of the two applications on show here of use.

ClipStore

image

Android's clipboard isn't anything special. You put stuff there and it disappears when you overwrite it with something else. ClipStore is a nice twist on that, offering the ability to save your previous clipboard entries, pin entries, add entries manually, and re-copy old entries.

27
Sep
image[5]

BoyGeniusReport just got a nice clear photo of the HTC Merge, a device we may or may not have seen pass through the FCC with a red keyboard, better known as the dual-mode QWERTY slider for Verizon. The phone appears to be running Sense, and is now rocking a rather svelte brushed-metal style keyboard - one with a markedly different layout to the G2.

image

There's also the whole Bing thing. It seems that Microsoft have a deal with Verizon to shove Bing onto any phones without the DROID branding. Which is pretty strange, considering the whole black-and-red colour scheme the Merge has got going on, making it look like it really should be a DROID.

27
Sep
image

This is what happens when you try to one-up the open-source community. Just when we were beginning to think HTC Sense might have come up trumps with a real killer feature in their Fast Boot, CyanogenMod creator Steve Kondik's right there with a cheeky "Yeah, CM6 "does" too :)". Tweeting that the feature will be committed to the CyanogenMod source soon (possibly with the arrival of version 6.1), Cy noted that the Nexus One would likely last in this hibernation state for about a week. Now, let's see what it looks like in action:

Of course, as we have discussed before, this is not a real, clean reboot, but we can still see plenty of potential use cases - switching off in areas of areas of no coverage, periodic check-ins on hikes, and other scenarios where something quite close to instant-on would be.

26
Sep

Back in the good old days, before our fantasies were crushed by manufacturer-carrier partnerships and vested interests, we dreamt of being able to make calls over whatever medium we damn well pleased. T-Mobile fed that desire further, with “Hotspot Calling” in 2007, subsequently causing temper tantrums with levied surcharges in a way that now reminds us of Ma Bell and their ludicrous femtocells. It’s such a pity they never took it any furth-

… wait, what? TmoNews just got some leaked slides of plans to push WiFi Calling on select T-Mobile Android phones? You don’t say!

Yes folks, it’s another week and another coup by the ninjas at TmoNews.

25
Sep
image

To the sound of a resounding “Meh”, Sony Ericsson have publically indicated that they have dropped Symbian off their roadmap for future handsets. Having been a member of the Symbian Foundation since its creation, Sony Ericsson are now jettisoning the aging platform for greener fields, leaving Nokia as the sole steward of the Symbian brand. According to spokesman Aldo Liguori:

“[Sony Ericsson] have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system”

Funnily enough, Sony Ericsson are still part of the Symbian Foundation, they just don’t have any Symbian handsets planned.

25
Sep
image
Last Updated: August 1st, 2012

People like Android because they like openness and because they like choice. The ability to boot a second, open-source operating system on your Android device is then a pretty compelling proposition. Following a flurry of activity around various fora, some progress has been made in booting the Linux-based Maemo 5 successor, MeeGo, on select Android devices. These devices, namely the Nexus One, Streak, and Desire are all based on the Snapdragon QSD8250 and it is that chipset the development community is focusing on.

image image

Credit: vgrade/M.Brook

Right now, it’s unclear exactly how functional the OS is, and, as usual, the development is suffering from issues with driver cross-compatibility and other similar obstacles.

25
Sep
http://squio.nl/blog/wp-content/2010/05/Android_Market.png

Those of you following the official @AndroidDev account on twitter may have spotted a cryptic tweet sent out yesterday, urging developers to check their e-mail inboxes. Contained within was an e-mail with some exciting news: Google will be bringing access to paid applications to more countries. The when and the where have still yet to be determined, but Ireland bleedin' better be one of those countries.

Considering the fact that the Android Market is currently available in a pitiful 14 countries, listed below, any increase will make for a dramatic improvement. However, when you look at how many countries the iTunes App Store is available in (90), there is still a lot of ground to be made before catching the Apple juggernaut.

24
Sep
image

Here’s something to get your teeth into. Over at LaptopMag, a whole host of Androids have been put through their paces in a grueling battery life endurance test. The goal was to keep the phones’ screens on while doing a moderate amount of processing, namely cyclically browsing a collection of web pages. Despite the supposed power savings afforded by AMOLED screens, the phones employing that screen technology fell quite a ways behind in comparison to the traditional LCD phones.

Why is that? AMOLED is supposed to only use up power on non-black pixels, right? Well, as LaptopMag points out, the majority of webpages are actually dark text on a light background, a scenario in which AMOLED actually uses more power than an equivalent backlit LCD.

23
Sep
image

In the excitement of HTC’s unveiling of the Desire HD and Desire Z in London, we missed out on this sweet little gadget. HTC announced plans to release a Media Link wireless DLNA adaptor in Q4 2010, as a companion piece to its continued expansion of the Sense experience.

image

Credit: SlashGear

What this little box purports to do is allow you to stream media from your DLNA-equipped phone to a suitable TV, irrespective of whether that TV has DLNA or not. There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot to the device: plug in the microUSB power cable, and connect the box to your display with the mini HDMI output.

22
Sep
image

While there have been several third party retailers already grabbing headlines with pre-orders of the T-Mobile G2, T-Mo themselves have been keeping mum about when the phone will go up for sale. Well, several T-Mobile customers have been reporting today that the G2 has appeared in their online store with an enticing label: “Pre-ordering starts soon!”

image

While this is no concrete date, it’s still enough to set vanilla Froyo fanboys’ hearts aflutter, despite the continued lack of an official release date for the G2 (don’t give up hope, guys).

image

Lest we forget in all the excitement: RadioShack are already advertising the G2 for $50 off the expected contract price, and Best Buy is offering it for $200 on contract.

Page 13 of 18«First...1112131415...Last»