Brian O'Toole - 17/18 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Brian O'Toole

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

Aug

DROID 2s Showing Up On Best Buy Display Shelves: $200 w/ Contract, $600 Without

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Droid 2, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

As the dust settles on the demise of the original DROID, a phoenix arises from the ashes in a downpour of leaks from the Motorola colander. I’m loath to mix metaphors, but the farcical nature of the DROID 2 pre-release circus can only be described in such epic terms. What do we know about the DROID 2?

And finally, now, its price. Sent in by a reader to Engadget, Best Buy has dummy units and prices out on display.

Right in there with the DROID X and iPhone 4, the DROID 2 will be $199.99 on a two year Verizon contract.

Aug

BlindType Keyboard To Come To Android - Type Anywhere On Your Phone's Screen, Even With No Keyboard Present

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, News

In a market that is rapidly becoming saturated, we have yet another entry. BlindType is a replacement software keyboard, but it’s one with a little twist. As the name might suggest, BlindType seeks to remove the visual aspect of typing on your smartphone’s software keyboard. Know the QWERTY layout by heart? This keyboard is for you.

Irrespective of where you tap on the screen, BlindType can figure out where on the keyboard you meant to hit by comparing the positions of your previous keypresses. Even if you shift your typing up an entire row of keys, BlindType will (probably) adapt and adjust to accommodate you.

Aug

MP4Nation Announce Nationite MIDnite $200 7” Froyo Tablet

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Froyo 2.2, News

Last Updated: August 8th, 2010

What with the fuss that the KMart-exclusive Augen GenTouch 78 has been getting lately, it seems like an opportune time to release a budget-oriented Android tablet that is actually purchasable. MP4Nation.net, an online store with a penchant for Asian PMPs and audio players, has had its Nationite-branded line of products for quite a while now, and on their blog today they unveiled the latest addition : the Nationite MIDnite, a 7” tablet rocking the latest version of Android. It is based on the WITS A81e, and unlike the RocketFish tablet tweeted by Best Buy CTO Robert Stephens it has some pretty hard specs to pore over.

Aug

Android 2.1 Update Gets Previewed On Dell Streak : 720P, Pinch-To-Zoom, New Keyboard

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Eclair 2.1, Streak

That Richard Lai fella sure gets all the luck, eh? Not only was Engadget’s London-based editor amongst the first to get to play with a Streak (aka Mini 5), Dell’s impressive 5” Android slate device, he’s now gotten an exclusive look at an early build of Eclair 2.1 running on the “tablet-phone”. While the previously unexpected 1.6 to 2.1 update is intended as a stop-gap measure to reduce the pain of waiting for Froyo, Engadget encountered several new features in their time with the new OS. While nothing has changed drastically, Eclair on the Streak has brought a few improvements and niggles of note:

The Good

One of the major complaints against the Streak was that its enormous screen space was wasted in landscape mode due to the inclusion of a number pad on the right side of its soft keyboard.

Aug

SurfaceFlinger Hack Brings Screen Calibration To Nexus Ones Running CyanogenMod 6

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Development

Remember Jeff Sharkey’s screen tool that allowed you to turn off the sub-pixels of specific colours on the Nexus One’s PenTile display, in order to save battery?

XDA-Developers member storm99999 has just published a hack allowing you to apply a different colour calibration profile to your N1’s screen using the very same function. However, rather than switching sub-pixels off completely, this hack changes the voltages and thus the colour balance to suit a particular colour temperature. In its current implementation, the mod changes the screen temperature from 9000K to 6500K, a slightly warmer hue.

Originally available as a flashable ZIP for ROMs supporting the original SurfaceFlinger hack, storm99999’s colour calibration profile is now included in the latest CyanogenMod 6 Nightly.

Aug

DROID Gets A Double Scoop Of Froyo

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Droid (Sholes)

As if having their handsets leaking out like crazy wasn’t enough, Motorola’s latest builds of Android 2.2 for the original DROID have slipped out on the MyDroidWorld forums.

Starting with a rooted version of FRG01B on the 20th of July, Chief of Staff p3droid has now dropped another build on the DROID community, FRG22. Claiming it to be Motorola’s latest, and the fastest DROID ROM yet, p3droid has already gone ahead and rooted it for those feeling adventurous enough to try something new.

The update.zip can be flashed as an upgrade over existing installs, but as usual be careful as some users have reported bugs when not doing a clean-wipe before installing.

Aug

Motorola Sage, AT&T-Bound QWERTY Slider, Leaks Out In Surprising Clarity

Posted by Brian O'Toole in AT&T, Motorola

Someone at Motorola’s marketing department is clearly convinced that letting out photos of forthcoming devices is the very best way of gathering hype.

The latest in the series is the Motorola Sage MB508 (or should that be SAGE?), a MOTOBLUR-running mid-range device with a landscape QWERTY keyboard and Android 2.1. Expected to land on AT&T as the replacement for the Backflip, Engadget's tipster says he has had his for over a month now, so it would seem that the phone is in the final stages of testing.

Click on the source link below for some more photos, for once lacking Mr Blurrycam’s trademark touch.

Aug

Samsung Captivate/Vibrant Now Rootable With One Click™

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Captivate, Development, Vibrant

Android dev TGA_Gunnman has been added to Amazon’s hit list for this latest in a litany of single-click phone unlocking methods. In spite of the impending lawsuit (not really), his Samsung Galaxy S One-Click Root program does exactly what it says on the, err, titlebar.

There are separate versions for the Captivate and Vibrant, so make sure you get the right one. All users have to do is download the program - currently Windows only - run it, and click the One Click Root button with their Captivate/Vibrant connected up to USB. Now all you have left is to sit back and wait for the custom ROMs to start rolling in (since there aren’t any yet).

Aug

Motorola DROID X Gets Single-Click Root — On PC Or On Phone, It’s Your Choice

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Development, Droid X (Shadow)

A common complaint leveled against Android is that it’s too technical or too difficult to use. This is especially the case when it comes to hacking around on your phone. While the command line may be the interface of choice for some Android users, it’s not exactly the most user friendly of solutions. Enter one-click rooting, something that iPhone jailbreakers should already be familiar with. One click. Can’t get easier than that, right? All it takes is downloading a simple Windows application, a click of a button, and BOOM (to use an Apple phrase) you’re all SuperUser-y.

For those of you who consider use of a computer beneath you, there is still a solution.

Aug

[Video] 720P Recording Lands On CyanogenMod 6 (Froyo) For The Nexus One

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Nexus One (Passion), Videos

No longer should Nexus One owners be jealous of their HTC Desire brethren. We’ve seen High-Def on the N1 before, and thanks to the continued hard work of Charan Singh and Cyanogen over at XDA-Developers, 1280 x 720 recording has finally come to an AOSP version of Froyo 2.2. The update.zip will only work for CyanogenMod versions greater than RC2, but it is expected to be ported to the popular LeoFroyo ROM and, who knows, maybe even the stock version of N1 Froyo in the future. There are still some bugs in the software, but these should be ironed out over the coming days.