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Sep

CyanogenMod 6 Achieves A New Milestone... Motorola Milestone That Is

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Froyo 2.2, Milestone, Motorola, News

This article mentions flashing of custom ROMs. If you’re unfamiliar with this term, hit up our primer here:

Custom ROMs Explained And Why You Want Them

CyanogenMod 6, a very popular custom Froyo ROM for a whole slew of Android phones, has given thousands of Android users something device manufacturers tried to take away - absolute freedom in customizing your Android experience. One glaring omission from the bunch is the Motorola Milestone, which Motorola decided to lock down way harder than its US counterpart, the original Droid.

All of this changed the other day with the announcement of Milestone support for CyanogenMod 6.1.

Sep

Zune Home Gives You That Zune HD Vibe, Tegra Sold Separately

Posted by Brian O'Toole in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Apart from SlideScreen, it seems like pretty much every alternative Android launcher out there is a slightly different version of the same thing; namely, the stock Android launcher. Well, SlideScreen is no longer alone. With Zune Home, we have something rather familiar but entirely different to what we’ve seen before on Android.

As the name would suggest, Zune Home is an homage to the laudably sleek interface found on Microsoft’s Zune HD portable media player. What it does is replace your standard homescreen with a simple list of clickable text labels: phone, contacts, etc. These link to applications of your choosing (apart from phone and marketplace, which are preset), meaning you can have the “internet” label open up your preferred browser, eg Fennec.

Sep

HTC Desire HD Look-A-Like Coming To Verizon?

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Desire HD (Ace), Devices By Manufacturer, HTC, News, Verizon Wireless

A couple of weeks back, Boy Genius Report got their hands on some photos of a very svelte looking, EVO-esque HTC phone that is supposedly coming to Verizon.

Now they have a suspicion that it is in fact Verizon’s model of the Desire HD, announced a few days ago in London.

There are one or two things to say about this - firstly, the handset they obtained images of has a kickstand, a feature notably absent in the super-slim Desire HD. Also, there have been no announcements as yet of a CDMA version at all, although that may well come in the future.

Sep

[Android Police Giveaway] 10 Amzer And Gizmo Dorks Cases Are Up For Grabs - Incredible (2), Droid X (2), Droid 2 (2), Droid (2), And EVO 4G (2)

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Contests / Giveaways, Other Reviews, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Introduction

Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a giveaway featuring not one, but ten cases from these 2 quality manufacturers: Gizmo Dorks and Amzer! They are:

2x for the Droid Incredible
2x for the EVO 4G
2x for the Droid X
2x for the Droid 2
2x for the original Droid

Each Amzer case is worth about $13 on average, while the Gizmo Dorks is usually $10 but currently on sale for $3.

First, however, we have a brief review of each, which I am proud to present to you, in full overdramatic armor, in the following sections.

Sep

Verizon Teams Up With Good Technology To Beef Up Android For Enterprise

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News, Verizon Wireless

Looks like Verizon is pushing Android for enterprise pretty hard: they've inked a deal with Good Technology and are bringing some pretty major enterprise features to Android. Specifically, the company provides encrypted and high security email, messaging, and mobile access, as well as features such as remote wipe.

Good is a fairly major player in the enterprise space: in the first half of 2010 alone, they added 1,500 enterprise clients. Obviously, this is bad news for RIM (the makers of BlackBerry), who currently rule the business market; losing a competitive edge certainly isn't going to help their already sagging market share.

Sep

Acer Liquid E Ferrari Special Edition Coming... To India

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Liquid e, News

Acer has partnered with Ferrari to release a special edition of their Liquid E smartphone. The internals are the same as the regular Liquid E, albeit with the processor stock clocked a bit higher:

1 GHz Snapdragon 8250 (45nm process - check out this article for details on why that's a good thing)
5 MP Camera
3.5" screen
Android 2.1

The only real customizations are that it's apparently been custom designed by Ferrari to be light weight, and checks in at 135g. Other than that, it's Ferrari red with an accompanying logo around back, and has a few custom Ferrari wallpapers.

Sep

Samsung Releases Source Code For Fascinate

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, Fascinate, News, Verizon Wireless

Samsung has released the source for the Fascinate, roughly a week after the phone was released. As usual, any bits that are special to Sammy aren't included in the release, but there should still be enough material in there to get tinkering. As I've said before, the layperson doesn't really benefit from the release, but modders can get down and dirty with the code to tweak things just the way they'd like - and hopefully, make those changes public so that others can get in on the action as well.

_{"Ergo, you can now produce modifications to your mobile device, vis-à-vis the fundamental programming found within its hardware."}

Once again, a note on navigating the Samsung Open Source Release Center: click on Mobile (near the top), then scroll down to SCH-i500 - that's the Fascinate.

Sep

Samsung Releases Minor Update For Epic 4G - Adds Media Hub, Fixes A Few Bugs

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

Yesterday, Samsung released a fairly minor update for the Epic 4G. There are only a handful of changes, including some light optimizations and a few small bug fixes - but more importantly, it adds Media Hub functionality. Media Hub is a new service that was introduced last night by Samsung, and provides access to movies and TV shows from most of the big dogs - not too shabby.

Full list of changes:

DI07 Update Details

Please see the list below for details of some changes found in the DI07 update.

Optimized, HotSpot in 3G idle mode to help conserve battery power

Optimized, Applied Qualcomm patch for performance enhancement

Added, Media Hub

Modified, WiMAX exit delay

Modified, UI "Noisey" One to "Noisy One"

Fixed, 32GB mSD card is not recongized when formatted in device

Fixed, When playing video, the playback is paused if a headset is connected/disconnected

Fixed, Sorry popup when DRM file is selected in the Gallery

Fixed, Hotspot registration/deregistration

Note, below is a screen shot of the descriptor.

Sep

Samsung Galaxy Tab Officially Headed To All Four Major US Carriers (UPDATE: No 4G On Sprint's Version)

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in AT&T, Galaxy Tab, News, Samsung, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless

As promised, Samsung is holding their event in New York City right now, and at that very event, they've just announced that their smoking hot Galaxy Tab will be hitting all four major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) sometime during October or November. Unfortunately, they've decided to leave the exact release dates up to the carriers.

Pricing is a similar story: the carriers get to decide. On a related note, however, Samsung has announced that the keyboard dock for the Tab (the one that essentially looks like a carbon copy of another popular tablet made by a company whose name is also a fruit) will retail for $100 and the desktop dock (again, reminiscent of a strangely similar dock for the iPad) will sell for $50.

Sep

WeTab Will Run MeeGo OS, Android Apps

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Devices By Manufacturer, News

Last Updated: September 26th, 2010

The planets have aligned: MeeGo, the latest operating system that will power phones and tablets and which you've probably never heard of, has just collided with Android, a mobile operating system made by... oh, you all know what Android is. Right?

Anyhow, the WeTab, which does indeed run the former of those two operating systems, will also be able to run applications designed for the latter, ie Android! It isn't clear whether this means that it will offer access to the Android Market or merely be able to run Android apps downloaded off the Internet, though the tablet will ship with an app store called the "Meta Store".