Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jan

Serval Project: Network-Free Communication, Or A Temporary Self-Organizing Self-Powered Network, For Android

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Applications, Apps/Games, News

Ah, the power of open. A team of people (mainly developers) has come together to develop a new communication method for times when existing infrastructure just doesn't work. They've come up with two systems:

The Serval Project consists of two systems.

The first is a temporary, self-organising, self-powered mobile network for disaster areas, formed with small phone towers dropped in by air.

The second is a permanent system for remote areas that requires no infrastructure and creates a mesh-based phone network between Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones, and eventually specially designed mobile phones that can operate on other unlicensed frequencies, called Batphone.

Jan

HTC EVO Shift 4G Joins The Permanent Root Club

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO Shift 4G (Speedy), HTC, News, Sprint

The title says it all, people: those enterprising individuals over at XDA-Developers (where else?) have conjured up a permanent root for the EVO Shift. As this is the first method available, the process isn't quite so easy as it's become for other devices. Still, it's not too outrageously complicated, either.

The steps:

Step 1
ok download this file and extract it to the root of your sdcard
www.thebcblends.com/shift/Shift-root.zip

Step 2
make sure you have adb properly setup on your computer before continuing
temp root using either visionary or z4root
open up command prompt and cd to your sdk platform-tools directory
then type adb shell then su
if you havent already u must press allow on your device to enable su perms

Step 3
check the md5sum of both of the files to make sure they match

Code:
md5sum /sdcard/Shift/hboot_orig.bin
Code:
md5sum /sdcard/Shift/hboot_eng.nb0
386c19451e8dd18f9b98fad6b11be4c0 hboot_orig.bin

60ec1006e6ec2e8acb370d6aad35b17e hboot_eng.nb0

if these do not match do not continue redownload the files then check the md5's again

Step 4

Flash the eng spl!!!

Jan

Facebook For Android Adds Deals - Here Is How To Find Them

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News, Tips & Tutorials

Facebook for Android has been notoriously slow to release updates and features in general, and last night's update reaffirmed that the app is nowhere near the top of Facebook's priority list. The Deals feature has been available on iOS since early November of 2010, only reaching Android almost 3 months later. According to the changelog, the Deals functionality is the only addition to the app, so let's take a quick look at how exactly you are going to find said deals.

As you can see, upon updating and starting Facebook, you will not find a Deals button anywhere in the menu.

Jan

Notion Ink Adam Tablet Already Rooted, Market Access Unlocked

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Adam, Development, News, Notion Ink, Videos

Well, this didn't take long - the hackers over at NotionInkHacks.com played around with Notion Ink's dual-core Adam Android tablet that finally started shipping last week and already managed to root the device.

The next logical step and the primary motivation for rooting Adam was, of course, getting the absent Android Market onto the tablet. As we all know, those with almighty root privileges are not easily stopped, so I'm happy to report that full Android Market is now also available on the Adam.

This article deals with a couple of advanced topics. If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terms, hit up our primers here:

Rooting Explained + Top 5 Benefits Of Rooting
Top Android Apps Every Rooted User Should Know About: Part 1 (Apps 1-8), Part 2 (Apps 9-16)

Screenshots

Check out these screenshots I've taken from videos by FreezerBite1 and Inspiron41 of their rooted Adams - the first one showing the Android Market, the second one playing Dungeon Defenders installed off said Market, and the third one of Launcher Pro that replaced the Eden UI (good riddance, in my opinion - I've always thought of it as too crude and poorly designed):

Videos

And here are the aforementioned videos:

Rooting + Market Instructions

Here are the latest available instructions, as per this NotionInkHacks post.

Jan

Google: OTA Fix For The Nexus S Reboot Issue Coming In 1-2 Weeks

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Google, News, Nexus S (Crespo/Soju), Samsung

Nexus S owners, listen up. If you own Samsung's flagship "Google Experience" device, it's likely you've experienced a random reboot bug that we reported on over 2 weeks ago. The Google bug tracker thread for this issue has been a roller coaster of emotion - after getting filled with a large number of comments, it was declined by a Google employee, only to be reopened shortly after due to a public outcry.

As if adding fuel to the fire, the thread was closed yet again in the past hour by a different employee. His action were reverted mere minutes later, which is making me wonder whether Google engineers sometimes need to talk to each other a bit more often.

Jan

Amazon Accidentally Leaks Pricing Of Motorola Atrix 4G ($150/$600) And HTC Inspire 4G ($100/$500)

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Atrix 4G (Olympus), HTC, Inspire 4G (Ace, Stallion), Motorola, News

The launch of the Atrix 4G is drawing near - yesterday, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha himself reminded us of this on the company's earnings call, and today Amazon hinted at the same thing by putting up its order page for the phone.

The move probably wasn't intentional (clicking the 'Buy at AmazonWireless.com' button leads to an error message), but it certainly has revealed some juicy details. Most importantly, the on-contract price is said to be a mere $149.99 - not bad for America's first dual-core phone. As for the off-contract price, Amazon lists it at $599.99, which is pretty much in line with what you should expect to pay for a device like this.

Jan

Hands-On Preview Of Android 3.0 'Honeycomb': The Android Tablet Era Begins Now

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News, Other Reviews, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Honeycomb is one of the biggest updates in Android history, so naturally, I jumped at the chance to try it out via the newly released Android 3.0 "preview SDK." What I found certainly wasn't disappointing - though it's important to remember that this is just a preview, meaning that not everything is in working order (for example, the emulator is so slow it made me want to tear my hair out at times, not to mention the frequent force close messages). Join us below for our first impressions of the new UI elements and other features found in Android 3.0 "Honeycomb."

The emulator's bootscreen is the same as it was for Android 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, etc.

Jan

Honeycomb Logos Galore - Which One Do You Like The Most? [Poll]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Off-Topic

Buried deep in the depths of the Honeycomb SDK that was released yesterday, this Tron-inspired Honeycomb logo, which, as we later found out, was actually part of the Honeycomb Easter egg. Whether this logo is THE Honeycomb logo or not remains to be proven, but it is definitely official, as it came straight from the SDK. Judging by my reddit submission, many of you liked it quite a bit but had ideas of your own of how it could be modified to be more in tune with the Android theme. Here are some of the mods.

Original

Green by gcalpo

Closer to Android colors.

Jan

T-Mobile Sidekick 4G To Be Manufactured By Samsung, Rocking Android 2.2.1 In Current Iteration

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News, Samsung, Sidekick 4G, T-Mobile

Been wondering when we'd hear more about T-Mobile's newest Sidekick? If so, today's your lucky day: TmoNews has some new info on the device, and a few blurrycam shots to boot. Perhaps the two most important facts: it will be manufactured by Samsung, and is apparently running Android 2.2.1.

^{You'll never guess where these images are from.}

That's not exactly great news, especially for those who had high hopes for the device. Why? Well, because Samsung doesn't exactly have a great reputation when it comes to Android updates, and for good reason. Further, T-Mobile has previously stated that they are committed to keeping their Android devices updated - and yet this phone is running Froyo.

Jan

Android Team Acknowledges Honeycomb Emulator Performance Problems, Hard At Work On Fixes

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

The Honeycomb SDK preview, allowing everyone to take a peek and play around with Honeycomb using the Android emulator, was launched yesterday, but after we got past the initial excitement, we found that the emulator itself was dog slow and pretty much unusable. In fact, it was so frustrating to use it that I wanted to punch walls and rip out my hair after 5 minutes with it. And I'm not even going to talk about orientation problems - how the Android team managed to ship the SDK with orientation broken by default (there is a fix for it in the Settings > Display) is beyond me and beyond the scope of this article.