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Nov

US Cellular To Begin Testing LTE Network Next Year; To Start Rolling It Out In 2012

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in News, US Cellular

Believe it or not, Verizon and AT&T aren't alone in the LTE scene; not by a long shot, as US Cellular CFO Steven Campbell has just reminded us all. During the Wells Fargo Technology Conference in NYC, he stated that the carrier will be rolling out LTE to one test market next year, while the rest of us will just have to wait until 2012. Rather discouragingly, the carrier hasn't even chosen a network equipment vendor yet, although Clearwire and LightSquared are, reportedly, being considered. You could argue that the carrier's really shooting itself in the foot here by waiting so long (Steven said that "I don't think we're feeling a sense of crisis or urgency"), but maybe they plan on introducing some awe-inspiring launch devices to save their bacon.

Nov

T-Mobile Unveils Official Tethering Plan, Charges $15 For Something Root Users Have Been Enjoying For Free All Along

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in G2 (Vision), myTouch 4G (Glacier), News, T-Mobile

Carriers' official tethering plans never cease to amaze us - $15 to $30 per month for something that users with rooted phones can enjoy for free via Wireless Tether or Tether for Android (not to mention the free tethering app that comes built right into stock Froyo). Nevertheless, T-Mobile's gone ahead and announced that starting this Sunday, November 14th, its users will be charged $14.99 per month for the feature. This will buy you unlimited data for your laptop/netbook to choke down, although there will also be a $10 monthly plan, which will get you just 200MB of data.

To soothe your anger, the carrier also announced that on the same day (11/14), it will introduce two new variations of its Even More plan.

Nov

Audiogalaxy Vs Subsonic - Fight! What's Your Favorite Android Music Streaming App? [Reviews, Poll]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

In our last week's poll, we asked you your thoughts on the best overall Android music player, and over 1500 of you responded, clearly putting PowerAMP ahead of the competition, followed by Winamp. PowerAMP released the full version shortly after and still occupies the #1 spot for playing local music in my book.

However, rightfully so, some of you noted that there are some players out there specializing on remote media streaming, and by that I don't mean Shoutcast streams - I mean streaming your own music collections. Google's music service may one day supposedly join the party, as we saw demoed at Google I/O earlier this year, but right now, that solution does not yet exist.

Nov

Amazon Wireless Temporarily Drops All Of Its 6 AT&T Android Phones Down To $0.01: Backflip, Bravo, Xperia X10, Flipout, Flipside, Captivate

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in AT&T, Backflip, Bravo, Captivate, Flipout / Twist, Flipside, News, Xperia X10 (es209ra)

Amazon Wireless, Amazon's mobile arm, launched a big sale on all AT&T Android phones today in a weekend promotion that could easily rival even the upcoming Black Friday deals (BF is happening on Nov 25th). All of the AT&T Android phones Amazon Wireless carries are temporarily exactly 1 penny:

Motorola Backflip
Motorola Bravo
Motorola Flipout
Motorola Flipside
Sony Xperia X10
Samsung Captivate

In addition to the above, a few other Android and some Win Phone 7 (if you're into that sort of thing) phones are also bearing the sweet sticker price of a mere cent:

HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid 2
Motorola Citrus
HTC Surround (Win Phone 7)
LG Quantum (Win Phone 7)

Get them while they're hot out of the oven - the promotion ends November 15th.

Nov

QuickOffice Spamming Your Notification Bar, Sign Of Things To Come?

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Android OS, Applications, Apps/Games, News

When you use free software, ads are usually part-and-parcel of the experience. However, typically developers are considerate enough to limit the advertising to within the app itself. Sadly, whoever programmed the popular document viewing application QuickOffice lacks such scruples and has decided to start pushing notifications to users, inviting them to upgrade to the paid version of their app. In many cases, QuickOffice is pre-installed with a phone's version of Android - even something carrier agnostic like the Nexus One - and is difficult to remove, leaving non-root users at the mercy of the app's creators.

^{Credit to TheFunkyMonk of reddit for the image}

While the notification has only appeared once on people's phones so far, and is easy to dismiss, this really seems like an over-stepping of the bounds.

Nov

What's New/Coming In Android Devices: White EVO 4G, Galaxy Tab For Sprint & Verizon, Droid 2 Global, Samsung Continuum, And Droid 2 Global Delayed

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Continuum, Droid 2 Global, Droid Pro, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Galaxy Tab, LG, News

Last Updated: November 21st, 2010

It's definitely starting to feel like holiday season is winding up - a ton of devices that we've seen in the pipeline previously are now making it to market at long last. Let's take a look:

Samsung Galaxy Tab

The Verizon and Sprint versions of the Galaxy Tab have launched already, and the device will be coming to Sprint in short order (11/14) as well. Quick recap of the specs:

7" 1024x600 screen
Both 3G and Wi-Fi
Android 2.2
1 GHz Hummingbird CPU
13.8 oz.

So far the reviews seem to be fairly mixed on the Tab. Right now, only the Verizon variant is listed at Wirefly, but we expect that to change shortly.

Nov

Froyo Leak For Epic 4G, Now Rooted, Fixed Up, And Ready For Consumption

Posted by Brad Ganley in Epic 4G, Froyo 2.2, News

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

Last night, XDA user Firon posted a flashable, pre-rooted, deodexed, and zip-aligned version of the Froyo leak for the Samsung Epic 4G. This is good news because the Galaxy S phones are hurting for some Froyo love, and Samsung seems to be taking its sweet time with it.

As with any leaked ROM, the DJ29 Froyo build for the Epic 4G is going to be anything but flawless.

Nov

We're Pretty Sure The Samsung February 2011 Flagship Device Renders Are Fake - Here's Why

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News, Samsung

Engadget - whose record on these things is usually among the best in the business - seems to have pulled the trigger on one that's pretty obviously fake. Check it out:

The spec sheet reads like a dream phone (which, again, it very well may be):

Gingerbread (Android 2.3)
4.3" or 4.5" (Depending on which part you read) SAMOLED2 screen
February release
8 MP Camera
1080p video recording
14.4 Mbps HSPA
1.2 GHz CPU
16 GB of storage
Insanely thin

Cool, right? Well, not so fast. Here's the stuff that makes at least the render seem like a mockup done in MSPaint.

Nov

HTC Incredible HD Spotted In The Wild Featuring LTE

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in HTC, News, Thunderbolt (Mecha), Verizon Wireless

While everyone else ranted and raved (or, alternatively, raged) about the Nexus S, the folks over at Android Central were busy getting their hands on a picture of Verizon's upcoming Incredible HD:

It sure is a looker with that oh-so-sexy aluminum body... but we already knew about that. The real news here is that, tucked away in the upper right corner of the notification bar, is a promising 4G icon:

It's not as surprising as it could have been since Jeremiah Nelson spilled the beans yesterday, but it's always nice to see confirmation in the form of device pictures themselves.

Nov

[An]Droid Does: Nexus One Controls A Lego Mindstorms Robot That Spins And Solves A Rubik's Cube In Seconds

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Development, News, Nexus One (Passion), Videos

Among all the Gingerbread waiting and Nexus S craziness today, this piece of news from the ARM Tech Conference in Santa Clara caught my attention and reminded me once again just how cool and versatile Android can be.

David Gilday, an ARM engineer, demoed a LEGO Mindstorms kit controlled entirely by a Nexus One quickly twisting and turning a Rubik's cube, solving it on average in 15 seconds. An even crazier demo of a 7x7x7 cube solver, this time using a Droid, follows as well.

I don't know about you but I am highly impressed with what this engineer managed to accomplish with a LEGO kit, an Android phone, and days of tweaking algorithms to perfection.