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Here's the problem with Android Wear. Although my G Watch R is always with me, notifying me and taking my commands, controlling it with anything but voice seems a tad cumbersome. You can realistically hold and interact with a phone using one hand, but you can't with a watch. You need both hands, which, if you ask me, feels like a step backwards sometimes. If my right hand is in my pocket, or holding something, steering, mixing a batch of cake filling, typing, grocery shopping, brushing my teeth, climbing a mountain, squeezing a lemon, or otherwise occupied, I have to interrupt whatever it is doing and bring it together with my left wrist to take care of a new notification on my watch. Or, and I'm not proud to say I've done this before, I have to raise my watch to my nose and swipe and tap that way.
If you didn't know, HTC has promised to provide bootloader unlock support for all devices released after September of 2011 as well as many others released before, and they have been keeping good on that promise with added support for many devices over the last few months.
We've been waiting all day for a new project called Revolutionary from AlphaRev and Unrevoked to go live, and that moment is now upon is. This new tool allows S-Off and NAND write access to a whole slew of modern HTC phones, including some devices that have yet to receive a permanent unlock solution:
Ever since the beginning of June, we've been teased by and patiently waiting for the mysterious AlphaRevX unlocker page that promised to completely unlock (S-OFF) the latest HTC Wildfire and even Incredible S, making root, custom ROMs, ClockworkMod recovery all possible.
If you happen to own a Samsung Captivate, HTC Aria, or HTC Inspire 4G, then the dream of many, many Android owners on AT&T is about to be yours - the ability to legitimately sideload apps. AT&T lifted its sideloading-barrier on the newly released Samsung Infuse 4G, and naturally, the question arose: What about older Android devices? Now we have our answer.
CyanogenMod 7 has earned its reputation as the most reliable Gingerbread ROM, even though it hasn't yet entered stable mode. And tonight, the fun goes on - RC4 RC3.14159265358979323846264338327, as the CM team so lovingly refers to it, has just been launched for all supported CM devices.
Just as promised, AT&T unleashed the Froyo update for the HTC Aria today. They provided a link to HTC's official download site, complete with instructions for applying the update and a warning that application will result in a hard reset of your phone. The mandatory reset does seem like a great idea, as the issues that plagued the Epic Froyo update were reportedly solved via a hard reset.
It's been a long time coming, but AT&T is finally about to show some love to the HTC Aria: they've announced via their Facebook page that an update to Froyo will be made available tomorrow. The post tells users to check back tomorrow to "learn how to download the update," so this might not be a nice and easy over-the-air procedure. But at least it tells us that one manufacturer is still developing for its older devices.
Thought the miniscule HTC Aria wouldn't be getting a bite-sized scoop of Froyo to call its own? Wrong! ls377 over at the Android Central Forums has packaged the leaked Froyo Sense RUU for the Aria into a flashable .zip file. There isn't really much else to say other than that you can flash it just like any other ROM (through Recovery Mode or through an app like ROM Manager) and that some users seem to be having issues with the Android Market. Still, if I were rocking an Aria, I wouldn't hesitate to leave Eclair - after all, who doesn't love themselves some nice, cool frozen yogurt?
This is seriously impressive stuff - the guys from the unrevoked team did it again, and this version 3.2 is definitely their best release yet. Most of the credit, outside of the core unrevoked team, belongs to Sebastian Krahmer for discovering the exploit that works on all supported phones.
Not everyone needs a new phone at this time of year, especially as you probably got your last one some time around Christmas, but if you’re in the market for a decent Android phone on your college-sized budget, here’s the what you’re looking at if you’re one of the four major carriers:
CyanogenMod 6 is continuing its rampage: last night the first Nightly build of CM6 was released for the HTC Aria (a.k.a. the Liberty) and CDMA HTC Hero. This should make the users of these phones quite happy - CM is the single most popular Android ROM, and for good reason.
Unrevoked, a tool that brought the ability to run applications that require root and originally developed for the HTC EVO 4G and HTC Hero, was just updated to version 3.
Nobody was happy to learn that the HTC Aria would be locked down in the same way as its predecessor, the Backflip, and be unable to install non-Market apps. Fortunately, HTC has given Aria owners a sort of “fix” through an update in their desktop client.
The crew behind the original easy root for HTC EVO 4G and HTC Hero - unrEVOked - has released unrEVOked2 (UR2) – a tool that lets you replace your phone's (see below for supported models) stock Android recovery with the ClockworkMod recovery. ClockworkMod allows users to create nandroid backups, use custom ROMs, and otherwise customize the phone.
If you’ve been paying attention to the news releases regarding the HTC Aria, you know that AT&T will once again be locking down the apps users can install by restricting unofficial app downloading. If you’ve been paying attention for a while now, you also know that they did the same thing to the Motorola Backflip – the only other Android phone they offer.
Good news, AT&T customers – starting June 20, AT&T will begin selling its first HTC Android device, the Aria. A few days ago, they (accidently?) released a video showing the HTC “Liberty” being tested. At the time, we speculated that it might actually be the HTC Aria we’d heard about before. Turns out we were probably correct, as various news outlets have been receiving the Aria to play around with, and they look to be one and the same.
Yeah, so the title may be a bit confusing, but it’s more or less an accurate summary. Basically, AT&T released a (promo?) video detailing their testing procedure for Android phones, in which Dante Martin, a device product manager at AT&T, waves around a HTC Android handset that looks a whole lot like the Aria whose leaked pictures were outed a few weeks ago.