droid x - 5/6 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jul

Motorola Won’t Blow Up Your Droid X With eFuse If You Try To Mod It - It Just Will Not Boot Until Reverted Back To Stock

Posted by John Thompson in Droid X (Shadow), Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the bootloader of the Droid X, and more specifically, whether the ‘eFuse’ will render your phone inoperable if you choose to replace the boot loader.

If you’re not up to speed with the story, it all started with this post a few days ago on MyDroidWorld, which claims that the Droid X boot loader is fitted with eFuse technology, which can physically brick the phone if you try to alter the boot loader in any way. Altering the boot loader is needed to install a custom recovery, which is then capable of doing full Nandroid backups and restores, as well as allows for installing custom ROMs.

Jul

[Scorching Hot] LetsTalk.com Beats Everyone's Price - Sells Motorola Droid X For $150, Samsung Vibrant For $100 With Free Overnight Shipping + Car Charger

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Droid X (Shadow), Galaxy S, Motorola, News, Samsung, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Vibrant

Wow, we knew Wirefly and Amazon were trying hard to compete and offered excellent prices on both the Verizon's Motorola Droid X and the T-Mobile's Samsung Vibrant that came out today. And kudos to them.

However, this deal that LetsTalk.com, another large A+ BBB rated phone retailer, just posted up beats out all competition hands down.

Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile: $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate shipped free OVERNIGHT, with a free car charger thrown in
Motorola Droid X for Verizon: $149.99 after an instant $50 discount, shipped free (though not overnight)

For comparison, both phones are being sold by the respective retailers for $200.

Jul

UPDATED: Want A Droid X? Don’t Want A Contract? Don’t Go To (Some) Verizon Retail Stores

Posted by David Ruddock in Droid X (Shadow), News, Verizon Wireless

UPDATE: Per our informer below in the comments, this may be limited to only some Verizon retail locations. But, there is confirmation that several actual Verizon locations would not sell unsubsidized devices in the link we’re sourcing.

Numerous persons are confirming in comments and side-notes on DroidLife that some Verizon stores are refusing to sell unsubsidized (full-price) Droid X’s to customers who are showing up and waiting in line for the device this morning. They are reportedly being directed to place orders online and have the phone shipped. While this is arguably little more than a shrewd business tactic, it certainly doesn’t make Verizon look any better given all the bad press the Droid X has been getting.

Jul

Motorola Droid 2 Coming In August; Droid 1 Being Phased Out

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Droid 2, Droid X (Shadow), News, Verizon Wireless

Word at DroidLife is that the original Droid is being phased out over the next few weeks (presumably with some promotions coming to help move the last of them off shelves). This is likely in preparation for the coming Droid 2, which is coming sometime in August.

The Droid 2 will be a direct replacement for the original Droid, complete with full slide out QWERTY keyboard (whereas the Droid X has none). Other specs:

5 MP Camera
3G Mobile Hotspot
1 GHz CPU
8 GB onboard memory
8 GB mSD card installed, support for up to 16 GB

While the Droid 2 will still be a high-end phone, it will fall just short of the Droid X.

Jul

Motorola Droid X Now Officially On Sale From VZW - Here Is All You Need To Know

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Droid X (Shadow), Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

The moment you've been waiting for is here - Droid X order page just went live at VZW's site.

You can pick up this bad boy for $199... that is, of course, if you are OK with potentially eating a $350 termination fee and never seeing your device rooted or running a custom ROM.

If, however, you don't care about rooting or custom ROMs, then pop open that browser and spill the cashish, because Motorola's new Droid X is a beast. Here are the specs for those who need a refresher:

4.3”, 854 x 480 px
720p Video Recording
8 MP Camera
1 GHz Processor
Android 2.1 (Eclair) at launch, with 2.2 (FroYo) coming later
8 GB onboard, 16 GB mSD card (24 GB total)
3 mics – front, back, and bottom
HDMI out
Swype

Looking for Droid X reviews to further decide on its worthiness?

Jul

Chance Of Unlocking Verizon’s Motorola Droid X Gets Even Lower: Say Hello to eFuse

Posted by David Ruddock in Droid X (Shadow), Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

On the MyDroidWorld forums, site founder p3droid has recently shared some new and disheartening information about the Droid X. While we reported that the Droid X is locked down with an encrypted bootloader, it now seems Motorola has taken an extra step to ensure no one starts tinkering under the hood.

In the event that the bootloader, kernel, or ROM are noticeably compromised, your Droid X will try to brick itself.

How does it work? While p3droid’s technical explanation will be far more informative than my brief summary, the technology at work here is known as eFuse. It has a simple purpose: to check the version of the bootloader, kernel, and ROM of your phone against those which eFuse is programmed to look for.

Jul

Verizon To Early Droid X Recipients: Just Kidding - You Can Activate Your Droid X Now

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Droid X (Shadow), Verizon Wireless

Yesterday, Verizon told the 170 customers who received the Droid X early that they couldn’t fully activate their phones until launch. Looks like they changed their mind, though – a shot of their system shows that as of Friday afternoon, devices can now be fully activated without any issues. A pretty nice move, and one that is sure to keep those lucky customers happy.

[Source: Droid-Life]

Jul

Verizon’s Motorola Droid X Uses Same Bootloader Encryption As The Yet-To-Be-Defeated Milestone. Translation: Good Luck Unlocking

Posted by David Ruddock in Droid X (Shadow), Motorola, News

According to two separate sources on the XDA forums, the Droid X is loaded with the now-infamous locked bootloader present in the Milestone. If you’re unfamiliar, this site explains the current methods being deployed to defeat the Milestone, but none have managed to succeed without killing the phone functionality. Motorola locks the bootloader using a proprietary encrypted private key scheme, and without access to Motorola’s encryption method, the hope for unlocking lies in exploits. Currently, an exploit known as the “kexec” method ranks highest in terms of hopes of success.

What does this mean for Droid X users? Custom ROMs and recovery images may be a pipe dream, unless a serious vulnerability is discovered.

Jul

Swype Voice Input Button Coming Soon - Already Present On Samsung Galaxy S And Motorola Droid X

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Droid X (Shadow), Galaxy S, Motorola, News, Samsung

One of Swype keyboard's most glaring omissions, especially apparent to those of us with Android 2.1/2.2 is the missing voice input button.

The voice input button, present on the stock keyboard when typing in any text field, lets you utilize Android's speech-to-text capabilities and works surprisingly well. I sure missed it when I installed Swype.

And I'm not alone - over 2000 votes have been cast by Swype users, making it the #1 requested Swype feature - the next one down is only around 600 votes.

The good news is: Swype has been listening, and the voice input button is coming soon.

Jul

Droid X HDMI-Out Is Crippled To Play Only Videos Or Display Photos Taken On The Device

Posted by David Ruddock in Droid X (Shadow), Motorola, Verizon Wireless

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

In a blog radio interview with a Motorola developer, when asked about how the Droid X’s HDMI-out could be used, the following answer was given by the Moto dev:

"The only time that we are enabling the HDMI driver on the device is when you are in the gallery mode. [...] The HDMI driver is not active any time outside the gallery"

As Android users are aware, gallery is the native photo and recorded video viewing application on Android devices. The mechanism of controlling the HDMI-out on the Droid X remains unknown, but for the time being it appears that, without root, the Droid X’s HDMI out is extremely limited in its usefulness.