02
Apr
Motorola Droid 2.1 rooted

Motorola Droid 2.1 Already Rooted, Get Yours Now (With A Catch)

Posted by in Development, Droid (Sholes), Motorola, News
Last Updated: August 1st, 2012

A day barely passed since the over-the-air (OTA) Android 2.1 update for the Motorola Droid was converted into a simple download installable without having to wait your turn in Verizon's rollout line, and we're already getting word on the 2.1 firmware getting rooted.

Speeddymon over at AllDroid.org forums, together with one Zinx Verituse have figured out a way to root the new version of the OS (2.1) by slightly tweaking the update.zip file that is used to upgrade the Droid from 2.0.1. to 2.1.

Note that this root method only works when updating from an unrooted 2.0.1.

If you already upgraded to 2.1, you have to revert back to stock 2.0.1 first and then apply the update below.

31
Mar
Motorola Droid

Don't Wait For Verizon To Update Your Droid To 2.1 - Do It Yourself And Do It Now

Posted by in Development, Droid (Sholes), Motorola, News, Tips & Tutorials, Verizon Wireless

Yesterday, Verizon released the Motorola Droid 2.1 update schedule which turned out to be so drawn out that by the end of it, we would have seen Android 5.0 (OK, not really but it could take 2-3 weeks).

Who wants to wait this long? It didn't take long for some smart folks over at AndroidForums to figure out where the update was located on Google's servers and provide instructions on how to accomplish it in a few easy steps. Here they are:

If you have rooted your phone, the 2.1 update will unroot you back.

 

  1. Download https://android.clients.google.com/updates/voles/signed-voles-ESE81-from-ESD56.fa406da6.zip onto your computer.

30
Mar
Motorola Droid Android 2.1

Updated: Verizon Finally Starts Upgrading All Motorola Droid Users to Android 2.1 Today, Pinky Swears This Time

Posted by in Droid (Sholes), Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

Earlier today Verizon started rolling out the long awaited and repeatedly delayed Android 2.1 upgrade to the selected few Motorola Droid customers - 1,000 to be exact.

The Rollout

According to the internal document obtained by Android Central, the rollout schedule is the following:

  • the first 1,000 very lucky Droid owners should have already gotten their OTA (over the air) updates today, March 30th, at 9AM PST/noon EST.
    If you are one of the lucky few, please share your experience with us, as soon as you stop calling all your friends to share the joy but right before you go on a spree of making fun of all the Hero owners with their ancient 1.5s.

26
Mar
Android statistics

Android Usage Skyrockets Across The Board In February 2010 - Apple, RIM, Palm, Nokia Fall

Posted by in CLIQ / DEXT (Morrison), Dream, Droid (Sholes), G1 (Dream), G2 (Vision), Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Magic, Motorola, myTouch 3G (Magic), News

AdMob, one of the world's largest mobile advertisement networks, posted a report (PDF) yesterday citing various mobile related statistics for the period of February 2009 to February 2010.

We've looked through all the boring stuff and pulled out the interesting highlights (you all like highlights, don't you?).

The Highlights

Here are the highlights that we've cherry picked out of it for you (the data is year-over-year where applicable):

  • AdMob currently serves over 15,000 mobile websites and applications and has received 14.1 billion (!) requests worldwide in the last year
  • The number of smartphones went up 13% from 35% to 48%
  • Smartphone traffic overall went up 193% (data transferred, number of requests)
  • Non-smartphone phones share went down 23% from 58% to 35% (yup, soon everyone is going to have an PreiDroidberry of sorts)
  • Android was the fastest growing operating system, up 22% from 2% to 24% (!!!)
  • The top 5 Android devices by traffic were:
    • Motorola Droid
    • HTC Dream (G1)
    • HTC Hero
    • HTC Magic (MyTouch 3G)
    • Motorola CLIQ
  • Among the number of requests from smartphones, all non-Android devices posted a decline while all Android ones were up (except for the G1, which was the first generation Android and doesn't really count).

25
Mar
Motorola robot screen test

MOTO Labs Team Hires C-3PO To Perform Screen Accuracy Tests. iPhone, N1, Eris Best; Droid, Pre, Storm 2 Worst

Posted by in Droid (Sholes), Eris, HTC, Motorola, News, Nexus One (Passion), Videos

Did you know Motorola has a Labs team that does cool things and then blogs about them? They're pretty cool like that. Correction: interesting piece of trivia - did you know MOTO Labs actually has nothing to do with Motorola? With a name like MOTO, one could think… well never mind, I apologize for the mistake.

The Finger Test

For example, in January they tested the screens on 4 flagship mobile phones by swiping a finger across the screen in a drawing app and recording the resulting patterns, complete with photos and a video.

The phones in the first test were:

  • Apple iPhone
  • HTC Droid Eris
  • Motorola Droid
  • Google Nexus One

The iPhone won with the straightest lines (no surprise here - the iPhone screen feels like butter), Eris and N1 were *kind of* accurate and the Motorola Droid was the most inaccurate.

Page 17 of 17«First...10...1314151617