fix - 5/7 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Apr

ATRIX 4G OTA Update Change Log Shows HSUPA And Call Quality Fixes, Coming Soon

Posted by David Ruddock in Atrix 4G (Olympus), Motorola, News

ATRIX 4G users rejoice - HSUPA will soon be here, and without any sort of hacky flashing requiring root access. The official Motorola update page for the ATRIX 4G's latest OTA, 4.1.83, has appeared on Motorola's website today. Here's the change log "highlights" according to Moto:

Data Speed
Increased speed at which data can travel on the network.

Data Connection
Improvements to prevent interruptions to data connection.

Screen
Improvements to prevent screen from freezing.

Email
Improved ability for users to receive email notifications so you know when you have a new message. Also, improvements were made so that you are now able to use the same email login to access both MOTOBLUR™ and YouTube.

Apr

Tiamat Kernel Adds SD Card Support To Motorola XOOM, Modders Show Up Google Once Again

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Development, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless, XOOM

The XOOM's currently nonfunctional microSD card slot has likely turned off many a potential buyer, but – if you're willing to take your chances with unofficial software from the Android dev community – the problem has finally been solved.

The solution comes by way of an update to Tiamat, a custom kernel from XDA member bigrushdog. Installation is more or less identical to any other kernel, but if you need instructions, knock yourself out:

1. Reboot into the bootloader by running:
adb reboot bootloader
2. Flash the boot image to your boot partition, then boot back into Android by running:
fastboot flash boot boot.img
fastboot reboot
3.

Apr

PowerAMP Updated With App To SD, Dolby/SRS Support, Open API For Developers

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Apps/Games, Development, News

The popular Android music player PowerAMP received an update this morning with new features and numerous bug fixes. Take a look at the change log below:

New:
- PowerAMP now has open API for 3rd party developers. Please check PowerAMP site for reference, samples, and complete Widget Pack sources
- PowerAMP now can be moved to SD card. You can still use PowerAMP widgets if you install PowerAMP Standard Widget Pack
- added Dolby/SRS support for HTC Desire HD (and few other HTC phones with Dolby/SRS) (Equalizer => DHD button)
- added song number/total counter (Settings => Look And Feel Tweaks => Show Track Counter)
- auto-advance option for queue (Settings => Auto-Advance Settings)
- PowerAMP now re-shuffles lists on repeat
- playlist/queue reordering can be now toggled on/off via special icon in list headers
- PowerAMP now shows embed lyrics from tags in its Album Art area.

Mar

N64oid, Nintendo 64 Emulator For Android, Was Not Taken Down - It's On Hiatus Pending Performance Improvements

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

When the Nintendo 64 emulator first came out, many users were overcome with joy - it was the first and only emulator for Android, and nostalgia was overwhelming. However, a short time after, N64oid simply disappeared. Worried threads popped up around the Internet, and with today's disappearance of PSX4Droid, we couldn't help but wonder whether the two incidents are related.

You can breathe easy though - N64oid is safe, at least according to a few people who received responses from the developer regarding the disappearance. The truth is, due to some compatibility and performance complaints, yongzh, the developer, made a decision to pull over into a pit stop and give the app a bit of a tune-up.

Mar

ATRIX 4G To Receive First OTA Update - Doesn't Include HSUPA Or Call Quality Fixes, But You Can Sign Up To Test It

Posted by David Ruddock in Atrix 4G (Olympus), Motorola, News

Motorola is preparing to release its first over-the-air update for the ATRIX 4G (beta signup link here, open until Friday at 12PM EST), which should be exciting news for owners of the device, though it may end up inspiring more angst than joy.

The ATRIX 4G has been known in particular for two problems since its release: first, a lack of HSUPA (high speed upload) support in the software and, second, poor voice quality on phone calls. Motorola has promised to address both of these issues - just not right now. Moto has yet to release the change log for the incoming update, but the admin on the Moto forums who posted on it has made it a point to confirm that neither of the ATRIX's biggest annoyances are being taken care of in the impending release.

Feb

Twidroyd Returns To Android After Twitter Ban

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Twitter's banhammer of UberMedia's properties - Twidroyd, UberTwitter, and UberCurrent - caused a bit of an uproar and panic on Friday, but both companies quickly issued their statements on the matter. Twitter clarified that UberMedia's apps were violating policies and trademarks, while UberMedia promised to release an update fixing the problems as soon as possible.

Here is what Twidroyd clients were seeing on Friday:

Over the weekend, the team behind Twidroyd came up with all the necessary fixes to the app to make Twitter happy again and released an update v5.0.2:

To our delight, things indeed seem to be back to normal, but we'll see if Twitter is satisfied for good when its engineers return to work on Monday (or Tuesday, since the U.S.

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

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.

Jan

HTC EVO 4G: Fix Music Streaming And (Maybe) Boost Your 3G Speeds With A Simple Hack

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

This morning, I noticed an interesting thread in the EVO subsection of the XDA forums that claimed to be able to fix music streaming (which was broken in some apps after the latest OTA), while boosting 3G speeds by .2 to .6 Mbps. As the process is very simple and easily reversible, I gave it a go - but decided that I was going to use SpeedTest to benchmark the changes. Unfortunately, what I found wasn't what I expected.

Before doing anything, I ran the test three times. Before the fix my average download speed was 938.67 Kbps. After I ran the fix, my speed dropped to an average of 782 Kbps.

Jan

Nexus One 2.2.2 And Nexus S 2.3.2 OTAs Rolling Out - Hath The SMS Bug Finally Been Conquered?

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Froyo 2.2, Gingerbread 2.3, HTC, News, Nexus One (Passion), Nexus S (Crespo/Soju), Samsung

As disappointing as it may be to see the Nexus One - Google's first officially anointed developer phone - still getting Froyo-based updates, that's exactly what just happened. According to several Android Central forums members, a 558kb update to Android 2.2.2 (or build number FRG83G) is currently rolling out over the air to the N1, bringing "important bug fixes" with it.

In related news, the Samsung-built Nexus S - Google's second developer phone - also received an update today, though this one is Gingerbread-based. Its version number is 2.3.2, and, coincidentally, it is also said to bring "important bug fixes."

So here's the question: Given the fact that the two updates are rolling out at almost exactly the same time with the exact same description, could they both contain a fix to the infamous SMS bug?