16
Nov
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How To: Root, Enable 3rd Party Apps, And Establish ADB Access On The Kindle Fire

Posted by in Amazon, Applications, Development, Gingerbread 2.3, Kindle Fire, News, Tablets

The Kindle Fire, Amazon’s content-subsidized tablet, has been arriving to the delight of people all across the U.S. The heavily-skinned Gingerbread Android device has left many questions in the minds of the Android and Gadget community. For instance, will we be able to install apps outside of the Amazon Appstore? How about using adb? And, of course, the most important question of all - can the Fire be rooted?

If you remember, Amazon said it wouldn't do anything special to prevent rooting or interfere with those who want to customize their devices in other ways (although the status of the bootloader is unknown at this time).

28
Jul
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BootManager Allows You To Install Up To 5 ROMs On One Device, Flashaholics Rejoice

Posted by in Applications, Development, Droid (Sholes), EVO 4G (Supersonic), News, Thunderbolt (Mecha)

Not content to wait for manufacturers to get in to shape and update our phones to the latest and greatest versions of Android, most of us here at Android Police have had a brush with a number of custom ROMs in the past.

Whether it's the latest version of Cyanogen or a more obscure mod, there is always a ROM floating around on my phone, and until now I've always had to uninstall one before installing the other. Fortunately, that's about to change thanks to a new application on the Market called BootManager.

This article deals with a couple of advanced topics.

25
Jul
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Still Waiting For The OTA? Don't Be - Update Your Sprint Nexus S 4G To Official Android 2.3.5 Manually (Build GRJ90)

Posted by in News, Nexus S 4G (Crespo4g), Samsung, Sprint

After 2 weeks of delays, the much anticipated Nexus S 4G update (Sprint only for now, sorry AT&T/T-Mo) to Android 2.3.5 (GRJ90) started rolling out earlier today. If you haven't gotten yours yet but want to apply it immediately to enjoy that nice boost to 4G speeds, among other things, then proceed to our instructions below - you'll be rocking the official 2.3.5 build in no time.

Instructions

Note: Make sure you're running stock Android 2.3.4, build GRJ22 (the update will likely fail if you're rooted).

  1. Download the update file GRJ90-from-GRJ22 and rename it to update.zip (make sure it's named update.zip and not update.zip.zip if you're using Windows and have it set to hide file extensions).

25
Jul
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[Neat] Android Web Market Now Shows Handy Charts Of App Install Histories

Posted by in Apps/Games, News

In a quiet update to the web Market, Google today rolled out these handy charts showing on each app page a 30-day history of installs. The charts can help gauge relative popularity of a given app throughout the last 30 days of its existence, but are relatively basic and not very practical.

Still, we'll take any addition to the Market that doesn't make it worse. I suppose it's actually kind of fun to see what effects new releases, updates, and promotional campaigns have on applications - for example, take a look at the chart of SwiftKey X, which recently went through a major revamp.

19
Jun
8

Official Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) Build Leaked For Samsung Fascinate, Now Available For Download And Install

Posted by in Android OS, Fascinate, Gingerbread 2.3, News, Verizon Wireless

P3Droid of MyDroidWorld has scored an early (debug) Gingerbread build for the Samsung Fascinate, and it's apparently quite polished. So far P3 and Justin (of AndIRC) are the only two to have laid hands on the build, but the issues they have found are that Tetris force closes, Google Maps isn't pre-installed, and some market apps don't show. Otherwise, they say it's a very solid build. P3 has provided a quick (37 second) video preview:

Justin was also kind enough to snap a few quick photos:

1 5 6

7 8

Ready to take the dive? Hit up the source for instructions and download links.

18
May
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[Updated] Google Rolling Out Fix For Wi-Fi Security Vulnerability To All Affected Android Devices

Posted by in Android OS, Development, News, Tips & Tutorials

Well, that only took one media firestorm. Google, in response to widespread reports of a potential credential security hole in Android (which not only affects Android, but any OS using authTokens), is starting to roll out a fix for the public Wi-Fi vulnerability to all affected Android devices today. Google's statement, below:

Today we’re starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts. This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days.

The vulnerability could only be exploited on public Wi-Fi networks - either by a sniffing attack, or SSID spoofing (a much more common method), and allowed an attacker to take a user's authToken for a particular service (eg, Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), and then use it to log in to the respective service and engage in whatever unscrupulous behavior they so desired.

04
May
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[Updated 5/4/11] Don't Wait For The OTA - Update Your Nexus S To Android 2.3.4 Manually (GRI40 Or GRI54 -> GRJ22)

Posted by in Gingerbread 2.3, News, Nexus S (Crespo/Soju), Samsung
Last Updated: July 26th, 2011

Wow, this didn't take long at all - the Android 2.3.4 update for the Samsung Nexus S that we were afraid would take a couple of weeks to surface, has already shown up and is ready to be flashed to your Nexus S running 2.3.3 (GRI40 or GRI54).

Just like before, manual update instructions couldn't be simpler, so why wait for your device to be updated OTA (who knows when that will happen) when you can do it all by yourself and get that Google Talk video and voice chat right here and now?

Note: If you don't have GRI40 (2.3.3) or GRI54 (also 2.3.3) and instead have GRH78 (2.3.1) or GRH78C (2.3.2), then head over here and install GRI40 first, then proceed below.

02
May
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Nexus One Owners, It's Your Turn - Download Android 2.3.4 Now (GRI40 -> GRJ22)

Posted by in Development, Gingerbread 2.3, HTC, News, Nexus One (Passion)

Nexus One owners, tonight you're getting a nice treat in the form of the incremental Gingerbread update 2.3.4, previously available only to Nexus S owners. To recap, the main feature in this release is the video and audio enabled Google Talk, although since the N1 lacks a front-facing camera, it's not going to be as useful as it was for the Nexus S.

Update: Err, looks like there is no video or audio support in this release at all, according to those of you with Nexus Ones. Why Google didn't just disable the phone's camera and left it a one-way video and two-way audio is beyond me, but at this point you may as well try the Gtalk version that was extracted from the Nexus S for everyone with Gingerbread to play with.

12
Apr
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Race To The Top - Google Maps Is The First Android App To Ever Pass 50 Million Downloads

Posted by in Applications, News

While Google Maps already made headlines today for omitting the changelog in the latest update, causing hundreds of 1-star comments, it does have a reason to celebrate, which overshadows this snafu by a long shot. The 50,000,000 installation mark, never before achieved by any app in the Market, has been reached, and by none other than Google Maps, making it the most downloaded Android application ever.

It's no surprise - the absolute brilliance of the Maps team helped create a product which wows first-time users, single-handedly lures them over to Android, and keeps innovating time and time again. Who needs a standalone GPS device when you've got Google Maps?

27
Feb
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Quick How To & Hands-On: Get The Stunning Honeycomb Boot Animation On Your Rooted Android Device

Posted by in Development, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

Last night, I spotted a tweet from simms22 linking to a video of the Honeycomb boot animation on a CM7ed Nexus S. This morning I awoke to a tweet from him with a link to download it. Update: about an hour ago, simms notified me that the original animation is the work of XDA member zul8er, and tnpapadakos then released an updated (fixed) version.

sims22_hcomb_boot

I think this is the first time I've ever seen his pretend pervertedness actually pan out.

And indeed, sexy it is. For those who missed the boot animation the first go-round, we were impressed the when we saw it earlier this month on the XOOM, and it looks just as good scaled down.

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