27
Aug

The crafty folks over at Droid Dog have just unearthed another secret buried deep in the G2's source code: a Google Voice widget.

They claim that it looks a lot like this:

and displays the amount of money in your Google Voice account, a compose message button, settings for Voice, a button for quick access to your inbox, and a button to turn Voice off.

Droid Dog is also reporting that the G2 will come with "just about every Google app available for Android," right out of the box. Then again, it's always better to have Google Translate pre-installed on your phone than AT&T Navigator (you know, that useless navigator that comes with all AT&T Android phones and essentially duplicates Google Navigator's functionality), right?

26
Aug

Sure, FroYo for the Droid Incredible was out and about this morning, and FroYo for the original Droid rolled out a while ago, and now we've got even more update news, this time for owners of the original Droid.

If you recall, (don't worry, I don't either) the first FroYo update for the original Droid brought many things, but downloading Adobe Flash player from the Market was not among them. Well, according to an email sent from Verizon to Engadget, a second OTA update will be rolling out soon that will enable the download.

Anyone seeing the update on their OG Droid yet?

26
Aug
dinc_ruu_about_software_screen

[Update @ 1:10 PM EST by Aaron] Looks like the update is rolling out starting tomorrow. Nice!

incredible-froyo-update

Despite the fact that FroYo for the Droid Incredible's big brother - Sprint's  EVO 4G - was officially released a few weeks ago, the Incredible itself has yet to receive the update.

dinc_ruu_about_software_screen widget_list_4

We still don't have an official release date (although there are countless rumors floating around), but we may now be one step closer: a new FroYo ROM for the Incredible has been released. It isn't clear whether this is a leaked version of the update that will (hopefully) be rolling out over the air soon, or if this is just something put together based on another device's update.

26
Aug
unrevoked
Last Updated: December 15th, 2010

This method is majorly out of date. Generally, every update breaks the current root method, and a new one must be found. By now, this is 3-4 cycles old. Please check XDA-Developers forums or unrevoked for alternate (and current) methods.

This one is sure to make plenty of people happy: it looks like there's finally a root method for the latest EVO OTA. The method was discovered by XDA-Devs user Dan Wager and is based on Sebastian Krahmer's Droid 2 root - although this seems to achieve root by downgrading to Android 2.1 and flashing unrevoked. Just like the Droid 2 root, the method is new and thus still pretty complex:

Make sure your phone is unplugged from your computer until I tell you to plug it in!

25
Aug
Last Updated: October 22nd, 2011

General Overview

The original Droid was a revolutionary phone, not just because it saved Motorola from certain bankruptcy but also because it revealed the wonders of Android to the masses.

For the first time, an Android device was being marketed in a way that appealed to an average American. Not only that - the Droid was Google’s officially anointed Jesus phone, up until the Nexus One came along, meaning it was the first to get Android 2.0, the first to get Google Navigation, etc.

That sets a pretty high bar for the Droid 2, and if you read our review roundup, you already know that most other bloggers thought that, while it is certainly a worthy successor to the most popular Android phone ever, it doesn’t raise the bar or set a new standard for Droids going forward.

23
Aug
moto cliq

No phone manufacturer is as fast with software updates as customers would like them to be, but Motorola has been particularly bad, especially with some of their MOTOBLUR phones which are still stuck on Android 1.5. But they do seem to be taking a step forward with a new timeline that lists when each of their phones around the world will be receiving updates to a later version of Android.

USA

BACKFLIP (USA)
Upgrade to Android 2.1 planned for Q3

CLIQ (USA)
Upgrade to Android 2.1 - testing in process, planned for late Q3/early Q4

CLIQ XT (USA)
Upgrade to Android 2.1 - testing in process, planned for late Q3/early Q4

DEVOUR (USA)
Will not have a software upgrade to Android 2.1

DROID by Motorola (USA)
Upgrade to Android 2.2 currently rolling out in phases

DROID X by Motorola (USA)
Upgrade to Android 2.2 planned for late summer.

20
Aug
p3droid_Xfroyo5

MyDroidWorld has scored a big one today: they’ve hosted the Droid X Froyo ROM, thanks to the hard work of P3Droid, Birdman, and rootzwiki. Installation seems relatively simple, and boy is it a popular download: their server was bombarded with 15,000 download requests shortly after posting it.

p3droid_Xfroyo1

p3droid_Xfroyo2

Installation seems rather simple, assuming you're rooted and are running stock recovery:

p3droid_Xfroyo3

p3droid_Xfroyo4

They’ve hosted the file with MediaFire since it seems to have crashed their servers.

Unfortunately, we don’t really have any details at this point since this just happened, but we’ll update as needed. If anyone takes the jump, be sure to let us know how it goes!

20
Aug
vodafone_desire_froyo

This morning on Vodafone’s forums, a VF employee announced that the Froyo update for the HTC Desire would be rolling out on Monday. We knew it was coming soon - on August 12, we relayed that they expected it to roll out in 7-10 days - sans crapware. The update is rolling out a bit later than expected (August 23 would be 11 days) because they wanted to make sure they’d worked out all the kinks. Vodafone is hoping to roll out the update to all customers within a two-week timeframe.

In what seems to be an attempt to appease customers who are still pissed off over the Vodafone 360 crapware debacle, they’ve even provided instructions for how to remove it:

Instructions for users who downloaded and now want to remove the Vodafone 360 update (1.24.161.3)

If you have downloaded the Vodafone 360 update and want to remove it from your device, you will need to follow one of these two approaches, depending on whether or not you have accessed and updated the “360 Updates” or “Shop” apps pre-installed in the 1.24.161.3 update.

16
Aug
Firefox
Last Updated: September 15th, 2010

Love Chrome's ChromeToPhone’s functionality? Want to achieve the same in Firefox? The world’s second most popular browser, Firefox, has an extension of its own to send links, images, selected text and clipboard from your computer straight to your Android phone with a click of a button.

To use the feature, you’ll need to:

  1. Download the ChromeToPhone app from the Market (meaning you will need Android 2.2) or by scanning the QR code below
    QR code for http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone/downloads/detail?name=chrometophone-android-v1.7.apk&can=2
  2. Download the Firefox extension, which can be found here.

Quick tip for Froyo users: When you want to fill in that long password of yours, just copy it to clipboard, then right click on the Fox To Phone icon and click "Send Clipboard"

image image

image image

Source: FoxToPhone via @AndroidDev

15
Aug
Last Updated: December 22nd, 2010

As our very own John Thompson said in his hands-on with Dell's Streak, the phone/tablet hybrid has some really nice hardware, like a front-facing camera, a 1 GHz processor, and 512 MB of RAM, but the fact that it runs Android 1.6 is rather disappointing.

Well, the update to Android 2.1 may never see the light of day, as Lionel Menchaca, Dell's official chief blogger, has tweeted the following message, which was just spotted by one of Engadget's tippers:

So there you have it - looks like Dell is scrapping plans to roll out Android 2.1 officially, instead gunning straight for 2.2.