News - 859/939 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Sep

Box.net App Lands In The Android Market

Posted by Brad Ganley in Applications, News

Last Updated: July 2nd, 2011

The official app for Box.net made its entrance into the Android market today, giving you a powerful alternative to Dropbox. While the free service offered by Box.net only offers half as much storage capacity as Dropbox (1GB), the Business offering ($15/mo) gives you a litany of awesome features that Dropbox just can't touch.

Official press release follows:

Palo Alto, Calif. – September 23, 2010 – Cloud content management provider Box.net today announced that its Android app is now available for free on the Android Marketplace. The Box for Android app makes it easy for users to access, share and manage their business content on-the-go from all devices that support Android OS 2.0 and above, including the HTC Droid Incredible, Motorola Droid X and Samsung’s Galaxy S series.

Sep

Apple, Motorola, And HTC Land Top Spots In JD Power Smartphone Satisfaction

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Devices By Manufacturer, HTC, Motorola, News, Off-Topic, Samsung

A bit off topic as there's nothing directly Android-related here, but interesting nonetheless: JD Power & Associates has released their findings for the Q2 2010 Wireless Smartphone Satisfaction Study, and Apple, Motorola, and HTC have grabbed the top spots (respectively), all landing above the industry average of 764 points (out of 1000).

Coming in below average? RIM (Blackberry), Samsung, Palm, and in last place, Nokia (note: not all companies are shown, just the big dogs). The results are still fairly close, though - Apple (at #1) scored 800, while Nokia (last, #7) scored 711 - certainly not a lot of variation.

Sep

T-Mobile G2 Pre-Order Now Live For Existing T-Mobile Customers - $199.99, Order By October 4th For Delivery By The 6th

Posted by Brad Ganley in G2 (Vision), News

As promised and exactly on time, the pre-order page for the upcoming T-Mobile G2 has gone live on T-Mobile's website. Unfortunately, it looks like only existing T-Mobile customers are allowed to submit their preorders, with everyone else being left to dry for now.

The upcoming flagship Android phone will cost you $199.99 after a mail-in rebate on a contract or $499.99 without. That is inline with Best Buy's preorder deal from 2 weeks ago and $50 more than Radioshack's preorder, which is currently the best deal available.

Those in need of a refresher on this bad boy's specs can find them below:

Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ MSM7230 mobile processor
Slide-out QWERTY keyboard, unique Z-hinge design
Android 2.2 OS
3.7” S-TFT WVGA display
512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal memory
8-GB SD card, expandable to 32 GB
5-megapixel camera with LED flash and autofocus
720p HD video capture
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR + A2DP stereo
3.5-mm stereo headset
4.68” (L) x 2.38” (W) x .58” (H)
Weight: 6.5 ounces
Included battery: 1300 mAh Li-ion
Talk time: up to 6.5 hours
Standby time: up to 17.5 days

Whether you will want to reserve now or try to wait for deals which Amazon Wireless and Wirefly will undoubtedly launch soon is up to you.

Sep

Under The Radar: HTC’s DLNA Companion Box Lets You Wirelessly Stream To Your TV

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Devices By Manufacturer, HTC, News

In the excitement of HTC’s unveiling of the Desire HD and Desire Z in London, we missed out on this sweet little gadget. HTC announced plans to release a Media Link wireless DLNA adaptor in Q4 2010, as a companion piece to its continued expansion of the Sense experience.

Credit: SlashGear

What this little box purports to do is allow you to stream media from your DLNA-equipped phone to a suitable TV, irrespective of whether that TV has DLNA or not. There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot to the device: plug in the microUSB power cable, and connect the box to your display with the mini HDMI output.

Sep

Mozilla's Stunning Seabird Mobile Phone Concept - This Is What Dreams Are Made Of [VIDEO]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News, Off-Topic, Videos

Last Updated: August 13th, 2011

Folks, I wish I could have the pleasure of telling you that what you're about to see is available now or even that it will be available in the next couple of years. Unfortunately, at this stage, this Seabird mobile phone concept, designed by Billy May for Mozilla, is just a dream. A dream, so beautifully projected in this video that it made me feel both sadness and happiness, inspiration and despair, awe and... well, you'll know what I mean after you watch it.

Without further ado, allow me to introduce Seabird:

If you happen to have 3D glasses, Billy May put together a 3D version of this video, available here.

Sep

Fresh ROM 3.3.0.1 Based On The Latest EVO 4G OTA 3.29.651.5 Now Available For Download

Posted by Brad Ganley in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), News

Last night we posted about Flipzmod3's caffeine-fueled rampage on the new OTA update for the HTC EVO. The OTA got rooted really-really fast, and now we have a fully-working, stable ROM based on it.

Last night, flipz, the author of Fresh ROM, sent out a test version of Fresh ROM 3.3.0 to all the donors/testers, and we did our job well. We nitpicked every tiny little bug, and the result is that tiny little .1 at the end of the public release flipz announced this morning, with fixes for all known bugs. Here's the changelog so you know what to expect going from Fresh 3.2 to 3.3.0.1:

Changes from Fresh Evo 3.2.0.0 to 3.3.0.1:

Based on a new Sprint OTA (3.29.651.5)

New kernel by HTC (ge2fb08e)
Modified slightly to allow apps2sd and remount to work

Has fps unlocked by default, straight from HTC’s source!

Sep

T-Mobile G2 Pre-Orders Starting Tomorrow For Existing Customers?

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in G2 (Vision), HTC, News, T-Mobile

We already knew it was coming soon thanks to T-Mobile's own online store, but only know has TmoNews discovered that "soon" could mean as early as tomorrow.

That's right, if this internal screenshot proves to be anything more than an image crudely put together in Photoshop, existing T-Mobile customers will be able to pre-order the device starting September 24 and ending October 4. The offer will, apparently, be available at "select" T-Mobile retail stores, through "Care upgrades," and, of course, online at the T-Mobile's dedicated G2 website.

While there is no mention of pricing (although there does appear to be a "Pricing" link in the screenshot), let's not forget the fact that Best Buy will be selling the device for $199 upfront on a new two-year contract, and Radio Shack will be shaving $50 off of that.

Sep

Verizon’s Motorola Droid X Froyo Update Causing Issues?

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Droid X (Shadow), Froyo 2.2, News, Verizon Wireless

After we posted that Verizon had begun their rollout of the Froyo update for the Droid X yesterday, a number of people told us they were having issues with music and ringtones on their devices. As this seems to be more than an isolated incident, we pinged Verizon to check if they were aware of the issue or had anything in the works. Unfortunately, all we received back was a curt "We're looking into it."

It doesn't seem to be affecting more than a minor percentage of users, so it's likely most people updated without a hiccup. Still, this is the only time we've had multiple users complain of the same bug on an update (at least, in recent memory).

Sep

Want Sense On Your Non-HTC Device? Download The Sense Theme For ADWLauncher

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, Devices By Manufacturer, News

XDA-Devs forum member JAguirre1231 has put together a theme for ADWLauncher that makes it look pretty similar to the Sense UI launcher found on HTC devices. Unfortunately, at this point only MDPI devices are supported (for those who don't know, MDPI is for lower-resolution phones, while HDPI is for phones such as the EVO, Epic, and Droid series). However, JAguirre says in the thread that he's planning on making an HDPI version as well.

Installation is more complex than ADW themes found in the Market, but still isn't too rough:

Download the .zip (provided at source link), then unzip
Install Sense.apk on your phone
Install ADWLauncher.apk
Place the remaining two files (adw_settings.xml and adb_backup.db) in the root of your SD Card
Import the .xml and .db files by using Restore in ADW

Is it perfect?

Sep

SwiftKey Keyboard, One Of Android's Best Keyboards, Sheds Beta Status, Goes Premium; On Sale For $0.99 Until September 30th, $3.99 After

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

SwiftKey Keyboard has been in beta ever since its introduction to the Android Market a few months ago. Having tried Swype, I also jumped on SwiftKey to give it a fair shot and ended up sticking with it. Yes, it was that good.

SwiftKey is different from other keyboards because it uses predictive recognition based on both tons of statistical information and your own typing habits. In fact, you can make whole sentences without typing a single key and just picking default suggestions.