Brian O'Toole
Contributing since August, 2010
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173articles
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About Brian O'Toole
Having learnt his writing techniques reading e-Books of Sherlock Holmes, Brian now spends his time /kicking, lurking, SSHing and encoding.
Latest Articles
Just when you thought your torment was over, Rovio have struck back with a glut of new levels. Some pigs just never learn, do they? Also included in the update is proper QVGA support, a dour-looking boulder bird, as well as fixes for some graphical issues. Best part about it? Rovio haven't removed the bug found on reddit that allows you to skip locked worlds, so you can go straight to these new levels even if you haven't passed the worlds before it.
People want to own their phones. Try as they might to frustrate their customers, networks and manufacturers are fighting a losing battle against the hacking community. The latest victory is an enormous one: the HTC Vision, better known as the T-Mobile G2 and Desire Z has finally been defeated. That pesky eMMC chip locking up the /system of the G2 has been circumvented, and full, glorious, permanent root has been attained:
It's been but a few weeks since Opera's announcement of Opera Mobile for Android at their Up North Web conference, and now the browser is out there navigating the maze of tubes that is the Internet. While they didn't quite meet their "within the month (October)" promise, we can forgive them for wanting to polish things a little further.
The Nexus One may be growing long in the tooth, but it's still surely one of the most active phones when it comes to development. Hence this hack should come as a surprise to no-one: T-Mobile's WiFi-Calling functionality has been extracted from one Vanilla Froyo running device (the G2) and injected into another, the one and only Google Phone. While this will obviously only work on N1s on the T-Mobile network, it comes as a welcome distraction to those of us waiting for the imminent Gingerbread OTA.
If you're a Vibrant owner interested in custom ROMs, then today is your lucky day. With their Éclair ROM amassing a 400-page thread in under a month, it's safe to say that Team Whiskey's new Obsidian release is going to draw the crowds. Posted on XDA-Developers just moments ago, let's take a look at just what this ROM has to offer:
Launched to much hyperbole back in September, Google Instant is now making the transition from your desktop browser to your mobile device. Those of you graced with the goodness of Froyo can now experience the same mind-melding AJAX tomfoolery on your handset as you do on a computer. As in the desktop version, Instant is an optional function and you can easily switch it on and off right from the search page. You may have also noticed that it requires significantly faster internet connection speeds to work properly, so in the case of a mobile device you're probably best sticking to using it only on WiFi or in strong 3G/4G areas.
Good news, developers: Google is finally giving you the opportunity to formally submit a description of changes to your app in its latest version. Many devs were doing this in the description field already, but were constrained by the character limit in place. This new option frees up some space in the description for ... well, further description, and is sure to please some application developers out there. No sign of the ability to respond to user comments, though, sorry.
Google Maps was updated to version 4.60 last week, and you may not have noticed it on the surface, but contained inside were some interesting resources providing an early glimpse at the style direction Gingerbread is set to take. Freenode IRC member canadiancow rather astutely spotted that there was a folder contained within the 4.60 APK that included icons and styling for API level 9, whilst we're currently on level 8 with Froyo. He changed all references to level 9 down to level 8 and recompiled the APK, and voilà, this is what Maps will look like (on left):
You're probably aware of one of the slightly more irksome facets of the G2 that is stymying attempts at custom ROMs, namely the locked down /system partition, where the OS is kept. Heretofore it has been impossible to tinker with this internal memory in a permanent fashion. All alterations were reverted on the next boot, leading to solutions like Paul O'Brien's VISIONary soft-root.
Well, let it not be said that HTC are ignoring the hardships of Desire HD early-adopters. Merely a fortnight after its release to retail, the Desire HD is receiving its second over-the-air update. While the first one promised "screen control and photo message compatibility enhancements", that clearly wasn't enough, as today's update once again addresses "screen control" issues whilst also solving a hitch with crashing of the YouTube app.
Samsung's got an event coming up on November 8th. Some of you out there may be pretty convinced at this stage that we'll be hearing of a phone named something like "In Excess" at this event, but that's all up in the air right now. What is pretty certain, however, is that we'll get an announcement of Samsung's previously-pictured Continuum, a dual-screen take on the Galaxy S line.
Fresh on this HTC's servers this morning we have the source code for the latest G2, DZ and Dinc kernels, along with source code for their respective WebKit browsers. While this news may not be much help to those still desperate for a G2 perm-root, it should come in handy once an easy solution for that is achieved, as it will facilitate the creation of custom ROMs for the G2 (and Desire Z). While you wait for that happy day, feel free to peruse the freely available source code for HTC's pair of landscape sliders.
While many of us would be happy to have any kind of Galaxy Tab at all, there's a certain breed who won't rest until they've eviscerated their latest electronic acquisition for the greater good. One such fellow is Finnish mobility blogger JKK at jkkmobile.com, who took it upon himself to dismantle his shiny new tablet and show its insides to all and sundry.
A couple of days ago, French company 3qubits unveiled their unique take on what they imagined touchscreen keyboards of the future would look like. Starting with the notion that a full QWERTY layout could never fit properly on a handheld touchscreen device, they set about creating something entirely different. What they came up with is 8pen, which was released to the Android Market moments ago.
You may recall Artem's preview post last week, where he showed off the latest in slick Android music players. Well, no longer are you at the mercy of filesharing site download limits, as PowerAMP build 204 is now available in the rather more dependable Android Marketplace. Cough.
While they may not quite have the buzz that Samsung's Galaxy Tab is generating, there has been still been plenty of interest in Archos's 2010 line of Android tablets - particularly among those who like to hold on to their money. Archos's pricing has traditionally been one of the hardware's most attractive points, and this year's "Generation 8" is no exception.
We're big fans of Faruq Rasid's QuickDesk utility around here. Well, hot off the presses we have news of a "Pro" version hitting the market. Along with drag-up-to-kill for applications running in the QuickPanel drawer, QuickDesk 0.4 Pro also brings support for landscape orientation. Rather than rearranging your portrait layout, the landscape implementation offers a whole new screen where you can fit 6 x 3 icons in the widescreen aspect.
If there's one thing about Android that's really been coming along lately, it's gaming. We've already seen great games like MiniSquadron!, Angry Birds, and Reckless Racing make good impressions, and now we have another cause to celebrate. Following on from the news of an imminent Cut The Rope release for Android, we have this illuminating tweet from id Software co-founder John Carmack, confirming what has been the wish of many since way back in August:
While all you Americans slept, Acer took the wraps off its latest Android handset, the Liquid Metal, over here in Europe. Sporting Acer's custom Breeze UI, the Liquid Metal runs Android 2.2 atop an 800 MHz processor. The MSM7230 CPU is a whopping 32 MHz higher than the 768 MHz of the original Liquid's QSD8250 Snapdragon, but this 800 MHz core is the same Scorpion processor that powers the rather lovely T-Mobile G2. If the G2's performance is any indication, this processor is no slouch (particularly when overclocked), so things are looking quite nice indeed for the Liquid Metal in terms of smoothness of operation.
As you may have noticed over the last couple of days, the Android Market hasn't been doing too well. Downloads have started, and then failed, failed to start, started to fail, and just generally failed in every imaginable way. There once was a time when clearing such-and-such cache would fix this sporadic issue, but it seems that even this black magic no longer suffices. Threads have been popping up all over the Android-tinted corners of the 'net with people unable to download anything from the Market.