Say what you will about the Android community, but when it comes to some users, they sure like to whine. Take these new Evo 3D and Sensation users who, once again, took to HTC’s Facebook page demanding and making all kinds of threats for HTC to make good on their “unlocked bootloader promise.” What really irks me is that these people haven’t even had their device for more than a few days and rather than celebrate, they’re ready to make good on their 30 day return window.
Rather than keep quiet, HTC actually provided a response to one lucky Facebook user stating,
We are diligently working to ensure that we do this right. When everything is finalized, we will make an announcement on Facebook. Thanks for your patience.
I should note that HTC never specifically mentioned anything about the Sensation and Evo 3D in their unlocked bootloader “future device” plans. Both these devices were pretty much all shipped and ready for retailers once the announcement was made and would have cause a huge delay (and further uproar) for both these devices if sent back for unlocking. But I suppose some people are never happy and no matter what, always feel entitled to things. Keep in mind, although the unlocking process seems easy enough, I’m sure there is a chain of command that most likely involves running all the in’s and out’s of the update by the carriers first. Also, I would much rather HTC focus on prompt OTA’s involving better battery life and bug fixes for the time being.
But while the rest of the world is complaining, I will continue to wait patiently for the update all the while enjoying and showing off my new Evo 3D to the world. Take your time HTC, work on bug fixes and I appreciate your new stance towards unlocked bootloaders. For the time being, the fact that you’re working on it, is good enough for me.
The BlackBerry PlayBook has been on the market for a little over a month now, and while we’ve seen the catalog of PlayBook apps grow, we have yet to see most of the BIG TIME services that sooo many of us use daily on our computers and other mobile devices come to the Tablet OS platform (seriously, I can’t even imagine going back to life without Kindle, Skype, Dropbox or Evernote and desperately want these apps on my PlayBook).
Not wanting to wait around in limbo, PlayBook owners have been reaching out to companies via email, phone and forums since the PlayBook’s launch to find out when these apps are going to become available. The responses have been mixed - some favorable and some that are less than inspiring. For example, the response I received from Skype was that they’re in a "wait and see mode" and "certainly not committing anything at this stage around development for PlayBook." This wait and see mode seems to be a popular trend which means it’s on us CrackBerry Nation to let these companies know that we don’t want to wait for their apps… we need them ASAP!
To that end, CrackBerry forums member technomensch had the inspired idea to startup the BlackBerry PlayBook Applications Initiative thread, which puts into one place all of the user outreach to these companies. Follow the link below to jump over to the thread where you can find out how you can help contribute to the cause and see where these popular companies are at with their PlayBook apps. Let’s make it happen!!
Fujitsu is working on a dual touchscreen phone that’s currently being shown off at MWC running Symbian, but according to unwiredview, the phone will be running Android when released.
The form factor is even funkier than you might initially think: the orientation of the two screens and hinge can be changed by the user.
Although more just a novelty right now, there could be great things in store for dual screen phones. Head on over to unwiredview for more images and a video taken at the MWC.
Sound off below, are you looking forward to a dual touchscreen phone, or not something that you see yourself using?
When it comes to erasing your tracks on the web, nothing is more pernicious and difficult to delete than the Flash-based cookie. Technically known as “local shared objects,” Flash cookies don’t go away when you clear your browser-based cookies. Instead they hang around, potentially collecting data without your knowledge or consent.
To delete Flash cookies you have to navigate through the Flash Player settings dialog. Unfortunately most users don’t know how to do that and Adobe has, until now, put very little effort into simplifying the process (it has at least made Flash respect the “private browsing” mode in modern browsers).
Now Adobe is finally taking some steps toward simplifying the process of deleting Flash cookies. The company has announced it is working on a new API that will allow your browser to delete Flash cookies along with the rest of your cookies. For now only Mozilla and Google are working on the API with Adobe, but presumably Adobe is talking to Microsoft and Apple as well.
While there’s no shipping code at this point, if the API were to make it into Firefox and Chrome it would give users an easy-to-find menu for quickly clearly Flash cookies. Adobe’s blog post says users can expect to see the changes “in the first half of the year.”
The move would no doubt by a small boon to privacy, but as Ars Technica points out, Flash cookies aren’t the only source of hard-to-defeat, persistant online tracking. For instance, the dreaded “evercookie” stores data in no less than 13 places and is nearly impossible for the average user to delete.
Still, for those annoyed at the complexities of deleting Flash cookies, things may soon, thankfully, get a bit simpler.
Miniature Food photo by Stéphanie Kilgast/Flickr/CC
After almost a year since an SMS sending bug that would deliver messages to the wrong recipient was uncovered in the Android operating system, Google is finally working on a fix. Google had been investigating the issue that seemed to spike in occurence last summer, but said it was difficult to reproduce the glitch that occurs pretty rarely.
With some work they did manage to pinpoint the cause of the problem and have developed a fix that should be rolling out to handsets shortly.
The HTML5 Canvas element promises web developers a web-native way to create animations, interactive charts and even full-fledged apps like image editors and complicated games. Canvas may well be the best thing about HTML5. But unfortunately, it can be kind of a pain to work with, especially for those coming from a Flash animation background.
Easel JS is a JavaScript library for working with the HTML5 Canvas element. It was created by developer Grant Skinner and his cohorts at gskinner.com. Skinner is probably best known for his work in Flash, and the Easel Library adds a number of tools that make Canvas a bit more approachable for Flash developers (and everyone else as well).
Canvas’ biggest drawback (compared to Flash or SVG) is that it has no internal concept of display objects. That means you have to manage updates manually (see our earlier posts for some more tips on working with Canvas). The gskinner blog post has some more details on what Easel JS does, but the main points are a core interaction model with a full, hierarchical display list and helper classes to simplify working with Canvas.
Easel JS is currently an alpha release, so proceed with caution. The code is available under the MIT license and full documentation can be found on the docs page. Skinner says that, once Easel reaches the beta stage, the code will be moved to GitHub and opened for outside contributions and improvements.
Rovio, the company behind the cash cow that is Angry Birds, has announced that they are working on an in-app payment system for selling new content without the use of third party software. It seems that Rovio wants to cut out the middle man, which is a pretty intelligent move on their part.
Furthermore, the system would also feature a system for carriers to retrieve a piece of the action as well, perhaps for allowing Rovio to charge the payments directly to the users wireless bill?
This will certainly be an interesting development to follow, and given how insanely popular the game has become, Rovio is poised to make a pretty hefty profit for selling additional content in this way.
Last week we told you that the developers over at XDA were nearing completion on a Gingerbread ROM for the Droid Incredible. Well, it appears that they have done it, and you can now install Gingerbread on a Droid Incredible.
On that note, it is an extremely alpha build with a lot of things still broken. It’s based on the SDK, and it won’t really be ready for general use until the actual Gingerbread source drops. Here are the major bugs that users will have to deal with:
No Sound
No Camera
Bluetooth
If you want to check it out for development purposes, however, hit up the XDA thread for a download link and instructions, and continue after the break for a brief video demonstration of Android 2.3 running on a Droid Incredible.
In a recent press release fed to Androidcentral, T-Mobile confirms the continued effort to bring HSPA+ tablets to their customers in 2011. The release does not specify which manufacturers they are working with or even if the tablets will be Android or not. I feel it is safe to say that a fair share of whatever their plans are will be Android based. We know Samsung has 10″ tablet plans and Motorola got caught showing off Honeycomb on their recent tablet venture as well. The ground work is there. I can’t wait to see what they put out. You can read the statement that was released below.
“T-Mobile is working closely with the majority of our OEM partners to deliver 4G products by integrating HSPA+ into roadmaps in 2011 as the dominant global standard. Consumers will continue to see HSPA+ fuel future innovation in a variety of mobile consumer electronics from smartphones and tablets to emerging devices. T-Mobile will continue to be at the forefront of wireless innovation, delivering an aggressive 4G product lineup in 2011, including 4G tablets.”
Unrevoked is a great tool for rooting many a handset, but if any of those handsets should receive an OTA update like the HTC Droid Incredible recently did, the rooting method is liable to break. But the Unrevoked team doesn’t give up in the face of adversity, and has been working on a fix to get Incredible support back into the app. The fix is currently in testing, but very could be available by the weekend. Sweet.
The HTML5 specification adds a new set of tools for handling web forms. Generally referred to as HTML5 Forms, the new tools enable browser-side form validation.
It’s important to understand that HTML5 Forms are not meant as your sole means of validation. You still need to do server-side validation and, of course, sanitize the user’s input before you store anything in a database.
In fact, HTML5 form validation is less validation and more, as developer Mounir Lamouri puts it, “like an adviser guiding you in filling the form.” In other words, HTML5 forms provide a quick means of very basic validation to let users know about errors before they submit the form.
The new forms spec is essentially designed to replace any JavaScript validation tools you might be using now — for example, ensuring that required fields are filled in or that a tel field actually contains a telephone number.
Obviously, with very limited browser support at this point, HTML5 forms aren’t ready for prime time. But if you’d like a glimpse of what’s coming, Lamouri’s overview makes a great introduction. If you’d like to experiment with the tools outlined in Lamouri’s post, you’ll need to grab a copy of Firefox 4 beta 7.
For further reading on HTML5 forms, be sure to check out the forms chapter in Mark Pilgrim’s Dive into HTML5, available for both online and offline browsing.
Ok boys and girls, Macnut R10 is here. Let me be the first to tell you it is everything we have or at least I have been waiting for. Back on November 2nd I brought you guys a quick look at Macnut R2. So in just five short days Eugene_373 and his band of merry men, have moved up 8 builds. Thats no easy feat. They came out almost to fast for me to even get signed back in to my Gmail. Lets take a look at this ROM in a little detail.
As you can see there is nothing to spectacular in these screen shots. None the less it gives you a look at just what you are getting into. These next few screenshot though are going to really excite you at least I hope so. I know they excited me.
I can confirm that GPS is now finally fully functions and locks on amazingly fast. I turned on the Sensor Enhance because I am indoors and it took no more then 5 seconds to pull me up. Which faster then any other ROM or GPS fix that I have ever used on my device before. One less thing to worry about. BUT WAIT THERES MORE! I love infomercials. Not only is the GPS issue resolved but a few very nice services were integrated into this build.
Yes you are all seeing those screens correctly. WiFi calling was integrated into this build. It also works rather well. I was able to easily sign in to my WiFi network, make and receive calls and text messages. No issues with it all. Very pleased with the added feature. Small note to mention, unlike previous WiFi calling or UMA that was available with T-Mobile, if you move away from the WiFi connection you lose the call. Currently there is no hand off. That is my understanding from all research as well as personal experience with this feature. To avoid potentially significant battery drain be sure to turn the feature off if you are not needing using it.
Now to move on to performance. Very fast, very snappy, very clean. I am sitting at 9.5 hours of usage with battery percentage at 35%. 4 hours of that was sleeping while the other 5.5 hours were spent playing with it a lot. Take a look at the linpack and quadrant I ran about 4 hours after install and app restore.
Not bad, not to bad at all. I have yet to see any issues with this ROM on my phone.
As always we like to let you know about anything that may not be working. One major conflict that is missed often, If you are on a 2.1 ROM and flash to this 2.2 ROM there is a high chance your internal memory will be wiped. Solution: Plug your phone up to your PC and copy your entire internal memory to a folder on your desk top. I have yet to encounter anything being erased on the SD card but feel free to back it up as well to be safe. Second potential issue when coming from a 2.1 ROM to these I have run into conflict using Titanium back up to restore my applications. This may be an isolated issue but I have read that others have been having similar conflicts. Primarily coming from a 2.1 ROM. I would recommend potentially backing up with App Monster or App Manager and save that folder to your desktop as well. Never hurts to be overly cautious.
Now, anyone that has been around the block with their Vibrant or any other device for that matter, knows that the same doesn’t always ring true for each phone. Don’t take this as 100% truth. In the past some fixes worked great for some but not others. You may or may not gain the same results as I did or as Eugene_373 achieved.
If you have questions on this ROM check out the developers forums here at xda-developers. Do all your research before you jump in top something you may not understand. As always we take no responsibility for YOUR actions. Proceed at your own risk.
Popular flash gaming website, PopCap stated that they are in fact working on games for the Android platform. Unfortunately, this news comes to us just after they announced the release of Bejeweled LIVE for Windows Phone 7, which makes us wonder just how hard they are working on it. It’s been quite a while since we’ve heard any Android gaming news or game titles in progress from them, so there isn’t much evidence to backup their statement.
Perhaps it was the release of Froyo which brought Flash gaming to our browsers, allowing us to play directly from their website, that turned them towards the new mobile OS on the block. Whatever the case is, I’m sure there are many users that would still appreciate local apps designed specifically to run on their Android device, free or not. At the very least, throw us a bone to give us something to be excited about.
According to an article at Reuters, Google TV is working actively to get their users all the content possible. This means that for the three broadcaster who have blocked access to their sites through Google TV – Disney, NBC, and CBS – there are heavy talks in the works with Google to get them on board. News Corp’s Fox is also weighing their options in blocking out content from GTV.
According to Gartner analyst Van Baker:
“Everybody knows the lock that Google has on Internet traffic in terms of advertising. If you take that model and you extend it to television, suddenly Google’s power becomes enormous in the advertising space and the broadcasters don’t like that idea.”
In a statement from Google, they said the Google TV “enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owner’s choice to restrict users from accessing their content on the platform.”
What do you think of these broadcasters blocking their content from Google? Be sure to let us know in the comments.
Trusted Resource for the Working RF Engineer
MRF: TriQuint has been such a key part of the development of gallium arsenide (GaAs) in this industry. It must be fascinating for you to look back at the company’s role during your time there.
A few weeks ago Nokia held a small event in California where they invited some people over for a beach party. At first I couldn’t figure out why so many of the attendees were in suits and then I realized Nokia was trying to show how the E73 Mode can be used for both work and play with the different modes. I honestly find the E73 Mode to be a fantastic device and keep going back to it as my daily driver with T-Mobile.
I admit it was a bit scary watching the people in the video in kayaks and on personal watercraft tooling around with the E73 Mode in hand and I sure hope no one dropped the device in the water during the event. Then again, the E73 Mode is so rock solid it could probably survive such a dip.
A hidden document has been found outlining a future Android 2.2 release for the Droid X.
The page was created on the 9th of September which would suggest that the update could be nearing completion. This is by no means a signal to getting Droid X owners to start constantly hitting the refresh button waiting for an update. More an indication that you might not have to wait that much longer.
Android 2.2 and Tegra 2. That is what it now takes to stack up in the Android tablet game, and Hannspree is saying, “Yes please,” on both accounts. Their proposed tablet will feature a 1GHz Tegra 2, 16GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card, and a 1024×600 capacitive touchscreen. Throw in some micro HDMI and micro USB ports and you have yourself a media machine capable of playing back smooth 1080p HD video, which, beeteedubs, can be viewed for up to 8 hours on one charge of the Hannspree tablet’s3,500mAh battery. Other connectivity includes WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1.
The newly announced tablet is priced at €399 (~$507), but no word on a release date. Hey, at least we have gone from 10 trash Android tablets popping up a week to 10 promising ones, right?
Carla Saavedra, web product analyst for Samsung Mobile support, recently tweeted information about a software update Samsung is hard at work on to fix the GPS problems that plague the Galaxy S line of Android smartphones. According to Saavedra, the update should be available in September.
The Samsung Vibrant and Samsung Captivate seem to be the two handsets affected the most by poor GPS functionality, though there is a good chance the unreleased Epic 4G and Fascinate Galaxy S phones could suffer from the issues as well. A manual fix is available for those who want to take a crack at it, but for the rest it looks like you might have to wait just a bit longer. No word on if this GPS update will be in conjunction with a Froyo release or something entirely separate.
Let me preface this entire post with one statement: If Sony Ericsson can pull off what they are promising, we can safely forgive them for their Xperia line of so-so Android 1.6 handsets. That being said, SE is late into the development of an Android handset reminiscent of the PSP Go. That’s right, and not only will the handset look like a Samsung Captivate made love to the Go, but it will also feature an Android 3.0-based ecosystem built up for a superior gaming experience.
The hardware we are dealing with? A large screen between 3.7 and 4.1-inches with WVGA or better resolution, a 5MP camera, and a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU. The real kicker though is the inclusion of not a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but rather a slide-out game pad featuring a D-pad, touch pad for analog control, and your standard four Playstation/PSP buttons. The device is said to carry the Xperia branding, but should also be receiving Playstation branding as well. The picture included is Engadget’s mock-up of the device.
But all that hardware means nothing without games to back it up, and SE apparently has teamed up with Google not only to get Android 3.0 on the handset with a custom skin, but also to bring a new section of games tailored for the device to the Android Market. Initially these games will only be available for the SE/PS device, and will be graphically equivalent to what we see in PSP or PSX titles. Games being tossed around include God of War, Modern Warfare, and Little Big Planet. Provided other handsets meet the hardware requirements, they may become available for the wider Android world at a later date. Right now word is the phone could launch as soon as October, further stoking the flames that the new version of Android could be launching sooner rather than later.
If this all pans out, it will score a major win for both Sony Ericsson and Google. SCEA will bring along a large catalog of published games that can be ported to Android while also pushing for new gaming development. Sony gets to have the makings of a hit handset and possibly the first real break-out mobile Playstation device. Android gets one step closer to being the ultimate mobile platform. OK, we know it might conjure up thoughts of the flop that was the Nokia N-Gage, but that was a time before smartphones had really taken off as an avenue for mobile gaming, and with this SE device being only an off-shoot of Android it enters into an already richly supported ecosystem. So who is excited?
It appears it may have been jumping the gun when the blogosphere erupted at the close of last Friday with the official EVO 4G update located on HTC’s servers and instructions for manual installation. Turns out the that build carried the version number 3.26.651.3 while holding off for the official OTA would have brought your phone to 3.26.651.6. Don’t worry. If you already did the manual install, you aren’t in trouble. HTC however is fast at work on a solution to bring those with the “unofficial” official update back in line with those with the official official update.
There is exactly no difference between the two builds save for one minor bug fix. The .3 version apparently suffers from WiMAX 4G connectivity issues which aren’t present in the .6 release. If you have experienced any of those issues you should be good to go after the new update starts rolling out.
RIM’s new BlackBerry Torch 9800 will not support Flash, but the company continues to work with Adobe on bringing the multimedia platform to its devices.
Have you had problems getting AllShare to work on your Galaxy S phone? Unfortunately it’s not just a matter of right clicking and clicking “share” and there aren’t any good sources available on the web for this either, hence this guide was necessary. So let’s get started shall we? Oh, this guide is intended for Windows 7 users only.
The secret ingredient to this whole process is Windows Media Player. (You can click any of these screen shots for full-size versions)
I’m using version 12 of WMP, so I’m going to assume you’re a good little computer user and you keep your software up-to-date as well Anyway, once you have WMP open, you need to view your Library. If WMP doesn’t take you there by default, just press CTRL+1 and it will take you there.
Now that you’re in your library, you need to right click on whatever type of media you want to be able to browse on your phone (I’m choosing Videos for this example) and then click Manage Videos Library.
You will then be greeted with the Videos Library Locations box.
At this point, just click Add, point it to whatever folder you would like to be shared to AllShare, and then click Include Folder. Once you do that, you will be brought back to the Videos Library Locations box, at which point you should see your new folder that you just shared.
That’s it! You will now be able to stream videos (and whatever other media type you add the same way in WMP) to your AllShare-equipped Galaxy S device! Pretty simple eh?
For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides
Because they are having such an easy time keeping up with making good old fashioned AMOLED screens (oh what, they aren’t), Samsung has their mind on the future and technology that will create unbreakable AMOLED displays. How will they do this? By simply using a plastic AMOLED panel covered with a thin film transistor, and then replacing the vinyl protection sheet with a polyimide film. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, don’t worry. All you need to know is this screen will be UNBREAKABLE. And maybe you could even do this:
Samsung plans to get this AMOLED out within two years. In all seriousness, hopefully they will have figured out a way to produce the screens at a much higher capacity by then.
Anyway, once you have WMP open, you need to view your Library. If WMP doesn’t take you there by default, just press CTRL+1 and it will take you there.
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