Android Community |
- What Android Fans will be Doing on February 3rd at 3AM
- Boku and Zong Partner Up With Verizon to Offer BilltoMobile Payments
- Angry Birds RIO Coming Soon! [With Movie Tie-In!]
- NOOKcolor Receives Android 3.0 Honeycomb
- Android Honeycomb Event Announced by Google
- Why Honeycomb will Work on Android Handsets as Well
- LG Optimus 2X Full Walkthrough and Hands On
- HTC EVO Shift 4G on Sprint 2.6.32 Kernel and T-Mobile myTouch 3G Froyo MR 2.6.32 Kernel Available from HTC Now
- Samsung Continuum Receives Verizon Software Update
- Verizon Axes Top-Tier Smartphone Rebates Altogether
- Motorola Atrix 4G Promo Video Released, Gets Us Pumped Up
- Samsung Galaxy S 4G SignUp Page Live on T-Mobile
| What Android Fans will be Doing on February 3rd at 3AM Posted: 28 Jan 2011 10:07 PM PST Sleeping. Even if you’re a developer who works until 4 or 5 AM even and sometimes especially on a weeknight, it’s your duty to sleep through that time on that day because guess what? That’s when Verizon releases the iPhone 4 to existing customers. Take a rest, take a nap, even watch a movie. It’s your time to relax and smell the roses, because that phone costs $90 a month that’ll be put to much better use for you — soda pop and USB cords.
You know what else you could spend that $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB models iPhone money on? A Motorola XOOM, or a Notion Ink Adam tablet. Heck, you could even build your own tablet and the money would be better spent. Let me tell you why, and stop me if you’ve heard this before. 1. You love Android, and Android loves you back. Why would you leave Android out in the cold like that? 2. iPhone 5 will be wayyy better. If you’ve gotta leave Android out in the cold, at least wait for an uneven number. 3. Wouldn’t you rather go with U.S. Cellular? How about a nice LG Optimus U to tide you over until Mobile World Congress? 4. Three AM is a time much better spent hanging out in the forums, deciding which phone you want your perfectly awesome Android phone to emulate. Who are we fooling? 5. No ClockworkMod. [Via SlashGear] )
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| Boku and Zong Partner Up With Verizon to Offer BilltoMobile Payments Posted: 28 Jan 2011 04:26 PM PST Boku and Zong, two popular mobile phone payment systems have both just announced a new partnership with BilltoMobile, which is directly connected to the Verizon Wireless billing system. This new deal will allow Verizon customers to purchase virtual goods, apps and other items and have them billed directly billed to their cell phone.
For Boku users, after a purchase is initiated, the user will receive a text message to confirm the purchase. Boku's mobile payments platform is active in 65 countries worldwide, with direct billing connections to carriers around the world including AT&T in the US and Vodafone in the UK. Zong, on the other hand, is the payment provider for Facebook credits, and provides payment capabilities to about 50 countries. Both partnerships are welcome as the world is shifting to new technologies to handle their bill pay, and why not have all mobile purchases one on bill? [Via VentureBeat] )
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| Angry Birds RIO Coming Soon! [With Movie Tie-In!] Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:59 PM PST So GET THIS – the next version of Angry Birds is still most likely going to be the Valentines Edition since that day lies behind the projected release of this one, but this one seems a bit more exciting: Angry Birds RIO. Do you know what RIO is? It’s an animated movie along the lines of ICE AGE. Does this mean there will be some Angry Birds in the movie? Let’s ask Peter Vesterbacka, aka Mighty Eagle at Rovio.
Speaking with Dan Takahashi of Venture Beat, Vesterbacka said this week: "We are like birds of a feather. This gets us massive global visibility, as if we had made our own movie." How silly of him to say such a thing. Birds of a feather – ha! What a cad. He continued: "We think of how Mario has been around as a game character for more than 25 years and feel like we are just getting started," noting that in addition to Angry Birds being posted on basically every single poster being put out for the movie, the character “RIO” from the film will be in the game as well. In the game, the Angry Birds themselves (instead of their eggs) are kidnapped and taken to RIO where they’ve got to escape and find their friends Blue and Jewel, two more characters from the movie. This game will have 45 brand new levels, and will be released (of course) on both tablets and smartphones. Watch both VentureBeat’s interview with the big Eagle himself and an official Angry Birds RIO trailer as well!            [Via VentureBeat] )
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| NOOKcolor Receives Android 3.0 Honeycomb Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:22 PM PST Ever since we first laid eyes upon NOOKcolor, we knew it’d perform well for the world – once it was rooted, of course. That was a few weeks ago. A couple days ago, an SDK of Android 3.0 Honeycomb was released. Today Honeycomb has been ported to NOOKcolor. What a wonderful system we’ve got here.
The developer who did this awesome task to project says that he plans on working on graphics acceleration next, to improve performance over the weekend so that Motorola XOOM, the tablet that supposed to be the ship that sails on winds of Honeycombs, might appear to be an ancient artifact by the time it’s released. Sounds great!   [Via XDA Developers Forum] )
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| Android Honeycomb Event Announced by Google Posted: 28 Jan 2011 03:12 PM PST Publishers have just been invited to an event by Google to be held next Wednesday in California. They’ve promised to bring “an in-depth look at Honeycomb, Android ecosystem news, and some hands-on demos! ” Sounds fantastic – we’ll be there with bells on!
If you’d like to check out coverage on this event, stay tuned here or head on over to SlashGear, as we’ll be covering the event LIVE the entire time it’s going on. Doors open at 9:15 California time – buzz on! )
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| Why Honeycomb will Work on Android Handsets as Well Posted: 28 Jan 2011 02:52 PM PST Today there’s some talk going around, some words being pushed that are re-stirring the sweet rumors that is Honeycomb supporting smartphones as well as tablets. Android 3.0 Honeycomb is a version of the OS created specifically to work well with larger devices, especially tablets. What’s been discovered today is the fact that although Honeycomb will open in its default resolution of 1280×768 pixels in WXGA, changing the screen setting (in the emulator running the Honeycomb SDK released a couple days ago) to WVGA, a different shell user interface is launched, this one lacking basically everything on the homescreen with launcher crashing soon afterward.
Well wait, doesn’t that suck? Isn’t that the worst? Well sure it is, but as long as you install a replacement (Engadget suggests LauncherPro) youll be able to get in and dig around for everything you like. This mode has a smartphone-friendly status bar, the current lock screen we’re all used to with slide to the left or right locks, and a browser without tabs. But what can we glean from all this info?
Lets ask our pal Robert Evans – you know he’s got some answers:
How’s that for an idea? Take a look at the Atrix 4G ad released earlier today to get an idea of what Robert’s talking about:    [Via SlashGear] )
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| LG Optimus 2X Full Walkthrough and Hands On Posted: 28 Jan 2011 02:21 PM PST One of the many phones the crew here on Android Community and our sister site SlashGear got our hands on back a few weeks ago at CES 2011 was none other than the LG Optimus 2X. It seems today that there’s lots of coverage of this phone flying around today, and back when we released that video (on SlashGear,) didn’t also post it to Android Community – so you might never have seen it! Now we’ve got an extra couple of minutes here on a relatively slow news day, so we thought we’d give you an awesome refresher. Behold the awesome power of the LG Optimus 2X!
You’ll be taken on this awesome journey by our pal Vincent Nguyen, who provides us with the following: Vince begins his journey by downloading our official Android Community Android app – this app is totally free to download and has absolutely no ads, allowing you to browse both news and the discussion forums here on Android Community. Once Vince flips back and forth a few times between different ways you can interact with AC, he heads back to the Android Markeplace and downloads Linpack, aka “Linpack for Android” by GreeneComputing – this being the app he’ll use to benchmark the device. Once the benchmark is run, he opens Dungeon Defenders, a game that’s since become very popular for testing the 3D capabilities of powerful smartphones. Once the game demo is complete, Vince take a look at the camera interface. The camera on the back of this device is 8 Megapixels, the first demo being burst mode (taking 6 pictures in a row.) Next there’s some 1080p video recording as well as playback. They do this recording in a relatively low-light environment then play it back in the stock video player. It’s difficult to see through the camera being used to record the demo of course, but we’ve got assurances from everyone who was there at the time that it was totally lovely. Next is the Optimus 2X vs Droid X in loading webpages, both of them starting at Google.com navigate to SlashGear.com – the Optimus 2X appears to move 3 or 4 times as fast as the Droid X. Mega-impressive. Take a look at the gallery below, and let us know if this might possibly be the phone for you in the near future.              )
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| Posted: 28 Jan 2011 01:50 PM PST If you’ll have yourself a fine little click on over to HTC’s quietly brilliant Developer center, you’ll find yourself a couple of updated files ready for downloading, that being a HTC EVO Shift 4G on Sprint 2.6.32 kernel source code and T-Mobile myTouch 3G Froyo MR 2.6.32 kernel source code, and there’s no longer way of saying it than that.
Take these files, oh brothers and sisters in our developer family, and do with them what you must. If it turns out you do something spectacular with them, well, then, come on back and tell us what you’ve done! Our discussion forums are waiting for the commentary, or you can comment in our newly revamped comment section at the bottom of this post. Joy! You can grab both of these downloads over at http://developer.htc.com/ )
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| Samsung Continuum Receives Verizon Software Update Posted: 28 Jan 2011 01:16 PM PST Today Verizon is pushing an over the air update to owners of the Samsung Continuum (you know the one, two screens, looks like a long wafer cookie,) which, amongst other things, will install V CAST Apps to the phone. We’ve been reminded specifically that V CAST Apps allows carrier billing, so customers purchasing applications through this Verizon store will will see those charges on their monthly bill. For a full list of changes, check the list below.
Here’s the big fat list: • Reply/Forward Visual Voice Mail audio files as attachments To install this update on your Samsung Continuum, you’ve only to go to your home screen, hit your MENU button (this is the one that looks like a table with two books under it, all the way to the left, between your two screens,) then proceed to hit SETTINGS, ABOUT PHONE, SYSTEM UPDATES, and find and click CHECK NEW. From there, you’ll have pretty obvious prompts, and be SURE you’re not in a rush to do this update, as it can take upwards of 10 minutes to complete. Take a peek at the screenshots in the gallery below to see what you should be seeing. Also check out this fancy PDF if you’re interested in Verizon’s official word.      For further reading on the Samsung Continuum, take a peek at our big fat review, then take a peek at the source code as released by Samsung. Two screens for sweet updates from Android Community while you’re playing Dungeon Defenders! )
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| Verizon Axes Top-Tier Smartphone Rebates Altogether Posted: 28 Jan 2011 12:28 PM PST Word on the street is that Verizon plans on getting rid of their rebate program for all phones costing $150 and above. What does this mean?! It means that while at the moment when you walk into a store and see a phone that costs $400, $300 with mail-in-rebate, in the future you’ll just see the phone for a $300. Why haven’t they done this sooner?
Apparently this update to Verizon’s way of doing things will be taking place very soon, like next week soon, January 31st soon. What this means for us is that we won’t have to type that extra set of 23 characters every time we list the prices of new phones. Sounds great! Also, thanks for the tip, BobD! )
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| Motorola Atrix 4G Promo Video Released, Gets Us Pumped Up Posted: 28 Jan 2011 12:06 PM PST As Motorola is prone to do, they’ve released a lovely introduction video to their newest smartphone, the Atrix 4G. It makes us feel like there’s more to this phone than just a speedy experience. In fact, they do say it’s the WORLDS most POWERFUL smartphone, so we hope to see that backed up, but this commercial shows more than just a phone, it shows a host of docks into which the phone will be able to be plugged, including most importantly behind a PC and in front of a giant television.
You’ll find yourself flying through the air and grabbing a nice pillow and your rock and roll shoes as you see all the not-quite-specific things the Atrix 4G will be able to do. What do you think – is this the Speedy Gonzolez Hulk Crusher for you?            )
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| Samsung Galaxy S 4G SignUp Page Live on T-Mobile Posted: 28 Jan 2011 11:19 AM PST T-Mobile is ramping up their efforts to promote the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S 4G with a signup page on their website. This page allows you to sign up for notifications of updates on the status of the release, but offers no visual of the actual phone, prices, or the ability to pre-order. The page does confirm the idea that this phone will be called Galaxy S 4G instead of Vibrant 4g.
This phone will more than likely be released alongside a whole slew of other projects in less than two weeks at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona. We at Android Community will be there, covering the event live and bringing you updates as we grab them. Stay tuned for more info! [Via Unwired View] )
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