Android Community |
- HALO Reach Bootscreen for you Master Chief Android Fans
- Froyo for Motorola Milestone XT720 Today
- Motorola XOOM WiFi clears FCC
- Alltel Samsung Gem offers Android on a budget
- Sonos Controller for Android to land in March
- National Trust offers cool app that helps you find places to visit in the UK
- App for strawberry lovers hits Android
- HTC adding Facebook button to social networking phone?
- Broadcom BCM21654 Android chip provides advanced graphics and a good price
- Honeycomb Renderscript Detailed [The Balls]
- Motorola Bee Concept Phone Runs Honeycomb, Trumps ATRIX
- Verizon Makes World’s First Voice Over LTE Call on a Commercial Network
- Android 2.3.3 SDK – New NFC Capabilities
- HP webOS TouchPad VS Motorola XOOM, TABLET WAR
- Morotola ATRIX 4G Hands On and Unboxing
| HALO Reach Bootscreen for you Master Chief Android Fans Posted: 10 Feb 2011 11:17 AM PST Oh the little things, they’re really what gets us pumped up in the morning. This is one of them, and I’m sure you HALO fans will at least take a peek at if not use the following boot screen for all eternity. This is a bootscreen created by XDA Developer Chackanug who says he’s been at work for 4 weeks putting together this epic bit of loveliness. Grab it instantly and never let go.
If you’re in the mood for a new bootscreen, you’ve only to travel over to the original thread and collect it for yourself. This file is both available as a set of original files or as a flashable package. With the original files you can push this file via ADB, find a way to plop it on your system for use and see it all the time, or you can flash it like a normal person. And let me tell you, this is no normal “HALO” either. This is a well planned, infinitely well storyboarded and executed scene in which the HALO team are send to destroy and conquer the oncoming Apple assault. WE ARE ANDROID is revealed at the end, and all is well. Wish it wasn’t so squished, but it’s free, so it’s completely fine as far as we’re concerned. [via XDA Developers] )
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| Froyo for Motorola Milestone XT720 Today Posted: 10 Feb 2011 09:32 AM PST Everything you know about updates is wrong! It turns out that this lovely bit of device we all call the Milestone will today be getting Android 2.2 Froyo, an update that Motorola themselves said would never again be updated as far as the mobile OS goes. Of course, this version of Froyo hasn’t come from Motorola, it’s come from an XDA hacker by the name of Dexter_nib, a ROM for you all to get your tasty treats on.
If you’re in the mood for some rooting and kerneling, you can today turn that XT720 into the Froyo machine you always knew you wanted it to be. All you’ve got to do is head over to the original XDA thread and get to downloading. The current release of this Froyo ROM is 1.2, and already nearly all of the bugs have been cut out and stepped on fervently. Let us know if it works for you, and remember that whenever you install a ROM, root your device, or do any kind of hacking, you do so at your own risk. That said, feel free to leave some feedback for the developer here or in the original thread. Also he’s probably in want of some help fixing the final bugs, so donate your time in earnest. Also if you’ve got any more photos of odd places frozen yogurt has ended up, please do share them. [via XDA Forums] )
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| Posted: 10 Feb 2011 07:15 AM PST The WiFi-only version of Motorola’s XOOM tablet has been spotted crossing the FCC, ahead of what’s believed to be availability in early Q2 2011. No details or photos of the slate were included, thanks to the usual confidentiality agreement, but the tablet is expected to only differ in what connectivity options it includes.
According to the report, the XOOM will have WiFi a/b/g/n with 2.4GHz and 5GHz support, along with Bluetooth. We’re also hoping it has a significantly lower price than the $800 tipped for the 3G-enabled XOOM, which is expected to make its first appearance on Verizon come February 24. [via NetbookNews] )
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| Alltel Samsung Gem offers Android on a budget Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:58 AM PST Alltel Wireless has kicked off sales of the Samsung Gem, a budget Android 2.1 touchscreen smartphone. The Gem has a 3.2-megapixel camera and comes preloaded with Swype, while hardware includes the usual Bluetooth and WiFi.
While the Gem might not be the most exciting smartphone in Samsung’s Android line-up, it’s definitely one of the cheaper models. Alltel is selling it for free after a $50 mail-in rebate and with a new, two-year agreement.        Press Release: )
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| Sonos Controller for Android to land in March Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:50 AM PST
One new feature is landing with the Android app though, music voice search. The feature lets the user search for tracks, artists, and albums using their voice rather than flicking through files on the screen or typing search requests. The voice control will also work for finding streaming radio stations. Other than the voice control feature the app has multi-room volume control and track control as well. The app will work on Android 2.1 and higher with the device has a HVGA or WVGA resolution screen. Via SlashGear )
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| National Trust offers cool app that helps you find places to visit in the UK Posted: 10 Feb 2011 06:09 AM PST The thing that is so interesting to me about England is that there are so many old places. In the US, we tend to tear down the old and bring in the new so you can’t see much in the way of old buildings like you do in England. Sure, the US has some historical buildings, but it seems like England is packed with them.
If you are traveling to England, Wales or Northern Ireland on vacation or just want to learn more about, some of the historic buildings in the country a new app from The National Trust has landed for Android. The app lets the user search over 400 National Trust properties and if you are in England, you can get directions to the properties. The app uses GPS to find cool properties in the area around you for you to visit. The info on the homes offers a bit of history and tells when they are open for you to visit. )
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| App for strawberry lovers hits Android Posted: 10 Feb 2011 04:15 AM PST If you are a big fan of strawberries and you want to learn some new recipes for the berries a new Android app has surfaced from the California Strawberry Commission. The app is simply called the Strawberries app and has over 100 recipes for people to check out and try that all have the sweet fruit inside.
The app also has a bunch of recipes that parents can make with kids, shopping lists for the stuff needed for the recipes, and tips from dietician Dave Grotto. The recipes can be shared and they have links to content written by food bloggers. The app is available for free download now on the Android Market and runs on devices with Android 2.2 or higher. It can also be downloaded at this link. This might be perfect the perfect app for anyone cooking up a special Valentine’s Day meal that needs a nice desert to go with it. )
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| HTC adding Facebook button to social networking phone? Posted: 10 Feb 2011 04:03 AM PST HTC is reportedly readying a new Android smartphone with in-depth Facebook integration, expected to make its debut at MWC 2011 next Tuesday. According to the FT‘s sources, the unnamed smartphone will not be Facebook branded, but will instead have a dedicated Facebook button to act as a shortcut to the social network’s services.
The rumor follows talk yesterday of an INQ Facebook device, though HTC isn’t confirming any of the speculation at this stage. Android Community will be on hand at the HTC press conference next week, so whatever Facebook-flavored loveliness is announced, you know you’ll see it here. [via SlashGear] )
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| Broadcom BCM21654 Android chip provides advanced graphics and a good price Posted: 10 Feb 2011 03:33 AM PST
The chip is called the Broadcom BCM21654 HSPA processor and supports Android 2.3. Broadcom says that it offers a full Android smartphone platform using the BCM21654 baseband, the BCM2091 RF IC, the BCM59039 advanced power management unit, and the BCM4329 chip with WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM capability along with the new BCM47511 GPS chip that supports GPS and GLONASS. Highlights of the new BCM21645 processor include a 40nm CMOS process construction and the lower price point of the chip will allow it to be used in cheaper smartphones. The baseband processor has integrated 3G HSPA support along with Class 32 EDGA support. It has dual SIM capabilities, support for VideoCore IV mobile media processor core for media playback, a 12MP camera, and support for 16 million colors among other features. )
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| Honeycomb Renderscript Detailed [The Balls] Posted: 09 Feb 2011 04:44 PM PST The following is a nutshelled rundown of what Renderscript is, and what it does. Renderscript is a brand new feature that was introduced, but not fully explained during the official Android 3.0 Honeycomb event. What Renderscript is involved in is graphics. Renderscript is a new API that’ll deal with high-performance 3D rendering as well as compute operations. What Renderscript aims to do is to bring a higher performance, lower level API to developers who, in a blaze of glory, want to max out the performance of their applications. These developers must be comfortable working “close to the metal” if they’re going to use this new API, but in doing so, they’ll receive three tools: a developer friendly compute API similar to CUDA, a simple API for rendering 3D on top of hardware acceleration, and a familiar language for use in C99.
How Renderscript has already been used is in things as simple as the live wallpapers shipped with Honeycomb and as complicated as the YouTube and Book apps which are, as I’m sure you’ve seen or will see soon, lovely to look at. The greatness inherent in Renderscript is the same greatness that makes Google say “close to the metal” as to attain the performance gain you’ll be gaining, you’ll be executing native code on the device. The great thing about this whole situation is though, unlike NDK that exist now, the final product works cross-platform. The development language for Renderscript is compiled to an every-device intermediate format while you’re developing before it is placed into the application package – this language is C99 with extensions. Unlike other situations that are cross platform and are weakened by this plus, when your new app is run, the scripts will be compiled to a machine code and are made to be optimized for whichever device they’re running on. With Renderscript, simple scripts will be able to run on a GPU as a compute workload when capable hardware is available for use. When more complex scripts come through, they’ll be able to run on the CPU. In addition to this, note that the CPU will serve as a fallback incase a suitable GPU or other accelerator is not available – these scripts will still be able to run on the CPU. Basically, simple scripts will be able to run in many more places in the future than they do now, but for now, CPU resources are leveraged and the work is moved to as many CPUs are in the device and able to be used. Above you’ll see a demonstration video created by Android Developers to show the power of Renderscript. In the video, caught from some Android tablet running Android 3.0 Honeycomb (we’ll take a wild guess and say it’s the Motorola XOOM), 900 individual particles are simulated and rendered. This is a brute force physics simulation activated by the pushing of one of the balls, then continued by the activation of gravity from the right side of the video frame. This show is put on so gracefully because the compute script takes advantage of both cores in the device automatically, running each frame with great smoothness. Renderscript’s origins go all the way back to live wallpapers and the 3D application launcher included with Eclair. Renderscript provides a new runtime for continuously rendering scenes which sits right on top of hardware acceleration and uses the developers scripts to give custom functionality to the controlling Dalvik code. These controlling codes will be sending commands at a course level, commands like “move the list” and “turn the page,” these commands determined by the scripts provided by the developer so that the process can be fully customizable. In the creation of Android 3.0 Honeycomb, Android Developers have moved from GL ES 1.1 over to 2.0 as the renderer for Renderscript. With this update, elements have been added such as 3D model loading, programmable shader support, and more efficient allocation management. This new compiler is based on LLVM and is beating down efficiency shown in Android versions 2.1 through 2.3 – and what’s the very best thing about this whole situation? Renderscript API and tools are now public.
Soon the developers at Android will be providing us with more technical information and some sweet sample code. Until then, enjoy these weirdly human-proportioned Androids made by the developers, shown here running on one of their internal test apps. As the application implements a single scene-graph, this graph demonstrates recursive script-to-script calling. Both Androids are loaded straight from an A3D file (an on-device file format for storing Renderscript objects) made in Maya and translated from a Collada file. Fun! [via Android Developers] )
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| Motorola Bee Concept Phone Runs Honeycomb, Trumps ATRIX Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:45 PM PST Over on the lovely and wonderfully wishful designers portfolio Joy Studios, makers of such gems as pre-pre-concept visions of Apple iPad 2, Sony Playstation Portable Phone, and the Apple iPhone Nano, they’ve got a brand new bag. This new design is a phone that will run Honeycomb out of the box, making use of Android 3.0 to create what they’re calling the “big brother” of the Motorola ATRIX. This Motorola Bee can record video in full HD 1080p, has a gigantic 4.3 megapixel screen at 1280×720, and of course works with both its own HD Multimedia Dock and Laptop Dock.
You see the similarities to the ATRIX, I’m sure. Or you don’t, but wish you did, therefore take a quick look back at our Motorola ATRIX 4G Hands On and Unboxing post, courtesy of SlashGear. This phone connects to several different media outlets in the same way the ATRIX is being promoted as doing. In addition to the HD Multimedia Dock and the Power Dock, it can plug into a similar Power Dock and has Micro-HDMI output. Also similar to the ATRIX this phone has a fingerprint scanner for security. Our pal Vince says this feature completely rules. The Motorola Bee has Wifi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3G speed (this is weird considering the 4G speed of the ATRIX,) and 32 GB memory upgradable to 64 GB. The display is AMOLED and has super multi-touch, and there’s a whopping 5 megapixel webcam on the front of the phone for video chat. On the back is a generous 8 megapixel camera with flash, and it just looks very lovely, wouldn’t you agree? — thanks for the tip, Manni!     [Via Joystudios.TK] )
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| Verizon Makes World’s First Voice Over LTE Call on a Commercial Network Posted: 09 Feb 2011 03:04 PM PST It’s been reported today, announced by Verizon, confirmed by Verizon Chief Technology Officer Tony Melone, that Verizon had officially completed the world’s first successful voice over LTE call on a commercial LTE network. This was a live, IMS-based VoLTE (voice over LTE) call on Tuesday, February 8th, 2011, in the morning at 9:45 AM ET. This call was made by Balaji Raghavachari, manager of technology for Verizon Wireless, with none other than an LG Revolution 4G which we of course got a quick look at during CES 2011.
This phone call was received by Sanyogita Shamsunder, director of technology for Verizon Wireless. What’s this mean? It basically means voice and data at the same time for Verizon forever. This wasn’t the first EVER call over LTE, in fact the initiative was launched over a year ago by GSMA, who indeed did make the very first call. Verizon made the very first call on a commercial network. All phones involved thus far have been working on Android 2.2 Froyo. See full press release below: )
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| Android 2.3.3 SDK – New NFC Capabilities Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:48 PM PST The folks at Google and Android have just revealed a short list of new NFC capabilities coming with the new system update Android 2.3.3. These updates take hold of what’s quickly becoming the talk of the town as far as futuristic communication with businesses, games, and even other people goes. What NFC stands for is Near Field Communication, and it has the potential to replace credit cards and cash as currency in the USA as well as the rest of the world.
NFC is a bright future for smartphones, so says we, as it can also be used for ticketing, advertising, ratings on all objects, and all manner of data exchange. The new capabilities added to NFC functionality are thus: • An extensive and comprehensive NFC writer/reader API that allows users to read and write basically every standard NFC tag used in this modern NFC world of ours. A set of API included in this update are thus: You’ll be able to take hold of each of these features with Android 2.3 Gingerbread update 2.3.3 as it contains the new API level, level 10. If you’d like to take a look at an expanded list of updates with 2.3.3, take a walk over to Google. If you’d like to download the SDK for this update, also head over to Google. [via Android Developers] )
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| HP webOS TouchPad VS Motorola XOOM, TABLET WAR Posted: 09 Feb 2011 01:22 PM PST Today at the HP/webOS event we’ve got our pals SlashGear reporting back and we just had to take a peek at what they were seeing. Turns out they are indeed announcing the HP TouchPad, a tablet computer that does show some hearty promise. Would you like to know how well it would hold up against the also recently announced Motorola XOOM tablet, that tablet running Android 3.0 Honeycomb? You’re in luck, we’ve got that kind of battle. Behold an apples to apples (aka no Apple) tablet matchup!
Below you’ll see a chart listing all of the points you’re going to want to see as far as specs compared on these two tablets. These are CONFIRMED specs on both devices, both of them having been officially announced by their manufacturers. The things we dont have confirmed at bits of information that we’ll have to attain once we’ve got the devices in our hands, items like battery time and actual video quality which one would only truly be able to judge once one had a chance to test the device. So without further ado, behold a knife fight between two tablets!
Will these specs make up your mind, or are you still hung on a line? Take a peek below for a gallery containing our own photos of these devices, both on screen and in hand. Here at Android Community we’ve got sort of a bias for Android devices, but we’ve gotta say, that webOS tablet doesn’t look half bad.                                           )
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| Morotola ATRIX 4G Hands On and Unboxing Posted: 09 Feb 2011 12:36 PM PST Oh joyous day we here at the R3 Network have gotten our hands on an ATRIX 4G from Motorola. This phone will soon be carried on AT&T, and due to its wild ability to dock with multiple devices, including a laptop dock we find to be particularly intriguing, we’re pretty pumped up to open the box. Take a step closer and have a peek at what’s inside the box, and stick around for some closeup shots of the loveliness. BONUS: we got some docks in the box.
The ATRIX 4G has a 4-inch display with more pixels per inch than most other Androids that’ve got the same sized screen – the screen here doesn’t quite match up to the iPhone 4′s 960 x 640 Retina Display, but it is a 960 x 540 qHD, making it quite the formidable foe in the screen department. When compared to the Nexus S, the ATRIX 4G moves more smoothly, and is just as or more visible outdoors. The case covering the battery in back is a tough carbon-fiber style finished plastic to protect the hardware, and a cool combination power button and fingerprint scanner on the screen protecting the software. This scanner has worked for us just fine thus far, but there is a PIN lock as well should it malfunction. Also on the back is a 5-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, and on the front is a webcam that supports video calls via third-party apps like Fring or Skype. Inside you’ll find a Tegra 2 processor from NVIDIA creating a speedy experience, though so far we’ve experienced five or six lockups due to large data loads. The operating system running on this device is Android 2.2.1 Froyo with a MOTOBLUR mask on top. Motorola ATRIX 4G unboxing & hands-on: Then there’s the ACCESSORIES which are almost more exciting than the phone. Amongst these are the laptop dock, desktop dock, and a mouse set and external keyboard. The laptop dock is what you saw in the original ATRIX 4G commercial that had (and now has) the phone plugged in the back, the entire bulk of the device sizing in at a slightly larger set of inches than an 11.6-inch ultraportable. The desktop dock includes HTMI, power and audio out, and three USB ports, as well as a multimedia remote. Imagine the fun you’ll have when you lie your hands on such a functional device. The ATRIX 4G supports 1080p video playback and comes in the box with support for Citrix Receiver. Plug this little device in wherever you need a bit of video or a presentation slide, and bam, instant sell. This phone will be available for pre-ordering via AT&T starting on February 13th barring a natural disaster striking every AT&T location nation wide. Take a peek at the gallery below, or head over to SlashGear for an alternate take.                                    )
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Sonos has a new app coming for the Android platform that will allow the user to control Sonos gear. Previously the controller app was only available for the iPhone. The app is set to hit the Android Market in March as a free download.
Broadcom makes a bunch of the chips that are found inside the smartphones we know and love. The company has announced a new chip for the inside of Android devices that promises to be cheap and provide advanced graphics. The new 3G baseband processor has an ARM Cortex A9 processor inside and is aimed at mass-market handsets.
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