Android Community |
- Chrome for Android updated, no longer works on some custom ROMs
- HTC One S gallery of pictures also leaked
- HTC One X pictures leak before MWC, looks amazing
- Official CyanogenMod 9 nightly ROMs ready for Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and XOOM
- ASUS Transformer Prime 3rd update this month rolling out, hopefully fixes reboots
- Google patent points at search-specific Android gestures
- More Nexus Tablet rumors: 7-inch model starts production in April
- Qualcomm: no quad-core Snapdragon CPUs until Q4
- Samsung Galaxy B rumored to have bezel-free AMOLED display
- Acer announces Liquid Glow with Ice Cream Sandwich
- Dropbox incorporates automatic image upload into latest update
- ZTE attains ‘world’s-fastest’ revenue increase for Q1-Q3 of 2011
- Samsung flaunts Exynos quad-core processors before MWC
- Android Community Evening Wrap-Up: February 23, 2012
- NEC shows off its Android MEDIAS hardware for MWC
- Motorola DROID X gets a massive bug fix update
- Sony offers official ICS Beta ROMs for Xperia Arc S, Neo V and Ray phones
- TI OMAP 5 dual-core video shows off performance vs quad-core
- Google+ Circles now available on Google Voice
- Android x86 adds Ethernet and VirtualBox support
| Chrome for Android updated, no longer works on some custom ROMs Posted: 24 Feb 2012 11:14 AM PST Oh yea! Chrome for Android Beta just received an update from Google over in the Android Market. At first glance we aren’t seeing anything particularly new, not to mention they weren’t nice enough to provide a change log for the update. Most likely the update just brought minor bug or performance fixes although we do have some bad news. The update is causing issues and Chrome for Android is no longer working on custom Android 4.0 ICS ROM’s such as CyanogenMod 9.
Whether this was intentional by Google to get all the devices that aren’t officially running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich denied access to Chrome or not remains to be seen. While many custom ROM users are most likely to try out beta software, it also makes sense if more users are using the brand new Chrome for Android beta than Google expected. Although they had to know it was coming. Back to the update, so far nothing really appears to have changed app wise — but wow it’s fast! Nothing in the notes other than the small change in the About Chrome tab for the build version. They must have made some changes to the back end because the browser overall feels much faster. If you weren’t using Chrome before, you should definetaly give it another try now because it is blazing fast. We expect great things from Chrome for Android and so does Google. Most likely we’ll be seeing more updates in the near future to make this the best mobile browser period. Are you noticing any changes other than CM9 and some custom ROM’s not working?
|
| HTC One S gallery of pictures also leaked Posted: 24 Feb 2012 10:37 AM PST HTC is set to have a huge Mobile World Congress and according to recent leaks they have a few highly impressive phones coming to market soon. With the new “One” naming we’ve heard rumors of the One X, One S, and One V. Minutes ago we reported some leaked pictures of the flagship One X, but now we have a full gallery of the 4.3″ One S too so check them out below.
At first glance the HTC One S, previously called the HTC Ville, looks exactly like the One X from the images. The key difference here is the One X has a 4.7″ display and is a little larger. For comparison the pictures show the One S next to the equally sized HTC Sensation and its 4.3″ display. So while they appear similar from the front it is the size, and the specs under the hood that make them different. The HTC One S should be powered by a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, have a 4.3″ screen like mentioned above and also sport an 8 megapixel camera. Making it similar to the X but having a smaller screen and only a dual-core, and not a Tegra 3. Either way this phone still looks awesome.
Looking at the image above the HTC One S (above) is clearly thinner than the already thin HTC Sensation. Rumors are reporting the new S to be one of, if not the thinnest HTC device to date. Looking at that picture they might be right. It might not be as thin as the DROID RAZR, but it doesn’t have any weird curves and should be easier to handle. Stay tuned for more details as the HTC event unfolds this weekend. Get all the details, pictures, and video from our MWC 2012 Portal. [via IT Pro Portal]
|
| HTC One X pictures leak before MWC, looks amazing Posted: 24 Feb 2012 10:16 AM PST HTC’s newest flagship smartphone that still has yet to be announced has just been spotted in the wild. Someone was lucky enough to snap a few quick photos of this extremely impressive looking Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich quad-core smartphone. Previously known as the HTC Edge, the HTC One X will be fully detailed and announced at Mobile World Congress in a few short days. Check out how thin and beautiful it looks below.
For those that haven’t been keeping track of the leaks this phone should be extremely impressive and HTC’s new flagship smartphone. Coming in with their best screen yet, a Super LCD 2 at 4.7″ and 1280 x 720p resolution. Powered by the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor this will most likely be the first quad-core phone to hit the market. Complete with 1GB of RAM, and previous leaks suggest an 8 megapixel camera around back that should be their best lens yet. Looking at the image above we can confirm HTC will continue with the capacitive buttons even though this phone will launch with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. They are sticking to the buttons to compliment their HTC Sense UI 4.0 overlay. Gone however is the search button and HTC has three main buttons with back, home, and menu. The second leaked picture in the gallery shows just how extremely thin this phone really is. Having all that power under the hood and still being on of their thinnest phones yet sure sounds like a winning combination. One interesting note is the phone will be using a micro-sim card. HTC will be officially unveiling this phone Sunday night in Barcelona, Spain and we’ll be there live to capture all the details and some hands-on video so stay tuned right here.   [via ItProPortal]
|
| Official CyanogenMod 9 nightly ROMs ready for Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and XOOM Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:55 AM PST At long last, the first officially blessed software for CyanogenMod 9 is available! The CyanogenMod team has been working hard since November to get Ice Cream Sandwich builds ready, and nightly ROMs for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and Motorola XOOM are ready for download now. Heat to the CyanogenMod ROM repository to download them now. For the uninitiated, “toro” is the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, “maguro” is the international HSPA+ model, “stringray” is Verizon’s Motorola XOOM, “wingray” is the WiFi-only XOOM, “crespo” is the Nexus S GSM version and “crespo4G” is the CDMA Nexus S 4G.
If you’re a little confused at why these are important, read on. The CyanogenMod 9 Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs and mods we’d featured previously are compiled from CyanogenMod’s published source code, but they’re not from the CM team itself. Anyone can use CyanogenMod code for their own projects, sometimes referred to as “kangs”, and these have been produced for just about every major Android smartphone and tablet out there . The six ROMs above are the first to be published under the official umbrella of CyanogenMod. Of course, this is the first batch of nightly ROMs, sure to be followed by many, many others. If you’re not used to hunting down bugs and submitting reports, you might want to wait a few weeks until the first release candidate becomes available for your device. And of course, loading up a custom bootloader and installing a custom ROM instantly voids your warranty. But we know there’s a ton of Cyanogen fans out there, so get to it – just remember to make a backup of your daily driver ROM first. As developer devices, the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and XOOM are the best qualified and first to receive the CM team’s attention. Eventually nighlties and stable ROMs will make it to the dozens of other supported devices. And for those of you who have a phone or tablet that’s not on the list, there a re plenty of independent devs out there willing to recompile CyanogenMod’s code for more esoteric hardware. While the CM team is famously abhorrent of timeline, you can expect the first release candidates to become available for the the Nexus phones and the XOOM within a month or so. Oh, and note that CyanogenMod doesn’t include Google Apps like Gmail and the Android Market – get the necessary ICS package here.
|
| ASUS Transformer Prime 3rd update this month rolling out, hopefully fixes reboots Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:45 AM PST ASUS has been pretty busy it seems because they have just pushed out yet another over the air update for the Transformer Prime tablet. This is actually the third OTA update for the Prime this month alone here in the US. I’m starting to wonder if they’ll ever give us a change log. After the last update seemed to cause more problems then it fixed, we are hoping for something different with this latest update to build 9.4.2.15 so we’ll see.
The update is very minor and should only take a few minutes. The only changes were to the build number and no changes were made to GPS or WiFi for those wondering. After the last update just last week many were complaining they had random reboots return, or those without reboots were now having the issue. My own Prime has only rebooted once the entire time I’ve owned it so while this problem is widespread, it doesn’t effect everyone. With ASUS pumping out 3 updates a month I’m starting to have mixed feelings. Yes updates in a fast and timely manor are great, especially OS upgrades like Ice Cream Sandwich. With updates as minor as these maybe they should do one big one, or at least give us a change log so we know what is being “improved”. So far the only improvement I’m noticing is smoother scrolling and a weird screen glitch appears to be gone. Hopefully this 3rd update finally fixes whatever random reboot issue they seem to be having. Or changes now they’ve released the bootloader unlock tool. As usual you can manually pull the update by menu > settings > about tablet > firmware updates. Most likely this will break root as always but you can run OTA Rootkeeper from the Market to save root — works great on the last update. Device Info
Display
Dimension & Weight
Battery & Power
Software
Hardware
 Cellular Network Device Connectivity
|
| Google patent points at search-specific Android gestures Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:13 AM PST Never one to settle for the status quo, Google seems to be investigating in never-before-seen methods of gesture control for Android or other touch-based systems. A newly published patent from 2011 indicates that software engineers have come up with a unique method of highlighting and searching for various types of content using a system that recalls Palm’s old Graffiti input. Essentially you draw a lowercase “g”, then continue the trail of movement around whatever it is on the screen that you want to search for. This in turn automatically searches the relevant Google service for the text, photo or video in question.
The patents cover a wide range of gestures in a staggering array of different configurations – not unusual, since the nature of the US patent system rewards those who cover all contingencies. But the basics are this: Place your finger on a screen or trackpad, draw a command around content that’s already there, then either automatically search for it or perform another command. The methods of doing so differ and sometimes include multiple pieces of content, but the common thread in the patent is that it’s all achieved in a single motion, without removing your finger or pointing device from the surface. To be honest ,this seems a little complex for a smartphone – the motions described in Google’s patent just wouldn’t be practical on anything smaller than 5 inches. But a tablet, or perhaps a device docked into a desktop mode? That makes a lot of sense. Google has already investigates the possibilities of gesture-based input in their Gesture Search for Mobile, and the software described here seems like a natural extension of those efforts. It’s unlikely that we’d see the fruition of this labor before a major revision to Android, so keep an eye out for the fruits of this labor at Google IO this summer. [via Patently Apple - thanks, Jack!]
|
| More Nexus Tablet rumors: 7-inch model starts production in April Posted: 24 Feb 2012 08:15 AM PST Here’s an idea that just won’t die. After Eric Schmidt’s off-the-cuff comments about bringing “a tablet of the highest quality” to market sometime this year, the idea of a Nexus Tablet seems to orbit around Planet Android and come back every six weeks or so. This time it’s from analyst Richard Shim predicts that Google will produce a first-party device running Ice Cream Sandwich in April. In this version of the tale, Google is going after the more successful low end of the Android tablet market with a 7-inch model priced at around $200, to compete with the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet.
But low price doesn’t necessarily mean low end. The analyst predicts that the tablet will have a 1280×800 resolution, making it one of the nicer models in the price range. For comparison, the closest non-subsidized tablet with a 720p screen is the Asus MeMO 370t, which isn’t even out yet. There’s no word on other specs, but if Google was going to go big with the screen, you’d expect at least a dual-core processor and a gigabyte of RAM. If, indeed, we’re talking about a real device. Popular wisdom grants that Motorola would be the one to build a developer tablet, since they had the honor of manufacturing the first Honeycomb tablet… and also, Google’s buying them. Even though Moto hasn’t adjusted their rather depressing software policies, Google is beginning to pull strings, yanking out CEO Sanjay Jha in favor of a former Google executive. Even so, if production was to start in April, that would imply that Google’s been working on this for some time, and Samsung or HTC are not out of the question. An initial run of 1.5-2 million units is predicted. Let’s be frank here: analysts have a nasty habit of making stuff up to get headlines (like the one we’ve just indulged Mr. Shim with). Aside from Schmidt’s rather vague comments last year, there’s no real evidence that a Nexus Tablet is inbound. Don’t get us wrong, we’d love to see one, we just remain skeptical of its actual existence. We’d love to be proven wrong, and April production does line up nicely with a Google IO reveal in the summer… [via Cnet]
|
| Qualcomm: no quad-core Snapdragon CPUs until Q4 Posted: 24 Feb 2012 07:46 AM PST All the news in the processor and system-on-a-chip space seems to be going to Nvidia these days, thanks to their four (and now five) core Tegra 3 architecture. In all the hustle and bustle, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon gets forgotten – not that it’s going anywhere. While almost ever major phone and tablet manufacturer has a Tegra 3 product slated for Mobile World Congress, they’ve usually got Snapdragons filling out the mid and lower ranks as well. It looks like that’s going to be the status quo for a while: A Qualcomm product manager announced that the company would be focusing on its dual-core products until at least late 2012.
That doesn’t meant that they’re not looking at greater performance – benchmarks from upcoming Snapdragon chips show some very promising results, as a matter of fact. But the previously hyped APQ8064 chip, which promised to run four cores at an eye-popping 2.5Ghz, won’t be seen any time soon. At the moment Qualcomm is more interested in getting its current-generation hardware to be more power efficient – a definite consideration, since the only thing that seems to stem TI, Samsung and Nvidia chips’ thirst for electricity is gigantic batteries, like the one in the DROID RAZR MAXX. Even so, a lack of quad-core branding may come back to bite Qualcomm. Whether or not the performance of the Tegra 3 or the upcoming quad-core Samsung Exynos processors is significantly higher than new Snapdragon models, putting “quad core” on the side of the box is a surprisingly important branding move. Snapdragon doesn’t have the same clout that it did way back when the Nexus One launched. That said, a normal-sized phone with better battery life than we’ve been seeing lately would be a feather in anyone’s digital cap. We’ll just have to wait and see what develops – Samsung, Texas Instruments, Nvidia and Qualcomm will be duking it out for years, in any case. [via Tom's Hardware]
|
| Samsung Galaxy B rumored to have bezel-free AMOLED display Posted: 24 Feb 2012 07:02 AM PST
Samsung won’t have the long-awaited Galaxy S III at Mobile World Congress next week, and it appears that none of the hardware it will have on hand is notable enough for a press conference. But if rumors from MK News can be believed, there’ll be at least one interesting thing to see: a smartphone with no bezel, or at least a nearly invisible one. The “Samsung Galaxy B” is reported to have a Super AMOLED display with no bezel (i.e. no space between the edge of the screen and the edge of the phone) on the side or bottom of the screen, with just a sliver on top for a speaker and front-facing camera.
A lack of bezel would make for a stylish-looking phone, certainly – high-end devices have been getting smaller and smaller bezels every year to squeeze larger displays into phones. The Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S II already have bezels that are downright tiny. That said, having no bezel at all might be a bit of an issue when it comes to usability: too close to the edge ,and gripping the side of your phone could register a press on the capacitive screen. Speaking of capacitive, a phone with zero bezel on the bottom would mean virtual navigation buttons, and following, Ice Cream Sandwich running at launch. All of this is absolutely, completely and utterly unconfirmed, with no spy photos or specifications to be had. While organic light-emitting diode technology certainly allows for much smaller spaces outside the screen than traditional LCDs, we haven’t seen anyone incorporate an OLED panel into a phone (or any other device) with no bezel at all. Still, that gives us at least one more reason to swing by Samsung’s booth, the first being the unconfirmed Galaxy Tab 11.6. Make sure to keep out Mobile World Congress portal bookmarked for up-to-the-minute coverage from Barcelona, starting on Sunday. [via The Next Web]
|
| Acer announces Liquid Glow with Ice Cream Sandwich Posted: 24 Feb 2012 06:23 AM PST LG, NEC, HTC, and a host of other alphabetically rich manufacturers have already spilled the beans on their Mobile World Congress 2012 wares, and Acer has no intention of being left behind. Today they’ve announced the Liquid Glow, which we are assured is a smartphone (as opposed to a shampoo or a car wax). This decidedly mid-range phone has all the basic goodies crammed into a 3.7-inch form factor, with the notable addition of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich at launch.
The specification list is decidedly mid-range: in addition to the 3.7-inch screen, it’s got a 5MP rear camera and NFC capability built in. That’s all that Acer feels like sharing at the moment, but we’d guess that a 1.0Ghz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM are likely for the final release. The Acer The Liquid Glow is aiming for a summer release (likely skipping the American market), but if you’re planning on being in Barcelona next week you can see it early. Acer has announced that it’ll be one of the many, many devices on display in Google’s Android pod at Mobile World Congress. Naturally we’ll be there as well, starting on Sunday with HTC’s conference and various press events – follow along at our MWC portal.
|
| Dropbox incorporates automatic image upload into latest update Posted: 23 Feb 2012 11:48 PM PST Much like Google+, Dropbox now has the ability to automatically sync your Android photos to your Dropbox storage account. However, instead of resizing your images like Google+ does, Dropbox will upload an image of any size. Mobile cameras are improving at a steady rate, so the ability to retain the quality of your photos could be very important to many users.
For the Windows users out there, when inserting a USB or SD card into your computer, Dropbox will offer the option to instantly upload image files to your Dropbox folder. The only way it could be easier is if Dropbox took the pictures for you. This new feature is bound to use up your free 2GB of data rather quickly, especially if you enjoy snapping photos/videos and forget automatic uploading is left on.
That’s why Dropbox will up the capacity for free users from 2GB to 5GB. The extra 3GB will not be available instantaneously, but will accumulate as you use automatic image uploading. For now, automatic uploading is only available for Android, but iOS users should see its app updated soon too. Will this update sway you away from Box offering 50GB of free cloud storage? [via Dropbox]
|
| ZTE attains ‘world’s-fastest’ revenue increase for Q1-Q3 of 2011 Posted: 23 Feb 2012 10:24 PM PST We’d just heard ZTE would be unveiling new quad-core 4G LTE devices at MWC in a couple of days, but did you know how well the company as a whole is doing? They’ve managed to achieve the ‘world’s-fastest’ sales revenue increase for Q1-Q3 of 2011. Prior to this growth spurt, ZTE’s sales revenue was a $6.87 billion for 2010.
And after a 33.4 percent increase for 2011, their revenue grew to $9.17 billion. I guess shooting for one of the top three handset providers by 2015 isn’t to farfetched after all. ZTE had always been quite aggressive at marketing their products in China, and their growth to other countries will be a test for success. The ZTE Avail was released over on AT&T last November as a mid-range prepaid phone, and after seeing the many quad-core devices to be shown off at MWC – we would probably consider it entry-level now. Other than this device and a couple others, ZTE hasn’t reached out to the US as much as they probably could have. However, we will see the ZTE Mimosa X; the first smartphone powered by NVIDIA’s dual-core Icera 450 HSPA+ modem. We’ll find out more in a few days straight from ZTE’s stand at MWC.
|
| Samsung flaunts Exynos quad-core processors before MWC Posted: 23 Feb 2012 09:04 PM PST We just saw the TI OMAP 5 show off great performance in a quick clip provided by Texas Instruments. Now we’ve got a little tease from Samsung that they’ll be showing off their Exynos 4412 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9′s at MWC. They are built on an improved 32nm process to make the new chip faster and retain better battery life.
The chip will be an estimated 26 percent faster and simultaneously use 34-50 percent less power. Power consumption is reduced because each core can be independently shut down when not in use. It can be clocked from 200MHz to 1.5GHz and includes four ARM Mali graphics cores. The Exynos 4412 can supposedly power a built-in projector as well as a 1080p 3D display, so maybe we’ll see these demonstrated at MWC. It will be up against the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, so hopefully we see some great performance. The Exynos 5250 also implements dual Cortex-A15 cores, so the OMAP 5 has some competition as well. We wouldn’t want the Samsung Galaxy S III to finally get here and not live up to its expectations, would we? [via SlashGear]
|
| Android Community Evening Wrap-Up: February 23, 2012 Posted: 23 Feb 2012 07:55 PM PST We hope you all had a great Thursday, and here’s a few of today’s top stories. The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer was updated to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) over in Taiwan, so we had figured it would make its way over to the US soon. We’re sure of that now, as ASUS recently confirmed it should hit the states tomorrow.
We’ve seen plenty leaks regarding HTC’s lineup of devices for MWC in a couple days, but a rather nice one presented itself today. The first HTC One X press photo leaked, and for those that don’t know – this is set to be their “hero” device. We’ll be sure to get a few of our own shots while in Barcelona, so stay tuned. First Verizon Wireless, then AT&T, and now T-Mobile plans on rolling out a 4G LTE network in 2013. It will start out with 10 capable devices, a combination of phones, tablets, and hotspots. The $4 billion and new spectrum that will be used to put this plan into action was from the failed AT&T merger a few months back. It seems Google has owned Motorola for months now, even though the purchase was made final just a few weeks back. Google is now set to replace Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha with one of their own employees. But who will it be? Dennis Woodside is rumored to be in line for the job, but nothing is for sure quite yet. And finally, be sure to check out Box for Android in the Android Market! They are giving all new users 50GB of free cloud storage. That’s practically half of what many Ultrabooks offer with their included base-model 128GB solid state drives.
|
| NEC shows off its Android MEDIAS hardware for MWC Posted: 23 Feb 2012 05:16 PM PST First it was LG, now another initiated manufacturer is giving us the goods before the big show. Japanese OEM NEC has displayed a trio of new high-end MEDIAS phones set to make their public debut at Mobile World Congress next week, All three are relatively large devices (especially for the Japanese market) running Ice Cream Sandwich, and all of them appear to be in the prototype stage. The interest is mostly academic for us since NEC rarely makes its hardware available outside of Asia, but at least one of the phones will strike a chord with those who love to see unique form factors. Impress Watch caught a look at them in an early press event.
That would be the “Best Cloud UX Device”, which is pretty clearly pre-production name. The device revives the dual-screen design last seen on the Kyocera Echo, though this time it’s a lot more up-market. A double-hinged design allows it to open up reverse-book style, though I suppose you could use it like a tiny laptop with a touchscreen keyboard as well. This sort of form factor has been popular with less powerful “electronic translator” devices. It looks like NEC has some custom software running on it, to deal with the extra interface tweaks. The other two devices are more contemporary, though the “Large Screen in One Hand Model” is a dead ringer for the Samsung Galaxy Note, thanks to its 5.0-inch screen. “The Most Stylish” looks like a 4.3-inch model, without too much to distinguish it from similar phones except that it’s running ICS. The other two do as well, and unlike HTC’s leaky MWC phones, they’re all using virtual navigation. Like I said above, these almost certainly won’t be showing up in Europe or North America any time soon, but we’ll keep a lookout at MWC regardless. Make sure to check our Mobile World Congress portal for the latest updates. [via Engadget]
|
| Motorola DROID X gets a massive bug fix update Posted: 23 Feb 2012 04:29 PM PST It’s been many moons since the original Motorola DROID X (released way back in the summer of 2010) got some of the old OTA love. Today Verizon announced a long overdue software update that fixes a host of bugs in the latest official Gingerbread build. DX users can get the update now via the manual method, or just wait for the update message to appear on your phone. And if you’re still running stock, you’ll definitely want the update.
Just a few of the new enhancements included in the 4.5.621.MB810 build include: better browser security, saving camera settings, better memory handling, WAV support in Visual Voice Mail, better Apps to SD support, and bugfixes for the update process itself, 3G hotspot, music app, and power management. If you’re a big fan of Motorola’s docks (guilty!) you’ll be happy to know that the DX now shuts off its button lights, making it a much more functional night table alarm clock. Unfortunately the DROID X is still saddled with a locked bootloader thanks to Verizon’s policies, so if you want stable software, Gingerbread is about as far as you can go. There are recoveries and ROMs available, but they all load off of official kernels, so what Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs are out there are largely unstable. That said, there’s some pretty good options in the Gingerbread realm, including official CyanogenMod 7 and a host of independents like Liberty. For everybody else, the long development cycle is (mostly) worth the wait. Device Info
Display
Dimension & Weight
Battery & Power
Software
Hardware
Cellular Network
Device Connectivity
[via Android Police]
|
| Sony offers official ICS Beta ROMs for Xperia Arc S, Neo V and Ray phones Posted: 23 Feb 2012 03:42 PM PST
Now that’s more like it. After promising an Ice Cream Sandwich update to all 2011 Xperia phones, Sony is putting its money where its mouth is and offering early access to the beta software to the Xperia Arc S, Neo V and Ray. All three have an official Ice Cream Sandwich ROM, and anybody can download the software and install it at their leisure – though it’s recommended for “advanced developers only”. Sony offered a few alpha ROMs before, but I’ve never even heard of an Android beta program quite this ambitious. Bravo, Sony. Bravo.
Of course, you’ll have to assume at least some responsibility. Before you can install the ROM you’ll need to unlock your phone’s bootloader at unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com, which (naturally) voids your warranty and gets Sony out of hot water if anything goes wrong. Then head to the source link aboce and look for the “download and install” section and download the relevant files – note that the older Arc and Neo phones aren’t supported for the beta releases. You’ll need to be fairly familiar with ADB and Fastboot to get the ROMs up and running, and for the moment there’s no Google Apps to be had, meaning no Gmail, no YouTube, et cetera. Sony wasn’t clear on whether or not the Android Market would be included ,but if you’re worried, it’s best to wait. Speaking of waiting, recovery-friendly versions with Gapps packages should start showing up on enthusiast forums soon, if you’re already rooted and you’d rather avoid the hassle. [via UberGizmo]
|
| TI OMAP 5 dual-core video shows off performance vs quad-core Posted: 23 Feb 2012 03:12 PM PST With everyone trying to build up excitement around their devices with Mobile World Congress kicking off next week, Texas Instruments has just released an impressive video demo today. With quad-cores getting the spotlight lately Qualcomm and TI have been showing off their latest dual-core platforms and that is exactly what we have today.
This video below shows the TI OMAP 5 against a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor that's presumably the Tegra 3. The Tegra 3 is four A9 chips mashed together and the new TI OMAP 5 platforms is actually their newest multi-core technology of two A15 processors working seamlessly together. Qualcomm recently released something similar although only benchmark results of their new S4 platform that is quite similar to the TI OMAP 5. They also pitted their processor against the Tegra 3, showing us that obviously both of these companies are a little worried — and they should be. The video shows the two tablets downloading videos, playing an MP3, and running through 20 pages of EEMBC’s BrowsingBench and more. See it below for yourself. A quick note the TI OMAP 5 is two A15 cores at 800 MHz and two Cortex M4s along with a SGX544 MP2 graphics. The other feature a 1.3 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 processor. As the video above shows we have two tablets running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running a set of looping benchmark tests of some sort. While this is something we’ve never seen and can’t compare to others we’ll leave the thoughts to you guys. The left is the TI OMAP 5 dual-core A15 processor, and the right is presumably the Tegra 3 in a Transformer Prime tablet. The Texas Instruments OMAP 5 clearly puts up its dukes and blows past the other device. TI’s chip was more than twice as fast (in this particular set of tests) and is capable of having battery saving features and low speeds, then ramping up to around 2 GHz per chip when needed. We could see even faster speeds from both the TI OMAP 5 and the Qualcomm S4 but for now Texas Instruments is expecting a late 2012 arrival of the OMAP 5. Thoughts? [via SlashGear]
|
| Google+ Circles now available on Google Voice Posted: 23 Feb 2012 03:04 PM PST Are you one of those strange, old-fashioned folks who talks to people on the phone? Actually moving your lips and everything? Wow, you’re old. Well, now you can combine your stone-age analog air vibrations with super-advanced modern social networking all the kids are
You’ll need to adjust the setting on the Google Voice website, and while that’s technically possible on Android (thanks, ICS browser!) it’s a whole lot simpler and easier using a desktop computer .Odds are pretty good that this feature will make it into the Google Voice Android app, but since it’s something you’ll only really need to do once, it’s not that big of a deal. Head over to google.com/voice, click the Setting menu, and click “Groups and Circles” to get started. For the time being it’s a standard “ring or voicemail” option, though that’s a lot better than just blocking someone or keeping the line open. Google Voice still doesn’t have that one feature that everyone’s hoping for: VOIP. And since Google is walking a fine line with the carriers anyway, it could be quite some time before that comes to fruition. In the meantime we can be happy for a little more armor in the armory of communication.
|
| Android x86 adds Ethernet and VirtualBox support Posted: 23 Feb 2012 02:30 PM PST There’s been a lot of talk about desktop modes i Android this week, but many don’t realize that you can install an experimental build of Android on your laptop or desktop computer right now. Android-x86 is a derivative of open-source Android that runs on standard Intel-compliant hardware, i.e. the vast majority of computers out there. The latest modified version from Android-Dev.ro adds two important features: Ethernet networking support (for small computers like the Atom-based “net-tops” that lack WiFi) and virtualization, so that eager users can try out Android in Virtual Box, VMware or similar programs.
As always with virtualized software, the VirtualBox support is a little tricky: hardware acceleration is a no-go, and Ethernet only works in DHCP mode. On the plus side, it’s running a full version of Ice Cream Sandwich, with new features like shared folders that can be accessed from the host machine and Android at the same time (not unlike plugging in a Honeycomb tablet with MTP file access). Otherwise it works just like the tablet interface you’re (probably) familiar with, just with mouse/touchpad and keyboard. To install Android-x86, you can download the ISO file and use it like an desktop OS disc. Burn it to a DVD, reboot your computer and get cracking, or just point Virtual Box to the volume. Fair warning, this is a pretty advanced way to try out Android, and having some previous Linux experience under your belt will help no end if things get hairy. The rest of us can just wait patiently for Android Jelly Bean or Ubuntu on Android.
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from Android Community To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment