Android Community |
- T-Mobile updates the LG G2x with minor improvements
- Spotify ICS update brings impressive new UI and plenty of features
- Lava XOLO X900 kicks off Intel’s Android phone plans
- My Tablet 7 by Xtec for $150 running new Ice Cream Sandwich
- Motorola DROID 4 gets minor software update
- T-Mobile HTC One S officially available April 25 for $199
- Samsung Galaxy S III photos leaked – could be real this time
- T-Mobile HTC One S review via SlashGear
- Qualcomm posts $4.9 billion in revenue for Q2 – Up 28%
- Google CEO says Android isn’t critical, only a tool to deliver Google services
- Draw Something updated with comments, undo move, and notifications
- DROID RAZR and RAZR MAXX updates being pushed by Verizon
| T-Mobile updates the LG G2x with minor improvements Posted: 19 Apr 2012 09:42 AM PDT Hey G2x users, if you thought LG and T-Mobile forgot about you we have some potentially good news. It appears they have prepped an update and it’s rolling out now for your Tegra 2 dual-core powered G2x smartphone. No, this isn’t Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but an update is an update right? Read on below for more details and download instructions.
Now we said potentially good news because the update is a very very minor one, and only addresses a few small bugs. They’ve not added anything or made any major changes, and this isn’t ICS like we mentioned above. We see no reason the G2x shouldn’t get updated, but then the same could be said about the G-Slate still on 3.1 Honeycomb. Hopefully T-Mobile plans to upgrade this powerful phone to the latest and greatest, but we can’t be sure because last we heard it wouldn’t see the update. For those interested in the update. It brings the G2x to Android 2.3.4 and is still for the most part vanilla Android. It looks like you’ll be getting some improved battery life, slightly faster overall device performance, and a more accurate 3G/4G signal reading with the update. It is available now over the air or you can use the LG mobile update tool from the via link provided below. Device Info
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 [via LG Support]
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| Spotify ICS update brings impressive new UI and plenty of features Posted: 19 Apr 2012 02:59 AM PDT The popular music streaming service Spotify is about to finally get a much needed, much anticipated update. We suspected an update was coming earlier this month and now can happily report that it will be available later today in beta. Spotify has completely overhauled their Android app with full Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich support as well as an impressive ICS theme too. Spotify is calling this a "top-to-bottom" app update and redesign that users will love.
While the new UI and design is the first thing you’ll notice, Spotify wants it to be known that under the hood they’ve added a brand new music discovery engine that will help Premium users discover awesome new music and artists — since we are here for the music and all right? I like their screenshots that is for sure. Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition (and Down River) are great songs. Premium users can enjoy this new app for Android with tons of improvements over the old and outdated design. First off you’ll notice the Android 4.0 ICS design elements, then you’ll quickly notice the album artwork is displayed in high-resolution. A welcomed change with all the HD phones and tablet screens on Android. Spotify has introduced a quick and easy slide-out menu for navigation and a quick menu option nicely themed to go right along with the latest version of Android. The image below shows how convenient both will be. A quick swipe toggles the slide-out navigation option and the quick menu floats over the top of searches, playlists, now playing lists and more.
Obviously looking at the images provided you can clearly see this isn’t a minor update, and just like mentioned above we have a completely overhauled top-to-bottom design change, for the better. The related and similar artists view has been improved, and Spotify has opted to add social aspects too with users being able to look up fellow users profiles and see their favorite music. For now this impressive new Spotify for Android app is in beta, and will be available officially on the Google Play Store sometime soon. For those looking to enjoy it today you’ll have to be a Spotify Premium subscriber (sign up here), and it will be available later today on Spotify.com so stay tuned for download links and full details. If you’re interested in trying out Spotify you can sign up with the link above, or check back shortly for our full review of the all new Spotify for Android app.      
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| Lava XOLO X900 kicks off Intel’s Android phone plans Posted: 19 Apr 2012 02:32 AM PDT The first Intel-powered Android smartphone will hit the market on April 23, with the Lava XOLO X900 going on sale in India. Packing a 1.6GHz Atom Z2460 processor with 1GB of RAM and a 4.03-inch 1024 x 600 LCD display, the X900 promises 1080p Full HD video recording and the ability to shoot ten 8-megapixel photos in under a second. Still, it’s the processor that’s the most interesting thing, Intel’s first commercial attempt at taking on ARM in smartphones and, soon enough, tablets.
Intel has harbored mobile ambitions for several years, but until now its chips have been too power-hungry to cope with smartphone-scale batteries. The new Medfield Atom, however, promises up to 5hrs of 3G browsing, up to 45hrs of audio, or up to 8hrs of talktime. The XOLO X900 is an interesting mixture of decent specs and merely mediocre ones. The display resolution is fair, as is the camera, but the Bluetooth 2.1 and clumsy design – not to mention Gingerbread OS, although an ICS OTA update is promised “shortly” – feel stale. Otherwise there’s microUSB and micro HDMI connectivity, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera and 16GB of storage, along with twin microphones and stereo speakers. It’ll hit India next Monday, priced at INR 22000 ($424), with broader availability later in May. [via SlashGear]
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| My Tablet 7 by Xtec for $150 running new Ice Cream Sandwich Posted: 18 Apr 2012 10:19 PM PDT With a list of impressive specification, the Xtec may be putting the hot Kindle fire on notice. It come with features that mix it in with the established tablets but comes in at a price less than that which has made the kindle the seller that it is. With an on board storage of 16 GB and a forward facing camera it has already improved upon the Kindle.
Providing a HDMI output and having an expandable Micro SD slot makes this little wonder truly flexible when it comes to using it for more than reading books. This is what makes it a decent device and should provide an impressive competitor to the budget tablet market – so you can have the ability to watch your movies on apps like Netflix as well as being able to rock out to your music on Pandora. The real attractiveness to this budget tablet is the amount of processing power that you get for your money. Coming in with a 1.5Ghz processor, as well as having 1GB of RAM, it should be more than capable of keeping up with the demands of today’s high-tech consumer daily tablet usage. So if it lives up to its expectations based on its average list of specs, it should be on most people’s list to check out. [via SlashGear]
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| Motorola DROID 4 gets minor software update Posted: 18 Apr 2012 04:36 PM PDT It looks like the RAZR isn’t the only Moto phone set to get an update this week. The Motorola DROID 4 QWERTY slider is also getting updated according to Verizon. Being the first OTA update for the DROID 4 you can expect mainly bug fixes at this point — and no Ice Cream Sandwich just yet but that should be coming eventually. Read on for more details on the update.
The update was just detailed over on Verizonwireless.com and explains what to expect with this update to build 6.13.219 rolling out this week. Being the first update for the D4 we have bug fixes, but some were needed so lets run through them. You’ll get WiFi improvements, much better battery life, and fixes to sound issues on bluetooth — especially that loud end call tone it would let out. Other improvements include tweaks to the backlit QWERTY keyboard. The main changes are to the sensor so the backlight will only come on when the device needs it, another function that should help improve battery life. Then the update includes some new MotoCAST widgets that will be on your homescreen on the new software. Usually updates start within a few days of Verizon posting the details, but it appears this is already rolling out so check for updates and you’ll be enjoying the latest from Motorola. Sadly this isn’t Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich yet, but then none of Moto’s phones have received it officially either. We are still expecting that for most newer phones in the next 4-8 weeks but your guess is as good as mine on the DROID 4 at this point. Let us know how the update goes.   Device Info
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| T-Mobile HTC One S officially available April 25 for $199 Posted: 18 Apr 2012 03:26 PM PDT Finally giving us the official word today is T-Mobile stating that their version of the HTC One S will be available in stores and online starting April 25th for just $199. We’ve been patiently waiting since we first spotted the device at MWC, and loved it in our full reviews. This phone will be one of, if not THE device to get on T-Mobile this summer.
T-Mobile has confirmed the date of April 25th, a day that rumors have been pointing at for a few weeks already, not to mention the device started appearing in T-Mo stores earlier this week. Along with the date we also know the HTC One S will be $199 with a new 2-year contract, but you’ll have to send off a $50 mail in rebate too. So technically the One S will be $249 out of the gate. For those wondering, you can buy it outright for $599 according to T-Mobile.com The HTC One S is a mighty impressive smartphone. While it doesn’t have the quad-core that the larger One X received, it’s still handled all tasks quite well from our reviews, impressions, and benchmark wars (links below). For $199 you’ll get a 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED display, Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, HTC Sense UI 4.0, an impressive 8 megapixel camera, T-Mobile’s HSPA+ 4G speeds, and 16GB of internal storage. Pre-orders should be available any time now and the phone can be all yours on Wednesday, April 25th. Who’s buying? Device Info
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| Samsung Galaxy S III photos leaked – could be real this time Posted: 18 Apr 2012 02:47 PM PDT Who’s ready for some juicy and possibly real pictures of the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S III flagship smartphone. We’ve seen more leaks and heard more rumors than I’d care to share, but today’s picture could be the first real images of the new phone. Taken by Mr Blurrycam himself (with an iPad no less) we’d love a clear shot but will take what we can get. Check it out!
Apparently these pictures were snapped up by the folks at Gizmodo and their sources are quite confident that this is in fact real, and what you see is the new Samsung Galaxy S III. Now whether or not that square design around the display is there to stay, or just acting as a disguise like we mentioned last week is still unknown. The official announcement where we’ll “meet the next Galaxy” is set for May 3rd so the wait is almost over, but this could have spoiled the unveil. According to the leakster the new Galaxy S III will be thinner than the SGSII, but will weigh a little more thanks to an impressive 12 megapixel rear camera, 2 megapixel front camera, and the quad-core Exynos processor under the hood. The back of the phone in these pictures looks pretty plastic if you ask me, and we’ve all been speculating about a ceramic design for months. One important thing is we are hearing this device pictured has a model number of Samsung GT-I9300. A device we’ve seen leaks of with an odd resolution, and have reported as NOT being the Galaxy S III. So this could just be an elaborate cover by Samsung, or possibly the Galaxy M instead. Obviously we still have tons of questions, as does everyone else I’m sure. Stay tuned for more details as we dig for more, and expect tons of hands-on pictures and video from the event May 3rd as we’ll be there live. [via SlashGear] — Thanks Kote
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| T-Mobile HTC One S review via SlashGear Posted: 18 Apr 2012 02:29 PM PDT In what will be the first HTC One device available in the USA, the T-Mobile HTC One S, you have a pretty awesome phone. HTC is already off to an excellent start for 2012 with their new “One” series available in Europe and now it’s about to take the US markets by storm. We’ve already reviewed the HTC One S thoroughly with the European model, and today we have the T-Mobile version to share with everyone. More details and beautiful pictures can be found below.
With the T-Mobile HTC One S you get an impressive phone for sure. Other than a few changes to the software and the radios under the hood this is the same as the European model we linked to above. You get a brilliant 4.3-inch qHD 540 x 960 AMOLED display (no 720 HD here) but the AMOLED looks great as usual. The same 8 megapixel rear camera with a backside-illuminated sensor and HTC’s new Imagechip technology and additional processor. Then to complete the picture (and all tasks) is the equally impressive Qualcomm 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM that is under the hood. The One S runs on Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich overlapped with the new and improved HTC Sense 4.0 UI tweaks. Being 4.3-inches this could be considered the perfect phone for many that think the Galaxy Note is too big, or even the Galaxy Nexus at 4.6-inches for that matter. Coming with top-tier specs, the latest version of Android, and being the thinnest HTC device to date it’s destined to sell well. With T-Mobile you won’t get 4G LTE speeds like you’ll see from the AT&T One X, but they do offer a pretty fast “faux” 4G with HSPA+ nationwide. From the screenshots below you can see it doing quite well, averaging around 8-10 MB/s download speeds.
One of the only downfalls with the One S (or the other One phones) is the lack of a micro-sd slot, or a removable battery for that matter. The T-Mobile HTC One S will only come with 16GB of internal storage, but that should be enough for most users – then you can use the upcoming Google Drive or Dropbox if you need more. If you are wondering how the dual-core processor in the One S will fair next to the quad-core Tegra 3 competition in the larger HTC One X (which we reviewed here), you’ll want to check out head-to-head benchmark wars out. The fight between dual-core and quad-core is much, much closer than you’d think and the HTC One S is no slouch by any means. For more details head over to the official SlashGear review, then check out all the links below for anything and everything about the HTC One S.              Device Info
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| Qualcomm posts $4.9 billion in revenue for Q2 – Up 28% Posted: 18 Apr 2012 01:33 PM PDT It’s that time of the quarter again where everyone is posting up their earnings reports and going over the numbers. Google just posted theirs and today Qualcomm has announced their earnings report, showing a pretty great Q2 of 2012. These results already have plenty of sales from their new Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor for upcoming phones like the HTC One S, but with it barely hitting the streets surely Q3 will look even better.
If you enjoy looking at the numbers, breaking things down, or just want to dream of the piles of cash you can see all the details from Qualcomm.com here. During the earnings report Qualcomm lists an impressive Q2 revenue of around $4.9 billion, exceeding Q2 of last year ($3.9) by a fair amount. Claiming a 28% increase year-over-year. All of this equals an actual Q2 income hitting $1.51 billion for Qually. For many earnings reports might be boring, but this gives us a pretty good picture of what the mobile market and Android is doing for companies such as Qualcomm. As we continued with the report it shows they’ve sold roughly 152 million Snapdragon MSM chipsets that power all of your favorite HTC, Sony, LG, Huawei, and many other smartphones on Android, and Windows. Qualcomm is set to have another impressive year and their new Snapdragon S4 “Krait” processor will be leading the pack until the quad-core hits the streets later this year. Again, for more details head to the investors link provided below. [via Qualcomm]
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| Google CEO says Android isn’t critical, only a tool to deliver Google services Posted: 18 Apr 2012 01:06 PM PDT An interesting story is making the rounds this afternoon regarding comments from Google’s CEO Larry Page. During Google’s court appearance over the spat with Oracle over the Android code Larry Page was quoted saying a few things and people are taking it the wrong way. Obviously Android is very important to Google and you can find out more of what Larry had to say below.
During today’s court session Larry Page was asked about Android and if it was a “critical asset” to Google in 2010 — that is two years ago while it was still in its infancy. Larry Page responded by saying, “”I believe Android was very important for Google. I wouldn’t say it was critical.”
Now what exactly that means is anyone’s guess. Is Android important to Google? You bet! Is Google committed to Android? Of course. Does this change anything? Nope, not in the slightest if you ask me. Basically what this comes down to is Google wanted a platform to help streamline their products to users hands, especially on mobile and that is exactly what Android has done. They’ve continued to deeply integrate their services into Android with Gmail, Search, YouTube, and now Google+. If anyone thought these didn’t go hand-in-hand then you’re crazy. Why not use all of the tools at their disposal? It might have just been a tool to deliver their services to the public back then, but Android has grown into something much more with over 850,000 devices being activated every single day. If they didn’t then, you bet they feel it’s critical today. Larry Page’s testimony is finished but we can still look forward to hearing from former CEO Eric Schmidt and even Andy Rubin in the coming days, so surely we’ll hear more details soon. Thoughts on his comments? Does it concern you in the slightest? [via The Verge]
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| Draw Something updated with comments, undo move, and notifications Posted: 18 Apr 2012 12:42 PM PDT There is this amazingly simple yet addicting game called Draw Something. Heard of it? Being a huge sensation and already downloaded over 10 million times on Android, and 50 million in total I have a feeling you have. Today they’ve pushed a large update bringing some improvements and features users have been begging for. Check below for full details on the awesome new update and get ready to draw.
First off and one of the most requested features was comments. Just like Words with Friends you can now post comments and chat with players while you draw. Laugh about how terrible your drawing skills are, just don’t give any hints. Then OMGPOP included a one-click undo last move button, so you can easily erase an entire stroke or line, without trying to be precise with the eraser. That isn’t all either. We now have pull to refresh where you simply slide down just like Facebook, Twitter and other apps to instantly refresh the game, and they’ve also included push notifications. This way you’ll know it’s your turn instantly — not just when you launch the game. Sadly it isn’t all good news though. Obviously the free version has some sort of ads included, but after this update I’ve been greeted with long, 10 second video ads for Verizon and other things since updating. That is a bummer but then again that’s why we have a paid version too. The new changes are awesome and you can enjoy them right now by hitting the download link below.  
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| DROID RAZR and RAZR MAXX updates being pushed by Verizon Posted: 18 Apr 2012 11:57 AM PDT Here is some interesting news today. It appears that Motorola and Verizon are having some issues with that Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich update we’ve been waiting for, and even saw leaked earlier this month. After announcing a soak test, then seeing the update leaked, it appears to be canceled or put on hold as they are now pushing an update to both devices — only this is still Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
Announced today by Verizon is the update to build 6.12.181 for the Motorola DROID RAZR and RAZR MAXX since they use the same software. Users can expect some improvements and multiple bug fixes but this isn’t Android 4.0 ICS sadly. Earlier this month Best Buy outed the ICS updates, and then the build leaked but apparently they’ve found some reason to delay or cancel that. So most likely we won’t be seeing it officially land for these phones for at least another 3-4 weeks while they continue testing. Either way the update for both RAZR’s should be rolling out starting today and you can see the changelog images below, or read all the information from Verizon themselves. The update however brings a few needed improvements, even if it’s not Ice Cream Sandwich. You’ll see better battery life, device stability, WiFi improvements, a more accurate 4G LTE meter, and new widgets — everyone loves widgets right? As usual the update should be available shortly or you can manually check for updates in settings > about phone and give it a go as soon as it becomes available. We expect it to start rolling out before the end of the week. Enjoy!    Device Info
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