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Engadget has an article on the 2.1 OTA announcement for the droid snippet:
We’ve just gotten the inside line on the next Droid update that’s making the rounds through Verizon’s testing department from one of our trusted sources, and overall, it looks like this should take users 95 percent of the way to curing pangs of Nexus One envy. Here’s what we’ve got:
More here
Yesterday Verizon announced the Motorola Devour the next in line of android based phones by Motorola. Devour by Motorola displays a 3.1 inch capacitive touchscreen with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard. The smartphone supports Bluetooth profiles such as A2DP, HID, HSP, HFP, AVRCP and GAP. Devour comes with a 8gb sd card preinstalled, still no word on pricing from Verizon. This will be the first droid device on Verizon wireless to sport the MotoBlur delivery service.
Whats interesting is that this phone will be running Android 1.6 not 2.0 or 2.1. My thinking is that Motorola and Verizon wanted to create a mini droid with a slightly older OS. I’m sure there will be OTA updates available in the future to bring the Devour to 2.1+ land.
Trying out a new free app from the android market place called wptogo allows you to post to your wordpress blog from your android based phone. Pretty cool little app, still no word on the ota for verizon wireless subscribers with moto droids for android 2.1. The sdk is out and I believe motorola is working on modifying it for the droid.
Yea I’m 25 days late but seriously who cares 
. Its 2010 and to start off the new year Google released their new phone on Tmobile running Android 2.1. It will be coming to Verizon Wireless this spring, still happy that I stuck with the droid. The nexus one doesn’t have a physical keyboard and I find myself using mine from time to time on the droid. Android 2.1 will be rolling out sometime late Jan/early Feb to the droid. I don’t have the current timeline for upgrades for the other android based devices. The sdk for 2.1 has been released so I’m sure its just a matter of time before the manufacturers hammer it out for the other models.
I must say that I’m beginning to rely more and more on pandora for music listening in the office. For those that don’t know pandora is an application that streams music to your desktop, laptop or mobile devices. Its free to use with some data restrictions if you are using it from a computer, don’t know if there is a limit on the data if you are using it on your smartphone. Find out more about pandora here. Till next time I feel like blogging…
The android market just seems to keep going and going. Current count is around 20,000 apps with about 75% of the market being free. Not bad and it will just keep growing with the addition of droid phones next year will be interesting. Don’t know what Apple has coming down the line but its going to be kinda hard to hold off the droid armada especially since the AT&T 3G network isnt the greatest.
Speaking of apps, I would like to send out my support for a nice little widget that adds a bunch of functionality to the base home screen of the droid models, Beautiful Widget. Originally Beautiful widgets brought the HTC Sense screens to other droid models but HTC was not having that so the author had to change his design. Still a nice little design and it adds a lot of widgets that make the droid even easier to use. Only 1.99 on the market and well worth the price.
Beautiful Widgets adds widgets for wifi, gps, airplane mode, vibrate, bluetooth, and a home screen addition with a clock and geolocation weather. The author is very good at updating the application especially when problems are reported by the users.
Here is the application on Androlib:Beautiful Widgets
In other Droid news today, it has been announced last night by wired.com that a lab was successful in rooting the droid. The original article can be found here. Excerpt below as well as link to the forum post with instructions on how to root the droid:
Verizon’s Motorola Droid is a brand-new phone today. Like many smartphones before it, the Droid has been rooted so that owners of the Android 2.0-based smartphone can install multitouch support (including pinch-to-zoom gestures), enhanced themes and other previously forbidden goodies.
Cyanogen, a well-known Android modder, tweeted this afternoon “Droid does … ROOT” and linked to an Android message board where the exploit is posted. Zinx Verituse, the hacker who discovered the exploit, posted the essential details and links to the file so modders can get down to business.
I’ve yet to try out the exploit as I’m a wee bit hesitant to muck with my $600 phone call me a wuss all you want but bricking this thing would not make me a happy camper. I dont advise anyone to do this unless they have a clue of what they are doing nor do I take responsibility if you brick your device by following these instructions.
This week just a month after its release Verizon has begun pushing out the OTA update for the famed Motorola Droid. The update will upgrade the droid firmware to 2.0.1 and is being pushed out by verizon, so there is no direct way to download it, well there is but I’m not gonna tell let’s just say google is your friend. Couple cavaets for the upgrade, battery life for the upgrade without being plugged in must be at 40%, if your plugged in and charging then 20%.
Fixes are listed below:
Nothing majorly announced but there is improved movement in the interface so the droid is a little more zipper than before not that I had a problem with it. Also the battery life has been improved havent fully tested it as I just upgraded today to 2.0.1 . Here are some pictures I’ve taken one before the upgrade and one after. Note the last picture was taken through my upstairs windows to the outside and the first one was taken from inside a moving aircraft after.
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| From Drop Box |
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| From Drop Box |
As I said earlier today the motorola droid comes with wifi built in basically allowing you to connect to any wifi network in the area that you have access to.
I was having a strange issue where my droid would connect to my home network and I couldnt surf or do anything. While in my office I was able to connect to our wifi there and surf and do anything that I could normally do on Verizon’s 3g network.
Well tonight after some research I figured out the issue, which of course was my network more specifically my encryption protocol. I have been using WEP for encryption for years and while the droid accepts that for its WiFi connections it seems that it has problems with WEP encryption when it comes time to surf. Sure enough I switched over to the more secure WPA2 encryption and now I’m able to run speedtests and all using my wifi connection on my droid.
Now I’ve read in forums that some people have had issues where they switched from WPA2 to WEP and that fixed the problem so I’m just sharing what fixed my issue. So if your having problems with your droid surfing on your home network try turning off your encryption first to see if that improves the issue and if it does you might have to rethink your current encryption methods.
WPA2 is more secure than WEP in most cases so it was time for a change.
Couple things I left out of the Droid review. The droid does have a built in GPS and WiFi. I would advise you to connect to wifi and use that to download data instead of the 3g network simply because using wifi doesnt count against the “unlimited” plan of Verizon which some are saying has a monthly cap of 5GB.
Recommended applications from the app store:
Better Texting – Handscent
Home and theming – Pandora or Open Home
Internet Music Streaming – Pandora and last.fm
Podcasts – Google Listen
Wifi – Wifi Analyzer is an excellent tool to help troubleshoot wifi connections on the droid
Ebay – Pkt Auctions
Weather – Weatherbug
All the applications I listed are free or have free versions in the app market.
So unless you’ve been living under a rock or really don’t give 2 craps, the Motorola Droid was released on Friday, Nov 6 for Verizon Wireless. Now you may be wondering wth you should care about the droid or whats the big deal. This is first phone released with the Google Android 2.0 OS and its being released on one of the best wireless networks in the nation.
I received my droid on Saturday and ordered it over the telesales line instead of going in store. Why you may ask? Simple the online store actually had an instant rebate on the device instead of the mail in rebate that the Verizon Wireless stores had, in addition it was just so much easier calling in to a number instead of standing in line. I’ll take an instant $100 over plopping down and waiting 3-4 weeks, if your lucky.
On to the nitty gritty so to speak the droid comes with both a touch screen as well as a slide out keyboard which was one of the main reasons that I chose this over the HTC Eris which was released on the same day. I use to have a LG Voyager and I found the touch screen to be slightly lacking but the Motorola’s touchscreen is absolutely outstanding and find myself using it more than I do the keyboard. In fact I can count on my hands how many times I’ve actually found myself using the slide out keyboard. One issue that I’ve seeing with the droid touchscreen is that it holds fingerprints a little too well for me I would advise getting screen protector but make sure you select the right one as some protectors have been known to interfere with touchscreen functionality. This is the one I’m currently using.
The droid also includes a 5MP camera with autofocus and dual LED flash. the pictures are pretty good for a phone and I will be uploading some of the shots I took later. Some people have complained about the pictures but to me the camera is fine for what it is. Its one of the best cameras on a smartphone that I’ve used. There have been reports of faulty cameras shipping with the droid as well as a problem with its autofocus. The issue with the autofocus is being addressed with a software update in the coming months. As for the faulty camera, that is totally a hardware issue and luckily my camera was not one of the ones effected.
Droid also ships with an exclusive new version of Google maps, this is the first smartphone offered by Verizon that does not work with VZ Navigator. Which is great because for 1) Google Maps is free, 2) Google maps for the Droid has spoken turn by turn directions and 3) its free, did I mention the free part no extra 10.00 a month for a feature that you might not use that much.
Application wise there are just a plethora of utilities in the app market that are either free or relatively cheap. For better management of your textings, I installed handcent from the app market, totally free application which improves the texting UI on the droid. As for the homescreen, I’m currently using open home lite which allows for many different skins to be installed which tailors the droid’s main screen. For those of you that listen to podcasts, I’m currently using Google Listen which can either stream the podcasts to your device or allows you to download the podcasts to be listen to at a later time.
Sound quality is excellent and the built in music player is very easy to use. Droid comes with a 16GB micro sd card and you can easily sync it to any of your favorite music syncing applications on your pc. One caveat the first time you connect the droid to your PC you will have to make sure that the droid goes into mass storage mode so that the PC can see the storage and the files can be uploaded. Once its setup then your good the next time you connect.
Sorry for not having pictures but I plan on uploading some later today and seeming that this is just my little review and there are a ton more out there you guys should be fine . All in All I would say I love my new droid and probably wont get rid of it as quickly as I got rid of my voyager.
I give the droid an 8 out of 10 on the Cliff scale.
**** Edit: Uploaded some pictures
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