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Spring is here

Spring is here in the Midwest and as typical for our area its still cold as a witch’s tit out here. I swear there is only 2 seasons you can depend on in the Midwest, Winter and Construction season.

Google should soon be announcing what enhancements are going to Android 2.2 OS. Flash 10 is included in Android 2.2 and supposedly running pretty well on the Nexus One. LG will be releasing the LG Ally soon, rumors are it will be Verizon Network at the moment yet another temptation to replace my precious droid. Ally has a strong product tie in to Iron Man 2.

Droid Incredible by HTC was released at the beginning of May and brings a Nexus One equivalent to Big Red Network, which is good since the evidently the Nexus One will not be released on Verizon or Sprint Networks. Evidently the Incredible and EVO 4G have replaced it respectably. EVO 4G looks to be the smartphones of smartphones making the droid look like its bastard cousin too bad I’m on Verizon for the next 2 years locked in.

Lg Ally Homepage
Droid Incredible by HTC
HTC Evo 4G

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Happy Pulaski Day

Its March 1st finally only 20 more days until spring hopefully it won’t be a long cold road on the way to reaching the first day of Spring.

In Google Android news there is a rumor going around over the weekend that was posted on gizmodo that Google may be trying to release Android 2.1 to all existing Android based phones. How this is going to work with the various carriers and manufacturers is anyone guess. Unsplintering Android would lead down a much easier road for developers but will 2.1 run on the older models of hardware is something we will just have to wait to see.

Linkage

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Android 2.1 officially announced for droid

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

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Motorola Devour Announced

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.

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Wptogo

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.

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Happy New Year

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…

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20,000 Apps and counting

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

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Droid has been rooted

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.

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Verizon OTA update for Motorola Droid releasing

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:

  • OS stability is improved.
  • Battery life is improved.
  • Camera auto focus functionality is improved, and time between shots is reduced.
  • Enhancements for three-way calling.
  • Audio for incoming calls is improved.
  • When receiving a call on call waiting, the speakerphone now remains on.
  • Bluetooth® functionality is improved; background echo is eliminated.
  • Improved Bluetooth phone book transfer of contacts to in-vehicle Bluetooth solutions.
  • After closing a GPS application, the GPS icon will now automatically be removed from the notification panel.
  • Users can now receive SMS and MMS messages after an EMS message is received.
  • SMS and MMS may now be sent to seven-digit addresses.
  • Google® contact merging has been updated to accommodate seven-digit numbers.
  • Visual Voice Mail notices now arrive instantaneously.
  • The corporate calendar widget user interface is updated

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.

From Drop Box
From Drop Box
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Wifi on the Droid

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.

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