Technology Android

[Casey]

fuck yeah

 

[Casey]

This month is going to be interesting. We'll most likely see a Nexus Prime/Ice Cream Sandwich announcement as well as an iPhone 5 announcement..... the Google announcement is already at an advantage because an iPhone announcement is obviously a hardware only deal (they already announced and previewed iOS5 in the summer).

You can bet there are some serious strategic chess mind games going on at both companies now as to when they make their announcements. Both companies will be worried about the other one potentially stealing their thunder.

ICS is gonna be REAL interesting. Something tells me Google has a trump card. ICS has been in development for longer than any previous version of Android. There's a lot of acquisitions Google made over the last few years that we have yet to see the fruits of. And with Samsung being the manufacturer, and Cyanogen now working for Samsung, everything about this seems like it's gonna be some seriously epic shit.

 

[ARon]

I recently read that ice cream sandwich will be a significant update but some major changes will be coming to what they think will be called jelly bean. They would have been on ics but there wasn't enough time to implement them. We will see though

 

[Casey]

Yeah, Chris Ziegler's post on ThisIsMyNext. It got updated with more info from another source:

We’re hearing from a trusted source this afternoon that the next version of Android after Ice Cream Sandwich will be known as “Jelly Bean,” continuing Google’s longstanding tradition of naming Android builds after sweet treats in alphabetical order. What we don’t yet know is the version number — in fact, Google has yet to say what Ice Cream Sandwich’s version number will be, much less Jelly Bean’s.
Additionally, our source tells us he’s hearing that the “game-changing stuff” that had originally been scheduled for Ice Cream Sandwich is now being pushed to Jelly Bean, though we don’t know exactly what those big features are. Since its launch at Google I/O in May, the implication has been that Ice Cream Sandwich will help unify Android’s phone and tablet efforts — represented right now by Gingerbread and Honeycomb, respectively — into a single trunk, but beyond that, very little has been said about what ICS will bring to the table.
With rumors of the Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Nexus Prime from Samsung hitting a fever pitch lately, it seems likely that an announcement is imminent (in fact, Eric Schmidt has said as much), so hopefully we’ll get some insight on where these two builds shake out very shortly.
Update: We’re hearing from another well-regarded source that Jelly Bean is in the running for the name, but that the choice hasn’t yet been finalized by Google; for what it’s worth, the pickings are fairly slim for desserts with “J” names, so Jelly Bean seems like a solid choice. The source goes on to say that there are some fairly major architectural, functional, and design changes in Ice Cream Sandwich, so by all appearances, this is still going to be a big-time release. Of course, that doesn’t mean Jelly Bean (or whatever Google ultimately calls it) won’t have a big outing in its own right, but the indication is that ICS won’t just be a warmed-over Gingerbread or Honeycomb.

 

[ARon]

Initially I was a little disappointed hearing that it wouldn't be a major overhaul but this updated news sounds promising. I do hope they change some of the design elements, I'm curious to see how much of that will come from honeycomb.

One thing that differs from android and ios is that when android gets updated its big news and things start to change. Ios 5 beta whatever comes out and its meh. There just seems to be more excitement in the tech world when a new android release is coming... but that makes no sense since "geeks" or whichever term you choose to use don't seem to prefer android.

 

[S O F I]

I do hope Ice Cream Sandwich fixes some shit that's been frustrating me a bit on Ginberbread.

1. The Sync button on the power control bar doesn't always turn green when I activate it. It syncs, but it doesn't go green. It's only when I touch the light button to increase light or decrease light that the sync button goes green.
2. There's a lag when updating apps in Market. Sometimes I update it and it acts like it wasn't updated. It still shows it as needing an update. Or, an app was updated and installed like five minutes ago, but Market still says it's downloading.

It's little things like that.

 

[masta247]

Saw the Sony Tablet today. Sucks balls, the price is laughable - costs the same as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 or the Ipad2, while being technically (and visually) closer to 200$ Chinese tablets

 

[masta247]

Oh and there are really no wifi hotspots in Canada. They even get wifi passwords at schools and you have to pay for it in hotels, which I find ridiculous. I was surprised that even malls and restaurants don't have wifi.
Weird, especially since I bought a pre-paid sim card with unlimited data for 10 dollars a month. The problem is that there are issues with Android, it's faulty and doesn't send data through a proxy - and Canadian carriers use proxy. So changing apn settings only changes them for the browser, not for anything else including apps, agps etc. The problem doesn't apply to iOS, or even Symbian. Strange that Google didn't fix it for that long. So in the end I can only use my browser oO I could root my phone and install auto proxy to force some apps to send data via the proxy but my phone came with a locked bootloader

 

[Casey]

Sony Ericsson released their own guidelines on how to unlock the bootloaders - http://www.theandroidsoul.com/xperia-arc-unlock-bootloader/

SOFI Those things would have undoubtedly been fixed by now. What are you running? 2.3.5?

 

[S O F I]

2.3.4

 

[Casey]

Weird. 2.3.6 is rolling out at the moment with more bugfixes, so I figured you'd already have got 2.3.5 by now. I don't know if either fixes the specific bugs you mentioned though.

 

[Casey]

Dope.

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The HTC Sensation XE has arrived, marking the first collaboration between the Taiwanese phone manufacturer and Beats Audio, after the partnership was announced last month. It’s not just a bundled pair of swizzle earbuds though – read on for all the improvements.​

At a glance, the HTC Sensation XE looks just like the Sensation model we gave a full fat five out of five back in May, bar the new black paint job: there’s still the same sharp qHD (960×540) 4.3-inch screen and Android 2.3 software.​

But there have been a few changes: the dual-core processor is now clocked at 1.5GHz (Instead of 1.2GHz), and included in the box, you get either an 8GB or 16GB microSD card for storing all your tunes on.​

As you’d expect, music the real emphasis here: the HTC Sensation XE comes with Beats by Dr Dre headphones with an in-line remote (Previous Beats cans have only worked with iPhone controls), which trigger a custom sound profile when plugged in for what HTC hopes is the best music performance.​

We’re actually pretty stoked to see a phone manufacturer actually starting to put some effort into the bundled headphones, which are typically the first thing we throw away. ​

The HTC Sensation XE is out in late September, but you might just want to hold your horses: an Android flavoured version of the enormous HTC Titan is rumoured to be on the way, dubbed the HTC Runnymede. More when we get it.​

 

[Casey]

In less exciting, but still very big, news.... Intel and Google have now partnered, so forthcoming releases of Android will run perfectly on the Intel processor architecture. Pretty much ALL computers/laptops/netbooks run on Intel processors, so this might be more significant as far as Android showing up on other kinds of hardware, it remains to be seen whether Intel can catch up with the companies leading the mobile processor space, like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, etc.

 

[masta247]

I rooted without unlocking the bootloader oO. I'm sure that it's still locked too.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Some info on the Nexus Prime, and rumoured Samsung Galaxy S III:

http://www.phonedog.com/2011/09/16/...eam-sandwich-and-galaxy-s-iii-details-emerge/

 

[Casey]

Hearing Nexus Prime will launch on Nov 3rd. So hopefully we'll get some Ice Cream Sandwich info soon.

 

[Flipmo]

CyanogenMOD 7 making huge progress on the HP TouchPad

By Daniel Bader on September 19, 2011 at 2:12pm in Mobile News

While the Touch-Droid project has faded away, the team at CyanogenMOD is toiling to bring the much-loved ROM to the HP TouchPad. Their recent status update includes working WiFi, accelerometer and sound, though there are issues with many aspects of each.
The sound is a bit high-pitched, while WiFi is flaky, and the touchscreen, though hardware accelerated, appears to be inconsistent in its accuracy.

Overall, for those waiting patiently for the CM7 code to be released publicly, we’re not quite there yet but are getting closer and closer every day.
Source: RootzWiki via Engadget

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As for Nexus Prime, I will be keeping my eye on that...

 

[Casey]

I just switched to Go Launcher. It's more customisable than LauncherPro and easily themeable, and it lets you have more home screens than LP does. I'm not sure what the limit is. It might even be unlimited. I have 9 homescreens right now and it's still letting me add more.

Anyway I'm still working on customising it the way I want but so far I'm pretty happy with how it looks

 

[THEV1LL4N]

the neon effect is pretty sick.

i've never tried installing a different launcher.

am i right in saying that installing will change the appearance automatically, with the launcher's options added to the android settings menu? or will the settings be found only in the launcher app?

what if i decide to revert? does uninstalling it work? or does installing launcher B overwrite the apk for launcher A?

 

[Casey]

Launcher apps have their own settings. And yes, you can have multiple launchers installed. Nothing gets overwritten. I have 3 launchers on my phone - the original TouchWiz, LauncherPro, and now Go Launcher. But now Go is set to default so you never see the others.