Storage Bug Hits HTC Evo 4G Phone Just Before Launch

The timing couldn’t be worse: As Sprint’s highly-anticipated 4G smartphone gets ready to go on sale, a glitch involving the phone’s storage media has cropped up.

A problem with the 8-GB MicroSD card that ships with the HTC Evo has left some early users frustrated. Some people who tried to take photos using the phone’s camera got error messages saying the device cannot save files to the SD card “due to insufficient file permissions.” Others found that the gadget could not access the SD card at all. Gadget Lab experienced it when testing the phone’s otherwise impressive camera.

The Android-based HTC Evo is the first 4G smartphone to hit the market. Google gave about 5,000 of the devices to attendees at its developer conference two weeks ago.

“It seems to be fairly widespread among those who received the phones,” says Andy Y, an Evo user who has been in touch with Google and HTC tech support over his faulty Evo SD card. “It’s a troubling trend.” He has posted extensively on an online Android forum about his experience, where he says about 20 people have complained of similar problems.

HTC spokesperson Keith Nowak acknowledged the issue.

“We have seen this crop up intermittently in some of the Evo 4G devices,” Nowak told Wired.com. “We have identified the cause, are testing a solution and expect to have a software solution available very shortly that will be automatically pushed to phones over the air.

“Many users are finding that a power cycle or switching the card out seems to rectify the issue, in most cases,” he says.

A Sprint spokeswoman says Sprint is aware of the issue but it is “impacting few of the devices.” The HTC Evo phones distributed at the Google conference are from the same shipment that Sprint will be selling in the next few weeks, says the spokeswoman.

It’s a troubling complication for HTC and Sprint as thousands of Evo phones will go on sale this weekend.

HTC and Sprint unveiled the Evo in May. The feature-packed gadget has a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing and an 8-megapixel camera cam for shooting photos and videos. (Evo’s MicroSD card has been manufactured by SanDisk.) Evo runs the 2.1 version of the Android operating system, and costs $200 with a two-year contract. Despite poor battery life, the phone has gathered positive reviews.

Neil Lund, one of the attendees at the conference and editor of droidninja.com, says he faced the camera problem the day he started using his Evo phone.

“Some photos I had taken came up blank,” he says. “I attempted to use the Astro file manager app to read from the SD card and it wasn’t able to recognize it.”

Lund reformatted the SD card and still came up with errors. He says a separate 2-GB MicroSD card filled with music that Google handed out to attendees worked fine on the phone.

“My hunch is that a bad lot of SD cards went out,” says Andy Y, who uses the name “Bek” on the Android forum where he posts. He says he hasn’t seen the card-related errors since he installed a new SD card on his phone Wednesday night.

Sprint exchanged Lund’s SD card from his Evo phone “free of charge and with no hassle,” he says.

However, HTC’s Nowak insists its a software glitch. “All I know for sure is it is a software issue, which is why we can easily make the necessary tweaks with an OTA (over the air) update,” he says.

Nowak could not confirm when that update would be available.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


Adobe AIR getting native Android app compilation

Sound familiar? That’s right: Adobe’s looking to move some of the same technologies it developed for Flash-to-iPhone app compilation over to Android, where we imagine the company will be meeting a much more receptive audience. AIR — part of the Flash portfolio of products — now has a native Android app feature in beta, letting you pump out .apk files from code written in ActionScript 3. Adobe’s targeting a release “by the second half” of the year, so this shouldn’t take too long to go gold… not to say there aren’t perfectly good ways of pumping out Android apps in the meantime, but this should make it a little less painful for seasoned Flash guys to port their stuff.

[Thanks, bono]

Adobe AIR getting native Android app compilation originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell Streak 16GB in stock on O2 UK website

Mesmerized by that 5-inch display? Looking to get in on the action for yourself? If you’re in the UK, take note: the Dell Streak is listed as “in stock,” with prices starting at free on contract.

[Thanks, Luke]

Continue reading Dell Streak 16GB in stock on O2 UK website

Dell Streak 16GB in stock on O2 UK website originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EVO 4G manual goes online, should hold you over for the next few hours

Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if you activated your new EVO 4G in the store tomorrow morning and you didn’t immediately know how to fire up a Qik video call? You’d be the butt of the joke — just imagine the hearty laughter and pointing you’d receive from Sprint reps and fellow line-waiters! Don’t let this happen to you, friends; come prepared. Read the manual now.

[Thanks, Carl]

EVO 4G manual goes online, should hold you over for the next few hours originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Flipout preview

We know you’re excited — the Nokia Twist finally has a legitimate competitor in the square-shaped pseudo-smartphone space! Motorola snuck up on us with its Flipout unveiling yesterday, so today we diligently trudged along to its local offices to get properly acquainted with this new Android handset. Running version 2.1 (Eclair) on a 600MHz processor might seem like a recipe for trouble, but it’s the same Cortex A8 (TI OMAP 3410) as used in the Droid, and our time with the little quadrangle revealed it could handle itself with aplomb. The Flipout also boasts a freshened up Motoblur implementation and 512MB of both RAM and ROM, but only 150MB for user storage — time to bring on Froyo, eh? With interchangeable back covers (two will come in the retail box) and that handbag-friendly form factor, the Flipout is unashamedly flirting with being a phone for style-conscious lady-geeks, but let’s see if it doesn’t appeal to gruff old types like us as well. Join us after the break for our full hands-on impressions.

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Motorola Flipout preview originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC Evo 4G Review: A War Machine [Review]

You know that scene in Iron Man 2, where Justin Hammer asks Rhodey which weapons he wants inside War Machine—and Rhodey says “all of them”? That’s exactly how the Evo 4G was born. Somebody said “everything.” More »

HTC EVO 4G root tutorial available, and not a moment too soon

We know that you’ve been champing at the bit ever since you heard that the EVO 4G had been successfully rooted, so we’re pleased to tell you that the gang at the XDA-developers forum has gone and posted everything necessary for you to perform the operation yourself. Better yet, Android Central has even posted a step-by-step tutorial. Now you too can perform a semi-obscure operation on an as-yet-unreleased smartphone! Check out the links below to get started.

HTC EVO 4G root tutorial available, and not a moment too soon originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inventec’s Dr. Eye puts Android in a pocket-sized laptop

Inventec's Dr. Eye puts Android in a pocket-sized laptop

It may sound like a mid-boss in some forgotten and poorly translated NES game, but Dr. Eye (aka the N18C) is actually a sort of keyboard-endowed MID from Inventec. This chubby clamshell sports a QWERTY keyboard, a 4.8-inch VGA touchscreen, 3G, WiFi, and a front-facing webcam. Power is said to come from a “Marvell 624,” which we’re guessing is a 624MHz PXA310 and, while it’s currently running 1.6, word is that it’ll be dipped in 2.1’s creamy filling in the near future. When will delivery be? Inventec has been showing this guy off since last year, and while the person doing the demonstration indicates they’ll be available “pretty soon” at a price point around $400, we found this guy for sale already at a price of 2688 yuan, or about $395. So, if you’re eager to get computing and prefer donuts to eclairs, we wish you happy importing.

Continue reading Inventec’s Dr. Eye puts Android in a pocket-sized laptop

Inventec’s Dr. Eye puts Android in a pocket-sized laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HomePipe streams your iTunes to Android, other files too

HomePipe streams your iTunes to Android, other files too Need another way to get your tunes (whether they be i-prefixed or not) onto your Android celly? HomePipe is the latest, a service offering easy access to files on your home computer via your cellphone. It’s been available for Apple devices for some time now, but a recently added Android app extends the reach of its plumbing system. That mobile app works in conjunction with a desktop version acting as a server, pushing photos, documents, and lots of types of media — including iTunes. HomePipe claims this makes it the “first to ever stream home iTunes music to Google’s Android,” but having played with Michael Robertson‘s MP3tunes service, which uploads your music library to the cloud and allows access from Android handsets, we’re happy to assure the service that it is at least the second. Still, it sounds mighty handy, and for the bargain price of free it’s definitely worth a shot. Video demo and full press release is just below.

Continue reading HomePipe streams your iTunes to Android, other files too

HomePipe streams your iTunes to Android, other files too originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DoubleTwist for Android Brings iTunes-Like Syncing

DoubleTwist, the iTunes-replacing app that will sync your music to your media player, has gotten its own Android app. DoubleTwist for Android pairs up with the desktop client and lets you easily synchronize apps, playlists, podcasts and videos.

DoubleTwist is the iTunes for everyone else. Slicker, prettier and less bloated than iTunes, the Windows and OS X software will work with pretty much every media-playing device out there, including the Kindle and, if you’re on Windows, the iPhone and iPod Touch. It will read in your existing iTunes library and even lets you shop in the Android Marketplace, just like shopping in the iTunes Store for apps.

I don’t have an Android machine for testing, but from the screenshots this looks more than a match for Apple’s iPod player on the iPhone. Early reviews say its worth using, especially as the stock Android music player is widely regarded as junk. One problem: there’s no widget for controlling from the home screen, although it is promised “soon”.

The app is “free for a limited time”. Available in the Android Marketplace now.

DoubleTwist Player [Android Marketplace via Phandroid]

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