Hasta La Gadget!

We knew it was too good to be true. Don’t get us wrong, this new ZN300 is alright, but Motorola knows as well as we do that this isn’t the device people are looking for Schaumburg to produce right now; the company’s engineering talent isn’t in question, but what the people want is a superphone that proves there’s some design talent in the house, too. That’s why this supposed Touch ZINE HD got such a strong positive reaction the past few days that we’d all held out hope that there was a shred of reality to it, but unfortunately, Androidphones.com makes a very convincing argument that it’s almost certainly poppycock: looks like our boy Yury Cassini here took the back of a ZN5, combined it with the blanked front of a E8, and — voila! — there’s the device the Android-loving world is waiting for. In our last piece about this device, we implored to Moto that “if this isn’t real, can whatever it is you’re working on right this second and do precisely this instead,” and as we sit here with broken hearts and shattered dreams, the advice most definitely stands.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Motorola Touch ZINE HD is likely fake, hearts break around the world originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Dev Phone 1 is good for many things that the stock G1 is not — hardcore geek street cred, developing Android apps, exercising your 1337est hacking skills — but one thing it’s not good for is buying and enjoying paid apps out of the Android Market. It seems Google has disabled access to paid apps from Dev Phone 1s, likely in response to the almost-immediate discovery by users that rooted devices had access to the hidden folders where the apps were stored, effectively making pirating them trivially easy. In all likelihood, the move doesn’t actually have anything to do with whether your phone is radio unlocked — it’s the rooting that’s the concern, and frankly, we’re a bit shocked at Google’s naivete at thinking these things were going to stay protected without at least a glancing effort at real DRM. You’d think that developers willing to shell out $400 for the device aren’t going to take too kindly to being locked out of the goods — which, ironically, could be their own — so let’s hope Google’s planning on cleaning up the shop and opening back up sooner rather than later.

Update: Get a load of this — we have an unlocked, rooted G1 on hand, and it still has access to paid apps. Same problem, essentially the same phone, but Google’s glossing it right over. If we had an ADP1, we’d be fuming right about now.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Google blocking paid Market apps from Dev Phone 1 users originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android may be doing its best to exterminate Linux on the mobile platform, but a dedicated group of fans is doing its best to keep it alive and on the move. One of those is a G1 user by the handle ghostwalker who managed to get a full X-Windows environment running on his handset. Building on the already working Debian version for the G1, he installs LXDE (the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) on top and then connects to that using the Android VNC viewer. The process sounds straightforward (as far as these things go) and is fully detailed at the read link, but as always don’t blame us if you break your poor Android’s shell — and heart.

[Via Hack A Day, thanks Neerhaj]

Filed under: Cellphones

X11 on G1 hack is for those who like a little extra OS in their OS originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d already heard that ASUS was at least considering using Android on its Eee PC netbook, and seen it wrangled onto one unofficially (see above), but ASUS’s Samson Hu has now offered a few more details that indicate just how serious the company is about the XP/Linux alternative. Apparently, ASUS has already allocated a team of engineers to work on the Android-based netbook, which Hu says could be ready by the end of the year, although the company isn’t committing to actually releasing a product until it sees how things pan out. No further word on ASUS’s other Android experiments, unfortunately, but it seems safe to bet that ASUS is devoting even more attention to those, at least if its latest timeline is any indication.

[Via GadgetMix.com]

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS experimenting with Android-based netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Admit it, you want some Cupcake, but you’re afraid of ditching the physical keyboard altogether. Good news for those of you who’ve snagged an Android Dev Phone 1, because your wish may be our command. The guys at Make have the lowdown on how to flash Cupcake to the device and experience that on-screen keyboard in all its glory. The hacked OS certainly wasn’t ready for primetime, and that hotly-anticipated soft keyboard was still a little buggy — but there is some hope for using the phone with one hand. We’ll bet Google / T-Mobile keep this one in the oven a bit longer until it’s ready to take on the masses, but at least we’re seeing some fresh baked goodness on something other than the Magic. There’s video of the Macguyver’d OS in action after the break.

[Via Geek.com]

Continue reading Android Dev Phone 1 gets in on the Cupcake action early, deemed to be a little undercooked

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Android Dev Phone 1 gets in on the Cupcake action early, deemed to be a little undercooked originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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