Hasta La Gadget!

Look, if you buy a carrier-branded Android handset, you should know good and well that you may never see the first Android update. It ain’t easy to hear, but as mama always said, the truth ain’t always painless. That said, there’s still some research you should do before picking a phone and carrier, and ComputerWorld has seemingly done just that for you. The methodology is all explained down in the source link, but the long and short of it is this: in the last half of 2010, Verizon upgraded 33 percent of its sub-2.2 phones to Froyo, while Sprint updated just 28.6 percent of its stable and T-Mobile blessed only 12.5 percent of its phones with the new digs. AT&T bashers should take note, as Ma Bell didn’t update a single one of its nine Android phones during the June-December 2010 time period. Yeah, ouch. Over on the handset side, we’ve got HTC gifting half of its devices with Froyo, while Motorola comes in second with 15.4 percent and Samsung third with 11.1 percent. No matter how you slice it, it’s a depressing study to look at, and it probably makes your decision to skip over a Nexus One seem all the more idiotic in retrospect. But hey, at least there’s the Nexus S to console you… if you’re willing to sign up with T-Mob, that is.

Study: Verizon Wireless and HTC most eager to provide Android 2.2 updates originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen plenty of data to show that Android is the hottest-selling smartphone OS among US buyers today, but now we have a stat point to show that it’s doing pretty well in cumulative terms as well. According to ComScore’s latest estimates, Android had 26 percent of all US smartphone subscribers in the quarter ending November 2010, bettering Apple’s iPhone for the first time. The major victim of Android’s ascendancy has actually been RIM’s BlackBerry, whose lead at the top contracted by 4.1 percentage points (nearly 11 percent less than the share it had in the previous quarter). Guess those Verizon iPhones and dual-core BBs had better start arriving pretty soon.

ComScore: Android jumps ahead of iOS in total US smartphone subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this year, we asked how you’d change Palm’s Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, both of which were launched with webOS 1.x. Needless to say, a lot can happen in three calendar quarters. Since, HP has swallowed Palm up, and webOS 2.0 has hit the wilds of our wondrous planet. The Pre 2 wasn’t exactly the most enthralling device to launch the OS on, but it is what it is. And now, we’re curious to know how you’d overhaul it if given the seat that Mark Hurd once resided in. Have you grown annoyed by any specific thing within webOS 2.0? Would you have tweaked the distribution process? Are you satisfied with developer participation? Would you alter certain things knowing that a nondescript webOS tablet was on the horizon? Go ahead and spend your last moments of 2010 in comments below — who knows what the next year holds for this gem of a mobile OS.

How would you change webOS 2.0? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 23:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hold on to your hats, people, there’s a wind of awesomeness coming through. The Nexus S is no longer the only Gingerbread game in town, courtesy of supercurio over on the xda-developers forum, who has ported the hot new phone’s Android 2.3 install over to its Samsung forefather, the Galaxy S. The port is described as being unmodified from the Nexus S original, although quite a few basic functions like voice, WiFi, and GPS (insert joke about Galaxy S GPS woes) aren’t yet operational. All the same, we agree with supercurio that it’s looking “super smooth” and look forward to seeing him and the rest of the xda crew polish this stock Android baby off in short order.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S receives Gingerbread port right from the Nexus S source (video)

Samsung Galaxy S receives Gingerbread port right from the Nexus S source (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re not totally sure that Android 2.1 users will be happy to be bundled in with 2.2 consumers — after all, there’s plenty in Froyo that’s not available on Eclair — but the fact remains that a cool 83 percent of actively used Android phones right now run one of the two latest iterations. A reminder is merited to say that by “active” we mean those that accessed the Android Market over the foregoing two weeks — which might have a slight bias toward over-representing the newer phones with folks either abandoning their Cupcake and Donut handsets or simply not searching for new apps for them. Either way, we reckon it’s good to see such nice big slices taken up by Android’s most advanced versions, it seems almost a shame that Gingerbread’s arrival will soon disrupt things all over again. For now, we’re off to our delicatessen, all this food talk’s given us the munchies.

[Thanks, Dan]

Android 2.x now accounts for 83 percent of all active Googlephones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 02:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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