Hasta La Gadget!

Best Buy knocks Nexus S down to $100 for two weeks only originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just to throw a little more fuel on the fire, it turns out that directing your browser to now.sprint.com/nexus takes you to a landing site where you’re told that “this page will be ready soon.” Certainly sounds more likely than ever that Sprint’s preparing to launch its own variant of the Nexus S — and if our sources are correct, it’ll be called the Nexus S 4G, likely with both CDMA and WiMAX on board. Interestingly, both now.sprint.com/evoview and now.sprint.com/evo3d — the other two devices in our rumor three-pack from earlier today — redirect to Sprint’s home page rather than giving you an HTTP 404 error, suggesting they’re also real. CTIA kicks off in just over two weeks’ time where these things are likely to be revealed, but who knows? Maybe they’ll give us a little tease ahead of the show.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Sprint’s Nexus website is ‘coming soon’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been hearing reports about Nexus S’ Android 2.3.3 update adding a yellow tint to the screen and even washing out its colors, but according to Google’s Ry Guy, said patch is indeed intended to tweak the display’s color temperature. Here’s the full quote from Google’s support forum:

“With your new OTA complete, you may notice a slight difference in the way colors are displayed on your Nexus S. For Nexus S, we have adjusted the color temperature settings to more accurately reflect darker colors at all brightness levels. The Gingerbread UI being darker, we found that the colors were not as accurate when the device was being used at lower brightness levels. For example, some users reported that the initial color temperature was too high leading to some darker greys having a reddish tone; with the new color temperature this is no longer the case.”

So while this display tweak is well-intentioned, it looks like many commenters on both the forum and XDA-Developers aren’t too happy with this. Being curious geeks that we are, we went ahead and manually updated our own Nexus S (and by the way, be sure to match your build number with the appropriate patch). As you can see in our comparison photos (shot with the same manual camera settings and medium screen brightness), the new overall color temperature is no doubt subtly warmer, although the dimmer brightness settings no longer suffer from the aforementioned red tone. Interestingly, we actually approve this change, and the Super AMOLED display certainly doesn’t look washed out to us, nor do we see any noisy dithering that some have reported. Surely we can’t be alone. Well, there’s only one way to help solve this mystery: if you happen to be a fellow Nexus S owner who’s applied this update, why not chime in below?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Nexus S 2.3.3 update adjusts screen’s color temperature, we go eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Your Nexus One is a second-class citizen no more: Today, Google’s rolling out Android 2.3.3 to both its premier smartphones. The latest build, still referred to as Gingerbread, brings even more NFC goodies than fortold, as the Nexus S will soon be able to write (not just read) rewritable NFC tags as well as act as a glorified NFC tag itself. (You can see both possibilities in the three screenshots above.) What’s more, Google tells us Android 2.3.3 will fix the random reboots that have plagued the Nexus S as of late, and offers other random bugfixes as well. You’ll find the whole kit and kaboodle streaming to your phones over the air during the next few weeks to come.

Update: We’re also hearing that integrated Facebook contacts will be treated differently in Android 2.3.3 — we’ve reached out to Google for more information.

Update 2: Here’s the deal with regards to Facebook.

Nexus S and Nexus One get Android Gingerbread 2.3.3, which fixes random reboots and writes NFC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lots of people have lots of problems with lots of things, but to say that we’ve been getting lots of complaints about Nexus S issues would be an understatement. Hundreds have chimed in on the Google Mobile Help forum indicating that their handsets are frequently losing data signal and, once lost, a reboot is required to reconnect. It’s been said this could be related to an issue that’s been around since 2009 (issue 2845), but a new issue in the Android bug tracker has been created, 14672, which specifically deals with the Nexus S. You might want to star ’em both if you’re affected — or feeling charitable. Finally, and perhaps even more troubling, is the phone rebooting. By itself. In the middle of a call. You can imagine how this might be a little annoying. That issue is number 13674 and it’s linked down there too.

Update: Huzzah! Just got a note from Google saying: “All of the issues described in the post are resolved and will be fixed with an OTA that will go out soon.” Feel free to start mashing that “system updates” menu item.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Nexus S suffering from random data loss, reboots? (updated: fixes coming!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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