Xperia X10 to get Android 2.3 this summer, makes us rub our eyes in disbelief

Who’s in charge of Sony Ericsson today and what did they do with the old crew? Reversing a previous statement saying there’ll be no Android updates for its Xperia X10 family beyond Eclair, SE has just announced that it’ll bring Gingerbread to the X10 at the end of Q2 / start of Q3 this year. That’s right around this summer, when we should expect a user experience roughly equivalent to that on the new Xperia Arc, Neo and Play devices, whose Gingerbread implementation looks to have served as the basis for the elder X10’s upcoming update. Seriously, Gingerbread on the X10, we still can’t believe it.

P.S. – If you’re wondering about the X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro or X8, those are all stuck on Android 2.1.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Xperia X10 to get Android 2.3 this summer, makes us rub our eyes in disbelief originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceSony Ericsson Product Blog  | Email this | Comments

Happy Birthday, OS X [Techversary]

Apple’s prized operating system—you may hate it, you may be in awe of its beauty, you may be using it right now—hits a milestone today. Version ten turns ten—and it’s come a long, long way. More »

Mac OS X turns X years old today

Whether it changed everything, made you think different, or was just a sideshow to the Windows centerpiece of your life, there’s no denying version X of Mac OS has been the most successful and enduring piece of software Apple has ever produced. It is turning 10 years old today, so we thought we’d spare a moment to say congratulations and to dust off an image of our favorite logo of the bunch. And who knows, with the next iteration being dubbed Lion and the lack of any more senior big cats available, maybe this will be the last big anniversary before Apple takes the leap into version 11.

[Thanks, Robert]

Mac OS X turns X years old today originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Microsoft serves up a ‘NoDo’ update schedule for Windows Phone 7 devices

Where is your Windows Phone 7 “NoDo” update? That’s the question Microsoft is aiming to answer with a new spreadsheet it has cobbled together to detail the software status of all WP7 handsets released so far. A February preparatory patch and the long-anticipated first proper upgrade to the OS, herein titled merely “March update,” are sat side by side, with a set of delivery states under them for each WP7 phone. Things aren’t looking awesome in the US, where AT&T’s batch is still undergoing carrier testing and T-Mobile’s pair of phones are “scheduling” (which Microsoft says takes no more than 10 days), but news is better overseas, where most have received the February OTA and are mere days away from the final NoDo goodness. Sprint’s HTC Arrive and AT&T’s upcoming HD7S will both have that software preloaded, so at least new buyers won’t have to fret unduly.

[Thanks, Arty]

Microsoft serves up a ‘NoDo’ update schedule for Windows Phone 7 devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 05:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceMicrosoft (USA), (International)  | Email this | Comments

Valve’s Gabe Newell hints at possible Steam port to iOS / Android, may be blowing hot air

We’d recommend taking this all with a healthy grain of salt for now, but according to a fortunate Steam Powered forum member who scored a trip by Valve’s headquarters, the company’s considering an iOS / Android port of Steam. Yeah, Steam — you know, that wildly popular game distribution service that’s doing its darnedest to kill off boxed video game sales. As the story goes, Political Gamer was able to sit down with Valve’s own Gabe Newell for a tick, and while the topics of conversation were obviously varied, one point in particular piqued our interest. Purportedly, Gabe confirmed that the company is “looking into the iOS / Android platform for possible expansions with Steam,” which makes absolute sense given just how well-received the iPod touch and iPhone have been by gamers. To boot, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play is just around the bend, and if Amazon’s able to launch its own app store, why not push out a game-centric one from a name that people already know and trust? Of course, pondering the possibility is far different than investing resources into a new product, so until we hear that the latter is definitely happening, we’ll be doing our best to suppress our expectations. Call it self-preservation.

Valve’s Gabe Newell hints at possible Steam port to iOS / Android, may be blowing hot air originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Recombu  |  sourceSteam  | Email this | Comments

Android 2.2 is now the dominant version of Google’s OS with 61.3 percent of all active devices

Considering that we’re about nine months removed from Google’s release of Froyo, you’d expect that version of its mobile OS to have been distributed quite widely by now and indeed it has. 61.3 percent of (the many) active Android devices — handsets and tablets, anything with access to the Market is eligible — worldwide are now running version 2.2, making it the most prevalent iteration of the software at the moment. Even more encouraging news is that, when taken together with Android 2.1, that group swells to account for more than 90 percent of active Google devices. If you want to look at the reverse, rather moldy, side of the coin, however, you’ll note that the latest mobile version of the OS, Gingerbread (2.3), is only on 1 percent of devices, while the absolute finest Android, Honeycomb (3.0), barely scrapes a couple tenths of a percent together. So yes, things are moving inexorably forward, just not as rapidly as some might have hoped.

Android 2.2 is now the dominant version of Google’s OS with 61.3 percent of all active devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 05:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceAndroid Developers  | Email this | Comments

Motorola Milestone achieves Android 2.2 milestone at last, Froyo update ready for download

The road to Android 2.1 may have been a long and treacherous one for Milestone users, but the one to Android 2.2 wasn’t even certain of reaching its goal. Thankfully, Moto has managed to conclude its “exhaustive testing process” and is now making a Froyo firmware update available to Milestone users wishing to step their software up a notch. Flash Player 10.1, a faster browser and mobile hotspot capabilities await the intrepid updater, but Motorola warns that any DRM-locked media you have on your SD card will be lost. Weirdly enough, there’s also a caution that “users may experience some adverse effects associated with the upgrade which could include slower operation of some phone functions and applications.” Once you’ve read and understood all the warnings, smash the source link to download the new software.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola Milestone achieves Android 2.2 milestone at last, Froyo update ready for download originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Motorola Europe (Facebook)  |  sourceMotorola  | Email this | Comments

Apple doubles down on in-app purchasing security in iOS 4.3, password now required

As you might recall, a certain game was racking up credit card bills because of its in-app purchases — something which probably resulted in some angry parents (or as the folks in Finland say, “birds”). In Apple’s latest iOS update, a feature has been implemented that requires the user to input their password whenever an in-app purchase is made. Will this new security measure actually prevent those children from purchasing hundreds worth of virtual fruit? A big boon for grown-ups, a big downer for those who no longer have an excuse to explain their Smurfberry obsession.

Apple doubles down on in-app purchasing security in iOS 4.3, password now required originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceGigaom  | Email this | Comments

Joli OS 1.2 available now, we go hands-on

Oh, remember when Jolicloud told us yesterday that it was going to release its Joli OS 1.2 sometime in the future? Well, the future is now! That’s right, you can download the OS or test out the web app in Chrome right this second. Naturally, we had to try out the new version for ourselves and we put it to the test on an Acer Aspire One 522. For those that have never downloaded the OS before, Jolicloud makes it incredibly easy — you can simply grab the .exe file from its site and the installation process takes care of the rest. Those that wish to download the ISO can do that as well. There’s also that new Chrome web app, but we’ll get to that soon.

Sure, the OS has dropped the “cloud” part of its name, but ironically, it’s more cloud based than ever. The entire OS has always been centered around web apps, and now the focus is on making those easier to share, discover, and create. The latter is probably one of the biggest changes — as you can see above, we made an app that launches the Jolicloud Engadget tag page. All we had to do was type in the URL and add a picture to the shortcut. You can also star an app easily from the main menu, which will flag it for your followers. (For those that aren’t familiar with the social aspect of the OS, you can follow others and see their apps, etc.) Other than that, the UI has been polished a bit and Dropbox has been integrated so you can easily access files from any of your Joli OS devices. And that’s where the new HTML 5 Chrome app comes in — you don’t have to install Joli OS on all your computers, you can now simply log in on any system that has a Chrome browser, although local apps, like OpenOffice won’t work. All in all, we’d say Jolicloud continues to make its cloud OS better and better — but don’t let us tell you how it is, hit the source link and try it out for yourself.

Joli OS 1.2 available now, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceJolicloud  | Email this | Comments

Canonical christens Ubuntu 11.10 ‘Oneiric Ocelot’

Canonical’s still one month away from letting Natty Narwhal (also known as Ubuntu 11.04) out of the cage, but it’s already teasing us with another OS flaunting an alliterative mammalian monicker. Like the Narwhal before it, Oneiric Ocelot (or Ubuntu 11.10), due out this October, will offer a 2D OpenGL-based Unity interface to support older computers, as well as Qt — you know, the framework Nokia loved and left hanging. You can also expect Ubuntu to scale back on the number of cloud services with the Ocelot, as it gears up for the release of the as-of-yet unnamed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (long term support). For now, that’s all she wrote, but if you’re dying to find out how they come up with those adorable Animalia appellatives, check out the source link below.

Canonical christens Ubuntu 11.10 ‘Oneiric Ocelot’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 06:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Inquirer  |  sourceMark Shuttleworth  | Email this | Comments