Hasta La Gadget!

As you may or may not be already aware, the Nexus One and HTC Desire have the same Broadcom chip. Seems trivial at cursory glance until you realize the Desire has a FM radio app, which should ergo be just as feasible on the Google-branded device. Cut to xda-developers’ intersectRaven, who’s released a custom N1 kernel that theoretically brings life to the FM receptor. It’s available to download, but as for when you’ll get a chance to really use this yourself, that’s entirely up to the custom ROM developers updating their respective wares. For his part, Paul O’Brien said today he’s already got it working on an upcoming Froyo Sense build for the device — hang tight, folks, it’s coming.

[Thanks, John]

Nexus One now a step closer to FM radio support, thanks to modified kernel originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You might be familiar with firmware impresario Conflipper by now, a man who’s earned a reputation tearing apart ROMs — often for unreleased devices — and pulling out the juicy bits for everyone to see. Turns out the dude runs a site called Shipped ROMs with… yes, you guessed it, a bunch of shipped ROMs for a wide variety of phones on it, and it seems HTC’s legal cats in Taiwan have taken issue, saying they’ve got “very strong reasons to believe that the HTC Intellectual Property was illegally obtained by fraudulent means” in a strongly-worded cease and desist letter sent to him earlier today. We reached out to HTC’s US branch for comment and got back the following:

“While HTC tries to take a hands off [approach] about the modder / ROM chef community, this site’s sole purpose [is] to make HTC’s content available for download from a source other than HTC. That content is not just the open source parts and kernels of Android but all of the software that HTC itself has developed. This is a clear violation of our copyrights and HTC needs to defend itself in these cases.”

In other words, these guys are just really against hosting official ROMs on unofficial servers. Anyone can dump a ROM from a phone and flesh it out, so we can’t imagine there’s any competitive concern — and no first-party site makes so many firmware builds available for so many devices in such a concise, well-organized way as Shipped ROMs is doing. Ultimately, it’s HTC’s property — it seems like they’re probably in the legal right here — but the unsavory PR effect with some of the company’s staunchest enthusiasts makes the endeavor more trouble than it’s worth, we’d argue. Tread carefully, HTC.

HTC slaps phone firmware site with cease and desist letter originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can’t wait to get your hands on an EVO 4G? Then it looks like you can now at least settle for the next best thing that’s not actually anything like the real thing: the final, shipping version of the EVO 4G ROM. That’s just been released into the wild courtesy of Conflipper, and is ready to be downloaded for use however you like — and at your own risk, of course. Hit up the source link below for the download link, and let us know in comments if you manage to work any magic with it.

[Thanks, Marcos]

Shipping HTC EVO 4G ROM released into the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 May 2010 19:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The lads and lassies at XDA-Developers made an intriguing discovery this week: a leaked 100MB file that might be the first Windows Phone 7 ROM actually destined for a device. What’s more, it could possibly reveal details about a phone we barely knew existed — the filename references an “HTC Mondrian.” At best, the contents might reveal wonders beyond imagination, including full specs, bundled apps, even the tools needed to properly shoehorn WP7 onto your existing HTC handset. At worst, the community might never open the blasted file, or discover it’s all a clever hoax. There’s really no indication either way, so we prefer to dream. If you think you’ve got what it takes, try cracking the ROM yourself (registration required) at our source link.

Leaked Windows Phone 7 ROM filename suggests an HTC Mondrian? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 May 2010 14:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So the ROM included with the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools refresh that was launched this week (to get it up to speed with the final release of Visual Studio 2010) has already been unlocked and torn apart over on xda-developers, and as you might expect, there are quite a few changes and additions in here versus what we’ve seen in the previous release. The most notable change appears to be the inclusion of Office, but we’ve also got dialer and in-call user interfaces, call history, call notifications (using Windows Phone 7’s standard notification paradigm, of course), and a method for uninstalling apps. Clearly, we’re still a long way from going final with this thing — and fortunately, Microsoft has given itself basically the rest of the year to get it good and solid. Andele, ladies and gentlemen.

Latest Windows Phone 7 emulator ROM unlocked, has Office and other goodies originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 May 2010 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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