Sep 18

Refresh Roundup: week of September 12, 2011

Posted in: att, firmware, galaxy s ii, GalaxySIi, gingerbread, HTC, LG, mobilepostmini, motorola, refresh, roundup, samsung, software update, SoftwareUpdate, Sprint, Today's Chili, update, verizon

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery from the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Official Android updates

  • The HTC Merge on US Cellular can now be bumped up to Android 2.3.4. It appears to be a manual install, so visit here to download the file and learn exactly how to update your device. [via UnwiredView]
  • HTC has added another device to its growing list of phones and tablets that now support the HTCDev bootloader unlock tool. [via PocketDroid]
  • The LG Optimus S on Sprint is now on the receiving end of an OTA Gingerbread rollout. [via UnwiredView]
  • Great news, Samsung Infuse 4G users: you’re getting an update. The bad news: it’s a maintenance fix, rather than a full-out Gingerbread upgrade. Still, it may be worth the download if you have the time or opportunity. [via AndroidCentral]
  • Samsung has released the kernel source for the Epic 4G Touch. [via PocketNow]
  • Sprint’s certainly getting a lot of love this week, and we’re not done yet: the Motorola Photon 4G is beginning to push out another smallish bug fix meant to curb WiFi issues experienced by a few users, and appears to be a gradual rollout. [via SprintFeed]
  • The original Motorola Droid X is expected to receive a maintenance refresh as early as tomorrow, which is intended to resolve a widespread issue with the keyboard. If you’re in this category, definitely keep a close eye out on this space. [via Droid-Life]
  • We’re hearing that the Droid 2 R2-D2 update to Gingerbread, which we originally reported on last week, is officially rolling out to eager fanboys and fangirls countrywide. [via AndroidCentral]

Unofficial Android updates, custom ROMs and misc. hackery

  • Those CyanogenMod7 builds for the HTC Sensation and EVO 3D we were talking about last week? They’re now available. As extremely early builds, download and flash at your own risk. [via AndroidCentral]
  • Since we’re talking so much about HTC, here’s one more thing: you can now grab a ROM for your HTC Desire HD that enables the beats audio technology. [via GSMArena and Android Community]
  • A dev has been hard at work pulling various Motorola Atrix ROMs and porting them over to the Droid X2. The first one available is plain vanilla Android 2.3.4, if you’re just not feeling up to using MotoBlur (aka the now-nameless Moto UI). [via Droid-Life]
  • The initial build of the Motorola Droid Bionic bootstrap is available for install, which essentially will enable you to bootstrap your recovery and create backups on your device. Custom ROMs still aren’t around for the Bionic yet (although early builds of CM7 began showing up this week), but the bootstrap is a big step toward achieving that goal. [via Droid-Life]

Other platforms

  • Symbian’s Anna update is continuing to expand support to more countries, including Italy, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey. The refreshes for the US, Canada and Australia — according to an email from Nokia — is expected to arrive within the next two weeks. [via MyNokiaBlog]

Refreshes we covered this week

Refresh Roundup: week of September 12, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 18

WrapUp: Lakers’ Victory Sets Twitter Record, Droid X Revealed, and More

Posted in: Today's Chili, twitter, verizon, WrapUp

This article was written on June 21, 2010 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Twitter.jpgLakers Victory Sets Twitter Record
Twitter announced on their blog that the L.A. Lakers winning the NBA championship broke tweeting records. On a typical day they see an average of 750 tweets per second, but the Lakers’ victory generated a whopping 3,085 per second.


droid.jpgMotorola Droid X Revealed by Verizon
 The next generation Droid phone will sport a 4.3″ screen, 720p video capture, and HDMI output.


wordpress 3.jpgWordPress 3.0 Released
The new version of WordPress includes a completely new theme, even more developer APIs, bulk updating of plugins, the merge of WordPress MU, and over 1200 bug fixes.


nintendo 3ds.jpgNintendo Announced 3DS Portable Game System
The Nintendo 3DS includes a 3D screen on top that doesn’t require you to wear glasses to get the cool effects. Pricing and release date haven’t been made available yet though.


fforward.jpgKevin Rose Leaving Diggnation
It’s been announced that Kevin Rose will be leaving Diggnation at the end of 2010 to start a new show called FForward. It’s still undecided as to what whether Diggnation will push on without him.


mac mini.jpgMac Mini Updated with HDMI and New Design
Apple refreshed the Mac Mini the same day they started iPhone 4 pre-orders last week. The new unibody design also has a slot for SD cards as well as an HDMI port.


–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

web2pdf.jpgConvert Web Pages to PDF
Web2PDF lets you input a URL, select settings like page size or orientation, and then generate a PDF for that site.


imagetricks.jpgApply Over 100 Single-Click Effects to Your Images
Image Tricks, a Mac application, lets you apply all kinds of effects to your photos in just a few clicks.


transmission.jpgTransmission 2.0 BitTorrent Client Available
Transmission is a popular Mac/Linux BitTorrent client that is faster in several areas and smarter when it comes to handling network lag.


qtdsync.jpgQtdSync Backs Up Your Files
This free Windows backup utility does both full and differential backups, supports multiple users, filters, scheduled jobs, and more.


extension sync.jpgExtension Sync Comes to Chrome
Users of Google Chrome developer builds, if activated through the command line, can play with the new ability to sync extensions.


flock chrome.jpgFlock Moving Base from Firefox to Chrome
Flock 3 Beta, currently available for Windows, uses Chrome as the basis for the browser. A Mac version should be coming later this year.


–Downloads–

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Sep 17

Samsung Illusion gets pictured on Verizon, convincing us it’s not a figment of our imagination

Posted in: mobilepostmini, samsung, Today's Chili, verizon, vzw
We can’t put all of our focus on Verizon’s LTE lineup, lest we forget that there’s plenty of 3G phones that need some attention too. The one shown above is a leaked image of the Samsung Illusion, also known to some as the Viper or the SCH-I110, a conceivably lower-end Android device with Gingerbread. It’s difficult to pin down any more hard details on the device, as the components inside the phone seem to be even more of a hallucination than the phone itself; speculation, however, points to at least an 800MHz CPU, a 480 x 320 HVGA smaller-screen display and a few eco-friendly features (as indicated by its Sustainable Product Certification). Persuaded yet? Yeah, we didn’t think so.

Samsung Illusion gets pictured on Verizon, convincing us it’s not a figment of our imagination originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Mobile Miscellany: week of September 12, 2011

Posted in: 4G, bluetooth, lte, Miscellaneous, mobile, mobilepostmini, motorola, samsung, Sony Ericsson, SonyEricsson, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vodafone, vzw

This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of September 12, 2011:

  • Vodacom South Africa has joined the data throttling club, though this carrier is taking a slightly different spin: BlackBerry users consuming more than 100MB of data each month will find their download speeds downgraded to GPRS or EDGE. The company claims this will only affect less than five percent of its BlackBerry customers. [via N4BB]
  • Bada fans: the Samsung Wave 578 is featured on Orange’s site as “coming soon.” [via The Inquirer]
  • Motorola announced the availability of the Fire and Fire XT in India this week. [via Motorola]
  • The Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray is now being sold at Vodafone UK. [via Vodafone]
  • Parrot announced the most recent addition to its lineup of Bluetooth products, called the Minikit+, a refresh of its popular hands-free speakerphone. The new model offers simultaneous pairing and voice commands. [via Parrot]
  • Research in Motion is hoping to put the NFC functionality in OS 7 to good use, as it announced that the BlackBerry Bold 9900 / 9330 as well as the Curve 9350 / 9360 will support HID’s iCLASS digital keys, which means corporate folks will able to use their smartphone as an access card. [via PhoneScoop]
  • While digging through the Droid Bionic’s webtop app, the names of two unknown Motorola phones were discovered: the Edison and the Common. Little is known about the Common, but a recent FCC filing mentioned the Edison and is speculated to be the follow-up to the Atrix, albeit sans LTE as originally hoped. [via Droid-Life]
  • The manager of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, Matt Bencke, wrote a post pleading developers to submit their Mango-compatible apps as soon as possible, as the new update is coming to existing phones soon and it’s obviously very important to have Windows Phone 7.5 run as smooth as possible. [via WMPowerUser]
  • A leaked Radio Shack roadmap indicates the HTC Vigor should be available in stores by October 20th, and the QWERTY-packing Samsung Stratosphere will be up for online ordering as early as October 6th. As this is a third-party retailer, we can’t say with surety that these dates reflect the carrier’s official release. [via Droid-Life]

Mobile Miscellany: week of September 12, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Sep 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Pantech Breakout shows its darling face in the wild

Posted in: 4G, leak, leaks, lte, mobilepostmini, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw
The Pantech Breakout, Verizon’s least-hyped LTE phone this side of the Droid Bionic, has seen a fair amount of time splayed out on paper without getting its fair share of closeups. This has finally changed, however, now that Droid-Life was able to get its hands on true-blue images of the device. It appears to be a unit that’s already arrived in a Verizon retail outlet, lending credence to the rumor that the 4-inch Android handset will be available for our purchase next week. Unfortunately, Verizon’s still acting as if the phone doesn’t exist, so we’ll just have to strum our fingers on the desk for (hopefully) just a few more days to see if it’ll get acknowledged.

Pantech Breakout shows its darling face in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 17 Sep 2011 06:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 16

Verizon starts ‘optimizing’ (read: throttling) network for the most data hungry users

Posted in: 4G, lte, mobile broadband, MobileBroadband, mobilepostcross, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw, wwan

We can’t say we weren’t warned, since Verizon updated its data policy way back in February, but it’s still a punch in the gut to hear its “network optimization” plan went into effect yesterday. A new policy page pointed out by Droid-Life explains how the policy will affect only the “top 5 percent of data users with 3G devices on unlimited data plans” (LTE and tiered data users are in the clear) by managing their speeds when connected to towers it has deemed are congested. Those conditions, termed network intelligence by Big Red, are what it feels separates this scheme from mere data throttling since it will only affect a few users (those consuming 2GB or more of data per month) at certain times and places, but it’s hard to see it any other way. If you’re one of those affected, expect a message on your bill or My Verizon account, although you may go into and out of the affected group depending on your usage. Hit the source link below for all the details — anyone else think it’s not a coincidence this policy popped up just before the iPhone 4 came to Verizon and is being implemented only weeks before the next iThing is expected to arrive?

Verizon starts ‘optimizing’ (read: throttling) network for the most data hungry users originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceDroid-Life, Verizon  | Email this | Comments

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Sep 16

Verizon preps update for LTE Galaxy Tab 10.1, promises ‘enhanced data’

Posted in: 4G, GalaxyTab, lte, ota, samsung, Today's Chili, update, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw

Did you splash out extra on the LTE version of Verizon’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 only to suffer the indescribable horrors of an unstable 4G connection? Then listen up: an OTA update including “enhanced data connectivity” is in the works that could be just the fix you need. It also promises a bevy of smaller improvements, including making the device recognizable to your Mac, zapping some EAS email bugs and adding data roaming alerts. There’s unfortunately no sign of the TouchWiz upgrade that has already graced the WiFi version, and no Honeycomb 3.2 either, but if everything happened all at once there’d be nothing left to live for.

Verizon preps update for LTE Galaxy Tab 10.1, promises ‘enhanced data’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 15

Shocker: Verizon director admits to LTE-Advanced future

Posted in: 4G, lte, mobilepostcross, roadmap, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw

AT&T took to the stage to announce its LTE network will go live on Sunday, which means today’s the perfect day for its fiercest rival to one-up the news. Verizon’s director of network technology Praveen Atreya, dropped the rather unsurprising news that the next natural step in the company’s data evolution chain will be LTE-Advanced. Don’t get your hopes up so fast, though: Atreya says it’s still too early in the game to test the new tech or figure out its potential speeds (spoiler: they’ll be disgustingly fast), so we’re likely not going to see any widescale deployment for at least the next few years. Still, we’re always looking forward to the next best thing, so learning that Big Red is following Clearwire’s lead in adopting the technology is reassuring, to say the least.

Shocker: Verizon director admits to LTE-Advanced future originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 15

Pantech Breakout to make its LTE debut September 22nd?

Posted in: 4G, lte, mobilepostmini, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless, vzw
With a powerhouse like the Motorola Droid Bionic now lodged firmly on Verizon’s 4G lineup, we’re not expecting very many folks to be downright impressed by the Pantech Breakout. The latest offering on Big Red’s LTE network appears to be ready for its emergence in a week. The folks over at Droid-Life not only got their hands on a full spec sheet of the device, they also have come across the user manual, available for download at the source link. It looks like the Breakout will offer a 4-inch WVGA display, Gingerbread, a 1GHz single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 1,500mAh battery and a 5MP rear camera paired up with a VGA front-facing video chat cam. No pricing is mentioned, though Pantech has a track record of being a budget manufacturer, so we’re thinking this is aimed directly at the lower end of the LTE price spectrum. If all goes this doc’s way, we’ll be seeing the new device on September 22nd. Who’s in?

Pantech Breakout to make its LTE debut September 22nd? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 13

Verizon intros $50 unlimited plan, takes a swing at pre-paid operators

Posted in: mobilepostcross, plans, Today's Chili, verizon, Verizon Wireless, VerizonWireless

In a direct shot at its lesser competitors, Verizon Wireless announced today the launch of a new $50 unlimited plan for pre-paid customers. Available starting this Thursday, the unlimited talk, text and web option’ll rollout to all of the operator’s retail locations, in addition to Walmart, Best Buy and Target. Users who opt for the plan won’t get their pick of high-end smartphones, and will, instead, have to choose from a selection of four feature phones from LG, Samsung and Pantech. The move could seriously undercut growth for Sprint — which operates Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile — as well as smaller operators, like MetroPCS, that count pre-paid users as the majority of their customer base. It’s not really an even fight, but with fellow industry titan AT&T already offering a similar non-contracted service, all’s fair in this messy wireless war.

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Verizon intros $50 unlimited plan, takes a swing at pre-paid operators originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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