While we expect Sense 5 to first appear on HTC’s upcoming M7 smartphone, it’s nice to see it running on some of HTC’s current smartphones such as the DNA. Whether you like Sense or not, Sense does have a huge fan-base and the 5th iteration looks promising to the eye. Hopefully HTC has lightened Sense down a bit as compared to their previous versions.
What do you think, does Sense look better to you now or still don’t care for it?
source: HTC Source
Verizon has a tendency to lock down phones on their network, but fortunately, Big Red hasn’t been able to ruin the developer experience on the Droid DNA. Just to show its resilience, the Droid DNA has been added to the list of supported devices in Flash Image GUI. Flash Image GUI is a neat little app that lets you flash kernels and recoveries without rebooting to recovery. If you’re the kind of person who likes to flash something new on their phone a few times a week, this app is a huge time saver. But remember that anytime you flash new software on your device, it can be risky, so be sure to keep a reliable backup just in case things go awry. If you’re a Droid DNA owner who wants to give the app a go, hit the link below.
source: XDA
Amidst all their troubles, including plans to cut back on shipments and models, HTC has been generating a small amount of buzz around one of their devices. Leaked specifications for the new HTC M7 device point toward it becoming the new flagship device for HTC, on par with or surpassing the DROID DNA as a successor to the HTC One X. The question remains as to whether HTC will be able to keep moving forward with such a high end device.
According to one rumor, HTC is preparing to announce the M7 at CES 2013 next week. Twitterer @Football4PDA tweeted earlier today that inside information indicated this would be the case. Along with the CES 2013 rumor, @Football4PDA also mentions the device will have screen buttons instead of hardware buttons.
Check back here at TalkAndroid for our coverage of CES 2013 as we track down this elusive HTC device.
source: @Football4PDA
Verizon has been making a habit of offering special edition DROIDs to their employees. A few months ago, it was the DROID RAZR HD / RAZR MAXX HD, and now the DROID DNA gets the same treatment. As you can see the back is the same color red as the side grills that are on the normal retail model. It’s pretty cool looking, but might be a little too loud. If you’re looking to get your hands on one of these, you might want to check out eBay since you won’t find them in stores. A couple of more pictures after the break.
With LG’s Nexus 4, Samsung’s Galaxy S III and Note 2 receiving all of the news lately of their great sales, it’s good to see HTC get some of the spotlight for once. It seems as if their Asia only Android device (Droid DNA in the US) in the Butterfly has been selling quite well and is prompting HTC to increase their shipments of the device.
According to Jack Tong, the president of HTC’s North Asia said “We will ship a large number of devices by the end of this month, due to the success of the HTC Butterfly J in Japan.”
The Butterfly sports a beautiful 5″ 1080p display paired with Quolcomm’s new quad-core S4 pro processor. If you’re curious about HTC’s new successful device, you can check out our review of Verizon’s Droid DNA right here!
source: Focus Taiwan
The HTC Butterfly, which appears to be a variant of the HTC J Butterfly and the HTC DROID DNA, has surfaced on HTC’s web site. With the slight name change comes a couple other differences. Most notable is the absence of LTE capability. Although that may be a negative, on the positive side the Butterfly’s storage is expandable via microSD cards.
According to an HTC spokesperson, the HTC Butterfly is slated for release in China. However, no information regarding availability in other countries or markets has been released. At the bottom of HTC’s page for the Butterfly, there is an offer for 25GB of Dropbox space for two years if you sign-up or log-in to Dropbox using an HTC phone. The footnotes to that offer indicate the offer is only available on the HTC Butterfly device, but not in China. This would seem to imply the Butterfly will be available in other markets.
source: Android Central
more info: HTC
It’s safe to say HTC’s Droid DNA is the top pick for a high-end handset on Verizon, but its $200 price point may have seemed a bit steep for the average customer. Well, Amazon appears to have taken this into account and has subsequently shaved $50 off of the initial price. This means customers can pick up the device for just $149.99 with a new two-year commitment.
The offer is good for both new and existing customers eligible for upgrades. Currently, however, the device is listed as being backordered, and won’t ship for 1-2 weeks. If waiting isn’t an issue, interested parties can hit the source link below to get their unit ordered.
Source: AmazonWireless
The DROID DNA is probably the best smartphone available today, at least according to me. Since Verizon is such a stickler when it comes to bootloaders and all that fun stuff, it can be tough to deal with for newbies. Well XDA member hassoon2000 has come to the rescue with an all-in-one toolkit that will unlock, root, and flash your DROID DNA with a ClockworkMod or TWRP custom recovery. It’s GUI-based and it couldn’t be simpler. At hassoon2000′s request, I won’t get into any other details, so hit the source link for more information. If you like what he has done, we encourage you to donate for further development.
HTC’s DROID DNA has earned tons of praise from the Android community, but it’s certainly apparent that all the hardcore tinkerers out there have been itching to get down and dirty into the real guts of the device— and HTC has delivered by releasing the open source code and binaries to the masses. The code is based off Android 4.1 and is specifically meant for developers and should allow for some slight ‘modifications’ improvements to the device and subsequently, the various custom ROMs out there. This should especially be of major importance to those of you who went ahead and unlocked the DROID DNA’s bootloader as well.
Interested parties can grab the source code (version 1.15.605.4) at the source link below.
source: HTCDev
Earlier this month we reported on a move by Sharp to capitalize on the 5-inch display they are producing for the HTC DROID DNA. Sharp plans to produce their own Aquos device with the same large 1080p screen. Initial plans were to target the device at the Russian market. This meant some tradeoffs were made in the hardware and early reviews indicated this caused the device to struggle with some activities like games and video playback. Sharp now appears to be expanding on their plans by offering the new Aquos in China. They have started that effort with the production of some promo materials comparing the device to several other top end smartphones. » Read the rest