Last fall Motorola hinted that they were planning to start moving the interfaces for their devices to being closer to a stock Android experience. Owners of Motorola DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX devices will see the fruits of that change in strategy as Motorola starts to officially roll out their Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update. According to Motorola’s software upgrade page, several Motorola specific applications have been removed and replaced with stock Android apps. » Read the rest
Our favorite Panda (@black_man_x) is at it again, giving us tips and clues to what’s coming soon. He sent out three particularly interesting tweets tonight about Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS):
This is a good as any inside information anyone can get. If you look at the hints, the other manufacturer(s) are probably either or both Motorola and HTC. We know HTC has the Rezound coming up and Motorola has the RAZR, which will be announced this Tuesday. Could either of those devices be stock ICS? Actually, I think I prefer Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich.
One other thing to point out is his choice of wording which is “device” instead of phone. He could be implying a tablet, and Motorola has two XOOM 2 tablets on the way.
Stay tuned because the 4th quarter could be the most exciting time for Android ever.
[via black_man_x]
We know some sort of variant of the Nexus Prime will launch with Ice Cream Sandwich on Verizon first. The big question is if it will be a true Nexus device with no bloatware? Our friends over at MyDroidLife have the system app list and guess what? No bloatware. We know the phone is made by Samsung so what about TouchWiz? It’s also missing in action. It looks like Verizon may have a full stock Android experience.
Also on the app list is Facelock.apk. This could be some sort of facial recognition for the lock screen. Of course we will find out all the details on October 11 at CTIA 2011 in San Diego, but I am sure more stuff will leak before than. Stay tuned.
November can’t come soon enough. Who’s going to miss City Id?
Full app list after the break.
Good news Epic owners. If you recently rooted your phone and have since had some troubles, an unrooted stock kernel has successfully been extracted. With the stock kernel you can restore your kernel to its prime factory state. Team ACS, the dev group behind the extraction, have the kernel as well as Samsung’s ODIN available for download. You simply flash the kernel with the ODIN tool. To get the more details, full instructions, and files hit the source link.
[via acsyndicate]
Anyone out there still holding onto their OG Droid from Motorola? Yeah, you know who you are. Desperately clutching to your nostalgia, praying for more updates. Well, folks, help has arrived, and it has come by way of developer Peter Alfonso. You may recognize the name from his GPA16 build, which – while unofficial – has become insanely popular on OG Droid devices. He has continued to develop for this piece of Android history, and today brings us a 2.3.4 build, complete with stock UI, clean code, and some other various and sundry tweaks.
If you want to give this sure-to-be-crowd-pleaser a go on your OG Droid, be sure to hit up the source link. Full changelog in the works. Don’t forget to let us know what you think in the comments!
[via Peter Alfonso]
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc launcher was something that many of us wanted for our own handsets since we saw it demo’d here. If you own a Samsung Galaxy S device however, you can now get that same launcher working on your device, without any of the lag seen in other launchers.
XDA member Syn Ack has taken the ‘unimportant’ files from the launcher code, and made it transparent and lightweight for all Samsung Galaxy S models. If you’d like to give this a try, head on over to this forum thread for more info on how.
[via XDA-Developers]
So bad here we told you about rooting the Motorola Xoom, then found out it may not be a great idea based on how Motorola may deal with your warranty and upgrade status to 4G. Now that we know the Flash 10.2 update is here, it was announced that rooted or unlocked Xooms would need to be rolled back and relocked or unrooted to get the update installed properly. Like we’re surprised there right?
How do you go about that? Well, someone detailed some fine instructions for everyone to follow, just in case.
Note: This will wipe your Xoom
- You’re going to need to have the Android SDK installed. You can download it here.
- Download the official HRI39 build from Motorola here.
- Unzip the files in MZ600_HRI39.zip and move or copy them to the /platform-tools folder in your SDK folder.
- Connect your Xoom to your computer.
- Type adb reboot bootloader. Wait for it to reboot into the bootloader.
- Type the following commands, waiting for each to finish before continuing:
- fastboot flash boot boot.img
- fastboot flash system system.img
- fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
- fastboot flash userdata userdata.img
- fastboot erase cache
You’ve now successfully flashed your Xoom back to stock. Now it’s time to relock the device.
[via Android Central Forum]
Finally available in the Android Market is an app for you E*TRADE fanatics out there. This app comes with a comfortable and user friendly UI, equipped with everything you need to take care of your stocks. If you are new to E*TRADE, opening up an account could just win you $500 dollars. You can create your account by applying here.
With the application you get:
For more information on the application you can check here.
[via E*TRADE]
In the latest “what were you thinking, Mr. web developer” news, it looks like an over zealous employee at Carphone Warehouse put up a listing for the Nexus S, showing it in stock. While we know that Carphone Warehouse probably wont be selling the phone until around Dec. 20th (a few days after Best Buy USA gets it), for a few hours, the site was showing it as in stock and ready for ordering. It has since been moved to out of stock, but we would love to know if anyone out there was able to get an order in. Did you? Be sure to let us know in the comments.
[via carphone warehouse]
French software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru, a developer on the Android Open-Source Project tweeted earlier this morning that Gingerbread will be in AOSP shortly after shipping to the masses. What does this mean to you? It means Pure Android on your device! Nothing against HTC’s Sense UI or Samsung’s TouchWiz, but sometimes you just want some plain ol’ stock (aka – Vanilla) Android. If Sense and Wiz aren’t your forte, then this just might be down your alley. It’s a real treat to see Gingerbread following Vanilla, Cupcake, Eclair, and Froyo, being codded off of the AOSP platform. Developers and users alike will certainly not be complaining. What’s your skin of choice? Sense? TouchWiz? MotorBlur? Does one trump over another? Or perhaps just AOSP? Let us know in the comments below.
[via twitter]
Note: All we’re saying here is that the AOSP code will be released, allowing for custom ROM development on things like the Nexus One. 