All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

No Need To Wait For Gingerbread: The Atrix Bootloader Has Been Unlocked | Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets - Android Police

Unlocked even before gingerbread...

 

Ah, ok, my mistake.

Hopefully the methods used to unlock the Atrix can be used on the Defy too.

 

Here's an interesting CNET article on Android smartphones in the pre-paid market:

Looking for a smartphone bargain? Check out prepaid | Signal Strength - CNET News

It's nice to see it's an expanding business, with more pre-paid carriers getting in on it. The phones aren't top of the line compared to contract carriers, but they're improving, and the advantage of such cheap service pricing is hard to argue with. Virgin Mobile may have its flaws, but where else are you going to get 300 minutes, unlimited messaging and unlimited data on an Android phone for $25 a month?

An interesting read, I think, even for those of you on contracts.

Also, I got my invite to Google Music. This'll be a few weeks of uploading

 

I got an invite too

But now my phone speeds are throttled so much that its pretty much worthless.... the song will take 20 minutes to buffer

 

You know what... I haven't used it near as much as I thought I would. BUT, as it gets better integration across Google platforms, it'll be a MUCH bigger thing. Once I can use it seamlessly on my Revue, I'll be using it a LOT more. Gah, it did take forever to upload though, even with a decent upload speed.

Google needs to integrate all their cloud services into a vehicle head-unit... it would be a major asset.

 

So, having uploaded your music to the internet, files you have on a PC or HDD in your house, you would then stream it back down to your TV.

Seems like a long-winded way of doing things.

 

Long-winded and dependent on your data connection, but it's to be able to play more music than can fit on your phone. I only have 1GB of storage, half of which is already taken up by apps and photos and such.

 

Phones I can understand, just.
But he's talking about playing it on his TV.

 

Well, it's much simpler to just get my music through the Google Music web app on the Revue than to go through DLNA... oddly enough. When the Market is opened to the Revue, then that may change, but as it currently stands... no.

On the Revue I use the browser to go to music.google.com. That shows me my entire music library.

 

I will leave this here if anyone is interested:
Amazon.com: Android issing on apple funny die cut vinyl decal / sticker: Automotive

 

From the main CM7 Galaxy S dev... from Twitter.

atinm
GPS - duct tape a garmin to the vibrant. The thing will likely never work...

 

There's working GPS in Gingerbread for the Vibrant someone over at XDA figured it out

 

Looking round the SE Insider/Ambassador site and they have a calender on there.
On various dates throughout September (TBC) there are the events I mentioned above and it also mentions that the 2nd to the 7th is IFA in Berlin.

An announcement perhaps?

 

This is interesting - 720p sAMOLED panel anyone?

 

That jives right along with everything I've heard from several people... Google wants to stick to PowerVR for handsets, so it makes sense they went with a TI OMAP platform.

 

If SE doens't release ICS 4.0 for the Arc and others, I'll be MAD!

 

Well, that's a pretty smart decision - the OMAP4430 proves just how potent the SGX540 GPU is, though it's a bit of a shame that it's just the SGC540 and not something newer.


GPUs aside, this is the first I've seen any mention of Samsung as the OEM, all the previous rumours have suggested Google were looking to move it around to keep everyone on-side.
Still, I think we can all agree that a 720p sAMOLED display would be about the best possible outcome.

edit: going back and re-reading the article, which seems to have been updated since I linked to it, the talk of Google working with a range of manufacturers so that there'll be a selection of ICS handsets released around the same time as the 'Nexus Prime' is pretty neat.
I wonder if they'll all have matching names - HTC could release the Evo Prime, Samsung the Galaxy Prime and LG the Optimus Prime!

 

Chill...lol. It'll be released for the Arc. Promise. Either by SE or XDA.

Yea, I would have liked the SGX544 that's in the OMAP5, but... hey I'll take the 540.

About the S-AMOLED, it better be a non-pentile matrix or I don't want it, no matter the pixel density.

LOL.. That would be pretty cool, but you know the US Carriers would butcher the "Prime" branding... adding their own "names". One could dream though.

 

Would the Pentile matrix matter if the pixels are so small?
Would you actually be able to tell?

Not that I think Samsung would take a step backwards anyway...


As for the GPU, even the 543 would be an improvement but at least it's not a Mali 400

 

It's not so much that... it's just I won't buy anything else Pentile. It's a vow I made. LOL. The S-AMOLED is truly a great panel, but I won't have another. Compared to the GS2 at the same resolution, the Galaxy S's Pentile S-AMOLED looks sad... and it takes a LOT to make an AMOLED of any kind look bad.

HA! I know, right! The Mali 400 is beastly in it's own right (4-cores of GPU), but it just doesn't have the driver optimization's that the PowerVR cores have. Imagination Technologies know their cores inside and out and their Android drivers are bulletproof. Plus they have some really nice OpenGL optimization's in the core architecture that Android really benefits from. Tegra2 is a waste of battery power, because the GeForce ULP renders the whole scene just like their desktop parts, whereas the PowerVR doesn't waste power on that... and just renders the parts that are visible.

Tile rendering FTW!

 

Just because the Galaxy S2 make's the Galaxy S's screen look poor, that doesn't mean that a pentile 720p sAMOLED panel would look sad... but as I say, I doubt Samsung would take a step backwards like that.

As for your vow, well if the rumours on the specs are correct but it turns out to be pentile, no offence but I don't see you sticking to it

Doesn't that kind of sum up TI's OMAP chicp as well?
Exynos, Tegra2, the dual-core Snapdragons; they're hardly bad CPUs but the OMAP chips are just better.

I don't know if it's drivers like the PowerVR/Mali situation but it strike me as being similar - this one's good but this one's better.

 

LOL! You know me too well. If it indeed does have the OMAP 4460, I WILL be buying one. Poste Haste.

Well, TI sticks to the ARM designs a lot more closely than others. Others will optimize for one thing or the other, whereas TI just sticks to the original designs and sticks a fat bus on the CPU interconnects... that's where all it's stout performance comes from. The OMAP4 has quite a large bus between the CPU and GPU and it shows...

 

Given you were going to sell your Exynos Galaxy S2 for an OMAP4430 model, that doesn't surprise me at all

More power to 'em - there's a lot to be said for simple and effective.

 

A lot of people have commented on the thinness of the GS2's battery case and worried about breakage. this should relieve any doubts as to it's durability.


Samsung Galaxy S2 battery cover unbreakable Google HKtech

 

Bendy ≠ breakable.

I'm sure if someone tried to actually fold it, it would break.

 

Would you guys happen to know anything about Android tablets, particularly the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1?

My dad recently got an iPad 2 for his birthday but he wants to return it due to lack of flash support. He primarily watches a lot of flash based video on his browser, will the Galaxy tab be able to support this? Like he'll have 3-4 flash videos on one web site that he'll play through. I've heard mixed reviews on the flash support for the Galaxy Tab.

And in general, I realize this may be a little biased, but what is the consensus on Android tablets vs iPad 2? I think most people still put the iPad as the leader of the pack.

 

The new Galaxy Tabs ( the 8.9 and 10.1" models) are seen as the first tablets that rival the iPad in terms of build quality, user experience etc.

Here's Engadget's review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Ignore the 8/10 score, read the text - IMO it's at least as positive as the review of the iPad2, despite the fact it gets 9/10.

The one area that the iPad still has an advantage is the number of optimised apps but that will only get better for Android tablets.
Not to mention, Google have released a 3.1 update for Honeycomb and have 3.2 on it's way in a couple of months so they're constantly looking to improve the user experience etc.


One little thing though, there's a lot of talk of Android tablets with next-gen dual- or quad-core CPUs reaching the market well before the end of the year ( September maybe?).

 

Wow quad core tablets? That's insane.

I don't think he wants to wait, I think he's probably gonna return the iPad now. But biggest concern is will he be able to watch flash videos on the tablet browser? That's literally 90% of what he does, he doesn't care about apps too much.

 

Not really, it's the next natural step.

The answer would be to head to a store and try one out.
All the current crop of higher-end tablets are using the Tegra2 SoC so if one can do it, they all should be able to - after that it's just down to UI etc and the Samsungs are supposed to be that bit better.

 

^What Step666 said... Samsung's Galaxy Tab is the one you want.

Heck, I can playback 3-4 flash videos inside my phone's browser... It's a walk in the park for a Tegra 2 tablet. The thing I love about the Galaxy Tab's though is that Samsung has put elastic scrolling throughout the Honeycomb UI, so it still has the fluidity of the iPad's bouncy menus, and all the raw functionality of Android, like Flash 10.3. But like Step666 said, I'd really recommend trying one out... And pretty much all the tablets running Honeycomb are Tegra2, so...

 

Thank you guys, appreciate it. I'll head down to Best Buy as soon as I get some free time to check one out.

 

I meant to mention this before but I really like the look of this handset.
Just a shame the specs are so ridiculously poor and it's a Sprint handset.

 

Me too. I liked that one and the Droid Pro... but the Droid Pro is soo locked down I didn't even give it a passing glance, and like you said, the Replenish is just pitifully spec'd. Put a bigger/higher res screen, a UMTS radio, and a Hummingbird chipset in the Replenish and you'd have a winner!

 

Yeah, I liked the Droid Pro too.
I've never been a fan of Blackberry handsets but Android handsets in the same form factor really appeal for some reason.

With regards to the keyboard, which Engadget pick out as a weak point, a half-qwerty keyboard would be really neat.


edit: except the ChaCha - the Replenish and Droid Pro look nice but the ChaCha doesn't, which is a little ironic given it's the only one available over here.

 

I do like that style keyboard, but the form factor is hideous IMO I had enough of it with my blackberry i think lol

 

I don't think I have seen a phone with an LED backlit LCD display yet. Unless there are a few that doesn't mention it on the spec sheet. Not that it is anything special. Just something i have never noticed/seen before.

 

AMOLED+ FTW Who needs a IPS panel and/or LED backlight!

 

I thought they all were already?

 

I thought they were just the ol'd CCFL backlit displays. Laptop displays have mainly moved to LED, I guess it's just never mentioned on phones.

On a random note (about flash), it works perfectly fine on a single core device. No reason why it shouldn't work on Tegra 2.

 

[Unofficial] Verizon roadmap - Android Forums

If true then I'm disappointed for another few months. Nothing on that list I want at all, no Galaxy S II or the "epic like" qwerty slider that was leaked.

Remind me why I'm on Verizon again?

 

All the current Xperia range do - the Arc is available in Canada, you can check that out if you like.

 

I'm not able to upgrade until October, so hopefully something nice comes out around then. Maybe the next Nexus phone will be on Verizon.

 

If they were indeed CCFL backlit, they would require a sticker or notification somewhere on the device warning of mercury toxicity, and to dispose of properly. I used to have that sticker on my NEC MobilePro 790... otherwise I've not seen anything like it on any other devices, so I just figured they were all LED backlit... especially since they're so small, it would be an inexpensive and durable solution.

 

The Arc's screen is definitely not a normal LCD though, it's blacks are very black giving it one of the best contrast ratios of any LCD panel on phones just now - GSMArena's tests confirm this.
So whilst LED backlighting itself may not be unusual, I think there's something different about it.

 

This makes me happy . I was researching, and got to the conclusion that :

1 - SAMOLED++
2 - SAMOLED+
3 - SAMOLED
4 - Bravia Engine LCD
5 - AMOLED

Correct?

 

It's all personal preference.

I'd rate the Arc's screen as being better than that of the Nexus S I used immediately before it.

 

Wow, that's awesome!


Can't wait for it...

 

The Google+ Android App...

 

Google+ doesn't want to play on my phone.

Yeah definitely to see the real Arc at some point. Been too lazy.

Good point.......


EDIT: G+ only showed my most recently added google account...grr

 

Does it launch then crash or...?

I wonder if you add more accounts under sync and accounts in settings, will it be visible to Google+?