Archives for June 2010

After a few false starts it appears that the Google Nexus One is finally getting the Android 2.2 FroYo update OTA. Google [GOOG] made the official announcement yesterday.

The announcement mentions that Nexus One users will start getting the update as of yesterday as an OTA (over the air) update which can be downloaded and installed while on the move.

New features include the ability to run Adobe Flash 10.1, use your Nexus One as a wireless hotspot as well as benefiting from some performance increases. [Read more…]

According to iSuppli, the company who estimate the build prices of smartphones and other devices, estimate that the iPhone 4 16GB model costs $187.51 to built. This puts the build price at more than the DROID and more than the previous iPhone 3GS model. The screen is believed to increase the costs a little.

It is expected that the 3.5 inch Retina display costs $28.50 per unit with the A4 processor built by Samsung costing $10.75. The new Gyro chip costs $2.60.

Of course iSuppli wont know the full details of how much each screen costs as huge bulk orders need to be taken in to consideration and Apple [AAPL] will have worked with the suppliers to figure out a price. [Read more…]

For those using the HTC Hero in the UK, you should now be getting a notification that a new update is available for your Android smartphone. The update hitting the HTC Hero is Android 2.1 from Google [GOOG] which ends months of waiting for it to arrive.

The update is 79.88MB in size and it is recommended that you use WiFi to grab the update. If you haven’t received notification just yet then check out the system updates screen and perform a manual check for the update.

Coolsmartphone points out that the update seems to pause at around 75% but don’t worry as it soon after carries on after a short wait… so don’t attempt to reboot mid update if this happens to you. [Read more…]

Amazon has launched Amazon Kindle for Android OS based smartphones. To run Kindle on your Android device you need to be running at least Android 1.6.

Features on the Android version of Kindle are similar to those of the other devices in that the app syncs up to your Amazon account and allows you to sync books, bookmarks, annotations etc… so that reading a book on your Android phone and then switching to an iPad Kindle App will let you carry on reading from where you left off. [Read more…]

Sprint [S] is pushing out an OTA update to HTC EVO 4G owners. The update is 21.43MB in size and is version number 1.47.651.1. It is expected that the minor update will enhance WiFi connectivity, perhaps even officially enabling 802.11n as well as improving battery performance.

We don’t have the full update details just yet though officially although comments on Engadget indicate that some screen issues have been fixed and that the device feels a bit more responsive than before. Also someone mentioned that the 30 frames per second limit was still in place. [Read more…]

Apple [AAPL] has announced that it has shifted 1.7 million iPhone 4 units within the first three days of launch. The time period was from launch day on the 24th to Saturday June 26.

‘This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. ‘Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.

It’s an impressive amount of phones being sold despite some of the issues that have been noted. We suspect that sales will still high moving forwards. [Read more…]

The Nokia N900 uses a Linux-based system called Maemo. If you like the N900 but not the standard OS then you can now switch to Android 2.2 thanks to a few hackers.

The team working on the N900 managed to successfully load up Android 2.2 on to the Nokia N900 allowing users to make use of the Google [GOOG] OS.

The version running on the N900 does have a few limitations. One of those is that the slide down status bar doesn’t contain any icons. Normally when dragging the status bar down you’ll see a list of details such as messages received, USB mounted and missed calls, but nothing is found in there although you can still drag the menu down. [Read more…]

It appears that T-Mobile hasn’t blocked Internet Tethering on the iPhone 4 that runs iOS 4. We tested just now with a T-Mobile SIM card (chopped and converted to a micro SIM) and successfully enabled internet tethering over Bluetooth and USB. This is on a SIM free 16GB iPhone 4.

To get the menu option to appear in the network settings menu, you need to go to the Cellular Data Network settings menu and enter the APN, Username and Password. For T-Mobile it’s the following settings… [Read more…]

If you have decided to pick up a Motorola DROID X when it launched on July 15 and want a bit more information about the smartphone before you pre-order and buy it, the whole user guide has leaked online.

The user guide for the Motorola DROID X contains 68 pages all of which are now online (over here) and available for you to download and read if required. [Read more…]

Over the weekend we reported that Apple [AAPL] could be launching iOS 4.0.1 which is a small update to fix reception issues that appear on the iPhone 4 when holding it a certain way. Basically, if you hold your iPhone 4 in your left hand and your skin bridges the gap over the black bar that separates the two antennae, the signal drops slightly. When in a low reception area the signal is lost completely.

The iOS 4.0.1 rumour started when a post on the Apple forums written by someone at Apple indicated that there was some lag when switching between frequencies on the iPhone 4 and that some calibration needed to be done. If this is correct, it could fix the issues although a number of people still insist it is a hardware fault. Until Apple respond with an iOS update, we’ll never know if it can be fixed by software.

Another iPhone 4 user emailed Steve Jobs asking if a free case would be provided. Having a case prevents your skin bridging the two antennae together. Normally Steve Jobs has responded with the same response to all saying that holding any phone makes changes to the antenna. His latest reply says the following though… “There are no reception issues. Stay Tuned.” [Read more…]