Facebook's Official Phone to be manufactured by HTC

HTC has agreed to manufacture Facebook’s official phone. The device has been codenamed “Buffy” and you can be sure to find it oriented around cutting-edge social capabilities. But what will it run? Could it possibly scoop up WebOS from HP or even start from scratch in a basic Linux environment? The most possible (and even most practical) solution would be to heavily mask a version of Android OS.

With the Android 4.0 source code now available to the public, you can bet Facebook will manipulate in such a way similar to Amazon. After all, the Facebook phone is bound to look unique. As the king of social networking and such a strong following, who’s to say Facebook won’t try pushing out more than one device. I particularly prefer a device free of buttons to give a better multimedia experience. However, I know a good many that still insist on having a QWERTY keyboard; Facebook’s social network serves us all, so why shouldn’t its line of cellphones?
Social competitor Google+ won’t get as much love if Facebook has anything to say about it. So if Facebook decides to go with Android, you can bet on a heavily modded interface. After all, it will be competing with Windows Phone 7.5, Apple iOS5, the future of WebOS, and even others versions of Android. I would expect to see a Facebook button included in their phone as well. However, with Ice Cream Sandwich supporting phones with no buttons at all, it could be included inside the OS; much like the naivegation keys on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
A new Facebook phone may even build in their Facebook application into the OS, much like the Google+ app in the Galaxy Nexus. Hey, it may even slay a few vampires too – who knows.
[via AllThingsD]

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Motorola DROID Receives Security Fix

The original Motorola DROID is finally getting some attention with a quick security fix update. No, this isn’t the official update to 2.3 (Gingerbread) that we had hoped for, but it’s an update none the less. These two security updates will only be available to those OG DROID users out there with a completely stock ROM, kernel, and recovery.

There is still a very strong OG DROID following over on XDA, and we should certainly see these security patches incorporated into some custom ROMs soon. For those still running stock however, click here to download the FRK76 security update. To install this be sure to rename the download to “update.zip” and place it on the root of your SD card. After powering down your DROID, reboot into recovery (by holding down the X and Power buttons). You should then select “Apply update.zip from SD Card”.
You should then be good to go! But lets be honest, if you haven’t rooted your device and are not yet running CyanogenMod 7, at least give it a chance! It’s easy and will definitely give your OG DROID the pep in its step that should have been there all along.
[via Droid Life]

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Kyobo eReader launches in South Korea with mirasol and Android 2.3 Gingerbread

Image by juhansonin via Flickr

Kyobo Book Centre has unveiled the world’s first eReader based on the new mirasol display technology by Qualcomm. This color e-paper display technology will allow for an enhanced reading experience as well as offer bright colors for pictures and video and exceptional battery life. The Kyobo eReader with mirasol is on sale starting today in South Korea and will initially be targeted at education customers.


We’ve mentioned the mirasol display before, Qualcomm’s new technology that aims to change the display markets while offering a technology that promises exceptional color, video-capable e-paper eReaders with amazing battery life. For more information head to mirasoldisplays.com or watch their innovation video here. Essentially using mirrors to reflect light back and control the color at the same time it offers an extremely efficient technology that will work great indoors, and look even better in direct sunlight. Basically a front lit technology rather than conventional backlight displays that are power hungry and become washed out with brightness from the sun or other sources while being used.
The Kyobo eReader will be using the newest mirasol 5.7″ panel with a 1024 x 768 resolution, a 1.0 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and running atop Android 2.3 Gingerbread with what we are hearing will be a locked down and custom UI — although I’m sure the Android hacking world will get on that right away.
Kyobo, Korea’s largest bookseller — will offer 90,000 ebooks for the mirasol eReader, as well as video education content and many other educational options, integration with social networking services and English text-to-speech support. With magazines for the down-time between study classes and possibly 3 weeks of battery life this will be one interesting eReader. The Kyobo eReader is available today starting at $310 USD in South Korea but we have no details on when or if it will see any other markets. Most likely we’ll be seeing more from Qualcomm and their mirasol technology at CES 2012.

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Samsung may be preparing their own quad-core chip for the Galaxy S III

A lot of people don’t think of components when Samsung is mentioned, and with tens of millions of phone sales it’s not hard to see why. But the Korean company is one of the large electronics parts suppliers in the world – it’s big part of why they’re so successful. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that they aren’t resting on their laurels and letting Nvidia’s Tegra 3 have all the fun (and press coverage): Samsung is apparently preparing a quad-core processor of their very own.

The new ARM-based system-on-a-chip is reportedly the latest in their very well-received Exynos line, model number 4412. We only know about it because of some short mentions in Samsung’s open source hub. Speeds would top out at 1.5Ghz, the fastest that Samsung’s dual-core phones are running right now, though obviously they’d get a significant performance boost. You’d think that this benchmark-busting beast would certainly be headed for Samsung’s next flagship device, the Galaxy S III, though the last time we saw mention of it it was rocking the slightly older 4212. If Samsung can prepare the quad-core chip in time, it would help it fight back against similar dream machines rumored out of HTC.
2012 would seem to be the year of the quad-core processor, at least as far as high-end Android phones are concerned. It’ll probably take a while for the technology to trickle down into more affordable devices. If you’ve just got to get your hands on some searingly fast hardware, be sure to check out Asus’ Transformer Prime, the first Tegra 3 quad-core tablet, due for an international release in December.[
[via Phandroid]

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Superboot v2 makes rooting the Galaxy Nexus a snap on Windows, Mac & Linux

Android enthusiasts tend to be pretty tech-savvy as a rule, at least by the standards of Aunt Rita and the rest of the population. But those with the real know-how that make rooting, flashing and other sundry modifications easy deserve some real props. Such is the case with Paul “Modaco” O’Brein. The second revision of his Superboot tool for rooting the Galaxy Nexus makes it even easier to get your superuser on, and it works with all major desktop platforms.
Windows users need only extract the Superboot ZIP file, put the Galaxy Nexus into bootloader mode, then connect it via a USB cord and double-click the BAT file. For OS X and Linux it’s a little more complicated with some necessary terminal commands, but even so it’s only one more step, and you can find full instructions on the MoDaCo forums.
The root method will only work with phones which have already been unlocked at the bootloader level, though naturally instructions for this are also included. It goes without saying that this is for the international HSPA+ version of the Galaxy Nexus, and may not work if Verizon ever decides to get off of their collective bums and release the LTE version already. Of course, you can kiss your warrantee goodby after applying the root, but something tells me that if you’re a Nexus owner who’s reading this, it wasn’t long for this world anyway.

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Motorola Xoom 4G LTE for $199 and more from Verizon on Black Friday

I’m sure we’ll be seeing plenty more deals for Black Friday over the next few days so you’ll all just have to wait until you see something worthy, then go big and get one. My local Best Buy had 5 tents already waiting yesterday — talk about nuts. For those on Verizon or looking for a good deal they’ve just announced a few of their own and we have the details below.

Be sure and stay tuned to verizonwireless.com/black-friday for all the information once that page goes live but in the meantime check out the details and the image below thanks to DL. Verizon will be offering a few awesome devices for free or very cheap come Friday and you wont want to miss these awesome deals, especially if you’ve been waiting for some.

First off, no they don’t mention a word regarding the Galaxy Nexus (anger) so we are still waiting on that front, but you could get a DROID Incredible 2 completely free if that if your sort of thing. Here’s what we know:
–Motorola XOOM for $199 with a new contract
–Red DROID Incredible 2 for FREE (Friday only)
–Sony Xperia Play and LG Enlighten for FREE
–LG Revolution for $49.99 (Friday only)
–Double data for smartphones still going on ($30 for 4GB)
–Free activations
Nothing extremely amazing here although the Motorola Xoom will most likely be one of the first tablets to receive Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich so this would be a great time to snag that for just $199 — not to mention it will be the 4G LTE model. For now be sure and stay tuned right here at Android Community as I’m sure we’ll have plenty more deals all week and hopefully — hopefully details on the Galaxy Nexus.
[via DL]

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Sony Ericsson Arc HD and more HD devices leaked in user agent profiles

We’ve heard rumors and even seen pictures of the next Sony Ericsson smartphone rocking a 1280 x 720p HD display but now we have a few more on the horizon. In a set of user agent profiles that were leaked we can now confirm the Arc HD (LT26i) will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread and has a 720p HD display just like the recently leaked photos suggested. Along with that we have a few more profiles also leaked.

The pictures can be seen below in the gallery for more details and if you’d like to view the UAProfiles yourself. Along with the Xperia Arc HD mentioned above another profile suggests Sony has a 720 x 1280 device in the works (LT28at) and a few more regular resolution 480 x 854 smartphones on the way too. According to the leaks these will all be running on ARM Cortex A8 processors and will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Sony has committed all current and future phones will be updated to ICS so that shouldn’t be a concern for too many users.

If the device listed above follows current Sony Ericsson trends it has a higher codename (LT28at) than the recently seen Arc HD (LT26i) so chances are we could be seeing another top end flagship phone from Sony coming soon. Sony recently bought out Ericsson’s half of the company but we haven’t heard anything else regarding that, maybe we’ll see a few SONY branded smartphones come early 2012 rocking Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. For more details and the rest of the leaked user profiles head to the source link at the via below.
[via PocketDroid]

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Adobe: Flash Will Be Updated To Support ICS Before Year's End, But Not Future Versions Of Android

Earlier this month, Adobe announced that it would be halting development on the mobile version of Flash, which included support for Android devices. More recently, it was realized that the current version of Flash isn't compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich, leaving early adopters of the Galaxy Nexus without the ability to view flash content on the web.
Adobe has now confirmed that it will be bringing Flash to ICS devices before the end of 2011, but it will not support any version of Android past 4.0. Throughout the lifespan of ICS, Adobe will continue to push critical updates, bug fixes, and security updates to Flash for Android to ensure device security, but that will be the extent of development as far as mobile Flash is concerned.
Hopefully, but the time the "J" version of Android is released, HTML5 will have gained enough steam to be widely supported and take the place of Flash altogether, helping make the transition from Flash support to no Flash support as seamless as possible.
[via Pocket-Lint]

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Google engineer and security vendors spar over Android malware threat

With all the stories about Android malware as of late, it might be easy for a novice smartphone user to get nervous. Security software vendor McAfee agrees: they’ve sent out a much-publicized report claiming that threats for Android have increased by 37% in just three months, and they’re predicting “75 million unique malware samples” across all mobile platforms by the end of the year. Juniper Networks is claiming a 472% increase since July. Google’s Open Source Program Manager Chris DiBona had a pointed rebuttal to this and other Android malware news on his personal Google+ page, mostly (go figure) in defense of Android’s open source nature.
DiBona’s argument refutes the idea that Android’s open source architecture make it inherently unsafe, or at least more so than competing platforms like iOS. Ge gives a history lesson on open source software and operating systems, noting that, yes, as platforms become more popular the level of malevolent interest and intent also rises. Previously the threats have been found and dealt with, both on iOS and Android, and despite a considerable amount of media attention the current state of mobile security is nothing like the Wild West days of Windows in the late 90s and early 2000s – you’re not going to pick up a Trojan simply by browsing the web.
He goes on to call out reports on the insecurity of Android, specifically from software vendors:

If you read a report from a vendor that trys to sell you something based on protecting android, rim or ios from viruses they are also likely as not to be scammers and charlatans. [sic]

So, where’s the truth here? McAfee has a lot to gain by making Android users afraid, but DiBona isn’t exactly a neutral source either. (It’s important to note that the views expressed in his post are his own, and not technically a representation of Google’s official stance.) Malware for Android is increasing – that’s a fact. It’s also a fact that the vast majority of it eventually requires users to manually install apps outside of the Android Market, purposefully disabling the security measure that’s designed to keep novice users out of trouble. In the instances when malware has been discovered in the Android Market, it’s been promptly removed.
I invite you to form your own conclusion on who’s “right” as far as the validity of threats is concerned. In the meantime, repeat that often-heard security mantra: never install apps or software from a source you don’t fully trust.

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