Android 4.0.3 Update: Better social integration, camera capabilities, and tons of fixes

Whoa that sure was fast. Google isn’t wasting any time and have already announced the next incremental update for the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform. We just received 4.0.2 on our Verizon Galaxy Nexus phones yesterday and it looks like 4.0.3 will be here very shortly. That is the wonderful part of owning a Nexus — it gets all the updates right away. All the details are after the break on the new update.

Soon we’ll be saying hello to Android 4.0.3 as it should rollout in the coming weeks. Along with the changes are plenty of API updates and tweaks for developers to take advantage of. Some of those include access to social integration like how Google+ and Gtalk have now and more. Here is the list right from the Android Developer Blog.
— Social stream API in Contacts provider: Applications that use social stream data such as status updates and check-ins can now sync that data with each of the user’s contacts, providing items in a stream along with photos for each. This new API lets apps show users what the people they know are doing or saying, in addition to their photos and contact information.
— Calendar provider enhancements. Apps can now add color to events, for easier tracking, and new attendee types and states are now available.
— New camera capabilities. Apps can now check and manage video stabilization and use QVGA resolution profiles where needed.
— Accessibility refinements. Improved content access for screen readers and new status and error reporting for text-to-speech engines.
— Incremental improvements in graphics, database, spell-checking, Bluetooth, and more.
It looks like the API changes will give developers and applications more access to the camera and calendar, improve tons of access for screen readers and text-to-speech engines and more. Then at the end it mentions improvements to graphics and even spell-checking — I’m excited to see what more they bring to that area as it’s already quite excellent.
Bring on the Ice Cream Sandwiches Google, we’ll take them all.
[via Android Developer Blog]

Read more »

Motorola DROID RAZR Maxx appears in Verizon System

We’ve heard the name Maxx before and now it appears that the RAZR Maxx is indeed real and coming, we just don’t know when. The RAZR Maxx name was first spotted earlier this month and could be one of the many different variants of the RAZR we’ve seen online. Today it has appeared again giving it even more mystery.

According to some new screenshots from Verizon we now have even more confirmation that the device does exist and Verizon is getting prepped. The image below is the name clearly being added into the Verizon system at some point yesterday. If we see another RAZR before the end of the year I wouldn’t be surprised. If it’s better than the DROID RAZR I have a feeling there will be some angry people with buyers remorse.

For now we mostly just have rumored specs but being MAXX it would need to be better than the original you’d think. We’ve heard a few reports of a larger display with a 1280 x 720p HD display and that huge 13MP camera like China’s model of the RAZR. For now the RAZR Maxx has been bumped up above the “rumor” category but that is as far as we’ll take it until we get further details.
[via Droid-Life]

Read more »

Here’s what the Verizon Galaxy Nexus looks like on the inside

These days it’s a rite of passage for every new and high-profile gadget: the moment when its tender casing is torn from its frame and all its silicon guts are spilled for the world to see. That time has already come for the HSPA+ version of the Galaxy Nexus, and ZD Net has given Verizon’s LTE version the teardown treatment as well. If you’re wondering what the inside of the very first Ice Cream Sandwich phone looks like, well, here it is.

There are no real surprises in the teardown. The micro SIM card (as opposed to a mini SIM card) is still slightly novel, but hardly unique. Samsung phones are pretty slim, but hardly impossible to crack as smartphones go; the DROID RAZR, with its armored construction and teeny tiny seams, is a lot harder. A couple of non-standard screwdrivers is all it takes to separate pretty much every bit of plastic, metal and circuit board.

Read more »

What Mods Have You Applied to Your Verizon Galaxy Nexus

So with the device being out in the United States for just over 24 hours now, we’re wondering what you new and even existing Galaxy Nexus owners have been doing to your phones? Personally, I’ve already unlocked the bootloader, applied Paul’s superboot script for one-click root, installed a custom recovery and even installed a custom ROM (though I did roll back to my stock rooted build after a few hours).

More than ROMs, there are a few little things you can apply to your device to make your experience that much better. We’ve got the search button embedded into the navigation bar, constant menu buttons in the navigation bar, a mod that lets you get rid of the constant Google Search bar on the homescreen, custom kernels and a whole lot more. Let’s hear what you’ve done in the comments section below!

Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Note for AT&T Said to be On Its Way With LTE, Without Exynos

Rumor has it that AT&T’s gearing up to offer the Samsung Galaxy Note early next year and, as you might expect, 4G LTE will be in tow. One thing we didn’t imagine, however, is the lack of Samsung’s dual-core Exynos processor. 1Instead there’ll apparently be a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor inside. Apparently Exynos might not support LTE radios yet. It’s not unlike the reason why T-Mobile’s Galaxy S II didn’t get Exynos – it didn’t support HSPA+ 42. In any case, a CES announcement is expected so be sure to check back in about a month’s time. [PocketNow]

Read more »

Samsung drops 3G lawsuit against Apple in favor of a different strategy

Both Apple and Samsung have been busy attempting to sue each other into oblivion, with the former claiming that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringed upon their designs while the latter claimed that 3G-capable iOS devices infringed upon their 3G technology patents, but now it looks like Samsung may be rethinking their strategy.
According to FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller, Samsung appears to have given up their attacks on Apple via the 3G patent route. It seems that the South Korean company has finally acknowledged that the 3G license was covered by Apple’s payment for the Qualcomm chips found in devices like the iPhone 4S, but this doesn’t mean that Samsung has decided to throw in the towel.
Samsung claims that the dropping of the Qualcomm challenge was mainly to streamline a case, and have instead decided to sue Apple over four different patents, although the exact nature of these patents remain unknown for now. Will Samsung succeed this time round? We guess we will have to wait and find out.

Read more »

AT&T’s Galaxy S II Gets Maintenance Upgrade to Android 2.3.6

AT&T is issuing an upgrade to Android 2.3.6 for owners of the Galaxy S II (not the Skyrocket, the original). There’s not much more to add than that since this was simple bug-fixing upgrade so be sure to grab it with no delay and, as always, don’t panic if you don’t get it right away. Get to Settings > Software update > Check for updates to get started. [Samsung via AC]

Read more »

Tablet sales up 264 percent, but miss targets, says IDC

IDC says 18.1 million media tablets were shipped in this year's third quarter, an increase of 264.5 percent compared with last year, and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 23.9 percent. Shipments fell short of IDC's original forecast of 19.2 million units, but the research company sees "strong demand" for this year's fourth quarter, thanks partly to shipments of Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Color. IDC has therefore increased its forecast for 2011 slightly, from 62.5 million to 63.3 million units.

The forecasts cover media tablet shipments to channels, not sales to consumers.

Apple was the market leader, shipping 11.1 million units in this year's third quarter compared with 9.3 million units last time. Its market share slipped slightly from 63.3 percent to 61.5 percent. Samsung took a distant second place with a 5.6 percent market share. Hewlett-Packard was third with a 5.6 percent market share, followed by Barnes & Noble (4.4 percent) and Asus (4.0 percent).

HP entered and left the market during the quarter, shifting 903,354 units of its TouchPad, mostly at fire-sale prices. Barnes & Noble shipped 805,458 units, according to IDC. RIM did not make the Top 5 table, having seen its shipments reportedly tumble from 500,000 units in this year's first quarter to 200,000 in Q2 and 150,000 in Q3 (when, thanks to price reductions, it sold more PlayBooks than it shipped).

The media tablet market is still small enough to be changed dramatically by individual product launches. IDC says in a statement:

"After ceding share in 3Q11 (down to 32.4 percent from 33.2 percent the previous quarter), IDC expects Android to make dramatic share gains in 4Q11 growing to 40.3 percent. That increase is due mostly to the entrance of Amazon's Kindle Fire, and to a lesser extent the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, into the market. The share increase comes at the expense of Blackberry (slipping from 1.1 percent to 0.7 percent), iOS (slipping from 61.5 percent to 59.0 percent), and webOS (slipping from 5 percent to 0 percent). Despite HP's announcement last week that it would contribute webOS to the Open Source community, IDC does not believe the operating system will reappear in the media tablet market in any meaningful way going forward."

The media tablet category is somewhat arbitrary. IDC used to count all of Barnes & Noble's products in the eReader category, which is dominated by the Amazon Kindle range. Also, IDC may find it difficult to track sales of the Kindle Fire separately, since Amazon does not publish sales figures.

Separately, Amazon announced yesterday that "that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago."

@jackschofield

Read more »

Tips and tricks for your new Galaxy Nexus

After a longer wait than anyone anticipated, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has landed on US shores under the auspices of Verizon Wireless. This is a totally different kind of Android phone running completely new software. Despite Google’s attempt to make Android more user-friendly, some of the most interesting features are still not exposed to the average user. With that in mind, let’s go over the three things that you should do as soon as you unbox your brand new Galaxy Nexus.

Set up Data Usage

One of the new features in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is a very robust Data Usage meter. For users that have capped mobile data plans, this can be a real money saver. The data monitor is available in the main settings page under Data Usage. This interface has a toggle for disabling mobile data at the top, and a large graph below it.

Tap on the graph and drag up or down to move the orange Warning line to just short of your monthly data cap. When the phone has reached this volume of data, a notification will appear in the status bar. This is nice, but if a user doesn’t see the notification, the data cap could still be blown. Luckily, Android 4.0 is smart enough to actually shut you down if things get out of hand.

Tap the check box next to “Set mobile data limit” to set a hard stop for your data guzzling ways. This option produces a second red line on the graph. Just drag this one to someplace above the orange one. To avoid overages completely, leave it just below the data cap. Alternatively, set it at a level over the cap that you would still be comfortable paying.

Down below the graph, Android also aggregates data usage by app so you can figure out what is hogging all the data. Tapping on any of these will bring up a detailed report of its activity.

Turn on GPU acceleration

Ice Cream Sandwich supports hardware accelerated drawing of 2D surfaces just like Honeycomb did, but now that power is at the user’s control. Developers are being encouraged by Google to enable this feature in apps, but we need not wait for them. Hardware acceleration can be forced on with minimal risk.

In the main settings screen, scroll down the the bottom and find “Developer options.” About two-thirds of the way down is the listing we need and it’s called “Force GPU rendering.” Enabling this will speed up the interface drawing of all the apps on the phone. Activities like scrolling and swiping will be more responsive and just plain nicer-looking.

Be aware that some apps might tolerate this better than others. The user interface could be broken in small, or more significant ways in these apps. If something seems broken, try toggling GPU rendering off.

Get used to real folders

As part of the home screen redesign, Google has added a new way of making folders. Android has always had folders, but in the past they were clunky and unattractive. ICS folders are so easy that there’s no reason not to base your experience around them.

To make a folder, drag any app icon on top of another, and let go. The result is a folder with both the apps in it. Anyone that’s used an iPhone recently will recognize this as almost the same system Apple uses. When opened, the apps in a folder can still be dragged around for better organization within the folder. Dragging an icon out of the folder returns it to the home screen.

Folders in ICS work on any home screen panel, and even in the dock area next to the app drawer icon. By making folders usable, Google has probably changed the way people will use the Android home screen.

There is, of course, much more to do with Android 4.0 on the Galaxy Nexus, but these are three easy steps that will get any user off on the right foot. ICS will reveal all its secrets in time, but hopefully not too long.

Read more »