OK, so the last time we told you that Gingerbread on the Nexus One was imminent, Google didn't deliver. Until we hear it straight from the Android's mouth, there's always the chance for these rumors to fizzle; people misinterpret things, timelines shift, and priorities change. This time feels a little more solid, though, as word is supposedly leaking out of the Mobile World Congress that Google's first smartphone will finally be getting an Android 2.3 update by this time next week.
MobileCrunch caught wind of a casual mention of the update at the MWC, and sought to try and nail it down a bit more before running with it. After mentioning its find to anyone who would presumably have knowledge of an impending update, a collection of off-the-record confirmations has started to become what sounds like a real possibility. After all, if there's anywhere outside Mountain View that you'd expect those in the know at Google to be spending their time this week, it'd be Barcelona.
Getting Gingerbread on the Nexus One could be the opening-of-the-floodgates we need to start seeing Android 2.3 ported to other handsets. Considering that pretty big changes are expected for the next Android, integrating parts of Honeycomb, Gingerbread may be the last major update coming to some of the older, aging smartphone hardware that's out there.
Many have been reporting random rebooting problems with Google's Nexus S. It looks like Google has figured out what the cause of the problem is and, according to "Google Employee" Ry Guy, a fix should be coming within the next few weeks.
"The initial results of our tests look very promising. At this rate we will most likely be rolling out an OTA to resolve this issue within one to two weeks. We really appreciate your patience as we do our final verifications on this fix before sending it out."
It's frustrating that Google's flagship phones (the Nexus One and the Nexus S) have been released with quite substantial bugs. The Nexus One, if you recall, had issues with switching between 3G and EDGE immediately after release. However, Google has done relatively well identifying and fixing problems in a timely fashion.
Two weeks ago the Google informed us via the @googlenexus Twitter account that the official Gingerbread update to the Nexus One would be rolling out in the "coming weeks". According to sources, that could now be just days away.
"A representative from the Android team tells me there have been no unexpected hurdles and that the rollout should be starting soon," says Computer World's JR Raphael.
If JR's sources hold true, you Nexus One owners may see Gingerbread by this time next week!
YouTube, in partnership with Sundance, Ridley Scott and director Kevin MacDonald, is embarking on an ambitious project on July 24th. The project asks users to take their cameras out and tell a story about their lives and the winning entries will be selected to appear in an edited documentary with footage created by users on their own recording equipment. With modern phones like the HTC EVO 4G, the Motorola Droid X, the iPhone 4, Microsoft KIN Two, and the Galaxy S variants capable of shooting videos in HD, modern geeks would make for great filmmakers. Now, all you need is a story--your life--and an eye for shooting.
According to the project's description, "On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. The most compelling and distinctive footage will be edited into an experimental documentary film, executive produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin."
If you do partake in this social documentary and share your life's story on this ambitious YouTube canvas, let us know and leave us a link to your videos.
If you have a good quality camera or camera phone, that would probably do fine as well, but for those with an HD-capable smartphone, there is little holding you back as you already have the equipment.
Google warned us that the Nexus One was approaching the end of its days, but we've gotta admit, we didn't realize just how quickly that moment would come. Sure enough, Google's official online store for the phone now just shows an ominous message that "the Nexus One is no longer available for purchase directly" from the company, which means you're going to have to go through Vodafone, KT in South Korea, or hold out for the units that they plan on selling directly to registered developers. Needless to say, for the bulk of potential customers, the phone is all but history. So, on that note, Nexus One: for your straight-shooting stock Android ways and your unlocked radio, you'll be dearly missed -- and we hope your legacy lives on, even though your retail model does not.
Previously we wrote about the technological differences between Qualcomm's Snapdragon CPU (found on the EVO 4G, Nexus One, Desire, Droid Incredible, etc) and Samsung's Hummingbird CPU (found on all Galaxy S smartphones). In this video, we add the Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 to the mix and put all three CPUs against each other to determine which "feels" fastest in everyday use. To achieve this, we see which device boots up fastest, which exhibits the smoothest internet performance, and so on. In the end, as you can see in the video, the Hummingbird and OMAP 3630 seems to beat out the Snapdragon in most cases, although our results aren't conclusive enough to determine a true winner.
Have you used devices with all three CPUs? Which do you think is fastest in everyday use?
TESTS NEXUS ONE DROID X Galaxy S BOOT 1 3 2 Browser 3 2 1 Google Map 2 3 1 Youtubw app 2 3 1
We've all been making fun of the iPhone 4 antenna problems for quite some time now. You know the one, where left-handers loose signal strength when they try to actually talk on their iPhone 4's.
It turns out that the iPhone 4's "unique new antenna design" may not be the cause of the problem after all. The electrical conductance of human skin combined with the signal blocking ability of the human body can combine in a sort of "perfect storm" which can cause a dramatic drop in signal strength. Unfortunately, the iPhone 4's antenna design seems to facilitate the conditions needed for this "perfect storm".
That doesn't mean that other phones are immune. Take, for example, my Nexus One running the latest radio from Korea. As the video illustrates, holding the phone "just right" causes a near-immediate drop of two bars -- half the signal strength!
After some experimentation I was able to figure out just how to hold my Nexus One to cause the bars to drop by one or two at will. This may add some credibility to Steve Job's statement that "you're holding it wrong". Then again, I had to try dozens of different "holding techniques" in both hands -- which took about 20 minutes -- to find out exactly how I needed to hold the phone to replicate the "death grip". (Maybe it doesn't give him that much credibility after all.)
What this does show is that the human body does a good job both conducting and blocking electromagnetic signals. If you're experiencing a drop in bars, using a Bluetooth headset may be your best option -- that way you don't have to touch the phone at all.
The "radio" on a smartphone is a complicated mess of interconnected drivers and APIs (what the camera has to do with the phone I'll never know). Regardless, improvements to the radio can improve signal strength, data throughput, WiFi, and somehow unlock 720p video recording, all all the same time. Of course, it could make your phone suck down more battery juice, or even prevent your phone from being a phone at all (by killing your wireless abilities).
The Nexus One was recently released in Korea, and came with a new radio. This radio is apparently agnostic to carrier-specificity (it's reported to work on all varieties of the Nexus One, those in Korea, in the U.S. using AT&T and T-Mobile, and even users in New Zealand ).
Initial reports indicate that most users are seeing marginal increases in 3G speeds, and no noticeable impact on battery life using the Korean radio.
One joker in the forums said the only thing he noticed was that people he was calling had a hard time understanding him with his new Korean accent. ;)
I don't have super-fast 3G coverage in my hometown, but in my tests I also saw an increase in speeds. Ironically the upload speed increased more than the download speeds.
If you have unlocked your Nexus One and are running a custom recovery (such as RA-Recovery) and you'd like to give the new radio a try you can download the 5.08 radio here; put this .zip on the root of your sdcard and reboot into recovery mode. Flash the radio508signed.zip and reboot. Then reboot again when prompted.
If you want to see what kind of improvements you get with the new radio download FCC Test from the Market, run a test before flashing, then run another test after flashing. Post your results in the comments below.
Gameloft is giving away one of its more popular Android games, Let's Golf HD, to HTC EVO 4G and Nexus One owners. Let's Golf HD is a classic arcade style golfing game, which can be quite fun. It features 63 holes in 4 distinct locations, 4 customizable characters, and advanced/casual control modes. The offer is only available for a limited time, so grab it as soon as you can if you're interested. Visit Gameloft's EVO 4G or Nexus One page to receive your complimentary copy (US only). Check out the short trailer below to see it in action.
As you may or may not be already aware, the Nexus One and HTC Desire have the same Broadcom chip. Seems trivial at cursory glance until you realize the Desire has a FM radio app, which should ergo be just as feasible on the Google-branded device. Cut to xda-developers' intersectRaven, who's released a custom N1 kernel that theoretically brings life to the FM receptor. It's available to download, but as for when you'll get a chance to really use this yourself, that's entirely up to the custom ROM developers updating their respective wares. For his part, Paul O'Brien said today he's already got it working on an upcoming Froyo Sense build for the device -- hang tight, folks, it's coming.
In this video, we take a look at some of the inbuilt software of the Motorola Droid X, plus put the device head-to-head with the iPhone 4 and Google Nexus One running on Froyo.
To start, the Droid X has some neat applications built in. You can use the 3G mobile hotspot app, but it's going to cost you $20 extra on your bill, plus there is a 2GB data cap. You can expect to get speeds similar to what a MiFi would bring, so about 1.5mbps down, and about 1mbps up.
We talk briefly about the DLNA support which allows you to integrated multiple supported devices for multimedia playback. It's still unclear as to whether this standard will be popular, but a lot of new TVs and smartphones are coming with the standard built in.
Then we do a web browser comparison against the iPhone 4 and Nexus One with Froyo. The results? The Droid X beat both devices most of the time in terms of page load times, which is great too see, and reflects the overall robust performance of the Droid X. Also, having the larger screen made
Ever wondered what would happen if you threw another mobile OS onto your Nexus One? Without removing Android? Contrary to popular belief, the world will in fact not end, and in many cases, lives could very well be improved. One particular modder over at Nexus One Hacks has managed to put together a video how-to demonstrating the installation of Ubuntu as a secondary OS on his rooted N1, and while you'll obviously find yourself dealing with a few incompatibilities should you follow suit, it's not like you really have anything better to do tonight than tinker. Right? Right. Jump on past the break and mash play to get going.
Cellphones, Mobile Handsets Android 2.2 (Froyo) versus iOS 4: the browser showdown (video) By Richard Lai posted Jul 7th 2010 1:56PM Hands-On 6diggsdigg A little while back Google boldly claimed that Froyo would have the world's fastest mobile browser, but the lack of final software back then meant we'd had to tie up our itchy hands until now. And boy, it sure looks like it was worth the wait -- Ars Technica's JavaScript benchmarks show that not only is Froyo's browser almost three times faster than its Éclair counterpart, but it also beats iOS 4's Safari by at least two-fold. That said, numbers alone don't always reflect real-life performance -- especially with Froyo supporting iPhone's much-missed Flash -- so we went ahead and conducted our own browser speed test. Read on for our videos and results after the jump.
Our test candidates were a 16GB iPhone 4 (with a shameless color mod) and a Nexus One rocking the official OTA 2.2 update and Flash 10.1. Naturally, we cleared out the cache files on both devices prior to each trial. Out of the five desktop-version websites that we tested for load time, three of them -- BBC News, gdgt and The Onion -- repeatedly produced a tie between the two phones, whereas the iPhone 4 consistently loaded Engadget about two to three seconds faster, and the Nexus One about one to two seconds faster with New York Times. Here's our video of one of the trials:
Cellphones, Mobile Handsets Android 2.2 (Froyo) versus iOS 4: the browser showdown (video) By Richard Lai posted Jul 7th 2010 1:56PM Hands-On 6diggsdigg A little while back Google boldly claimed that Froyo would have the world's fastest mobile browser, but the lack of final software back then meant we'd had to tie up our itchy hands until now. And boy, it sure looks like it was worth the wait -- Ars Technica's JavaScript benchmarks show that not only is Froyo's browser almost three times faster than its Éclair counterpart, but it also beats iOS 4's Safari by at least two-fold. That said, numbers alone don't always reflect real-life performance -- especially with Froyo supporting iPhone's much-missed Flash -- so we went ahead and conducted our own browser speed test. Read on for our videos and results after the jump.
Our test candidates were a 16GB iPhone 4 (with a shameless color mod) and a Nexus One rocking the official OTA 2.2 update and Flash 10.1. Naturally, we cleared out the cache files on both devices prior to each trial. Out of the five desktop-version websites that we tested for load time, three of them -- BBC News, gdgt and The Onion -- repeatedly produced a tie between the two phones, whereas the iPhone 4 consistently loaded Engadget about two to three seconds faster, and the Nexus One about one to two seconds faster with New York Times. Here's our video of one of the trials:
At this point we thought: would things load quicker with Flash uninstalled? Turns out it's a small yes -- this time the Nexus One consistently loaded Engadget, New York Times, gdgt and The Onion a tad quicker than the iPhone 4, whereas BBC News produced a tie. Still, this is far from the massive performance jump that Ars Technica's benchmarks suggest (not that we're saying the site did it wrong), but for now it does look like Android's just about won this two-man race. Apple, your move next.
