VoipHow2 http://www.voiphow2.com Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:26:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 Google Docs for Android update brings real-time collaboration, Improved UI http://www.voiphow2.com/google-docs-for-android-update-brings-real-time-collaboration-improved-ui/ http://www.voiphow2.com/google-docs-for-android-update-brings-real-time-collaboration-improved-ui/#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:26:33 +0000 Cory Gunther http://androidcommunity.com/?p=79727 The Google Docs app for Android just received another hefty update today. Bringing with it tons of changes such as real-time live collaboration for editing, an improved user interface, new layout tools and more. It keeps getting better and better with each update and this real-time update is a big one that many will be [...]

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]]> Well folks, that sure was fast. After ASUS released their official bootloader unlock tool only hours ago, the amazing developer community we all love and trust have already released ClockworkMod Recovery for the quad-core powered tablet. It is available now and will require a few ADB commands but for those interested this is good news.

Obviously now that the Transformer Prime bootloader can be easily and officially unlocked the development will surely take off. It has been rooted a few times already and now the fun part can truly begin. It looks like developers might have already had this waiting because they released it pretty quick after the ASUS unlock tool was dropped.

Once some official work gets started I’m sure the touch-based recovery will make its way to the Prime. Also this early release only works with the built-in storage and you wont be able to flash or mount USB storage while in recovery. That should be fixed shortly but for now we’ll take what we can get right. Check out a few of our links below for our full review, root instructions and more for the Prime then head to XDA and get CWM Recovery today.

XDA Thread — thanks MacK

Device Specifications and Information
Device Info

    Device Name : Transformer Prime
    Manufactuer : Asus
    Carrier : NA
    Announced Date : November 09, 2011
    Release Date : TBA
    Also Known As : Transformer 2

Display

  • Screen Size : 10.10 Inch
  • Resolution : 1280×800
  • Screen Type : IPS+
Dimension & Weight

  • Height : 10.35 Inch
  • Width : 7.12 Inch
  • Depth : .33 Inch
  • Weight : 586 Grams
Battery & Power
    Battery Type:
  • Lithium Polymer
  • Battery Capacity : 6579 mAh
  • Talk Time : NA
  • Stand By Time : NA
Software
    Android OS:
  • 3.2.x
    Audio Playback:
  • AAC
  • AAC+
  • MP3
  • WMA
    Video Playback:
  • h.263
  • h.264 / AVC
  • MPEG-4 (MP4)

Hardware

    CPU : Tegra 3
    CPU Clock Speed : 1400 Mhz
    Core : 4
    Ram : 1024 MB
    Internal Storage : 64 GB
    Front Facing Camera :
    Camera Resolution : 8 MP
    External Storage:
  • MicroSD
  • MicroSDHC
    Camera Features:
  • Auto focus
  • Flash
  • 1080p Video Recording
    Sensors:
  • Accelerometer
  • Ambient light
    QWERTY :
Cellular Network
Device Connectivity
    Wi-Fi:
  • 802.11b
  • 802.11g
  • 802.11n
    Bluetooth:
  • Bluetooth 3.0
    Location Features:
  • Compass
  • GPS
  • Wi-Fi location
    FM Radio :
    NFC :


]]> Mobile World Congress officially kicks off on Sunday but we are slowly starting to see plenty of leaks and details this past week. Today another leak has just revealed two upcoming smartphones for Verizon Wireless and most likely they’ll be 4G LTE phones. The DROID Fighter and LG Cayman have both broke cover and are coming in the next month or two.

The name “DROID Fighter” instantly made me think of the above picture. It was that or Jean Claude Van Damme but I figured a picture from Bloodsport would be too much. Obviously these names are probably just codenames and we’ll have something more fitting come final release — although the XYBOARD name might prove that theory to be false.

We don’t have many details on either of these phones but according to leaks gathered by Droid-Life the LG Cayman is listed in Verizon maps for a late March arrival around 3/29 and the DROID Fighter (probably Motorola) is slotted in around April 12th. The Fighter could also be a follow up to the DROID Charge but your guess is as good as ours at this point.

Chances are we’ll be hearing or seeing more shortly, possible at Mobile World Congress this next week over in Barcelona, Spain. These may or may not be actual release dates but they do both fall on Thursday — Verizon’s favorite day to launch new phones.

]]> HTC is gearing up for Mobile World Congress with a new line of smartphones and a neat new naming scheme. Aiming to have a better year than the last we expect great things from HTC. Today over on their Facebook page they’ve posted a teaser image that only causes us to have more questions than we did yesterday.

They don’t give us much to go on other then a simple one liner that reads : “This Sunday you’ll discover something fast.” We already know they have a quad-core smartphone headed to the event in the HTC One X (HTC Edge), but the 5 could mean we’ll be seeing 5 devices from team HTC this weekend. Sunday is HTC’s Mobile World Congress event and we will be there live to get all the pictures and video you’d like.

Other various leaks have teased an HTC One S, One V, and possible a tablet or two from HTC this year so we’ll be sure to bring all the latest news. Not just on that “fast” device they are teasing. There is a lot we expect to see at MWC this year and HTC is just one part, but an important one. With their new hero strategy where they’ll be making less, but better quality phones than they have in the past we are excited to see what they bring along.

Check back Sunday for all the details and news as it comes in.

[via Facebook]

]]> Play it again, Sam: Verizon customers in locations across the United States are unable to connect to the LTE data network this morning. The outage may or may not be nationwide, but customers in Houston, Dallas, Memphis, various California locations and New York City are all reporting issues. Verizon customer service has confirmed connection problems, and assures applicants that it’s working on them. 3G data and voice seem to be unaffected so far.

This has become a recurring problem for Verizon, which had no less than three major outages in December of 2011 – just a few weeks after the releases of major 4G phones like the HTC Rezound and Motorola DROID RAZR. It didn’t help that Verizon’s marketing has featured the “largest 4G LTE network in the country” and “the most reliable major network” (paraphrasing) for months. The outages varied in breadth and duration, but the longest was a complete shutdown of every LTE network that lasted more than a day.

Verizon previously indicated various technical issues behind the interruptions of service. They basically blamed new challenges in the LTE standard, but that’s little comfort to customers who were sold on greater speeds on a big, reliable network – not to mention the fact that data caps now limit how much they can do and when. Verizon’s reputation as the best large-scale cellular provider is taking some big hits, no doubt about it. We’ll see if they can make amends, or if their competitors can capitalize on the misfortune.

Feel free to report any Verizon issues you’re having in the comments section, and be sure to include your city and the time that the problems started or ended.

[via SlashGear]

]]> Without a doubt, one of the most interesting pieces of hardware3 from a design and form factor standpoint has been the Padfone from Asus. We first saw the dockable smartphone/tablet way back in May of last year as a concept device, but over the last eight months it’s been steadily progressing to a retail release. We saw refreshed hardware at CES under glass, but rumors pegged it for a final, official unveiling at Mobile World Congress. Considering the invitation we just received to Asus’  press conference, we’d say those rumors can be put to rest.

To refresh your memory, the Padfone is a unique smartphone with a ~10-inch tablet add-on device. Slide the phone into the dock and your data, apps and media appear on the tablet, using Android’s tablet interface. Back in May this was a bit of a pipe dream, but the combination of code for both smartphone and tablet interfaces in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich appears to have made it a reality. In effect the tablet add-on is just a bigger screen and battery for the smartphone… because that’s all it needs. Presumably, that means you can use your phone’s cellular and data connection to make calls and texts as well.

Given the conceptual nature of the Padfone, hardware specifications are a little hard to come by, but we do know that the smartphone uses a 4.3-inch AMOLED display (or at least it did when we saw it at CES). Based on the revised render in the invitation, it looks like the capacitive navigation buttons may have been abandoned. There’s no way to know the dimensions of either piece, but it’s safe to say that the tablet portion needs to be considerably larger than other ten-inch devices.

There’s been a lot of talk about docking and interfaces in Android lately: rumors persist that Android Jelly Bean includes a desktop mode activated by an external screen, and a new ARM-based version of Ubuntu will be available to Android OEMs later this year for the same purpose. Of course Asus id no stranger to docking hardware, since the Eee Pad Transformer and Transformer Prime include keyboard attachments with extra ports and batteries. We can’t wait to see what Asus brings to the table in Barcelona – keep an eye on our Mobile World Congress portal for the latest news.

]]> I’ve got some wonderful news for the eight people that still own a Motorola Cliq 2 on T-Mobile! Your prayers have been answered, and you’ll soon be getting an official update to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. All it took was 13 months after the Cliq 2′s January 2011 release, and a full 14 months after the availability of Gingerbread itself. So…. hooray. If you’d like to get in on the action a little early, you can head over to the official Motorola forum and sign up to beta test the update for the manufacturer. The new software still includes the MOTOBLUR UI layer.


The Motorola Cliq 2 was released on January 19th, 2011 as a mild refresh of the original Cliq, including its sliding QWERTY keyboard. The screen was bumped up to 3.7 inches with a resolution of 854×480 (the same size nad density as the original DROID) with a 5-megapixel camera and Android 2.2, which at the time was downright timely. T-Mobile was the only US carrier to bite, though it seems to have hit its end of life between then and now – likely superseded by phones like the MyTouch Q by LG.

Motorola has been getting a lot of flak lately for its poor update schedule, thanks to the reveal that most of its high-end phones wouldn’t be seeing Ice Cream Sandwich until at least the summer of 2012, and probably longer. Updating a year-old phone with year-old software isn’t likely to change that perception. All this is set to the backdrop of Google’s acquisition of the American company, which seems to clash with their continuing habit of poor support and locked-down software. We can only hope that the big G will be a positive influence of Moto’s customer-facing policies, but that seems less and less likely as the acquisition begins its final stages.

[via TmoNews]

]]> What’s more catchy than an extremely generic product name like “X3″? How about a longer generic name that’s already appeared on dozens of handsets? PocketNow reports that the LG X3, rumored to be the South Korean manufacturer’s new flagship when it appears at Mobile World Congress, will be rechristened the LG Optimus 4X HD. Why 4X? Who knows. Changes from a codename to a more generic name for actual release aren’t uncommon, and our American readers should remember that LG tends to bow to carriers when it comes to US branding – see the Optimus LTE and its Nitro HD and Spectrum names on AT&T and Verizon, respectively.

Just to jog your memory: the LG X3 was previously rumored to feature a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, a massive 4.7-inch 720p display (likely featuring the same IPS LCD technology as the Optimus LTE) with 16GB of on-board storage and an 8MP rear camera. The original source claimed that the superphone runs Ice Cream Sandwich, but since we’re seeing a Menu button in the capacitive navigation area, Gingerbread at launch is still a distinct possibility. The CX3/Optimus 4X HD has already been put through the benchmark gauntlet, and come out way on top of the rank and file of high-end Android phones.

For those of you keeping track, that’s at least four Tegra 3 phones we’re expecting to see unveiled at Mobile World Congress next week: HTC’s One X (nee Edge), Fujitsu’s unnamed 13.1-megapixel monster, Huawei’s Ascend D1 Q, and now the LG Optimus 4X HD. In addition LG has recently unveiled the Optimus 3D Cube, AKA the 3D Max, with its lenticular display, along with the more luxury-oriented L3, L5 and L7, all likewise sporting the Optimus branding. If you can get through all of that without a chart of some kind, good for you – everyone else, head over to our Mobile World Congress 2012 portal to get the latest.

]]> It’s finally time, Eee Pad Transformer Prime owners: Asus has graced you with its promised bootloader unlock tool. If you don’t want to waste precious seconds reading, click this here link to get to the download page. Select “Android” in the OS pull-down menu, then click “Utilities”, then click the download link under “Unlock Device App: Unlock boot loader”. The bootloader unlock tool will only work if you’ve updated your Transformer Prime to the official Ice Cream Sandwich ROM, and like all bootloader unlocks, it will wipe your personal information completely.

If you’re new to the Transformer Prime or the short-lived controversy surrounding its release, it goes something like this: Asus locked the bootloader when the high-powered tablet hit the market back in December, to the consternation of just about every advanced Android user who wanted to get his or her custom ROM on. After an outcry from disgruntled customers, Asus promised an unlock tool in February, as well as a relatively speedy upgrade to Android 4.0 in January. Both those promises are now fulfilled, even if some of the hardware-related issues that users have been having with WiFi and GPS are still present. Note that if you decide to take your bootloader into your own hands, your warranty is kaput.

Once the bootloader is unlocked, it won’t take long for someone to use fastboot to get a custom recovery package installed, and after that it’s only a matter of time before custom ROMs and kernels start appearing. Asus has yet to update the original Transformer to Ice Cream Sandwich (and may not do so until March) but there’s plenty of community-authored ROMs out there that have picked up the slack. Happy modding, folks!

]]> Fujitsu has been making waves in the Android world as of late, due in no small part to their impressively thin ARROWS phone bound for Japan. But the company is also planning a return to the world smartphone market with a debut at Mobile World Congress this month, and if you believe Unwired View, they won’t be coming empty handed. Reportedly the company spoke of a monster phone with Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 SoC, a 4.6-inch display and a whopping 13.1-megapixel rear camera.

Naturally Ice Cream Sandwich is along for the ride, and it’s coming in a semi-rugged chassis that’s resistant to both water and dust. Fujitsu didn’t say anything about ARROW-style thinness, and since it’s also purported to have impressive battery life, we can assume that a slinky frame wasn’t a priority. Based on the tiny thumbnail provided by the manufacturer as a pre-event teaser, you can see that it uses just three capacitive buttons – and that one of them is Menu. That implies that the phone was originally designed with Gingerbread in mind, but of course, the photo probably doesn’t reflect final hardware.

If Fujitsu wants to get back in the worldwide smartphone game, it’s picked a heck of a time to do so. Both HTC and Huawei have already leaked drool-worthy Tegra 3 devices before MWC, and fellow Japanese giant Panasonic has already revealed its high-end Eluga phone set for a wide release. That’s not even counting regular competition from Samsung and Motorola, both of which are probably sitting out MWC when it comes to high-end smartphone hardware. Fujitsu will be on the floor showing off its latest and greatest, so keep an eye on our Mobile World Congress 2012 portal for all the juicy details.