Category Archives: Mobile

How to manually upgrade Nexus S from Android 2.3.6 to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

By Sergey Povzner | Published: December 17, 2011
If you own T-Mobile’s variant of Samsung Nexus S (i9020t) and don’t want to wait for the official OTA Android 4.0.3 update, you can install it manually. The procedure below will upgrade stock Android 2.3.6 build GRK39F to Android 4.0.3 build IML74K. With a rooted phone the easiest update process is to use ROM Manager (Download ROM [...]
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Official roll out of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to GSM Nexus S begins

By Sergey Povzner | Published: December 17, 2011
Just one day after Galaxy Nexus went on sale in the US, owners of GSM versions of Nexus S rejoice: Google has began the roll out of the Android 4.0. Users running stock Android 2.3.6 should receive OTA update within the coming month. Impatient owners can also install this update manually. Once upgraded, check out [...]
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Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.0 released by Verizon in the US

By Sergey Povzner | Published: December 15, 2011
The wait is over and Galaxy Nexus is finally available in the US from Verizon Wireless. Galaxy Nexus can be purchased online or at Verizon Wireless, Best Buy, Costco and Radio Shack stores. Verizon’s price is $299 with a contract and $649 without a contract, but before rushing to the store, check the online deals such [...]
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CyanogenMod 7.1 is released

By Sergey Povzner | Published: October 10, 2011
The most popular Android custom ROM CyanogenMod has released today a new stable version CM 7.1. With almost 6 months since the last stable CM 7.0 release it’s been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait. The new release adds support to 24 more devices, which brings total number of supported devices to 68! [...]
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News: 7″ Amazon Fire, Microsoft and Samsung sign a deal, Cyanogenmod and Xperia, Google Voice, Google+, Skype, Hipmunk, Google Wallet and more

By Sergey Povzner | Published: September 30, 2011
It’s been a while since the last news update, so this roundup of the most interesting news from the past few weeks covers a lot: 7″ Android-based Amazon Fire tablet was unveiled and will start shipping in US for $199 on Nov 15 . The main selling point besides its low price will be access to the vast library [...]
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News: Google to acquire Motorola Mobility

By Sergey Povzner | Published: August 15, 2011
A big news for the Android ecosystem: Larry Page announced today a 12.5B acquisition of Motorola Mobility. This acquisition will have a significant impact on many aspects for the Android world: from its Nexus brand, carrier availability, and better OS integration with hardware to a better defense against recent patent attacks on Android. More reaction [...]
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Nexus S comes to AT&T on July 24

By Sergey Povzner | Published: July 21, 2011
A great news for potential Android phone buyers: on July 24 Best Buy will start selling Nexus S phone fully compatible with AT&T network for $99 with 2-year contract. AT&T joins T-Mobile and Sprint in supporting Nexus S, which leaves Verizon as the lone carrier without Nexus branded phone. Nexus S ships with the latest version of Android [...]
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News: Android Market update, live Google Maps traffic coverage in 13 European countries, 550000 daily Android activations

By Sergey Povzner | Published: July 18, 2011
Catching up with the last week’s news: Roll out of the major upgrade to Android Market for phones has began. User interface has been redesigned from scratch to improve discoverability of apps and games.  If you are in the US, this version adds ability to rent movies and buy books from Android Market. Android 2.2+  phone is required for the update. You [...]
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News: offline maps and transit navigation in Google Maps, Skype video calling, Google+ launch

By Sergey Povzner | Published: July 8, 2011
Recent news: Google Maps for Android was updated to version 5.7. New features include turn-by-turn transit navigation (beta), photo viewer for Place pages, and streamlined user interace for getting directions. Google Maps update also added a very useful add-on to the Labs: offline maps download. To enable the add-on, open Maps -> More -> Labs and [...]
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News: Android Google Talk audio and video calling now works over T-Mobile’s 3G network

By Sergey Povzner | Published: June 28, 2011
Ever since Google Talk added video and voice chat support for Android phones in April, T-Mobile has been blocking Google Talk calls over its 3G/4G network. Calls worked, of course, over Wi-Fi and cellular networks of other carriers, such as Verizon. This has changed today and both video and audio calling now works flawlessly over T-Mobile’s cellular network. Google Talk [...]
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Tip: how to avoid duplicate notifications when using custom SMS app

By Sergey Povzner | Published: June 27, 2011
Android stock SMS Messaging app is quite good and does its job nicely, but some Android users like to get fancy with their SMS apps. Enter Handcent SMS app, which supports MMS with picture, video and audio attachments, great customization, group send, themes, different ringtones and LED notifications, 20+ languages, SMS history search, message password protection, schedule sms delivery [...]
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Tip: how to fix a launcher that is stuck in Force Close loop

By Sergey Povzner | Published: June 22, 2011
I personally have never ran into this problem, but a friend of mine just did and found a very nice solution which is worth sharing. The launcher on his Verizon Samsung Fascinate (a variant of Samsung Galaxy S) went into a permanent Force Close loop, which means that the launcher would crash every few seconds [...]
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News: Swype 3.0 released with Honeycomb support and resizable keyboard

By Sergey Povzner | Published: June 15, 2011
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Swype. Despite it’s permanent beta status for Android phones that do not have Swype preinstalled, it is by far the best onscreen keyboard that I’ve tried. Swype is the reason I almost never miss physical keyboard. The secret to Swype’s success is that it is a [...]
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13 tips for Android beginners

By Sergey Povzner | Published: June 13, 2011
If you just bought your first Android phone, here are some useful tips on using phone’s buttons, Home screen and customization. 1. You can install apps to your phone from the computer’s web browser. Open market.android.com in your computer’s browser, login to your Google account, find an app, click Install. The download of the app will [...]
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Google I/O 2011 recap: 18 months of Android updates, Music, Movies, Android@Home, Honeycomb 3.1 update, USB Host support and more

By Sergey Povzner | Published: May 25, 2011
The amount of Android news at Google I/O 2011 was impressive. Let’s recap the most important announcements from the conference. Alliance of hardware manufacturers and providers This is possibly the most important news for Android users: the alliance of hardware manufactures and providers announced that new devices will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first [...]
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Google I/O 2011

By Sergey Povzner | Published: May 9, 2011
Google I/O 2011 starts tomorrow. The session schedule is impressive and contains 9 tracks: Android, App Engine, Chrome, Commerce, Dev Tools, Geo, Google APIs, Google Apps, and Tech Talk. If you are one of many developers who wanted to attend, but won’t (registration sold out in under an hour), you can watch main events live. Both keynotes (about [...]
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News: native Google Docs app for Android is released

By Sergey Povzner | Published: April 27, 2011
Over the last two years Google has added capability to edit Google documents and spreadsheets using Android and iOS mobile browsers. Today Google took the next step and released a native Google Docs app for Android 2.1+ devices. The native app makes it very easy to access documents, spreadsheets and presentations from different Google and [...]
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Update Skype for Android to fix privacy vulnerability issue and get 3G calling

By Sergey Povzner | Published: April 20, 2011
On April 14, Android Police revealed Skype for Android vulnerability issue, which would theoretically allow malicious third-party application to get access to Skype’s profile information and chat logs. The issue was acknowledged by Skype the next day. The vulnerability was caused by Skype using wrong file permissions of the cached profile information and not encrypting profile data. Today Skype announced [...]
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CyanogenMod: 30, Android manufacturers: 4 (CM7 is released)

By Sergey Povzner | Published: April 11, 2011
Congratulations to CyanogenMod team on achieving a major milestone: CM 7.0 got released last night! CyanogenMod is a firmware based on the open-source Android operating system and CyanogenMod 7 is the first stable Gingerbread-based release. The number of cell phones that run official version of Gingerbread (Android 2.3) is currently 4. Those are Nexus S, Nexus [...]
Also posted in Android, CyanogenMod, Gingerbread | 5 Comments