Year: 2010

well, i’ve been doing this little experimental blog for just over 2 months now, and i’ve got to say, it’s been a blast.  what’s even more surprising, is how many of you keep coming back for more!  cheers to that!

and since i’m really starting to roll with this thing, i want to get you all more involved!  with that said, it’s time to open up this blog for some of those burning questions that have been sizzling on the tip of your tongue.

you have questions about your phone?  on apps?  need something reviewed?  need some basic tips or tutorials?  want more videos?  free stuff?  contests?    more news?  want to write for droid life?

this is your chance to let me know what you’d like more of, less of  and anything in between!  give it to me straight! 

and once again, thanks for allowing this little blog of mine to keep on growing!

not really surprised to hear this news are we?

if interested in rooting your motorola milestone, you can check out the video below or the massive amounts of user instructions and comments over at droid forums.net.  there are already a number of success stories from around the world including the UK and Brazil of milestone users completing the task.

**REMEMBER!  DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE ARE NOT LIABLE IF YOU BRICK YOUR PHONE LIKE A FOOL OR IF ANYTHING BAD HAPPENS TO YOU.  CHEERS!**

video tutorial:

Just take the file in the post, name it update.zip, and throw it on the SD card in the root directory.

Turn off your ‘stone.

Hold down both the camera button and the power button THROUGH the Motorola “M” icon, until you see the exclamation point / triangle icon. Let both keys go. I tried the Droid method : power button and X button, and it didn’t work for me.

Now, this was finicky on my phone: Hold down the “volume up” button, then press and hold the camera button (while still holding the vol up). If it works, within a few seconds you should get a text screen telling you to use the d-pad for navigation, and offering you a couple of choices. Select “install update.zip from SD card”, and press the d-pad center button. Wait until it tells you that it is finished.

Reboot the phone.

Check the apps drawer for the superuser whitelist application. If you have that, the root worked.

You will still be on 2.0 after the root.

let me know how it goes!

for motorola droid users, we keep getting good news on a daily basis it seems. damian koh of cnet spoke with a vp at motorola, spiros nikolakopoulos to discuss their 2010 outlook.  you’ve gotta like the sound of these quotes if you are a motorola user…

On the number of Motorola devices we expect to see in 2010.
There will be between 20 and 30 smartphones globally and, at this moment, all of them will run Android. Naturally, not all will be available everywhere as it depends on the company’s partnership with the various telco operators in each country. For non-smartphone models, they will run either Brew or the Motorola’s own operating system.

On Android engineering teams.
A third of the engineering team is based in the US, while another third in China and the final third in Korea. The team works solely on everything Android, including the integration of the software with the device. Nikolakopoulos didn’t say how big the team is, though.

for a company as large as motorola to go all-out-android, you should be very happy to be a droid user.  the support should continue on at the highest of levels.  weee!

(via android central)

as i was browsing a few of the motorola droid forums last night, i noticed a few posts with people wondering what the update they had just received was.  of course, most of us flipped, hoping it was the android 2.1 update!  it appears that it wasn’t.  the few people that have come forth with the update are not experiencing anything different with their phones.

the update coming to some phones was reportedly about 61MB which is pretty significant in size.  here is the system info after installing:

Model Number: Droid
Firmware Version: 2.0.1
Baseband Version: C_01.3E.01P
Kernel Version: 2.6.29-omap1-g0dd7e0b
                            android-build@apa26 #511
Build Number: ESD56

i find this semi-weird as it’s the same build as is on my phone which was updated back in december.

many are speculating that this was just to fix certain handsets that have been unable to update their facebook applications.  users with this new update can now download the facebook update from the market without having installation issues.

now, i don’t know about you, but 61MB seems a little big for such a minor fix.  was this just a preparation sort of update for 2.1?  maybe a patch just waiting for the 2.1 update?  maybe.

update 4:05: the crew at droidforums.net has been given some details through their sources…

Our sources have indicated Android 2.1 has passed all internal testing on the Droid and a target is to have all Droids updated before the end of the month. This patch had added some minor fixes and preps the phone for a smooth Android 2.1 RELEASE. To be clear, the forthcoming immediate update is not 2.1, but a precursor to smooth the transition to 2.1 which will follow within the next couple of weeks. Stay Tuned, more details to come!

the rumor mill has our android 2.1 update set for 1/22 or 3 days from now.  we’ll keep you posted as we have more.

it’s sounding more and more like the android 2.1 os will not be called “flan” after all.  google and android have been crafty with their naming convention for new builds of their operating system and the newest appears to follow along their previous releases in a sweet sort of way.  how does “froyo” sound for the 2.1 operating system?  froyo meaning frozen yogurt of course.

here is the list of android os’s and their nicknames to help add or clarify some confusion…

• android 1.5 – cupcake
• android 1.6 – donut
• android 2.0 or 2.0.1 – eclair
• android 2.1 – froyo
  

good times!