Transformer Prime ICS update coming on 12 January, unlocked to follow boot loader, GPS is not good

We have some good news and bad news for ASUS transformer of primer owners and future buyers. The company was only a precise time frame for the Android 4.0 ice cream sandwich update for its slate and it's gone either not too far.

The ICS update rollout for the transformer Prime on 12 January, is only 9 days away. The company also said that it already to release a tool that you use to unlock the Tegra 3 driven animal bootloaders and the custom ROMs get up and running.

Now for the bad news. Unlock of the bootloader means that kiss your warranty for reunion - a movement, the unlikely that ASUS is to win many friends among the developer community. But since install custom firmwares raises your warranty on any Smartphone (and if you install not so, why would you mess with your boot loader in the first place), we do not think that this will become too large a problem.

What could be a bit problematic, the Asus is transformer Prime GPS performance. "Early Adopters" have trouble getting a correct GPS lock with and according to ASUS with this problem in the hardware of the device.

According to the manufacturer, the metal shell of the transformer-Prime is the reason why its GPS performance is less than stellar. Now, there is quite an outrageous assertion as quad-Prime is not the first metal device not all of them are problems around and I am sure GPS. However, it is good to know that an update that you are not going to come, saw someone in the event to replace their car navigation with an ASUS tablet. The company even promised to remove the function of the transformer Prime information to avoid confusion.

For everyone else from the transformer, Prime is probably still there is an excellent device and it is all the sweeter in 9 days, when it comes to taste Android 4.0 ICS.

Update v6.2.1 pushed out to Kindle Fire – it installs silently and breaks root with SuperOneClick

The Amazon Kindle Fire gets listed in the same column as the rest of the Android tablets, but it’s worth remembering that it’s a highly customized version of Android and works differently than the rest. Take the silent auto-updates for example – the Fire will install the latest available firmware version 6.2.1 without asking, which will break root and make the tablet immune to SuperOneClick rooting.

The update does bring several goodies, the most valuable of which is probably the ability to remove items from the homescreen carousel. The update also improves scrolling performance and adds the option to lock Wi-Fi access with a password (as a sort of child lock).

As for geeks who want to keep their root, make sure you don’t connect to a Wi-Fi network or the Kindle Fire will fetch and install the update in the background.

Several potential fixes have been offered by the XDA-Developers forum posters – moving to CyanogenMod 7, removing (or simply renaming) OTASilentInstall.apk and restarting, modifying the hosts file to point Amazon’s update servers to localhost.

You can read up on that over at the forum thread.

On a related note, the Amazon Kindle Fire seems to be an increasingly popular web browsing device as recent ad impressions study by Millennial Media (the largest independent mobile ad network) suggests. The number of impressions has been growing by 19% a day since the Fire’s launch.

While ad impressions don’t directly relate to the number of actual users of the tablet, the sheer increase in the number of impressions (even bigger than the iPad’s back when it was launched) shows the Kindle Fire is on a roll.

Google Ships 'Ice Cream Sandwich' Partner Update, Adds Social Stream

Google formally announced Android 4.0.3 on Friday, the base version of its "Ice Cream Sandwich" operating system that will be provided to partners.

Although Google described the new version as a mix of optimizations and bug fixes, the real significance is that the new OS will be the baseline version that will be rolled out to partners interested in developing phones and tablets around the new OS. It also appears to possibly include Facebook Ticker-like functionality.

"Going forward, we'll be focusing our partners on Android 4.0.3 as the base version of Ice Cream Sandwich," Xavier Ducrohet, the Android SDK Tech Lead, said in announcing the new version. "The new platform will be rolling out to production phones and tablets in the weeks ahead, so we strongly encourage you to test your applications on Android 4.0.3 as soon as possible."

In addition to incremental improvements in graphics, databases, spell-checking, Bluetooth, and other features, the new OS includes a new social stream API.

"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," Ducrohet wrote. "This new API lets apps show users what the people they know are doing or saying, in addition to their photos and contact information."

Apps can now add colors to calendar events, Ducrohet added, and improvements were made to screen readers.

Smartphone cameras also received a key improvement: the OS now supports video stabilization, a feature of many point-and-shoot cameras. QVGA resolution profiles were also added.

Which phones will be receiving Ice Cream Sandwich? Hit the link to find out. And then check out the related explanations from Sony Ericsson and Motorola on why it will take so long for those updates to arrive.

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Motorola Xoom gets unofficial Android 4.0.3 update, comes at the cost of camera functionality

December 18th, 2011 byPrasad

Android, Tablets

It’s been just a day since Google released the Android 4.0.3 update and the folks over at xda-developers have managed to get it working on the original Motorola Xoom already.

While this may sound like exciting news, it’s still pretty much a work in progress, which means things are not working quite as well as they should. The camera is not working and there is a green overlay from time to time. But then again, that’s usually the case with most custom ROMs and as the developer continues to work on it, it will get better with time.

But if you’re impatient to try out Ice Cream Sandwich on your Xoom and are willing to forgo the camera functionality (not that the camera on a tablet is of much use anyway) you can giving it a try by visiting the source link below.

Source

View the original article here