By now most of you probably have already heard of the term “rooting” and how rooting actually makes your Android device faster. For starters, rooting your phone is actually the same as jailbreaking an iPhone.
The benefits you get from a rooted phone is like opening Pandora’s Box. Whether or not you’re planning on installing a custom ROM for your phone, you should probably root your phone, as it can open up myriad opportunities to install apps that require root access.
When you root your phone you are actually giving “super user permissions” on your phone. It’s like running Administrator mode on your desktop computer with you controlling the permissions, configurations, settings, and the like. Once you have a fully rooted phone, the possibilities are endless. A rooted phone lets you install custom-made ROMS out of the box and run apps that particularly require root access.
There’s a big boundary between installing custom ROMs and rooting. Although installing custom ROMs gives you tons of features that are not directly provided by the phone’s manufacturer, rooting on the other hand can come in handy as most of the features can be added by installing the right apps to get the job done. Below you’ll find a helpful list of apps that I recommend newly rooted phones to have installed.
Superuser
Superuser would be on top of anyone’s list of apps after you successfully rooted your phone. When you root your phone, you are actually establishing administrative rights, and the Superuser app is the one maintaining that control over your applications. Any application that requires root privileges directly passes through Superuser.
In order for the application to run, you are prompted with a pop-up display giving you the options of allowing or denying root privileges. It is a must-have app for you to be able to run any other applications. Get the Superuser app free from the Android Market.
SetCPU for Root Users
Ever wondered about tinkering with your phone’s CPU speed without ever touching that pesky configuration command line using the Linux kernel? Then it’s quite hard to pass an offer you can’t refuse, but SetCPU for Root Users just manages to make your life easier with just a bit of sliding the seek bar. Of course, you need root access to make it happen. SetCPU can help you tinker with clock speeds at great lengths. It allows users to underclock and overclock CPU speeds depending on the phone’s processing capabilities. Get the SetCPU for Root Users app for US$2.00 from the Android Market.
Titanium Backup
Backing up important files will mostly come in handy as Titanium Backup is as powerful as it can get. The app itself proves worthy of its name as it can make backups of entire applications together with all of their associated data. Not only that, it can delete unwanted applications, bloatware, and system apps–such as those coming from phone manufacturers. If you really tend to screw up your phone (e.g., a failed installation of a custom ROM), Titanium Backup can revert to that state when your phone was running smoothly, thus saving you time from starting all over from scratch. Get Titanium Backup free from the Android Market.
Wireless Tether for Root Users
For people who are generous enough to share their wireless data plan, Wireless Tether works wonders for the tech-savvy roadrunner. Basically, the app turns your phone into a wireless access point for anyone nearby to stay connected to the Internet. The app is quite useful in situations when you are out of town and you have several gadgets that need to stay connected over the Internet. Get the Wireless Tether for Root Users app free from the Android Market.
Screenshot It
Sad to say that Android versions lower than Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich don’t support native features for taking screenshots right from the phone. Thanks to an application called Screenshot It, users can now take snapshots of their phone’s screen. Screenshot It is an interesting app that lets users take screenshots of their phone. Users can set options to take snapshots when the phone is shaken. It offers a load of nifty features such as cropping, rotating, and inverting of images. It can also save the data to your SD card. Get the Screenshot It app for US$4.00 from the Android Market.
There are many amazing “root-only” Android apps that you can load on your Android phone. These five apps are just some of the more important ones that a newly rooted Android phone would be better to have before getting any other app. What root-only apps do you use on your Android smartphone?
Japanese glass manufacturer Nippon Electric Glass recently unveiled its latest creation, a type of glass that is transparent enough that you actually might think there is nothing there in front of your naked eye.
The glass substrate, dubbed as the “invisible glass” was recently announced and exhibited at the FPD International convention in Yokohoma, Japan.
What makes the so called “invisible glass” achieve near-invisibility is that it does not reflect light, thus reducing glare. The ordinary type of glass reflects about 8 percent of light while the remaining 92 percent passes directly through the glass itself.
The glass constructed by Nippon is designed to have over 30 layers of specially made film on each of its sides measuring in sheer nanometers. Nippon’s Invisible Glass was able to pass 99.5 percent of light and only 0.5 percent is reflected, making it achieve the invisible look.
Ordinary glass on the left, invisible glass on the right.
Although there are still no reports on when the Invisible Glass will be made available for consumers, it is likely that when the product is released, we could expect to see great changes when it comes to technological advancement. The Invisible Glass would redefine the industry, as it could be used on many technological devices such as computer monitors, tablets, mobile phones, laptops, and the like. Many equipment manufacturers would want to adopt anti-glare technology, especially those that produce devices that heavily rely on the use of glass in their design.
Haven’t gotten the Summer 2011 Android Mini Series?
Our friends from The TakenShop in Malaysia are feeling very generous and have decided to give away two sets of the “Heroes & Villians” (4 figures in a set) series to two of our lucky readers!
The best part of this giveaway? It’s international! It doesn’t matter if you’re from Neverland or from the Shire, you’ll be sure to receive your prize – if you’re lucky enough to win. If you prefer just buying the Summer Edition straight up, remember stocks are limited. There’s also a new 2011 Halloween Don Pablo Calaveroid figure available.
Samsung recently announced the release of the new Nexus phone, the Galaxy Nexus. This one’s equipped with a fast dual-core processor, and powered by the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. With its 720HD display, we all doubt there is anything a techie lover would ask for more.
There have been many changes in the Nexus for the past few years, and below is a summary of its evolution.
Nexus One
The Nexus One is the original Nexus phone and for the specs, the manufacturing company boasted of its 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, with a 3.7 inch LCD display and a 5MP rear camera. One of its most noticeable features is its trackball that also served as a notification light that changes color. The phone was known to kill the iPhone and with its fast processor, no doubt a lot of people were excited for the project.
The Nexus One also served as Google’s beginning of selling phones without any prior major advertising, nor the need to sign a contract with phone carriers just to avail a unit.
Nexus S
We all know that the Nexus One didn’t become a commercial success and yet, Google pursued creating a series of flagship smartphone to give Android lovers the ultimate Google Experience phone. The Nexus S, which is the successor of the Nexus One, has a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird as its processor, a bigger AMOLED display at 4.0 inches, 512 MB of ram, a whopping 16GB of internal storage, plus a 5MP camera. The only thing that’s missing from this phone is its multi-colored notification light, and a slot for microSD card.
Unlike the Nexus One, retailers and carriers were able to advertise the unit and sell it in stores. This gave the Nexus S a higher chance of being successful in the smartphone market.
Galaxy Nexus
The Galaxy Nexus is the second entry in the Google smartphone series by Samsung. The unit was recently reveled in a press conference held in Hong Kong over a week ago, and the features that the phone offers show how impressive it can be and why Android lovers should watch out for it. Not all phones have a high graphics acceleration however, this unit boasts of a 720 pixel HD display, and 4.6 inches of high quality screen display. Compared to other smartphones made by the same company, the Galaxy Nexus has no built in hardware navigation buttons, since they are replaced by buttons built into the Ice Cream Sandwich software.
Similar to its predecessor is its ergonomically designed curved glass display. However, aluminum is used in some parts of the chassis to give it a solid and premium feel, compared to the previous versions which only used plastic chassis.
The Galaxy Nexus is jam packed with a dual core processor plus tons of great features. With such an offer, nobody is quite sure whether or not the series can move forward in such a short span of time. However, there are also Android users who wish to have a Nexus Tablet made available.
The HTC Rezound is expected to be announced at a press event this week, but it looks like Verizon is getting antsy. The handset has broken cover at Verizon retail locations, making an appearance in an in-store advertisement. Rumors point to the phone launching sometime between the 10th and 17th, with some saying the 14th is the date to watch. The Rezound showing off it’s Beats earphones and red softkeys ahead of an official announcement isn’t too surprising. The fact that Verizon is still advertising the LG Revolution and Motorola DROID BIONIC is.
The Samsung Galaxy S is joining a growing group of current devices receiving pre-release builds of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. As was the case with previous instances on the Nexus S and HTC Thunderbolt the alpha build is worth mentioning but hardly useful as daily driver ROM. Android 4.0 has not seen an “official” release, so developers have been using the SDK (rather than the source code) to patch together makeshift builds of the new OS version. This results in software that isn’t fully baked. The Samsung Galaxy S version of this tasty treat is not even available to the general public yet, though work is progressing thanks in large part to the same team that brought us MIUI.
The above image doesn’t look much different than any other official Samsung Galaxy Nexus image we have seen before, but this one isn’t just any Galaxy Nexus. According to the astute men of DroidLife, this image has the distinction of originally having the file name ”Verizon_SCH-i515.jpg.″ The image was located on Samsung’s website, and despite its name the device pictured lacks any recognizable Verizon marks. Two possibilities here: (1) the file is a placeholder image with Verizon included in its name for identification purposes for the people working on the Samsung website, or (2) like the Nexus devices before it, the Galaxy Nexus will be absent of the expected carrier branding, lending to it’s clean Google Experience roots. Sure, it’s a bit much of a fuss over a single image, but it is the Galaxy Nexus. We’ll take any excuse to talk about this beautiful device.
I wonder if the Android manufacturers, especially the top 5 ones – Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG and Sony – can sleep well at night knowing how many millions of devices they’ve left behind without upgrading them even for a year, or many times without upgrading them at all. I’m thinking they sleep pretty well, knowing they sold the devices to customers, and now they don’t have to care about them anymore. Because if they didn’t, then they’d probably actually do something about it, wouldn’t they?
This graph has been going around the web for the past couple of days, and while I think it was created with some mal-intentions to take a jab at Android by someone who is very much in love with Apple, and normally I wouldn’t support it, this time I just have to. Because I’m afraid it’s the only way the Android manufacturers will learn – by being publicly shamed into doing something about it already! They need some tough love, if we are to receive more upgrades on our phones.
Remember how after the continuous outrage about the locked bootloaders, we started seeing a glimpse of a future when phones will stop being locked? Samsung stopped locking them. HTC offered an online unlock tool, and Motorola is just getting around to having unlocked bootloaders, although they still seem to blame the carriers for now allowing them to do it. I don’t know how true that is, but hopefully things will change when Google finalizes the acquisition. LG and Sony seems to keep them open as well.
So at least we set the direction for them. It’s time to do the same for software upgrades, too. Enough is enough. We heard about the Android Update Alliance in spring at Google I/O, but it was very vague, with no specific plans or commitments from them, and when I saw the Android 4.0 event, I realized they didn’t say anything about it, which made me think that things might not be going too well with that. The manufacturers might be starting to backtrack on that plan.
I really hope I’m wrong on this, though, and it’s more of a matter of starting over with Android 4.0. Perhaps the new Android is easier to upgrade, and it could be why Honeycomb devices get updates much faster. On the other hand, it could be just because the tablets are mostly using the stock version of Honeycomb. That again leads us to another thing. Maybe manufacturers need to stop doing such deep customization of Android?
I was hoping that with Android 4.0, Google would set some sort of guidelines that allows them to only lightly customize it – like change the theme, colors, widgets, whatever. As long as it’s all a surface customization, and it means anyone can find common traits in all Android phones, so all Android phones can have a certain identify. Also, it would be a lot easier to revert to stock Android, and disable the theme on top. Google hasn’t given any details about this, and they probably do want manufacturers to do more of that, but knowing some of the manufacturers, they’ll keep messing with it.
Either way, fast updates are important, but what is even more important, is at least getting the updates in the first place! If they can promise me that if I buy a phone today, and I’ll be getting at least 3-4 next major Android versions for the next 18 months or so (considering Google releases one every 6 months or so), then I would be quite happy with that. They’d end up supporting their customers for 75% of the their contract’s lifetime, while in the same time still leaving room for them to want to upgrade to a new phone once the contract is up.
I don’t think 2 or more years of upgrades is necessary, because then technology would move slower, and people might start hanging on to their phones for more than 2 years. I get that. But at least give me 18 months of upgrades, not just 3-6 months with just one upgrade – maybe.
All Android manufacturers need to commit to 3-4 major upgrades of Android, and they need to do it NOW.
We are back with today’s round of the best, fun-filled, and extraordinary apps the Android Market has to offer. Halloween is only a few days away and keeping with that holiday spirit, I thought it only appropriate to feature the most goulish, creepy and gory Halloween themed apps from the Market. Let’s have at it!
Halloween Clock - This clock widget comes to you from the makers of Kinectic Clock and features a festive Halloween theme complete with a little witch Andy, brewing away in his cauldron. The widget was actually rendered using 3D graphics and features an insane amount of detail. Not only that, it’s highly customizable too! Halloween Clock features:
-Four different skins to choose from (wood, wrought iron, stone, and brick).
-Each skin switches to day and night versions on its own (or choose any skin you’d like to remain static).
-Moon and sun rise and set as the day goes on (or choose your favorite position to remain static).
-Space for two customizable launchers. App icons look like they’re nestled right in the grass!
-12 and 24 hour modes.
Haunted House HD – I’ve come across my share of amazing live wallpapers in my day and let me tell you — none of the come as close to the amount of interaction and fun as this spooky 3D wallpaper from the creators of My Beach and Season Zen. The wallpaper allows you to travel around the outside of a haunted house, tiptoeing by candle-lit pumpkins and mailbox that can be customized with your name. Feeling brave? You can even travel inside the haunted house and have a look at the paranormal activity that lies within.
Haunted House HD features the ability to customize every part of the scene, choose your style of pumpkins and hide or show the items in the scene to decorate your haunted house for Halloween. Amazing fun and from a live wallpaper no less.
Swiftkey X (with Pumpkin Theme) – SwiftKey X is my personal keyboard of choice (at the moment) and in celebration of Halloween, they saw it fit to introduce a brand new “Pumpkin Theme” in addition to their already available ones. SwiftKey X is based on the new version of TouchType’s advanced Fluency language inference engine… simply meaning — it can almost predict what you’re going to say before you say it.
You can fine tune SwiftKey X with typing styles to match the way you use your phone. Whether you rely heavily on prediction or if you prefer to write your words out in full rapidly making typos and errors, SwiftKey will keep everything in order. If you haven’t yet, now would be a great time to check it out.
SpecTrek Light – SpecTrek is one of those oldie but goodies. I’ve been having fun with this app since back in the G1 days and not much has changed. Not much has to. The name of the game is ghost hunting and you must run around your immediate vicinity, hunting down ghosts using radar. One you’re in range, hold up your phone to switch to augmented reality mode and catch ghosts ala Fatal Frame. Tons of fun to be had especially when navigating around your neighborhood trick or treating.
Contract Killer: Zombies (NR) – While not really “Halloween themed” (zombie killing is fun any time of the year) Contract Killer recently release a zombie version of their popular FPS game. How do you play? Well, it’s simple. Gun down anything that groans, “Braaaaaaains.” Just make sure you don’t get too trigger happy as you have to rescue innocent civilians from the zombie-infested environments.
Sliceween – This is a fun physics game where you have one simple goal: Get the bat. Into the house. Sounds easy enough… Or is it? You’ll have to slice your way to victory using bars, bricks, spiders, teleporters and more. Featuring 4 different worlds for a total of 80 levels. I know it all sounds a bit weird but try it out. Sliceween is sure to get you into that Halloween spirit.
Well, that pretty much covers it for our special Halloween edition of “Apps of the Day.” Have any scary apps you would like to recommend? Just sound ‘em off in the comments! We’ll do our best to feature them come Monday, for one final round of Halloween themed apps. I hope you guys have a great weekend of partying and please, make it home safe.
Back in September, Sony Ericsson announced that they would being rolling out the Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread update to their devices, unfortunately for us here in the states (and other parts of the world), it was only for Nordic countries. Thankfully, today, SE announced that the 2.3.4 update has begun rolling out for the rest of the world but with a few added changes. Highlights of the update include:
Google Talk with Video Chat for smartphones with front-facing cameras
Updated Facebook inside Xperia™ functionality for enhanced like, share and discover abilities.
Xperia™ smartphones introducing world’s first 3D Sweep Panorama functionality powered by Sony.
16x video zoom
The software upgrade will enable consumers to turn their Xperia™ smartphone into a mini-mobile PC by connecting USB peripherals (mouse, keyboard or game controller) to Sony Ericsson LiveDock™ multimedia station. Connect the smartphone to a TV via HDMI to get a big screen experience.
Gesture input – text input by swiping the finger from one letter to the next
WiFi DLNA
Screen capture – allows the user to share a screen grab from anywhere in the phone.
Sony Ericsson devices that can look forward to the update are just about their entire lineup and include the Xperia Arc, Play, Neo, Mini, Mini Pro, Pro, Ray, Active, Neo V, Arc S and the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman. For a video walkthrough of the new features (you have to see “USB on the go”) check out the video below.
Sony Ericsson (soon to be just “Sony”) has quickly proven to be one of the better Android OEM’s, offering continuous support in regards to updates and with their work in the developer community. Now all that’s left is for SE to deliver some shiny dual-core devices to the US and they’ll be golden.
Haven’t gotten the Summer 2011 Android Mini Series?
