Sure took a long while, but the Android 2.2 update is now available to all HTC Legends residing in Europe and… no, sorry, this isn’t the just-announced Gingerbread. It’s Froyo, the one before it — trust us, this isn’t a frozen dessert you won’t mind in the midst of winter. And don’t bother asking about 2.3 because HTC isn’t giving specifics yet. Wildfire? That’s “coming soon,” according to the person behind the HTC UK Facebook curtain.
If you’ve got a Legend, fiddling with that gorgeous unibody aluminum shell in your hands is only going to keep you entertained for so long — at some point, you’re going to want Android 2.2. Well, it took a little while — as skinned phones tend to — but HTC has announced via its Facebook page in the past few days that the phone will start getting Froyo “in the coming weeks.” First up will be unbranded devices, while carrier-stamped versions will have to wait a little longer because, as HTC explains, there’s an additional approval process that has to happen for each of those. Blasted bureaucracy!
If you’ve got a Legend, fiddling with that gorgeous unibody aluminum shell in your hands is only going to keep you entertained for so long — at some point, you’re going to want Android 2.2. Well, it took a little while — as skinned phones tend to — but HTC has announced via its Facebook page in the past few days that the phone will start getting Froyo “in the coming weeks.” First up will be unbranded devices, while carrier-stamped versions will have to wait a little longer because, as HTC explains, there’s an additional approval process that has to happen for each of those. Blasted bureaucracy!
It’s almost a given that HTC may have a little announcement for us next Monday, but chances are you’d like to let Windows Phone 7 settle in for a bit while you cling on to your trusty green bot. Assuming neither the Desire HD nor the troublesomeDesire Z / G2 tickled your fancy, you now have two more options for consideration: a “phantom black” Legend and a “brilliant white” Desire (as seen a few weeks ago). Patrons in Europe should be seeing these new handsets starting this month, but here’s a caveat: we’re told that rather than going 100 percent SLCD for the Desire, it’s actually a mix of both SLCD and AMOLED, so be sure to double-check with your store before handing over your hard-earned euros.
It’s a sad day for fans of Android, brushed aluminum exteriors, and retina-searing AMOLED displays. Bell’s HTC Legend seems to have come to the end of its days, the provider moving the phone to “end of life” status due to “ongoing supply constraints from the manufacturer.” Phandroid speculates this is due to AMOLED shortages slowing down HTC manufacturing, and that certainly seems like a reasonable conclusion. We also checked out some other suppliers of the phone and they too are not listing it in stock, so this could be a rather abrupt end of the road for one of the best looking, though not necessarily best performing, Android handsets.
Update: David D. wrote in to point out this Forbes article pointing out that chip shortages could also be at least partly to blame here.
It’s summer. It’s hot. Naturally, everyone wants to lick some frozen dessert in one form or another. Shortly after the Nexus One got its absolutely official Android 2.2 update, HTC has once again leaped out to tell us of its own Froyo offering. The Taiwanese mobile giant has informed Recombu that it’s expecting “several of our 2010 models including Desire, Legend and Wildfire” to join Google’s latest green bot party “beginning in Q3.” We went to the trouble of confirming this with HTC ourselves, and while this isn’t really much of an update from the company’s previous statement in terms of time frame, here’s hoping that at least some of its customers will get the delivery before the summer fiesta ends.
Sure, the Desire’s coming to a handful of regional American carriers later this year, but what if you want the smaller, sleeker, more aluminum-clad Legend? Well, there aren’t any carrier-branded options in the States — but it seems that a number of unlocked units with US 3G bands are starting to ooze out of the cracks. Negri Electronics has an 850 / 1900MHz 3G Legend in its store for a shade under $500, which means you’re not getting much of a discount over the more powerful 850 / 1900MHz version of the Nexus One — but you are getting a pretty sweet unibody shell and an optical d-pad. Any takers?
The phone, the myth, the Legend has just become available over in Canada, giving North Americans their first taste of that aluminum unibody construction. It’s looking highly likely that this is the same handset we saw gracing the FCC’s pages not too long ago, indicating that Yanks should be getting in on the fun relatively soon as well. AT&T already let one HTC cat slip out of the bag today, guess this confirms the Liberty won’t be feeling lonely in Ma Bell’s Android cupboard whenever it does launch. And hey, Canadian friends, just think of the Legend as consolation for your teams not sniffing the Stanley Cup the past three years.
That ugly, pixelated label doesn’t really look like much, does it? Ah, but there’s so much going on here! A closer examination reveals that the label is a dead ringer for the label found underneath the endcap of HTC’s lovely unibody aluminum Legend — but this isn’t exactly the Legend with which we’re already well acquainted. Instead, this FCC filing is for a phone that operates on the 850 and 1900MHz WCDMA bands, a pretty strong sign that it’ll be coming to AT&T (and / or Rogers, Bell, and Telus) at some point. Further evidence lies in the FCC ID itself: the original Legend bears an ID of PB76100, while this puppy is the awfully similar PB76110. Sure, it’s no gigahertz-class, WVGA ultraphone, but we’ve got to admit — the Legend’s sexy enough to have us a little excited.
Attention, possessors of the European HTC Legend! Have you noticed a handful of missing apps in the Android Market, namely Twidroid, Layar, MySpace Mobile, Barcode Scanner, Google Goggles, FxCamera, and so forth? Today, the brilliantly quiet HTC has finally come to light with the bizarre offending bug — camera incompatibility. Oopsie! Any moment now your metallic slab should receive the OTA update to patch things up, and hopefully the Droid Incredible will get the same fix even sooner. Crisis averted.
