We’re told it’s merely bug fixes, but Nexus Ones across the land are getting updated to Android 2.2.1 — “FroYo.1,” if you will. Whether Gingerbread will ever make an appearance on this bad boy remains unclear, but hey, at least Google’s still hustling to keep it updated in the meantime.
Digg If you’ll recall, a little while back HTC waved its white flag amid AMOLED shortages and made the jump to the readily-available SLCD for its Desire and Nexus One handsets. As a quick recap, here’s what CEO Peter Chou said about the swap:
“The SLCD displays provide consumers with a comparable visual experience to HTC’s current 3.7 inch displays with some additional benefits including battery performance.”
So, just how “comparable” is the SLCD? To find out, we picked up both flavors of the Desire to perform some comparison tests. Let’s start off with the picture quality: what caught our attention straight away was how much sharper SLCD is, but alas, AMOLED is still in the lead for vibrancy and brightness. We dug a little deeper and learned that this has to do with the different pixel arrangements on the two types of panels — unlike traditional TFT LCD panels, AMOLED’s PenTile RGBG (red, green, blue, green, etc.) filter matrix utilizes just two subpixels per pixel instead of three in the same amount of space, thus allowing greater transmittance due to the larger red and blue subpixels. But obviously, the downside is that the pictures aren’t as sharp as the denser-packed SLCD. Read on for more!
Well, well — what have we here? Word on the street has it that we’re looking at a new, unreleased (officially, anyway) Froyo build for Google’s now-tough-to-locate Nexus One. The open source community has yet again uncovered what looks to be a real gem, with this fresh Android 2.2 version (FRG33) promising minor bug fixes, improved WiFi performance and speed improvements from top to bottom. There’s obviously no Google-approved changelog to prove anything one way or another, but you can give that source link a look if you’re feeling froggy. Just don’t blame us when you suddenly can’t access the Android Market, or your world otherwise implodes.
If 6.0.0 RC1 just wasn’t cutting it for ya, CyanogenMod-6.0 has released what’s being touted as the “first stable release based on Android 2.2″ and has hit the target number of supported devices, which by our quick count includes EVO 4G, Slide, Nexus One, Dream / Magic, Aria, and Droid — and we might be missing a few.. You know the drill; if you need a bit of Froyo in your mobile life.
The Nexus One retail situation has been pretty dire since Google humanely put down its own online store, leaving only paid developers with an easy option to get an unlocked unit (and only an AWS 3G version at that). Now, even that’s been taken away — at least temporarily — thanks to unexpectedly strong demand that left Google to “blow through the (substantial) initial inventory in almost no time” and run up a backorder with HTC. Interestingly, Google specifically points out that HTC is doing a good job with manufacturing despite the AMOLED shortage, which leads us to wonder whether the SLCD version is shipping in quantity yet — and considering how the Nexus One and Desire are well into midlife, we wonder whether it makes sense to even bother at this point when we’ve got next-gen products just around the corner. Good news is that Google still seems committed to getting Nexus Ones back in stock for developers, we just don’t know when that’s going to happen.
It’s bad enough that Google decided to stop selling the Nexus One directly — especially since the AT&T-friendly 850 / 1900MHz version is nigh impossible to find now — but what sucks even more is that existing owners have been in peril of being left high and dry for accessorizing their increasingly rare little gems. Thankfully, the Nexus One’s manufacturer has stepped in to fill the void, offering the full range first-party goodies including the car dock, desktop dock, holster, and rear covers in a range of eye-popping colors. We’re not seeing batteries here, but… you know, there’s always the gigantic aftermarket option.
Google just confirmed it at an Android / Flash event in San Francisco, and sure enough, our trusty Nexus One just found, downloaded and installed the final (read: non-beta) version of Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1. It weighs in at just under 5MB, and it’s looking as sweet as ever so far. Nexus One owners can hit up the Android Market to get their download on, and we’d highly encourage you to bookmark a few dozen Flash sites just to rub in the faces of your dearest iDevice-owning friends. Just sayin’.
Well, it looks like the now slightly dated Google Ion finally has an official successor — Google has just announced that the Nexus One is its new developer phone. It apparently remains unchanged from the recently-axed consumer model, however, and Google notes that it will ship with Android 2.1 but receive Android 2.2 shortly after you turn it on. Got your developer credentials handy? Then you can log in and get your order in right now for $529.
Update: We just got a look at the specs on Google’s developer site and it looks like the Nexus One on offer is unfortunately T-Mobile only. Check out the tell-tale bands for yourself after the break.
Update 2: The specs mention that the device has “no root access” and that the bootloader is locked, but we’re taking this to mean it’s no different from any other Nexus One you’d buy. More ominously, though, it says that fastboot isn’t enabled, which leads us to wonder whether this is going to cause problems with bootloader unlocks in the field. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Thanks, Carson!
DARPA has long been working on making real-time translation systems practical and portable, and it looks like it’s now closer than ever to its goal — although it can’t necessarily take all the credit. The research agency recently teamed up with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) to test three different systems as part of its TRANSTAC project, at least one of which relies on none other than a Nexus One to do real-time, spoken language translation from Pashto to English, and vice versa. Of course, specific details on the translation systems are otherwise a bit hard to come by, but NIST is more than happy to draw a few Star Trek comparisons in its demonstration video — check it out after the break.
