Managed to pick up a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 from Verizon only to find you are now stuck with a locked bootloader? The good news is that Adam Outler has now revealed how to unlock your Note 2 via XDA TV.

Recently Verizon has become very aggressive about locking up bootloaders with smartphones featured through their wireless service. The Note 2 was in particular known for being locked down tight, but Adam Outler further proves if there is a will, there is a way.

While the root method for the Verizon Galaxy Note 2 has been around for a bit now, a fully unlocked experience was previously believed near-impossible. Now you too can do custom recoveries and install your own ROMs with the same ease as any other Note 2 owner.

So what’s needed to get the job done? Heading to XDA is a good place to start, as is watching Outler’s XDA TV video. You will also need a special tool apparently, affectionately named “Suck it Verizon Odin Package”.

Where you avoiding Verizon’s version of the Note 2 do to the lack of an unlocked bootloader? Does this news change your mind?

[ source ]

The post Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Bootloader is Now Fully Unlocked appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The Sony Xperia Sola has a pretty unique feature, it’s called floating touch. What is that all about? Basically you can interact with the phone without having to touch the screen. This is a really cool idea, though Sony limited when and where the feature could actually be used.

Luckily, XDA member neectron has found a way around the limitations, creating a new app that enables floating touch technology throughout the entire UI of the Xperia Sola. The new modification is easy to install, but you have to have the Xperia Sola for it to work.

Why would you possibly want something like this? Why not just touch the screen like normal? I’ll be honest, this isn’t something you’d use a lot. With that in mind, there are uses. For those that work outdoors or deal with grease at their job, do you really want to touch that screen before washing? For those with slightly wet hands, this could be a convenient way to use your phone without worrying about getting water all of the screen.

The reasons might not affect everyone very often, but it does go to show you that there are practical applications for floating touch. Check out the video below or head to the XDA developer’s forum and grab the mod for yourself.

The post Xperia Sola mod allows Floating Touch throughout Entire UI appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Latest news has it that these nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core 32GB 10-inch tablets running customized Android 3.2 Honeycomb were sold out quickly. However, slates are about to reappear soon, or can be shipped to stores (at least in Silicon Valley where I checked) in 3-5 days from now. So anyone feeling holiday blues and 5 Franklins in his/her pocket thats left unspent, may try this toy instead. Droid-Life’s Kellex has put up an interesting video review of the slate, so much of the boring tech specs could be just omitted:

On top of what was being said in this review, it’s worth to mention that the responsiveness is not so stellar throughout the tablet’s UI. ASUS customizations of a clean Android 3.2 are suspected to be responsible for this, then the nVidia Tegra 3 code for drivers and such might be just quite immature for the first Tegra 3 based device.

The post ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Available at BestBuy for $499 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The ICX Development Team consists of  members DooMLoRD, KeiranFTW, XperiaPlayer, Deanboro or DJ_Steve and including some others from the  XDA Developers Community.  This group of heros have successfully built a customized port of Ice Cream Sandwich for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia PLAY handheld device. Sony Ericsson became the first major vendor to offer an official ICS update, but it was initially meant for just three of their devices. While the ICS coverage for customers gradually improves, it apparently leaves much to be desired. Customized ROMs from ICX is nothing new, and in this case, of Sony Xperia PLAY such a ROM brings many treats of real Ice Cream Sandwich to the device.

For their Alpha 2 release:
– no random reboots!
– sound is working
– added stock ICS launcher
– added cpu overclock (up to 2 GHz)
– added file manager

To be included in next version:
– use DesireHD AOSP ROM as a base
– portrait mode will work
– and a lot more.

If you are an Xperia PLAY user, you may want to follow the rapidly evolving development thread here. By the way, the ICX Team is also known by their customized Ice Cream Sandwich ROM for Droid X:

The post Early Alpha ICS Type Port by ICX Appears for Xperia PLAY appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The post Samsung Galaxy S And Galaxy Tab Not Getting ICS appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

This is a very early custom build of CyanogenMod 9 (Android 4.0.3 out of Android Open Source Project) that didn’t get its own fork at CyanogenMod repositaries just yet. Adventurous users and fans of the original Motorola Droid may get a first glimpse of ICS goodness on their phones by using a download link here. Make sure to follow the discussion at XDA-Developers if you read this news late, as the new builds pop up constantly.

This build (or as author calls it “attempt”) was accomplished by XDA developer kfazz. As the video above shows, it’s quite nice and reasonably smooth for a more than 2 year old phone with just 256 MB of RAM. First test reports show that the build has colors that are fixed from previous kfazz builds, UI is a lot smoother, screenshot works, WiFi works. Interestingly enough, the available memory is about the same as what it was on Gingerbread — 90mb free, and that is without all of the memory booster tweaks, such as Supercharger, etc. Screen rotation is backwards, keyboard out triggers portrait, and the camera gives a “cannot connect error”. The’re’s more quirks and bugs to keep this highly experimental build a daily runner for Droid, but the work goes on for the growing excitement of Droid community.

There’s also a report that the last update of this ICS ROM works on Motorola Milestone A854 model (but not on A853 model). All in all, it’s a Christmas gift for Droid fans that came early.

The post Pre-Alpha Build of ICS on original Motorola Droid A855 appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It was reported at XDA-Developers forum yesterday that the OTA (OTA=Over-The-Air) update for the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet to its 6.2.1 version of firmware has killed its rooting procedure, a so called SuperOneClick. It’s worth mentioning that rooting in itself is not the real target for all those tinkerers at XDA-Developers and elsewhere. It’s just a tool that facilitates running alternative firmware on the Fire, namely CyanogenMod 7 and coming CyanogenMod 9 (based on Android Open Source Project for Ice Cream Sandwich). It improves handling the device in its sideloading mode, and, conversely, sideloading some system apps might take rooting and superuser privileges essential.

The SuperOneClick app for Kindle Fire that stopped working for its intended purpose is just a single, simple to use tool among the more demanding and convoluted procedures of manual rooting. Like it happened before with many smartphones and tablets, the routines of re-rooting (or rooting again for your device, after the firmware update push) will be found sooner rather than later.

The pesky silent OTA updates irritate anyone who has rooted their Fires previously, modified their firmware, and otherwise enhanced their experience with the tablet. As always, development is conducted to solve the problem of losing root at the next Firmware OTA upgrade. Simple tools are known, such as block the “hosts” file to stop Amazon’s updating servers from reaching  your Fire. A DeviceUpdater system app can be killed, renamed, or deleted. FOTA (FOTA= Firmware OTA) Kill app was brought in to the arsenal. But cat and mice games are continuing.

As for now, a pre-rooted stock 6.2.1 update is taking its shape. When the development will be finished, it will become another backup plan for tinkerers of the Kindle Fire. Then, no need to write off SuperOneClick and other user-friendly rooting tools just yet: these utilities are tweaked constantly to address any threats of silent “un-rooting” OTA updates.

As for the update itself, you won’t hear many good words about improvements that this update can supposedly offer: the base of it is still Android 2.3, and not Android 4.0.3, or even Android 3.2 which are both more suited for a tablet-sized device than this phone-centric and ageing Gingerbread. Your mileage may vary though, and some high-bandwidth videos on your Fire may even stop stuttering.

The post Silent OTA Kindle Fire Update Breaks Root appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It seems that a very early build of ICS running on Amazon’s Kindle has now surfaced, thanks to the efforts of XDA developer g1011999 (or stevenlin here). While early and not fully functioning, it still shows very good progress already.

Steven, an author of this pioneer ICS port, for Amazon Kindle Fire was quoted saying this about the port:

“After two weeks of working, finally got ICS running on Kindle Fire!!! Things that work:
1. Touch pannel.
2. Hardware graphics

Things that don’t work:
Audio, wifi, accelerometer, light sensor.
I’ll initiate an open source project for kernel and android source after cleaning my codes.”

ICS ports for tablets are rather rare at this point, and an official first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet is not even readily available in US yet.

It remains to be seen what kind of response this might receive from Amazon, but considering they are striving to get their Fire as the best selling tablet, only behind the iPad, this development is capable to jolt the Fire sales even more.

Their direct competition, the Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Tablet, may sport better hardware but it also features technology that blocks ports such as this or even the very popular CyanogenMod 7 from running. It is worth noting that the older Nook color could receive ROMs, though nothing like ICS has ever been achieved on its hardware.

According to Barnes & Noble, the number of Nook Color tablets that are running alternative ROMs (like CyanogenMod 7) is roughly around 3%, although there is really no way of ever really confirming this claim. I can easily imagine that a proven capability of running better than stock software on Amazon Kindle Fire (such as ICS) will greatly augment their potential customer base.

Even if a Kindle owner never goes to such lengths as rooting and putting Ice Cream Sandwich on their devices, just the idea that it is possible might boost sales. NOOK Color became quite popular mostly for this reason, even if Barnes & Noble doesn’t want to recognize it.

We will certainly follow further developments as they occur, so stay tuned for future updates.

The post Amazon Kindle Fire Runs Ice Cream Sandwich appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

To be fair, these ROMs cannot really be used on a daily basis for your regular web browsing and mobile tweeting needs. Instead, they’re just the SDK. What this means is that some basic functions won’t work when you flash your phone with these ROMs.

On the bright side, while flashed and rooted, you’ll have the opportunity to see what Gingerbread will look like on your phone when it’s finally ready for some 2.3-flavored primetime. When you’re done previewing, flash it back to your old ROM and you’re as good as new again.

Among the Android phones that can get a Gingerbread preview are the Droid Eris, Evo, and HTC Incredible.

[Life Hacker]

The post New ROMs give most Android phones a taste of Gingerbread appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Last month, the enthusiasts were able to take the stock 800MHz processor under the hood of the Android phone and push it to 1.344GHz, almost doubling its clock speed. Now, someone has pushed it even further to a whopping 1.9GHz.

The T-Mobile G2, which is basically the same as the HTC Desire Z, has been permanently rooted and this is opening all sorts of possibilities. At 1.9GHz, that makes the processor in the G2 even faster than certain netbooks and notebooks, at least in terms of clock speed.

Is it stable? Probably not. Will it suck through your battery life like there’s no tomorrow? Most definitely. Even so, this is quite the feat and their efforts should clearly be applauded.

SOURCE: Android Police via XDA Forums

The post T-Mobile G2 overclocked to 1.9GHz appeared first on Mobile Magazine.