Evo 4G Ice Cream Sandwich ROM: Revisited
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Chameleon Launcher, A Kickstarter Project For Android
Despite Honeycomb tablets having been around for over a year now, we’re only recently starting to see some real innovation with home screen launchers, features that really bring something new to the table, or even just a better way of doing the same things. Chameleon aims to change that, jump after the break for a description of what exactly it is. Continue reading
Evo 4G LTE Out Of Customs, Going On Sale Later This Week
It looks like HTC really was able to get everything cleared up pretty quickly as today we received news that shipments of Evo 4G LTE’s had been released and would be shipping immediately for those who pre-ordered with an expected arrival date of this Thursday. There’s no official word on this yet, but I would expect there to be in-store stock on the same date, possibly Friday.
Source: [InsideSprintNow]
Motorola Refuses ICS Upgrade To Droid 3 and Droid X2
Motorola’s had a list going for a while now of devices they plan to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, and the ones that won’t ever see that officially, today they updated it to say that the Droid 3 and the Droid X2 will not be getting the upgrade. It looked like this is what we were headed towards for a while, but there are two things that make this a really pathetic move from Motorola. The first is that they were part of the alliance at Google IO last year that promised to give all their devices timely software updates for 18 months after release, this included updates to the latest major version of Android if hardware could run it.
Well, both these phones have more processing power than my Evo 4G and it runs ICS just about flawlessly now. Hardware capability isn’t the problem. Simply put, Motorola doesn’t care enough about the experience of their users to spend their time creating an upgrade path. They already have your money, what do they care now? So, the second thing that makes this ridiculous is the blog post on Inside Motorola that they released, explaining the lack of upgrades:
“…And, obviously we want the new release to improve our devices. If we determine that can’t be done—well then, we’re not able to upgrade that particular device”.”
Seriously, Motorola? Try telling the people running custom ICS ROMs on their Droid 3’s and Droid X2’s that it doesn’t improve the phone. Now that it’s clear just how easily Motorola is willing to throw away past promises of software updates (both devices have been on the market for less than a year). I’m going to have a hard time recommending their phones to anybody who cares about updates, hell, I might even actively advocate avoidance of Motorola products for that reason.
Source: [Motorola], [Engadget], [AndroidCentral]
One X and Evo 4G LTE Indefinitely Delayed At US Customs For Apple “Patent Infringement”
It has just been revealed that because of a previous patent dispute between Apple and HTC over Apple Patent #5,946,647, shipments of the HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE have been indefinitely delayed at customs pending investigation of said “patent infringement”, there’s no word yet on whether this will affect the May 18th release of the Evo 4G LTE or not yet, but hopefully enough have shipped through already to get the device where it belongs this Friday, with the customers. So, now the important part. Why the quotes around “patent infringement” because this, the first piece of tech news that has seriously made me angry in a long long while, has inspired a rant. Read on for my take on this, and a description of what the dispute is over.
15”, 17” 2012 MacBook Pro Benchmarked
Judging by the number of leaks, real or fake, we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks the announcement date for the 2012 MacBook Pro refresh is drawing close now. Today marked the release of some benchmarks that appear to be for the Ivy Bridge processors in the 15’’ and 17’’ MacBook Pro. Judging by the benchmark, whichever model sports the i7-3820QM will be around 17% better than the current line. Apart from this, all the rumors are still saying that the MacBook Pro will lose the optical drive and sport a thinner design, however it’s now been added on by 9To5Mac that they expect Firewire and Ethernet will be shunted aside as well. Lastly, the benchmarks have also confirmed that the new MacBook Pro’s will be switching back to Nvidia graphics with the GeForce GT650M. Hit up the source link for their full predictions article.
Source: [9To5Mac]
The Problem With Ultrabooks
It’s been the better part of a year now since the term “Ultrabook” was first introduced to us by Intel. There are over 10 distinct Ultrabooks on the market from various manufactures, But I don’t think any of them can claim to have made much of a dent in the market share of Apple’s MacBook Air. So why is that? Are they just not as good? Are they too expensive? What’s going on here? Jump after the break for my take on why this is happening.
