Cell Phones

Sometimes it takes a crafty, steel-nerved individual to leak an unreleased phone’s details ahead of time. And then sometimes all it takes is a negligently uploaded video. An official promo for the Milestone 2 has popped up on YouTube before quickly being yanked by Moto. The Droid 2′s international sibling unsurprisingly looks to be its carbon copy by another name: it features a 1GHz OMAP SOC, 512MB of RAM, a 5 megapixel imager, and Android 2.2 as the OS (complete with Flash Player and Froyo’s native hotspot ability). We’ll go out on a limb here and guess that this means the rest of the world will be getting its dose of Moto’s latest and greatest QWERTY slider in very short order.

[Thanks, Thomas]

Update: Oh hello! Someone managed to rip the video before Motorola’s retraction, so we’ve naturally got it embedded for you just past the break. And yes, whether you like it or not, Motoblur lives on. Thanks, qakgob!

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SOURCE:MobiFlip.de

Despite Motorola’s best intentions to the contrary, the Droid X has been making steady progress toward viable custom ROMs, first with root access, then with a recovery method… and now, at long last, we’re starting to get the first few glimpses at legit cooked firmware. The two options we’re seeing so far are Sapphire — originally designed for the Droid of old — and a so-called “FlyX” ROM from longtime contributor Birdman. In both cases, the benefits of eschewing Motorola’s standard builds are pretty obvious: you get Froyo, root, and a host of apps and capabilities preferred by the superuser crowd like surcharge-free mobile hotspot access. The process is a little involved to get these bad boys installed at this point, but with time, we’re willing to bet it becomes a pretty painless endeavor. Follow the break for a quick video of Sapphire booting into stock Froyo on the X — a tantalizing sight, indeed.

[Thanks, Clift]

VIA:BGR, Droid Life
SOURCE:Android Central, Steven Bird

Remeber the Motorola i1? Moto has just added its second rugged(ish) Android handset in the 3.7-inch Gorilla Glass-fronted Defy. It’s dust-, scratch-, impact-, and water-resistant. Matching up to the IP67 durability spec means it’s expected to resist being submersed in up to a meter of water for up to half an hour — making it a pretty awesome option for taking your Android to the beach, 854 x 480 is your screen resolution, backed up by an OMAP 3610 chip running at 800MHz (there had to be some tradeoffs, right?). Android 2.1 is another slight disappointment, we’re not clear on why Froyo had to be left off the table, but at least Motorola has bundled Swype as the default input mechanism. Should be a boon for some, we suppose. The Defy is expected to launch across Europe in Q4 2010.

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We’d reported before our belief that the rumored Droid Pro is nothing more than the dual-mode version of the Droid 2, but the question remained: knowing that the Droid 2 has a model code of A955, what the heck is the difference between the model codes A956 and A957 that have been showing up in Verizon’s systems? Looks like we might have some clarification on that question this afternoon thanks to a new shot clearly calling out the A957 as the R2-D2 version of the Droid 2 that’s launching late next month. What does that mean? Well, it means that if the Droid Pro is a separate product with insane specs, it hasn’t shown up in any screen shots and we don’t have a model code for it. Our original tipster was pretty insistent that Verizon didn’t have any product on its 2010 phone roadmap with crazier specs than the Droid X — and besting it inside of six months would seem like an awful business move anyway — so now, the only question seems to be whether Big Red will go with the “Droid 2 World Edition” or “Droid Pro” branding when this thing launches in the coming weeks.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]
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You might recall that Verizon and Motorola’s first go-around at pushing Android 2.2 to the original Droid didn’t include compatibility with the Flash 10.1 install in the Market — but don’t worry, lovers of Flash-based web ads, because the fix is now upon us. We don’t know exactly how long the rollout process is going to take, but you know how it goes with Android OTA updates: even if they try to stretch it over several weeks, there’s usually an update.zip floating around within a few hours that you can grab if you want to accelerate the process just a bit. Here’s the full statement from Verizon:

“Verizon Wireless has begun pushing an update today to the DROID by Motorola (introduced November 2009) that will allow customers to download Adobe Flash 10.1 via Android Market. Flash Player 10.1 provides access to millions of sites with rich content including animations, casual games, videos, rich internet applications, audio and much more.”

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The very first line of the forum post on xda-developers says it best — proceed at your own risk — but if you’ve been kept up at night waiting for root to be gained on Verizon’s recently-released Droid 2, it looks like your day has come. The process involves tethering up to your PC and transferring a couple binaries, but seems straightforward enough and should open the door to surcharge-free tethering and other apps that require root access. We’ve no doubt Motorola will be looking to patch this up with the next OTA push, of course, so update carefully from here on out.

[Thanks, Jonathan]
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SOURCE:xda-developers

Remember that midrange, Android-equipped MB520 Kobe from Moto we told you about a few days back? Well, it’s stepping out for the first time this evening with a little help of our dear brother from another mother, Mr. Blurrycam. As we’d heard before it’s definitely destined for AT&T bearing Android 2.1 with Blur (complete with Blur logo on back), though our tipster tells us we can expect an update to 2.2 over the air. Along with “Kobe,” the codename “Diablo” is apparently being tossed around internally, though decisions have been made on what to call it when it hits shelves. A Droid X competitor it’s not — but coming off the Backflip debacle, it’s baby steps for Moto’s Android relationship with AT&T, right? Hit the break for more shots.

[Thanks, Napoleon]

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What we’re looking at here is allegedly the leaked over-the-air update to Froyo that Verizon plans on deploying to Droid X customers in the next few weeks, which means two critical things for customers: it should generally be faster all the way around, and — of course — you’ve got support for Flash, which was a big topic of interest at Motorola’s launch event for the phone a couple months back. The update is available both in rooted and non-rooted versions, so if you’re feeling adventurous today and you enjoy the thrill of doing something that offers a remote possibility of bricking your phone, you may want to go ahead and grab it. Good luck, and let us know your experiences in comments, alright?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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SOURCE:My Droid World

Practically everything we’ve heard — both officially and through tipsters — lines up with information coming out of Phone Arena this week detailing a truly Google-heavy upcoming Fall and Winter release schedule for our friends at Big Red. Starting next month, it seems that we’ll see a global version of the just-launched Droid 2, possibly with a white option (though it seems this could also be the R2-D2 model), and the Motorola WX455 we’d leaked has been named “Citrus” and will (as you probably could’ve guessed) target the low end of the market and the young’uns who are looking for an affordable way to get into Android; as WWAN-enabled laptops go, they’ll be picking up the Dell Vostro V13 and the HP Pavilion DM1.

Follow the break for the rest of the action!

[Thanks, something we’ve heard a bit about — that uses BlackBerry 6 but is said to still carry over the Curve 3G was also on tap, and it looks like we’ll finally see that in October as well. Samsung should be coming in with a three-pack of Android models here, including the Fascinate alongside midrange “Continuum” and low-end “Gem” models. Not to be outdone in the Android arena, Moto is said to be introducing an XT610 model that basically looks like a lower-end version of the Droid X; they’ve yet to roll out a midrange Android slate on Verizon, so that’d make some sense. There’s also a device called the A957 “Sick” floating around — which we really hope isn’t a retail name, obviously — that is supposed to be a high-end model and may end up being the device we’d known as the Droid Pro. Oh, and remember how the Pre Plus just went out of stock on Verizon? That lines up nicely with some talk that the Pre 2 is being prepped for an October release, too — possibly to correspond with the unveiling of webOS 2.0, if we had to guess.

Phone Arena goes on to say that those Entourage e-readers we broke the news on are actually destined for a November release, not September as we’d originally thought; they’ll be coming in two sizes, the original Glacier that T-Mobile is testing. Finally, we should be seeing these long-discussed tablets: one from Samsung called the i800 and another smaller model from Motorola tentatively labeled the “Stingray.”

It’s definitely notable that practically all of the intel that we’ve received from trusted tipsters in the past several weeks lines up with this roadmap, so we’re confident that it’s pretty accurate; of course, launch dates have a nasty tendency to slip ad infinitum, so we won’t be counting any chickens ’til they’re hatched.
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SOURCE:Phone Arena

T-Mobile USA just dropped the knowledge on Twitter that it’ll be carrying the Motorola Charm starting next Wednesday, August 25 — but what it failed to mention is pricing. For what it’s worth, the company does specifically say that it’ll be “affordable” — and although a marketing department’s definition of “affordable” can be very different from ours, we’re encouraged by a handful of previous rumors that there would be ways to get it for free on contract. If you need us to jog your memory, the Charm is a cute little portrait QWERTY Android device with a Kodak-branded 3 megapixel cam and landscape display, giving it a rare form factor that could very well appeal to a whole new audience (read: BlackBerry folks). So, how much would you pay for it?

Update: Turns out Moto’s posted on its official Facebook page that it’ll run $74.99 on contract — not free, unfortunately, and in the age of free Pixi Pluses, that might be a tough pill to swallow. We’ve also been handed a video of Telus demonstrating its version of the Charm, which should look and work exactly the same — check it out after the break. Thanks, Matt and DeadMan!

VIA:@TMobile_USA (Twitter)
SOURCE:T-Mobile, Facebook