Did a bit of geekery work this morning. My wife got the HTC Legendplus this cool accessoryover the weekend and joined the Android family, she totally digs it. I also noticed that since I got my device the Android Market has grown significantly and now has a ton of cool new apps.

Anyways, playing with the Legend prompted me to finally take care of the nagging message I’ve been getting on my Nexus that told me there’s a system update for my device. I haven’t updated my phone in a while. I was running the first Froyo build (FRF50) that I installed just as it came out but since then there’ve been a few more updates, more official ones. I’m not sure why I got the OTA (over the air) notification for the update as I rooted the device and I’m running a custom recovery (RA) and I read it wasn’t supposed to go out to such devices. Also when I clicked the OTA message there was nothing to install.. but it kept coming back. So I got the FRF91 full update zip plus the root zip and flashed them both (skipping FRF83, FRF85B as I already had Froyo radio from the FRF50). All was done via the nice RA recovery just booting in bootloader, scrolling to the zip file, clicking on it and waiting. Oh yes, I did do a full Nandroid backup beforehand just in case.
Everything installed fine, the first boot after flashing a new ROM takes a while, a few minutes instead of 30 seconds, and those minutes look pretty long :-) but as long as you’re not flashing a new radio component the risk of bricking the device is very low, so I’m told (do at your own risk blah blah). The first few minutes after everything booted up things looked slow and I was starting to get worried. I know it takes a while for it to settle in, I didn’t do a wipe or anything just installed on top, so all my apps and data are still there and I’m guessing it re-populates and checks some db’s with this stuff, but still slowing down is not nice. It took another reboot and everything is now even snappier than before the update. Good update from Google as I always.

Back to the HTC Legend, since it’s a HTC device rather than a Google one it had the HTC Sense on it, I was really impressed with it. Lots of small improvements and UI polishing over the stock Android that my Nexus is running. It has more eye candy, kindda like iPhone type of usability tweaks for the Android. I would not hesitate to get a HTC with Sense, such as the HTC Desire, as my next phone in the future. In fact I liked the HTC keyboard so much that I looked it up online and apparently I’m not the only one liking it as some good folks in the community extracted the APK’s and made them available for other Android users. I already had a couple of different keyboards installed so I’ve got the Sense one as well now which will probably see the most use. I could get the full Sense UI installed on the Nexus as I saw it’s available and was done but I think I’ll just pick and choose the components I like instead of changing the whole thing. Might be too much bloat getting the full UI.

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Tags: accessory, android, Android Apps, app, backup, FRF91, froyo, froyo legend, google, Google Phone, HTC Desire, HTC Legend, htc legend froyo, htc legend froyo update, HTC Sense, iphone, legend froyo, Legend froyo update, nexus, Nexus One, OTA, ra recovery, Update, Upgrade

So Apple is giving away this Incase snap case for Iphone 4 for free which got me thinking about changing my phone case.

I’ve never had a rigid or a silicone case but I’m open to trying it. Either something like that snapcase or maybe this case might be even better, as it looks extremely well made.

I really like the original case that came with the Google phone but it’s starting to wear out, it’s made of neoprene, so it ain’t gonna last long. And I can’t find a reputable seller anywhere who sells the original thing. Plenty on eBay sell similar cases, quite cheap (no $29.99 prices ;-) ) but even with the cute Android logo on them it’s pretty obvious they’re not genuine.

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Apple iOS 4.1 Update Fails to Fix iPhone 4 Signal Loss.

A test of the iOS 4.1 beta still shows reception dwindling to near nothing when putting the iPhone 4 in the signal-draining “Death Grip.”

No kidding.. the patch didn’t make the antenna move inside the case? :-) Personally, I’d much rather get thisone. As for Apple, maybe in the next patch they can try another approach, sending an electric shock to the holder’s hand whenever the phone is in the “death grip” to remind users whenever they are holding it “the wrong way”.

Apparently there’s a press conference scheduled for tomorrow, maybe a recall in the works?

And a personal anecdote, last weekend a long time user of iPhone I met had some hands on with my Google Nexus One, they liked everything about it, were impressed with the features of Android, in fact couldn’t find anything they didn’t like, but their conclusion was: “Hmm I’m not convinced” :-) As someone wrote before: that is the real “death grip” of Apple, on its customers.

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Eric Schmidt: No Nexus Two or Google-brand Chrome OS netbook – SlashGear.

“Google has no plans for a second-generation Nexus Two smartphone, according to CEO Eric Schmidt, since the Nexus One met its desired goal of spurring on the Android hardware market.”

Interesting strategy, the number of Android phones out there did jump up, and I guess unlike Apple, Google doesn’t have to make another phone to keep its profits going. Lastly, does that means my Nexus One is the first and last Google Phone to ever exist? Either way, HTC makes some really nice hardware the Desire is basically like a Nexus 1.5 from a hardware perspective.

This was just too funny.

This is really nice: Microsoft’s Über-cool Mobile Touch-Surface , it reminded me of the movie Gamer and the interface used there by the kid operating Kable. Earlier on I read Microsoft sold more than 90 million! copies of Windows 7. Pretty impressive, well deserved too as it’s a fantastic product.

Looks to me like Apple is under seige in the innovation space from not just small less powerful competitors but these days also from the big boys like Microsfot (Win7, new technologies like in this video) and Google (Nexus/Android). If Apple hopes to stay in the game it’s going to have to come up with something better than an oversized ipod.

Haha this is hilarious! But a bit NSFW (language mostly) so if you’re at your desk now trying to look busy and important (or maybe that was just me ;-) ) then you might want to wait till you reach home, or better yet just head out and watch it on the iPhone :-)

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