Droid

Skype App Coming to Verizon Wireless in March- Has Hell Frozen Over?

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Verizon Wireless and Skype just announced that Verizon is going to carry skype calls over its network starting in March.   It may require a data plan, but those international calls may have gotten a lot cheaper.

Seriously?  This seems such an about-face from the wireless carrier that was known to lock everything down and make you pay for any small incremental benefit (I’m looking at you, ringtones from the V-shop).  I’m skeptically optimistic at this point.  And I hope it continues.

Here’s the initial phones with Skype support:

  • DROID by Motorola
  • DROID ERIS by HTC
  • Motorola DEVOUR
  • BlackBerry Storm 9530
  • Storm2 9550
  • Curve 8330
  • Curve 8530
  • 8830 World Edition
  • Tour 9630

–Ben

Sources:  Skype, Verizon Wireless, PCWorld

Motorola Gives timeline for Android 2.1 for Smart phones and Droid

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Motorola has put up a page giving expected roll-out dates for their android phones to upgrade to Android version 2.1.  Here’s the summary

  • Droid – soon
  • Milestone (Europe) – Q1 2010
  • Milestone (Latin America) – No Date
  • Milestone (Asia-Pacific) – No Date
  • Cliq (USA) – Q2 2010
  • Dext (Europe) – No Date
  • Dext (Latin America) – Q3 2010
  • Dext (Asia-Pacific) – Q3 2010

They also claim to be working closely with Google and carriers to bring “the most optimized” experience on each of the phones.  Let’s hope that “the most optimized” doesn’t mean “missing features” in marketing spin.

–Ben

Sources:  Motorola Support, Phandroid, InfoSync

Motorola Admits Jumping the Gun on Android 2.1 Details

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Apparently Motorola released the Droid 2.1 details too early according to their forum.  Bummer.  I was hoping the update would coming this week.  I guess a few days more won’t hurt.

Maybe something good will come of this.  Motorola has been getting some flak for releasing a “gimped Andriod 2.1” compared with the Nexus One.

–Ben

Sources:  Motorola Forum, PCMagazine

Free Must Have Website Checking Tools

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I’ve been working on updating the skin to this site, and I wanted to comment on a couple of tools that I think are useful:

Fascinating Stuff.  I’ll write about the plug-ins I’ve installed in another post, which is the reason I was using these sites.

-Ben

Sources:  As stated above

Droid’s 2.1 Page removed from Motorola – Why – and link to pics

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Motorola had a informational page about what was contained in the 2.1 update.  But they pulled it shortly thereafter.  From the looks of it, nobody’s answering the question of why.  However, Phandroid has a screenshot of the missing page.

The page showed the new features as:

  • Text to speech for any text box
  • Better virtual keyboard
  • 3D Gallery – photos, videos and other image sources are shown in 3D stacks that move when the phone is tilted
  • PINCH TO ZOOM – in web, gallery and maps (finally)
  • News and Weather App/Widget
  • Maps – syncs with desktop, personal suggestions, night mode
  • Music App gets tabs to switch screens
  • Google Goggles – including “reading” business cards and adding them to you contacts (Cool!)
  • Fix on the Pattern Lock Bypass bug (I think)
  • Yahoo email setup optimizations
  • Better Battery Optimizations

For those of you who don’t know, you can manually check to see if you’re authorized for the update right now by going to Settings -> About Phone -> System Updates.  If you’re not authorized yet, try back again later.  Reclicking is not likely to do any good.  Remember that this is a gradual roll-out like the last update.

–Ben

Sources:  Motorola, Phandroid, Phandroid, Engadget

Android 2.1 Droid Update imminent on Verizon -maybe multitouch

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Motorola just announced on their facebook page today that the Droid will get Android 2.1.

My hope is that it fixes the corporate exchange email settings  and IMAP bug.  Engadget reports that the 2.1 update should add multi-touch to the web browser.  But we shouldn’t expect to see all the Nexus One bells and whistles.  However, we’ll have to wait and see.

Happy Updating.  Oh and backup that phone.

–Ben

Sources:  Doodgical, Engadget, Engadget, Facebook, Phandroid

Fix – Droid MMS won’t send – Too many in queue

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So it appears I’ve hit the first major Droid bug.  I tried to send a whole bunch of people MMS pictures of my new kiddo.  For some reason, it got stuck on several messages and said that there were too many unsent MMS messages and that I’d have to wait.

Here’s the issue:

  • If you contact has parentheses around the contact’s area code, then MMS might fail — and only MMS — texting and calling should work.  (Wow.  Talk about dumb bug)

Here’s the fix:

  1. Delete any thread (your conversation record) of anyone you want to send an MMS to.  (If you don’t it will put it in that thread and pull the number from the thread)
  2. Remove the contact’s number and retype it in.  The Droid will put the hyphens in, which is OK.  Oh, and make sure you change it for each of the ways you store the contact (such as GMail and Outlook, if its in both).
  3. Reset the phone.
  4. Do the MMS message.

Hope this stops someone else from cursing at their otherwise awesome phone, like it did me.

–Ben

Source:  Thanks to GearLive

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