Category Archives: android

Toshiba Folio AS100 – ruining their own reputation?

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I was expecting to grab AC100, but unfortunately Toshiba Thailand decided to stay put releasing AC100 indefinitely. Nonetheless, they, at least, are in a hurry having AS100 on sale (hoping to get some market share from Apple iPad, perhaps.) 10″ slate tablet powered by promising nVidia Tegra 2 and Android. It does look good on the paper indeed. Unfortunately, it’s doomed to fail hard.

Not a single thing is right. From cheapy chassis; half baked Android Froyo; ugly look. Checkout photos below if it’s true.

Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100 Toshiba Folio AS100

A pixelated screen isn’t from the camera. The screen looks worse in person, believe me. Touch sensitivity isn’t responsive as it should be. On-screen keyboard is just plain stock Android, no optimization to suit large screen like Samsung or Dell did with their tablets. You may see that all menu is tweaked for menu + key which is supposed to be for AC100. Tweaked UI like home button on top left is pretty small, not even suited fingerprint touch. It seems like everything isn’t for AS100 at all. Actually, in other words, it’s failed since the screen is off. When screen is on, it’s even worse.

It definitely gets 0 rating from me, failed miserably.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Sync Contacts problem in Froyo?

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Symptom: No matter how you tried, you will not see Twitter and/or Facebook data in your contacts.

Cause: When you upgraded your Android to Froyo, you are likely to face this issue–missing Facebook and/or Twitter contact in your existed contacts. It’s somehow broken the bond between Contact & Facebook & Twitter.

Solution: Go to Settings | Applications | Manage Applications – find Twitter and/or Facebook, then tap Clear data. Restart once, check if you have Sync Contacts turn on for those apps. You should be good to go now. If you still find a problem, try Clear data in Contacts too. It will be a bit slow to recover this time since it will have to start from scratch again, but you will have everything in order again.

Popularity: 2% [?]

MOTOLORA: Buy from another company if you like to have custom ROMs.

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MotoDEVThis has been addressed by Motolora couple days ago before upcoming Droid X, which is named to be the best phone yet, is available.

I really don’t understand yet how Motolora decided to piss customers (or soon to be customers) like this. As Nexus One owner, I can do pretty much all I want with phone. However, I still use stock ROM, why? I don’t like any custom ROM over vanilla one. Nonetheless, I do push some edited libraries I like to my phone such as light_mahimahi and indeed superboot image which is for root access. Nothing is better than what you’ve done by yourself.

The way I see this is Motolora can just do the way Google did with Nexus One. You can unlock easily, but the consequence is no turning back and surely voiding warranty. That is software part of course—if your phone turned to a brick, that’s yours since you gave your consent before unlocking. However, if hardware failure happens, that should be covered. There is a rumor about eFuse being used in Droid X as well, but that ain’t confirmed. If it’s true, it would be the worst move ever. By the way, we all know that rooted phones are just a minority; custom ROM phones are even less, but these are groups of people who are willing to buy every single new phone or considering as pretty loyal customers. I guess that Motolora never learned when Palm, Inc pissed off all loyal customers then.

For me, the worst thing of this issue is Motolora is like the only company so far that has a physical keyboard which I really want. Milestone was my target. This issue gave me a big pause—since I was waiting for superboot image for it for a while now. However, with new Droid X, I guess Motolora will have no real advantage to other companies then.

Good bye, MOTO until you change your mind.

updated: (July 28, 2010) It seems like DroidX can be rooted pretty easy w/o breaking anything; what a good sign that is.

Popularity: 1% [?]

AT&T Nexus One to Froyo

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It’s been a while after T-mobile one got Frozen Yogurt. However, it’s time to end since Google started pushing Froyo OTA update since last week. I got 2 OTA updates, but they both failed to complete the update. Why? because I rooted my EPE54B. Thus, OTA will not do the job nicely.

How? you can do all manual update =) As of now, Google released FRF85B. For whom you might not understand, all T-mobile and AT&T, which have their own build number, will have to same build, FRFxx. When Google first released Froyo to T-mobile Nexus One, it’s like FRF50. However, not it’s FRF85B which is official.

Update procedure: it will be 2 path for rooted N1 and unrooted N1.

1. For unrooted N1, EPE54B, you just grab images of your build below.

2. Rename the file to update.zip and copy to root directory of SD.

3. Reboot your N1 to recovery mode by holding volume down + power. You will get into HBoot/Fastboot mode.

4. Use volume up/down to select menu and power to select “recovery.” N1 will reboot again to /!\ page. That’s fine. Then, you have to get into recovery mode by holding power and press volume up.

5. You will see Android system recovery;you now can use your trackball to select any option. Choose apply sdcard:update.zip

6. Wait until reboot and have fun with Frozen Yogurt.

 

For rooted N1, you will have to take rougher route. You actually have many ways to do so. Custom ROM like Modaco or else, for example. However, I just prefer to have original ROM with root access. You can follow these steps to do so:

1. go back to original image.

2. update as unrooted N1 steps above

3. root FRF85B

For the first step, you need to download original image, here. Please check md5 too. Then you have to extract boot.img, recovery.img out to your android-sdk tools directory (c:\android-sdk\tools for me) Now you are ready to copy old image to replace superboot one by fastbooting. You have to get to Fastboot mode and check if it’s Fastbook USB which is indicated connection between N1 and computer.

c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot devices  // to check if computer sees N1
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot erase userdata
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot erase cache

This 2 steps above are optional and if you use Amon_RA’s recovery, you will have to get into recovery mode to wipe those.

c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot flash boot boot.img
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
c:\android-sdk\tools> fastboot reboot

That would be all set for returning back to original image =) (well, not exactly true since we didn’t care about system.img and userdata.img which the update doesn’t bother.)

For the last step, download superboot image here. Then rename to update.zip and apply sdcard:update.zip in recovery mode like when you did with updating Froyo image.

Now you will be very happy AT&T Froyo Nexus One like I am.

 

Note: FRF85B root update.zip didn’t do the trick for me since it’s error while updating. If you face the same situation, just ask. You can do a manual way also =)

Popularity: 6% [?]