If you weren’t one of the lucky few to receive the “soak test” of Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) and also weren’t interested in upgrading manually over the weekend, then feel free to “pull” the update now.  Verizon has held up their end of the bargain and made the update available just as the east coast clock struck midnight, leading us into June 1.

So if you are running stock Android 2.2 (Blur 2.3.340) and want to be all official and stuff, do this:

Menu>Settings>About phone>System updates

The update should be the waiting for you.

Cheers Patrick, Adam, Kurtis, Bill, Andrei, Brian, Jeff, MJZ, Scott, Sam and everyone else!

This game called SHADOWGUN from Madfinger popped up late last week and pretty much blew everyone’s mind with its incredible graphics and the fact that it would be optimized for both the Tegra 2 and Kal-el quad-core processors from NVIDIA.  It really takes 3D environments to the next level on a mobile device and also might be the first title to truly bring console-quality graphics to the small screen.

And it just so happened to be available for demo at what we’re guessing is Computex?  Neither of the videos we have actually say that, but we aren’t worrying about such small things when a game this impressive is being mirrored to an HD TV.

One more quick video after the break.  

Your days of free tethering with a Verizon phone may have come to an end this weekend (at least on certain devices).  Our inbox filled up with reports of users who received a warning message (pictured above) in place of the website they were trying to reach while tethering.  We’re not surprised by this at all, especially after seeing Wireless Tether get the stiff arm from Big Red at the end of April, but that doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it.  If you want to use Wireless Tether going forward on a DROIDX or Thunderbolt with Gingerbread, you’ll have to fork out $20 a month for a 2GB plan.

And I’d go into arguments on why I think this move is garbage, but we all get it, don’t we? Most of us feel like we should be able to use our “unlimited” data any way we see fit and Verizon isn’t about to let us have that much control.  They will argue that using our devices to load up data-intensive web pages or streams would harm their network if done by a massive amount of people, but we all don’t care and want to do it anyway.  It’s an argument we can’t and never will win unfortunately.

Anyone tried any of the other tethering apps lately?

*Note - From what I can tell, this is only affecting Gingerbread builds that attempt to run Wireless Tether and not other tethering apps.  My Thunderbolt and DROIDX both popped up the message above and are running 2.3.  I also used the non-Market Wireless Tether.

*Note 2 - Barnacle appears to work still.

Cheers Mike, T and everyone else!

After digging through the back end of Motorola’s website, a site redesign was discovered along with a number of never-before-seen or heard-of devices including the XOOM 2.  Embedded into the images of this new Moto site we are seeing what appear to be codenames of Zaha, Slimline, Pearl, and Tracy XL.  The same images for each phone are used over and over again though, so we’re really not sure if these are fake, Moto screwing with all of us, or early renders.  We’re hoping that at least a couple make it to market though, as the designs are something we haven’t seen before.   

At the beginning of May, Viber invited all of our readers to sign up to be notified when the beta version of their free VoIP calling and texting app would be ready – yesterday, invites went out.  We have a link to the file below, but if for some reason it isn’t compatible with your device, you’ll want to fill out their form where you can specify a phone.  It definitely seems a little picky.

Download:  Viber.apk

Install just as you would any other 3rd party app.  Free calls to other Viber users over 3G and WiFi.

*Tip – If you can’t get it to work with your normal phone number, I had luck using my Google Voice number on my Nexus S.

Cheers Chris, nativi, and Wade!

Before we get into announcing the winner of the Motorola XOOM WiFi, I just wanted to say “Thanks!” one more time to all of the fabulous readers of this little blog of ours.  We have now been up and running for about a year and a half and have experienced one of the greatest periods in mobile communications history together.  Android essentially took over the world and we all helped make it happen as one giant group of enthusiasts.  This place has become the most active and entertaining Android community around and wouldn’t have stood a chance in this competitive genre if it weren’t for all of the tutorials, tips, apps, jokes and stories from readers that have filled its comment sections since day 1.  No one does it like the Droid Life community – you guys are awesome.

So we hope you all enjoyed our first annual (yep, doing it yearly) Reader Appreciation Week!  We handed out all sorts of amazing prizes, including 3 Honeycomb tablets.  While it has been quite the task to keep up with the 7,000+ entries on each post, we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  It has been an absolute blast.  To cap it all off, let’s get down to the final tablet winner.

Who takes home the Motorola XOOM WiFi?  Chosen randomly is…

Upgraded to Gingerbread on the DROIDX and love that new app drawer, but can’t part ways with LauncherPro?  We have a solution that’s built right into LP that will get you the best of both worlds.  All you have to do is…

1.  Long press on your app drawer.
2.  Choose Change shortcut>App groups>All apps.
3.  After that, pick an icon and your life with both the GingerBlur drawer and LP are  complete.

All good now?  Any other tips for new GingerBlur that we should let everyone know about?

Cheers Shawn!