CyanogenMod 9 is slowly coming together behind closed doors, while we all wait anxiously for it. Every now and then we get a peek behind the curtains of the mad men that bring us CM and today is one of those peeks, and boy is it a good one. We get to see the official Ice Cream Sandwich launcher for CM9 and you can download it and take it for a spin, as long as you realize this is still an alpha build. 

While I’m not interested in getting into the dev drama that appears to have surrounded this situation, I did want to point out that there has been a bootstrap app for the DROID RAZR since November, but for whatever reason, slipped through the cracks and almost no one saw it (maybe because most of you were renting it?). XDA member nitroglycerine33 created the fully working app that will flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto your device. Backups and restores appear to be fully working, so if rooting and then tweaking and potentially flashing ROMs is in your RAZR future, you will want to jump on this.

I should point out though, that to my knowledge, there is not any form of system file that will save you should your run into soft-bricking types of issues. So if you proceed, understand the risks involved here.

Via:  XDA, Phandroid

You can imagine that there were some unhappy people after hearing that Samsung was planning to leave out the original Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab lines from its Ice Cream Sandwich update plans. Apparently there were enough that Sammie is now revisiting the idea to see if they can somehow make it happen. This is good news for the millions of folks that bought Galaxy S phones across the globe, but we’ll have to recommend that you not hold your breath, hold on for dear life, or cross any appendages as it could be a while. With TouchWiz reportedly the blame for the initial “No,” and also knowing that Gingerbread took almost a full year to rollout, it could be a while.

Via:  The Verge

If there was one complaint that we have seen on numerous occasions and has actually affected our experience personally, it’s the low volume issue on the Galaxy Nexus. It’s tough to tell if this was Google or Samsung’s doing, but one thing is clear, the external speaker just doesn’t get loud enough. That’s where Volume+ comes in to play, as recommended by a number of readers over the last week. While I’ll be diving into it throughout the day myself, I would recommend that you check out the comments and reviews for the app to see for yourself that this appears to be the second coming of some speaker-fied holy figure for G-Nexes. It’s fairly inexpensive as a paid app, just make sure you read the directions at first boot to understand what’s going on.

Market Links:  Paid ($1.62) | Free

Cheers Adam!

Good ol’ Android. It doesn’t matter what it’s running on, you will almost always find someone out there willing to hack on it, and that’s just what happened with Motorola’s MotoACTV fitness watch. As you can see from the video above, the device is no longer running Moto’s custom fitness software, but is instead cruising along rather smoothly with the Honeycomb launcher, Android Market, Youtube, Google Maps and more. With fairly lower end specs compared to phones just released, I’ve got to admit that I’m surprised to see it running so well. The again, the insides are essentially what gave the OG a solid 2 years of life.

If you are interested in rooting, you can find full instructions at the CMW link below. And by no means does this look to be a difficult process.

Via:  CMW, Engadget

The final day of Two Weeks of Holiday Tegra is here! It has been quite the ride over the last couple of weeks – 9 of you have already won brand new Tegra 2 powered tablets from NVIDIA. But, to finish this contest with a bang, we are going really big and throwing out an Asus Transformer and its accompanying docking station to take you from tablet to laptop in seconds. The original Transformer has probably been the most popular Android tablet of the last year, so what better way to celebrate that than by giving it to one of our readers just before X-mas.

Let’s do it!  

It’s time we all take a much needed break from the interwebz and go spend time with our family and loved ones.

• Here’s a batch of custom ROMs for the Galaxy Nexus to tie you over this weekend.
• Andy Rubin tweets that 700,000 Androids are activated every day.
• New radios available for the Galaxy Nexus.
• Changelog now available for the mysterious DROID Bionic update.
• We asked DL readers which phone they owned – lots of G-Nex.
• We introduced MoreQuicklyPanel for people who want root features without having to root.
• LG Spectrum and HTC Fireball to be Verizon’s first 4G LTE global devices?
• Looking for Swype on the Galaxy Nexus? Get it here!
• New DROID 4 shots for the masses.
• Should we expect the DROID 4 in February of 2012?
• DROID RAZR update rolling out now to users.
• Verizon confirms update headed to the Galaxy Nexus for signal indicator.

From everyone here at DL – have a wonderful and safe Christmas.  Peace!