Verizon’s 4G LTE market total will reach 143 when they turn on another 26 and expand in others tomorrow morning.  The teasing of this new batch of cities started back in August, with many of them going live well before they were scheduled to.  By covering more than 160 million Americans – I’d say Big Red is well on its way to covering the entire nation by the end of 2013.

Here is the list of new cities/markets:

Fort Smith and Jonesboro, Ark.; San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, Calif.; Daytona, Fla.; Bloomington, Champaign/Urbana, Rockford and Springfield, Ill.; the Quad Cities, Ill./Iowa; Iowa City, Iowa; Shreveport, La.; Kalamazoo and Saginaw, Mich.; Reno, Nev.; Las Cruces, N.M.; Fargo, N.D.; Canton, Lima and Mansfield, Ohio; Dyersburg, Tenn.; the Tri-Cities, Tenn./Va.; and Austin, Beaumont/Port Arthur, Wichita Falls and El Paso, Texas. The company is also making major 4G LTE expansions on Thursday in San Francisco, Indianapolis and Cleveland/Akron.

Seeing LTE yet?  Wouldn’t doubt it if you were.  

We normally try to avoid blacked out emails from readers that have to do with the release of upcoming devices, but when it comes to the Samsung Prime, it’s hard to ignore.  Every little bit of info we can grab about this phone is music to our ears.  Rumored to be the first device to launch with Ice Cream Sandwich, this may be the device that we have all been waiting so patiently for.  The return of a legitimate stock Android device on Verizon –  mmmhmmm.

The email above, which is apparently from a deep-rooted Verizon HQ employee, claims that it may not see DROID branding (something we assumed as well) (it supposed to replace the Charge though, so that’s up in the air), but may get announced right around the time that the iPhone 5 is – more than likely in October.

I will say that I’ve spoken with some of our friends who are well aware of this device.  While we have yet to hear of it finding its way into the hands of a bunch of testers, we are positive that there are live units around and in the hands of select individuals at this time.

Yep, hypebeast.

Via:  Phandroid

Yesterday afternoon, we saw recovery loaded onto the DROID3 which was a pretty good sign that the Bionic wouldn’t be far off since they run almost identical software.  According to our homie @cvpcs, a bootstrap app that will slap (say that 5 times fast) Clockwork Recovery onto your device is just about ready for prime time.

For those not familiar with bootstrapping, we’ll have to direct you back to our DROIDX and DROID2 days.  Bootstrapping allows us to sort of bypass the stock recovery and use an alternative recovery for flashing ROMs, creating backups, etc.  It’s way of having a little extra fun with our Motorola devices since they are locked up so tight on the bootloader front.  Speaking of bootloader, we wanted to remind you that this does not unlock it, so there will be no kernel hacking going on – at least for now.  

Another big day in the world of non-Verizon Android news.  The T-Mobile Galaxy SII is going to be a BEAST even without the Exynos processor, Epic 4G Touch potential owners can learn all there is to learn about the device now, and we are starting to see Honeycomb ROMs for the HTC Flyer – and yes, now we want one.

• T-Mobile Galaxy SII gets a 1.5GHz Qualcomm dual-core processor.  And, wow.
• User guide for the Sprint Epic 4G Touch has leaked just in time for launch.
• The first Honeycomb ROM is now available for the HTC Flyer – tablet Sense and all.
• HTC Runnymede gets a better picture with Beats logo and a full list of specs.
• Android and Intel’s Atom processor are about to become close friends.
• Random unknown tech company Git Media launches two new tablets.

To stay current on devices headed to carriers other than Verizon, be sure to subscribe to Android Life.

Ahh yes, PenTile RGBW displays again – boy do we love talking about these.  Instead of voicing our strong opinions on the use of these screens though, we wanted to try and stay positive this afternoon and pass along a tip that may help those of you with PenTile devices (Bionic, DROID3, DROIDX2).  Over at the PenTileBlog, a recent post discussed the best way to save/extend battery life based upon the type of wallpaper that you use.  As experts on the subject, they recommend that you choose wallpapers that use less highly saturated colors, meaning backgrounds withs lots of blacks or a mix of black and white are best:

In other words the worst case power consumption for a PenTile display is when you are displaying more than a minimal amount of highly saturated colors, regardless of whether it is red, green, blue or a combination of these colors.  This is true even if the image is largely dark.  The best power consumption, other than a totally black screen, would be to use unsaturated colors or simply black and white.  The worst case power consumption for OLED  is the best case power consumption for a PenTile RGBW display.

As an example, if you pop open the wallpaper app for your Bionic, you should try to skip almost all of them aside from the white and grey paper at the very end (pictured above).  And if you need some other options, feel free to check out the Oreo Slice wallpaper pack that we featured a few months back.

Via:  PenTileBlog

Last night a questionable document surfaced out of Best Buy that was said to be an end of 2011 timeline for Verizon’s upcoming devices.  The document looked super sketchy since it had a variety of misspelled words, leading many of you to question it (as did we).  Well, we just received another document from a Best Buy employee that includes similar information, but in a much clearer and correctly spelled manner.  So it’s pretty obvious to us that regional Verizon reps were given a specific set of details that they were to forward on to retail stores, this one just differs slightly.

No Thunderbolt 2 (aka HTC Vigor).  Doesn’t mean that the device isn’t coming by any means, but it for whatever reason did not make this rep’s list of important changes.  We still have the Stratosphere as replacing the Fascinate.  The Samsung Prime (actually spelled out this time) is taking over for the DROID Charge.  And that’s about it.

Just wanted to pass on as a second source to back up that previous story.

Cheers ___!

Pretty bold words from Martin Fichter, the acting president of HTC America.  In a sit down chat at the Mobile Future Forward conference in downtown Seattle, Fichter unveiled the results of an unofficial poll he had completed on the dorm floor that his daughter lives on at Reed College here in Portland.  He checked with a group of kids who all said they did not own an iPhone because they are no longer cool, and that people like their Dads own them.  Most of them had HTC, Samsung and even random Chinese devices instead of Android’s biggest foe.