Folks with a Galaxy Nexus, a treat popped up for you online today. Android 4.0.4 is now in the wild and available for you to install via custom recovery. The new build is IMM30B and like I said, brings you to 4.0.4 rather than the 4.0.3 that many were hoping for. There is no official changelog, but this appears to update the radios and bootloader at the very minimum. Funny thing is, I now get 3 bars of 4G LTE at my house, a place that I used to get just 1 or 2 bars. I’d say that bar calculation that Verizon had mentioned is included. Will be digging into it throughout the night to see what else has changed – for now, get to flashing.  

All the way back during week one of our time with the Galaxy Nexus. emails started trickling in from users who were dealing with a microphone muting issue while on calls. We have yet to run into the issue ourselves, but it’s clear if you browse any tech forum on the internet that this is a problem for a number of owners. Verizon appears hesitant to admit that it’s a serious problem, so we thought we would run a poll to see how many of you are being affected by it. No better way to let them know that with some numbers, right?

What exactly is happening? While taking incoming calls or making outgoing calls, the microphone on the device will cut out so that the person on the other end of the line can no longer hear a thing which obviously leads to them hanging up. Toggling mute on or off, switching to speakerphone, swapping devices, activating new SIM cards, etc. are not helping the situation. It’s pretty obvious that this is a software bug that simply needs to be addressed in the next update. The problem is, that this started happening to users back in December and we are now almost a week into February without a fix.

We still have no word on when the big Android 4.0.3 (or is it 4.0.4 now?) update will be out.

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Cheers Matt and everyone else!

A little tablet data to take you into the weekend? And I don’t know why, but I find it shocking that the average tablet user manages to spend 90 minutes per day on one. I also think people lied about using them in the bathroom. Name me a better bathroom buddy than a massive 10″ slab?

Via:  Staples

Cheers Kris!

Just finished off a Friday night run, plugged in my MOTOACTV and sure enough, it prompted me to update. It updated to version 4.55.97, but depending on the model you have, you may receive a slightly different build (4.56.97 / 4.57.97 /4.58.97 are the others). All of them should include the exact same enhancements though, including better battery life, a new status bar, and the ability to lock the screen during workouts.

Full break down is after the break.  

We reached out to Google to see if we could get some clarification or reasoning as to why CDMA devices would no longer be “supported” as developer devices and they responded. Dan Morril, an Android engineer who you may be familiar with, provided an explanation at this Google Group’s page:

Hello! This is a quick clarification about support for CDMA devices.

For various technical reasons, recent CDMA Android devices implement core telephony functionality in .apk files provided in binary form by the carriers. To function correctly, these .apk files must be signed by the so-called “platform” key. However, when an individual creates a custom build from the AOSP source code, they don’t use the same signing key as these CDMA flies were signed with.

The result is that these files don’t work properly, and pure AOSP builds running on these devices can’t place calls, access mobile data, and so on. Because we aim to make sure that we are as clear as possible about the degree of support that devices have, we updated the docs over at source.android.com to reflect this reality.

We will still make available as many as possible of the closed-source binaries for these devices, and Nexus devices will continue to have unlockable bootloaders. And, of course, GSM/HSPA+ devices are still supported, as are any other devices we’re able to support. We’ve simply updated the documentation to be clearer about the current extent of CDMA support.

We are of course always working to improve support, and we’ll keep everyone updated as we make improvements. Thanks as always for your interest in AOSP!

So basically, CDMA is not widely supported as we mentioned earlier and is also simply a pain in the ass. From what we have been told though, the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon is still a “Nexus” and will continue to be updated in a timely manner, but Google is simply making it clear that a device running a CDMA radio cannot be officially “supported” since its files are signed differently from AOSP code. If that makes any sense.

And devs in the building, please feel free to clarify that further.

Update:  So rather than make you read through this long drawn out mess, we decided to post a summary to get you up to speed since a number of folks are still coming to this specific post.

This afternoon, a reader of ours noticed that the Android Developer pages were updated to show that they no longer support CDMA devices. Without any word from Google on these changes, we started asking important questions and posted this story since that affects the LTE Galaxy Nexus, XOOM LTE and Nexus S 4G. Could this change the way updates are issued? What about factory images? What does it mean to no longer be “supported?” All questions that we feel we deserved answers to.

Once enough of a stir was caused, a statement was issued by an Android engineer. Basically where we stand now, is that according to Google’s standards for AOSP, CDMA devices cannot be officially “supported.” It’s an odd situation and one that even some of our readers who create their own AOSP ROMs are having a hard time wrapping their brains around.

Thankfully Google has assured us that the LTE Galaxy Nexus and all other “Nexus” devices will still receive timely updates, remain unlocked, etc.

You can read their full statement here.  

The U.S. government has been testing Android phones for a couple of years now, but they expect to deliver them to soliders in 2012 according to a report from CNN. Up until this point, government officials and military personnel were not allowed to use smartphones for work-related activities, but with the ability to customize the operating system to their liking thanks to Android’s openness, things are about to change. The project to get smartphones and tablets running Android into the hands of our soldiers has finally been given the green light. For now, the devices are only capable of storing classified info, but within a few months, they should be able to transmit it over networks as well.

One of the surprising notes from this report has to do with the types of phones they will use. According to people familiar with the project, the government will not build specially designed hardware and will instead use commercial devices and then simply load them with an ultra-secure version of Android. With a secure Android smartphone, a soldier could potentially see fellow infantry on a digital map in the field, or an official could send an important dispatch from from anywhere without fear of security breaches.

Why not go with iOS devices? Because Apple refused to give the government access to their source code. And since Android is as open as it gets for a mobile OS, the choice was clear.

We also found it interesting that one of the contractors mentioned how quickly they could update their phones thanks to the OS they are running. He mentioned that once Google has released source for their latest update, that they can have a secure version up and running on phones within 2 weeks. Yeah, we’re looking at you now, carriers.

Via:  CNN

Cheers Greg and Daniel!