A developer booted up Ice Cream Sandwich on the DROID RAZR a few weeks back, but last night, an almost fully-working ROM was released. Technically still in “alpha,” this ROM has working 3G/4G, Google Apps (except Google Talk), touch screen, and phone. The list of non-working features includes the camera (no surprise there), adb and the downloading of apps from the Market. Those all seem like normal first release ROM issues to me that are almost always worked out over time.

Feel free to give it a shot. Oh, you need to make sure you are on .748 kernel though, not the new .173 leak.

To see the ROM in action, jump to the 7:00 mark in the video below. Instructions at the source.  

So the HTC Rezound now has an unlockable bootloader, one of the best screens in the mobile universe, Beats audio enhancements, a stellar $199 price tag, and now global radios that work without an unlock code? Nice work, HTC.

The back story is as follows. A UK user of XDA ordered the phone over the holidays hoping that it would work on T-Mobile. Sure enough, after slapping in a SIM card and changing the network settings to “WCDMA Only,” he had a connection and data. Verizon and HTC are apparently claiming that the phone does not have global capabilities, but this thread has been going strong for a few weeks now with more evidence mounting by the day that it indeed does.

If you have a Rezound and are traveling overseas any time soon, feel free to hit up the source link for instructions on how to get your phone up and roaming the globe.

Via:  XDA

And just like the HTC Rezound, the LG Spectrum has an update on the way. It’s as minor as it gets and will simply fix Netflix playback. Yep, that’s it. We will have a full review of the device up within the next week or so, but you can view our early unboxing here.

More info.

Cheers to everyone who sent this in!

The lock screen from the leaked Ice Cream Sandwich build for the Motorola RAZR that snuck out yesterday has already been turned into a GO Locker theme. It will cost you a buck, but at least you can get a taste of Moto’s attempt at skinning Android 4.0 before it goes officially public. The developer also wants you to know that this is basically an “alpha” since it was based off of one photo.

Market Link ($0.99)

Cheers zyghost!

In 2010 the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed to help stem the ever present problem of copyrighting media in the digital age. The Electronic Frontier Foundation worked hard though to get a few exemptions to this bill, namely protecting remix videos from being taken down and phones being jailbroken; or rooted. Now, these exemptions are up for renewal this year and not only is the EFF asking for help renewing the two exemptions they have now, they want to expand the exemptions to cover rooting tablets and jailbreaking video game consoles as well.

This is quite a big deal, because if these exemptions do not get renewed it would technically be illegal to root your phone allowing any company who wishes to come after you in court. The biggest case of this would be Sony taking legal action against George Hotz, a man who figured out how to jailbreak the Playstation 3 and put it on the internet. The EFF has a full page dedicated to the rooting exemptions needed along with a petition to sign and a place to send comments directly to the U.S. Copyright Office. There are somewhere near 5,000 signatures already, let’s add our names to make sure we can keep hacking our phones as much as we want.

Via:  EFF Website | Petition

The HTC Rezound has its first major update on the way according to Verizon’s support pages. The update is a decent size at 52.5MB, improving audio during calls, resolving a task manager issue, updating the signal strength indicator to 5 bars, and addressing overall stability. The new build is 2.01.605.11 with a new baseband of 0.95.00.10118r. Normally when we see these documents, the update rolls out within a week or two. Let us know if pops up!

More info.

Cheers to everyone who sent this!

The DROID RAZR MAXX is available now from Verizon Wireless. For $299, you can have one of the thinnest 4G LTE phones on the planet that somehow manages to house a 3300mAh battery. If battery life was ever a concern for you with current LTE tech, this is the phone for you. According to Motorola, this phone should provide you with 21+ hours of talk time, over 2.5 days of streamed music, and days upon days while sitting idle. You can view our CES hands-on with the device here.

Buy.