This little trick probably won’t be used much until the Android hacking/developing crowd gains root access to our new Droid X, but you might as well know about it now.  Practice up people!  And no, this won’t brick your phone.

Instructions…

1.  Turn your phone off.
2.  Hold down “Home” and press “Power” until the Motorola logo appears.
3.  Release  ”Power” and continue to hold “Home” until an exclamation appears.
4.  Release “Home” and press the “Search” button once.
5.  Your phone will now enter recovery.

To get out of it, simply use your volume up and down buttons until “reboot system now” is highlighted and then press the camera button.

Simple enough?

Since we don’t have root access to the Droid X just yet, we also don’t have a wireless tethering app available, right?  True, but what we do have is a Bluetooth option!  If your computer allows for Bluetooth connections, then you can have your mobile hotspot on the go without being directed to VZW for payment.  Oh yeah, this feature is fully confirmed and working on Mac, Windows and Ubuntu systems.  You can still USB tether using PDANet or Tether, but who doesn’t love to remove that pesky cable?

The only thing we have to worry about now is how long until Verizon blocks this.  Will it be with the OTA update we’re expecting to receive today?  ”Updated Bluetooth® connection for enhanced video sharing experience” is one of the fixes coming, so enjoy it while you can.

Cheers Jacob and Wade!

As far as we know, the Droid Incredible’s OTA update has only gone out to a small test group before it begins a full on blast, and whether or not you want to believe that is completely up to you.  What I do know, is that the OTA update file that’s floating around in the wild has all of the goodies that’ll you’ll see once the update hits your phone.  And one of those new features is the official DI boot animation which we have for you today.

Download: DROIDINC_Boot.zip

Instructions…

*Note 1* – These steps are performed on an unrooted Incredible through the Android SDK.

*Note 2* – This process also works if you want this on your Droid 1.

*Note 3* – The command for the audio file may not work the first time.  If it doesn’t, run the command 1 to 2 more times and it should work.

1.  Download the file from above.
2.  Unzip the 2 files into your android-skd/tools folder.
3.  Make sure nothing is selected and hold SHIFT+right click inside your tools folder.
4.  Choose “open command window here.”
5.  Type in the following commands:

adb push bootanimation.zip /data/local

adb push android_audio.mp3 /data/local

adb reboot

6.  Your phone will now reboot with the official Droid Incredible boot anim!

If you need help installing the Android SDK, check out this post we did a while back.  You will also need the HTC Incredible USB driver which will install with HTC Sync from here.

Cheers Antovolk!

One of the only issues to continue to frustrate many Droid Incredible users is the poor battery life.  Whether your phone is sitting idle, you are using it sparingly or even heavily, there are reports of batteries draining from 100% to 85% within minutes.  Users have been forced to entertain gimmicky fixes and today, we have another for you to test out.

The guys at XDA have put together 2 methods, 1 for rooted users and another for all users.  We have yet to test either on our own DI, but will definitely be doing so some time this weekend…

Method 1 (STOCK or ROOT)

- Charge your battery like normal
- When you see the green light unplug the phone and power it down
- Plug it back up (you should see the orange light again for a while)
- When the light turns green again, then you are fully charged.

Method 2 (ROOT ONLY)

-Charge your phone fully (don’t just go by the orange light turning green check your battery under settings>about phone>>battery)
- Reboot in Recovery and get adb shell running
- Once you have adb shell (#) running type in the following commands:

mount -a
rm /data/system/batterystats.bin

- Reboot the phone immediately after running the commands
- When your phone reboots disconnect your cable and DO NOT CHARGE until the battery dies (the phone will shut off)
- When the battery dies out charge the phone like you normally would.

Please let us know if either method helps!

Source:  XDA Forums
Via: CalebNance

Cheers Taylor!

For those of you already running one of the many Android 2.2 builds in the wild, you might want to steer clear of using the USB tethering option that is built in.  In fact, if you do, you will be directed immediately to this page which asks you to sign up for Mobile Broadband Connect.  Problem with that?  There is no package for the Droid at this time.

Update: I should clarify this a little after reading some of the comments.  This appears to be something new and only happening with the native Froyo tethering app.  That would be the tethering included in the newest FRF84B build.  Wi-fi tethering should still work and quite possibly, the rest of the tethering apps on the market.

Check out some reader emails we just received…

If you try and tether your phone using froyo, it will not work and it’ll send you to a vzw page prompting you to buy a package that doesnt exist. I called verizon and they could not upgrade me to the package because it doesnt exist for moto droid.

More from VZW customer service and their thoughts on Froyo…

Just got back off the phone with vz and they stated that I should not have 2.2 and they wanted to know where I got it. I refused to answer that because I just read and am not an active participant in the Droid Life community. They said if they find out anyone is tethering they can suspend or terminate there contract. As well as they refused to release whatever they put on my account to stop me from tethering.

We know that the Droid X will have mobile hot spot capabilities at an extra $20 per month, but what is Big Red going to do about straight up tethering?  Also, you’ll notice on the Mobile Broadband Connect page that package pricing is ending on July 15th, which is?  The Droid X release date.

Fun stuff for sure.  Just be careful!

And let me know if you are able to continue to use the native tethering app while on Froyo without receiving that URL we posted above.  Also, list your Froyo build number.

See that screenie?  That’s my JRummy Kangeraded Froyo Droid running the new Google Maps 4.3 which was released earlier today.  Reader scrizzo just sent over a set of instructions I had yet to try that worked like butter.  Seriously, I had tried the adb shell instructions out there, the .xml file update method, and couple of others with zero success.  And then I received this magic…

Instructions…

*Note 1* – If you don’t have Terminal Emulator, download it from the market.

1. Open Terminal Emulator and type in the follow commands:

For JRummy ROMs:

su
mountsys
rm system/app/Maps.apk
cd system/bin
sh pm uninstall com.google.android.apps.maps
unmountsys

For all other ROMs:

su
mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 dev/block/mtdblock4 system
busybox rm system/app/Maps.apk
cd system/bin
sh pm uninstall com.google.android.apps.maps
cd ..
cd ..
mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 dev/block/mtdblock4 system
sync

2. You can now attempt to install the Google Maps update.
3. If it fails the first time, just cancel the download and try again.  If it fails again, reboot and try.
4. Done!

If this set of instructions still doesn’t work for you, please drop the name and version of the ROM you have in the comments.  Maybe we can pinpoint which methods are working for different ROMs.

Questions?

Cheers again scrizzo!

We still haven’t received word on whether or not Verizon is phasing out the Droid Incredible, but we do know that over the last week they’ve released an entire series of DI tutorials for all of those beginner Android users out there.  Most are under a minute long and cover topics like personalizing home screens, adding additional Google accounts, and using the Android Market.

These videos are definitely worth a watch if you are new at all to the Android game.  Check out a few of them below including the new Droid Incredible intro video…

Using Google Search…

Navigating the home screen…

To view the rest of the series, check out Verizon’s Youtube channel.