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Tagged: mods

Aura Slate is a mod-friendly Android tablet on the cheap

By Michael Crider
on 16 Feb, 2012

Between the hubbub over the Eee Pad Transformer Prime's locked bootloader and the continuing fervor surrounding Motorola's locked down models, the ability for end users to access the hardware and software that they've purchased is becoming a major theme in the Android world. The level of access is, for some users at least, one of the most important factors in their buying decision for a new smartphone or tablet. A tiny startup called Aura Design aims to shake up the market with a new series of Aura Slate tablets, which not only open up the software, but the hardware as well: in addition to an open bootlader and easily modded Android build, the source code for Android and the hardware dirvers is ade easily available.

ICS mod gives Galaxy Nexus true full screen, disables virtual nav buttons

By Michael Crider
on 15 Feb, 2012

Android's virtual navigation buttons, introduced in Honeycomb and expanded in Ice Cream Sandwich, have been something of a polarizing subject. While plenty of users appreciate the flexibility and aesthetic options they provide, others miss the physical feedback of real buttons, or would rather use the full size of the massive displays on current high-end phones. If you're a Galaxy Nexus owner who falls into the latter camp, you're in luck: XDA member "mrx8836350" (catchy!) has developed a method for banishing the navigation buttons altogether.

Onskreen Cornerstone brings windowed apps to Android tablets

By Michael Crider
on 9 Feb, 2012

Tablets are big. Smartphone apps are small. This would seem to present an obvious answer to the many, many Android apps that scale up to massive resolutions instead of adjusting their total user interface Ice Cream Sandwich-style. But no, apps form unconcerned or merely oblivious developers continue to scale up, as if someone ran over an Android smartphone with a steamroller. Enter Cornerstone, a method for managing windows of apps on Android, jut like on Linux, OS X and, uh, Windows.

Nokia N9 Ice Cream Sandwich port in progress

By Michael Crider
on 9 Feb, 2012

Much as we begrudge Nokia their wring (not to mention stubborn, deluded and more than a little incestuous) decision to go with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform for their current generation of smartpohnes, it's hard to deny that their hardware and industrial design is top-notch. Home Android developer Alexey Roslykov seems to agree, as he's been instrumental in porting Android to Nokia's underground favorite the N900. Now he's on to something a little more modern, in terms of both hardware and software: getting a full-fledged Ice Cream Sandwich port running on Nokia's drool-worthy N9. The developer tweeted out the phot below with the simple desciption, "Progress".

Change DPI and Market settings easily with build.prop Editor

By Michael Crider
on 6 Feb, 2012

If you're a dedicated Android modder, you're probably aware of the myriad tweaks you can apply via the build.prop file, located in the /system folder. It's a popular method of changing your phone or tablet's screen density (as in our Galaxy Nexus Tablet experiment) or fooling the Android Market into thinking you've got a different phone than the one you have. But Android's built-in text editor leaves something to be desired, and the only alternative to a root-enabled file browser has been the tedious ADB method of backing up and swapping in modified build.prop files.

Devs, start your compilers: Peek offers free/cheap devices to hackers

By Michael Crider
on 2 Feb, 2012

If there's one thing the Android development community can't resist, it's a cheap mod platform. The Nook Color and (eventually) the HP TouchPad both owe their legacies to budget-conscious Android users looking for something to mod. The latest platform for cheap hacking might just be the Peek, a single-function device built for SMS on the cheap. The company is going out of business, but The Verge reports that CEO Amol Sarva wants to give the thousands of unsold units to hackers, hoping that "maybe somebody can build something great". At least one member of the Reddit Android section has the idea of porting Android to the device - a familiar rallying cry.

ClockworkMod Recovery Touch expands to more devices

By Michael Crider
on 1 Feb, 2012

One of the more exciting developments in the Android mod scene in the last week or so has been ClockworkMod Recovery Touch, a new version of Koushik Dutta's ubiquitous custom recovery software. Initially offered earlier this week, the touchscreen enabled pre-boot environment is now available on more Samsung, HTC and Motorola devices. Initially developed for only the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S. But a recovery system takes a lot less time to modify than a full ROM, so we're seeing the updated software spread out quickly.

New “Dark Google Apps” mod saves battery on OLED phones

By Michael Crider
on 1 Feb, 2012

Screens that use organic light-emitting diodes, better known as OLED and AMOLED, have a unique method of image production. When instructed to display a "black" color, the individual pixel cells are physically turned off, providing the stunning blacks seen on OLED-equipped devices like the Galaxy S II, DROID RAZR and the original Nexus One. Interestingly, this also means that displaying a mostly black image on an OLED screen also draws less power than a white or full-color image. To take advantage of this technological quirk, an intrepid modder on XDA has set about modifying all of Google's core Android apps to save the maximum amount of battery on OLED phones, via the simple expediency of reversing the color scheme.

Run Android on any laptop with SATA-based PunkThis board

By Michael Crider
on 31 Jan, 2012

We've seen a few Android-based netbooks run through the production mills of confused OEMs, and we're fairly sure that a certain major manufacturer is including Android in a SoC bundled into their latest ultraportable laptop. But if you want a little do-it-yourself Android/laptop action, look further than the CUPP Computing PunkThis board. It's a tiny system-on-a-chip built into a PCB board with SATA and Mini PCIe connections on one side. What does that mean? It means pop this sucker into your laptop's hard drive bay, and you're running Android in seconds.

Easy Development Studio makes rolling your own ROM a snap

By Michael Crider
on 31 Jan, 2012

I'd wager there's a lot of you reading this who run custom ROMs on your Android phone or tablet, but only a tiny portion that actually develop your own. (Guilty.) The simple fact is that rooting and flashing a custom recovery/ROM is fairly simple for those of us that know our way around a command line, but cooking up an entire ROM requires some more specialized skills. Enter Easy Development Studio, a Linux tool designed to make compiling your own ROM easy, or at the very lest manageable, for the layman. Check out the thread on XDA to download the beta.