Android Community Weekly: May 27th, 2012

Another week of happenings for the best mobile platform around has come with some surprisingly good news. Courts have cleared Google of all wrongdoing in the long-awaited end to Oracle’s patent trial, and HTC’s EVO 4G LTE has been cleared through customs and away from the litigious hands of Apple’s patents. Shipments are arriving to pre-orders now, with a little something extra. That’s the best news you’ll hear all week.

In hardware news, new budget Gingerbread phones have arrived on AT&T and T-Mobile: the Samsung Galaxy Appeal and Huawei Prism, respectively. The Canadian Galaxy S III has been rumored for a June 20th date, and the same date has been leaked for T-Mobile, with the Galaxy Note following a few weeks later. They might have to settle for the white version, though: the blue international model has been delayed. Those of you who want an ASUS tablet with mobile data will be glad to know that the Transformer Pad 300 was spotted at the FCC, with bands for AT&T LTE.

Verizon has confirmed that it will begin updating its LTE phones for global roaming in the summer, starting with the HTC Rezound, Motorola DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX. NVIDIA’s Icera series of modems has a new addition in the Icera 410, which has been certified for AT&T’s LTE network. That means Tegra 3 LTE tablets are coming soon. There have been a lot of new rumors surrounding the ASUS Nexus Tablet, with the hardware itself (and maybe even a new version of Android) due at Google I/O. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is still being redesigned, this time with a bay for the S-Pen stylus built into the case.

On the software side of things, the Android 4.0.4 update for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus is finally, finally available, just not from Verizon. HTC has detailed its plans for Ice Cream Sandwich updates later this summer, and Sony says that it’s abandoned the ICS update for the Xperia Play. The modders have been busy this week, with root for the HTC EVO 4G LTE and (YES!) an unlocked bootloader for AT&T’s One X. The updated version of TouchWiz for the Galaxy S III has been ported to the S II, among others, and the LG Nitro  HD on AT&T now has an Ice Cream Sandwich leak. Finally, the Google+ app has a shiny new interface, but no tablet version yet.

Here at Android Community, time is running out to enter the NVIDIA TegraZone Anniversary Tegra Pack Giveaway. Winners will be chosen on May 31st (Thursday) so get your entries in now. Check the original contest post to find out how. We’ve also got a review of the Sony Xperia U, and an interesting (and somewhat divisive) editorial on the most cost-efficient way to stay grandfathered into Verizon’s unlimited data plans. Until tomorrow, stay in school, don’t do drugs and always make a Nandroid backup.