HP TouchPad Gets A Taste Of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

Almost two years after the HP TouchPad tablet was released, the aging 9.7 inch tablet continues to learn new tricks. The latest? You can now run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean on HP’s discontinued tablet.

Developer SGA has started releasing test builds of CyanogenMod 10.1 for the HP TouchPad.

SGA also offers builds of CM10 based on Android 4.1.2, but it’s the new CyanogenMod 10.1 builds that offer Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

That means you get support for lock screen widgets, Google’s new notification system, and other improvements.

As of April 5th, there are still a few bugs to deal with. Bluetooth doesn’t work. The front-facing camera doesn’t work, and hardware-accelerated video decoding doesn’t work out of the box.

But it’s actually not that tough to enable support for accelerated video playback yourself. It’ll probably be available in future builds, but you can find instructions for enabling it below. This’ll let you stream video from Netflix, watch HD video from YouTube, and use hardware decoding in video players such as MX Player or Dice Player.

I’d still only recommend installing SGA’s builds if you’re willing to risk breaking your tablet. Users have reported that the battery can run down while the tablet is sleeping… and if reaches zero you may have trouble getting the TouchPad to turn back on again, even after you plug it in.

So proceed with caution… and with a charging cable handy. You can also just completely power down your tablet when you’re not using it instead of letting it sleep.

RootzWiki forum member RolandDeschain79 has put together a good guide of what’s working, what’s not working, and steps you might want to take to improve the experience of running SGA’s test builds on your tablet.

Installing CyanogenMod 10.1

If you’ve already installed Android on your HP TouchPad you should already have ClockworkMod or TWRP recovery on your device.

In that case all you need to do is download the latest build of CM10.1 and the latest gApps package for Android 4.2. Currently that’s gapps-jb-20130301-signed.zip.

You can then reboot into recovery and install the updates. You don’t have to perform a factory reset first, but it probably wouldn’t hurt. It’s also a very good idea to perform a complete backup in recovery in case anything goes wrong and you want to restore from your backup.

If this is your first time installing Android on an HP TouchPad that’s only been running webOS up until now, follow our guide for installing Android on the TouchPad. Just use the new builds of CyanogenMod and gApps instead of any older versions.

Enabling hardware-accelerated video

Theoretically all you need to do to get Netflix and YouTube HD videos to play is swap out a single file on your tablet. But the process for doing that is actually a little tricky.

As xda-developers forum member webdroidmt discovered, what you want to do is replace the vidc_1080p.fw file in the /etc/firmware directory on the HP TouchPad with one from an Android 4.1 ROM where hardware-accelerated video works.

Here’s how I did that:

1. Download the 20130304 experimental build of CyanogenMod 10 for the TouchPad from developer jcsullins to my PC.

2. Open the .zip file on my PC and navigate to the \system\etc\firmware directory.

3. Extract the file called vidc_1080p.fw to my desktop.

4. On the HP TouchPad I installed Root Explorer from the Play Store (other file browsers with root access may work, but Root Explorer is easy to work with when changing file permissions).

5. Navigate to the /system/etc/firmware directory on the TouchPad using Root Explorer.

6. Tap the button at the top of the screen that says “Mount R/W” to allow read/write access to the directory.

7. Move the vidc_1080p.fw file from this directory to another directory. (You could delete it, keep a copy in case anything went wrong. So I copied it to the root directory of my SD card. I also renamed it so I wouldn’t confuse it with the new file).

7a. You may be tempted to just rename the file. Don’t do that. You have to move it out of this directory in order to make room for the new file you’re about to move in.

8. Copy the vidc_1080p.fw file from step 3 to the /system/etc/firmware directory on the HP TouchPad (you can do this by connecting your tablet to your PC with a USB cable, emailing yourself the file, or whatever your preferred method for transferring files to your tablet is).

9. Long-press on the vidc_1080p.fw file and change the permissions so that they match the image below. When you’re done, Root Explorer should show the permissions as rw-r-r–.

10. Reboot your tablet.

Once the TouchPad finishes rebooting, you should have support for hardware-accelerated video playback.

HTC First To Launch On AT&T April 12 For $99

Facebook Home, we got our first official look at the device that will run it right out of the box: the HTC First. Available April 12 for $99 on contract, the HTC First is an LTE-enabled AT&T device with modest specs and a minimal design.

Coming in black, white, red and light blue, the First features a blank body with nothing but a camera on both sides and three capacitive buttons on its face. Under the hood you’ll find a Snapdragon 400 chip powering a 4.3-inch display, with Android 4.1 running underneath Home.

If you're looking to pre-order the HTC First click the link. Off contract, the First will set you back $450.

Source: AT&T

HTC One Developer Edition To Launch On April 19th

HTC announce the HTC One Developer Edition last month. HTC already revealed the unlocked One with 64GB of memory would retail for $649, but we didn’t know exactly when it would go on sale. Today I bumped into the HTC team at the Facebook event and they were nice enough to confirm the launch date.

An HTC spokesperson said, “The HTC One developer edition will be available for pre-order in the coming days through www.HTC.com and will be available for sale starting on April 19th.”

The HTC One Developer Edition will support all the 2G/3G/4G/LTE bands of AT&T, but it should also work on T-Mobile. When it comes to HSPA+ the device supports 850/1900/2100 MHz. T-Mobile mainly uses 1700 MHz for their HSPA+ network, but they have been refarming their network to support 1900 MHz in select cities. Sightings of T-Mobile’s 1900 MHz network can be found at Airportal.de.

When it comes to LTE, the device supports 700/850/AWS/1900 MHz (US). T-Mobile is rolling out LTE on AWS bands and we believe the Developer Edition should support it, but we are still waiting on final confirmation. We have reached out to HTC to see if the device will support T-Mobile LTE and we will update this post when we get an answer.

I don’t know how big the demand will be for the HTC One Developer Edition, but I plan on buying one just to support devices that are SIM and bootloader unlocked.

Facebook Home Initially Available For A Handful Of Phones

Those anxious to get their hands on Facebook Home are probably wondering if it will work with their current device. Well, we have the official list of supported handsets, and lengthy it is not. If you have a marquee phone from Samsung or HTC you are most likely covered, but those with lower-tier devices or something from another manufacturer are out of luck (at least initially).

On April 12th, the following devices will support Facebook Home: the Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, HTC One X, and HTC One X+. Home will also be available out of the box for the AT&T exclusive HTC First.

Facebook is moving to support as many handsets as possible, so if your phone didn’t make the initial batch there is still hope. As for tablets, it could be a few months before we see anything.

Facebook Unveils Facebook Home For Android

Facebook Home does just this, in a beautiful redesign of the Facebook experience. No longer do you have to pull up an app or a mobile website, pictures are right there for you on the lock screen. You don’t have to open your phone to see what your friends or loved ones are doing, it’s all right there in front of you. With a simple swipe of a finger, you can breeze past photos, status updates, making the experience even more natural than it was before. Zuckerberg said people look at their phones 100 times a day, so making Facebook an increasingly engaged product is smart.

New features brought to Home are Chat Heads, Notifications, Cover Feeds and App Drawer, all designed to make navigation, engagement and use much easier and friendlier. “We think this is the best version of Facebook there is,” Zuckerberg said during the presentation.

I couldn’t agree more. I was blown away by how engaging and easy it is to use.

The main facet to take away is not only the hundreds of millions of Android devices this will be on eventually (initially it’s launching on smartphones, but I was told a tablet version will come within the next several months), but the increased engagement, which Facebook can eventually monetize. Zuckerberg was asked about this during the Q&A portion of Thursday’s press conference, and though he laughed and claimed to forget what the question was about, monetization of Facebook Home is important.

Eventually there will be advertisements on Facebook Home, but not on the first version. What isn’t clear at this time is how Facebook will integrate ads into the product without ruining the experience, but that question isn’t for today. Wall Street wants to see more engagement, which will ultimately lead to more ads and higher revenue, and the Street got just what it wanted.

Not only does this put Facebook in the forefront of users faces again, it could signify a thawing of the frosty relationship between Google and Facebook. Facebook Home runs on both the Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean versions of Android, something that makes it available to millions of Android users, and isn’t dependent on Android updates. That’s a smart move by Facebook to not make this a forked version of Android, but something more. Google was aware of what Facebook was building, and though Google shares fell sharply on Thursday, it could be a start to bigger things between the two companies.

Facebook really impressed me with Facebook Home. Now it’s time to see how users feel about it. We’ll all find out soon enough when it launches on April 12th, available on Google Play.

Download Quickoffice For From Google Play

Google is now providing a way to edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents for Google Apps for Business users

Google Drive is pretty slick. It allows you to collaborate, edit on the fly, and create documents and easily share them. The problem is, most of the time somebody in your organization will end up using a Microsoft Office product and throw a wrench in it all. You see, Google Drive's editing abilities don't mix well with Microsoft Office files. 

Since Microsoft Office is the standard for business documents, Google is trying to alleviate any problems a bit by offering up a free copy of Quickoffice which is very compatible with the various MS Office format. If you're a Google Apps user, grab it free from the Google Play link below.



Source: Google Play Store

Copy Now Available For Android

There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to cloud storage. I think just about everyone knows about Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon Cloud Drive. Well, now it looks like we have a new challenger. They’re called Copy and they’ve recently introduced an Android application into the Play Store. After checking it out, I must say… I’m rather impressed.

Let’s talk about storage first. It’s pretty much a standard to offer 5GB of storage for free upfront. That’s a given. But where Dropbox offers bonus storage for getting friends to sign up (small 500MB increases), Google Drive the others offer nothing. Copy separates themselves from the competition by offering an additional 5GB for every person you get to sign up, who in turn, gets an additional 5GB for using your link. That’s HUGE. That means you’re probably not going to want to sign up on your own you’re gonna wanna use a friend’s sign up link.

Let’s take a look at the Android app. Overall, it’s very clean, very minimal. Stuff stored in the cloud is separated by the tab marked “Contents”. Clicking onto the tab marked “Upload” will display all the media on your phone, and you can further swipe to the left to access raw files (documents, apps, etc.).

For those that want to back up all their smart phone photos automatically to Copy, there’s that option as well. In fact, I kinda prefer over Dropbox. Where Dropbox will upload every single image whether it’s a screenshot, download, or picture taken with your camera Copy will only upload actual pictures taken with your camera, if you ask me that's a great feature over Dropbox.

In conclusion, it seems Copy is doing a whole lot right and what they don’t, can easily be addressed in a future update. You get a nice amount of free storage to start out with and if you’d pay for additional storage, plans start out at 250GB for $10 a month or $100 a year. Also, I didn’t talk much about it, but the desktop application for Mac and Windows is top notch and performs well (it’s almost identical to Dropbox’s offering). If you’re looking for a new place to store your virtual boxes of…. well photo's and what knots, Copy might be the perfect cloud storage for you. 

As I mentioned before, sign up with the affiliate link below to get an additional 5GB and check out the free app now available in the Google Play Store.


Affiliate Link (additional 5GB of free storage)

Evleaks Offers First Look At Facebook Home

With Facebook’s Android-themed event under 24 hours away now, leaks on what they plan to announce keep rolling in. We’ve already got a good idea of what the device that unveils “Facebook Home” will include and how Facebook Home will be deployed (essentially as a home replacement launcher available in Google Play). Now we’ve got a peek at what Facebook home will look like.

9to5 Google has scored an @evleaks exclusive featuring the first look at Facebook Home’s UI. If the leaks are accurate, Facebook Home will build on stock Android to offer a design-heavy minimal interface with social front and center. Exactly what part of Facebook Home we’re looking at in the latest leaks is a little confusing, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

Source: 9to5Google

Sprint Officially Announces HTC One On April 19 For $199, Pre Orders Start April 5

Sprint joined AT&T in announcing the availability of the HTC One. Sprint will also launch the 32GB version of the device on April 19 for $199 on new 2-year contract in both black and white. Sprint did not mention a 64GB version, as that is an AT&T exclusive. If you’d like to secure one sooner than the 19th, Sprint will open up pre-orders on April 5, this Friday. Click the link below to view the official statement from Sprint.


Source: Sprint

Best Buy Offering Verizon Palm Pre 2 For 44.99

If you're looking to cut costs on your cell phone contract and maybe upgrade from a beaten old Pre or Pre Plus, you might want to turn some attention to Best Buy and Verizon, as they have a Verizon Palm Pre 2 available contract-free for Verizon's prepaid system for the low low price of just $51.99. That sort of rock-bottom pricing doesn't come around often, even for two-year-old long-canceled smartphones like the Pre 2.

There's no immediate indication that this Pre 2 is locked into only Verizon's prepaid service. Verizon actually allows you to bring any Verizon device onto prepaid, and there's nothing about this phone that says it wouldn't work the other way around too, there likely hasn't been any reprogramming to lock them onto prepaid either.

Prepaid service for a smartphone like the Pre 2 through Verizon will run you $60 a month for unlimited talk and text with 500MB of data, while another $10 will net you a 2GB data allotment. Not only is the $51.99 Pre 2 through Best Buy the cheapest smartphone offered for Verizon prepaid, it's a damn good price if you were looking to pick up a spare device or two should things go south with your current webOS smartphone.

We'd actually say, if not for the fact that it comes with minimal support from HP and app developers, it would qualify by far as the best smartphone offered on Verizon prepaid, either directly from the carrier or Best Buy.

It looks as if this offer didn't last long, a quick check of the Best Buy website shows the device being sold out. Hit the link below.

Source: Best Buy