Friday, April 2, 2010

The Ultimate Tablet?

You have e-readers, with clean & easy-on-the-eye e-ink displays, and you have tablets with full color multi-touch displays. Want to have both in 1 device? Look no further!

I came across this Nvidia Tegra2 based tablet, called Adam, from Notion Ink that features a Pixel Qi transflective display. It's basically an e-reader screen with multiple modes:

- Full color LCD transmissive mode;
- A low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode;

This will bring you 16h of reading pleasure!

For more specs, check Notion Ink's Adam page.

Friday, March 26, 2010

QNap Firmware with TimeMachine & S3 Cloud

The latest QNap TS-439 firmware introduces native support for Apple's TimeMachine and Amazon's S3 Cloud backup.

Just install the firmware, enable the 'TimeMachine' service, launch TimeMachine and select your QNap NAS (it's displayed in the list) and viola... unlimited TM storage for your Mac! ;-)

More firmware details.

I love my QNap!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Nvidia Tegra prototypes

Check out Nvidia's new hardware for tablets and MIDs. I'm still not up to date with the iPad specs, but this baby features a 1Ghz dual-core CPU, hardware 3D graphics & HD video playback.

I don't believe it is shown in the video, but the Tegra powered 15,6" Vega tablet from ICD is looking very sleek. Anyone fancy a 15" calendar/browser/videoplayer/e-mail display in their kitchen?

Monday, February 1, 2010

HTC Magic Sense's New Features

Let's have a quick look at what is new in HTC's Sense UI update for the Magic:

Multitouch is here!
While browsing the web or watching your photo's you can now pinch zoom to grow or shrink the content. If you don't want to pinch, you can still double tap to switch between 4 different zoom factors. Awesome feature which was until now only possible on custom roms.

New Browser
A new browser with MT enabled and visual bookmarks which show a thumbnail preview of the page.

Google Maps
The latest Google Maps v3.2.1 client, but with layers and navigation disabled (only available as of Android 1.6).

Tethering
USB tethering is selectable from the Communications Settings menu. You can enable it by pluging in the USB cable. Another feature previously only available for rooted roms.

Clock
The clock application allows you to add different places & timezones, great for people who travel alot and want to keep track of the time at home. They also added a stopwatch and a countdown timer to the default clock application.

HTC Widgets
Doesn't really need mentioning, but cool nonetheless! Have a look at all the HTC Hero widgets. Oh, and as a bonus, the new HTC Hero & Eris widgets on the Android Market seem to work too!


I'm sure I missed some other additions, but these ones really popped out at me.

On a side note: the new HTC Sense UI for Android 2.1 will be available by the end of March 2010.

So let's keep building those awesome customized kernels & roms! Continue the inspiration ;-)

Friday, January 29, 2010

Dell Mini 5 Tablet Shown By CEO

A cool mini tablet running Android from Dell is shown in a quick video by the chief himself!

Check out the video on Phandroid!

Flashing The Proximus Magic

If you want to start flashing other roms on your Proximus Magic, then follow the next steps to enable custom rom flashing:

1) Install a custom recovery image:
Follow Amon_RA's recovery guide, or..

alternatively, and more easy IMO, you could use the FlashRec application (if exploit is not yet fixed on your magic). This app lets you flash Amon_RA's recovery image (or any recovery image) to your phone without having to install Android SDK. You just download Amon_RA's recovery image (for 32A) and put it on your SD card so the app can select the recovery image.
If you start the FlashRec app, first make a backup of your standard recovery image (press 'Backup' button). Then type in the location and filename of Amon_RA's recovery. For example, if you put it in the root of your SD card, you should type /sdcard/recovery-RA-sapphire-1.5.2H.img, if the path and filename are correct the 'Flash Recovery' button should become enabled.

Tip: rename the recovery file to something simple, like recov.img, more keyboard friendly ;-)

You can boot into recovery mode by powering down your phone and restart it by holding both 'Home' & 'Power' buttons until the phone vibrates once. Once in recovery mode you can make a nandroid backup of your current rom. I strongly advise you make a backup before flashing any other rom, this way you can always restore the original rom if things go wrong.

2) Install an engineer SPL:
This step is normally not required to flash roms that are made for your current radio version (v3.22). However, if you want to flash newer radio images (required for the latest roms and most likely also for the latest Android versions) this step is required.

- Download the 1.33.2009 ENG SPL update image, and put in on your phone's SDCard.

- Power down the phone and boot into recovery mode by holding both 'Home' & 'Power' buttons until the phone vibrates once.

- From the recovery menu select 'Apply sdcard zip', select the SPL update file.

- After update, press 'Green' key & reboot your phone (notice that the screen will say "Formatting cache:...", don't wait, if the recovery menu appears select 'reboot'.


If you completed both steps, you can flash any rom, radio or SPL through fastboot or by using the custom recovery rom.

Happy flashing!

Official HTC Sense UI for Proximus Magic (update)

Months have gone by and still no OS updates from Proximus. I contacted HTC, but they told me that Proximus needs to approve the updates. So nothing will happen unless Proximus wakes up.


For those of you who want to experience the official HTC Sense UI on your Proximus HTC Magic and don't want to wait for Proximus:

The latest stock HTC rom has been provided by CursorDroid.

This stock rom is the Official HTC Magic Sense UI 3.05.401.3 for Europe, slightly altered to have root access. This rom uses the latest HTC kernel, making it a very stable rom.

You also need to update to the latest Radio and SPL images. Follow the instructions carefully!

Once installed, select English language and continue the setup. If you want to switch to Dutch language you need to download the MoreLocale application from the Android Market.



I'll explain how to prepare your Proximus Magic for flashing in another post.

UPDATE: HTC just made an offical announcement for Europe, stating that SenseUI is now available for non-google branded Magics. You can find the official rom on the HTC Europe site. BEWARE: installing the update from the HTC site will leave your Magic with a perfected SPL, making it nearly impossible to flash other roms. I advise you to install the stock rom (which is identical but comes with an engineering SPL) as explained above.

UPDATE2: And as expected not for Proximus Magics since Proximus is still hibernating. You won't be able to download the rom with your HTC serial *sigh*