Cell Bytes

Browser preferences are a very personal thing and many people tend to be pretty die-hard about their browser of choice. For Opera users with Android devices, this has been rather frustrating. The company announced the beta of their Opera Mini for Android browser back in March, and updated the app in July, but still lacked many features of standard Android browsers like pinch to zoom. Not anymore.

At Up North Web, the company announced they were hard at work on Opera for Android and would launch the browser within a month.

The release comes with 3 main improvements:

• A new name: Opera for Android sounds a lot better than Opera Mini 5.x if you ask me
• Pinch to zoom: previously there were only two levels of touch and zoom in/out
• Hardware acceleration: essentially allows Opera to run at “lightning speed” so they’ve improved performance

You can’t quite download Opera Mobile for Android yet, but they assure us that it will be available “within a month”, so mark November 14th on your calendar and if you haven’t heard anything by then, let the inevitable complaint storm begin.

The brilliant thing about Sony’s NEX-3 and NEX-5 cameras is that they’re compatible with the company’s A-mount lenses (when using the $200 LA-EA1 Mount Adaptor). Thanks to a firmware update, there’s now AF support when using these lenses, plus users can customize the soft-key settings and maintain the aperture settings when recording video. [Sony] More »

Grooveshark has quickly become one of the most popular streaming music services in the Android market, and yesterday they released a big update in the Android market to appease their customers. Alongside a bunch of bug fixes (those are always welcomed), we’ve been treated to a host of new features that should win over a lot of new customers (and keep existing ones happy.) Here’s the full list of changes:

Subscribed playlists – You can listen not only to playlists you’ve made, but ones you’ve Favorited while using Grooveshark.
Genre Radio – If you *really* don’t know what to listen to, we’ve added a bunch of Radio stations created by genre. Pick one and go.
User stations – You can save a Radio session as a playlist and come back to it.
Repeat Options – Repeat a single song, or an entire queue.
Queue is remembered across app restarts – The songs in your queue will remain there, even if you restart your phone/app.
Last.fm scrobbling support. I don’t think I have to explain this one to you fans out there.
Bluetooth support for play, pause, next and previous song controls.
Bugs We Fixed:
Playlists will now sync!

Wifi-only songs are now playable over cellular networks, if you like.
Using Shuffle won’t cause the app to crash anymore!
Fewer “Lost connection to Grooveshark” messages, and significantly saved battery.
QueueService (the player code) now manages its life-cycle properly, and shuts down when not in use.
Removed the Quit button—it’s not needed anymore.
 The app frees background resources when a the last song queued plays, or the current song is paused.
 Quitting the app now happens when the phone’s home button or back button are pressed enough.
Now Playing didn’t always clear when the app wasn’t in use; this is fixed.
After a force close, sometimes songs wouldn’t play and the “Unknown
Media Player” error was displayed; this has been fixed.
*
For some Android phones, music would stop playing when the app went into the background; this has been fixed.
Skipping between songs frequently would eventually cause the app to hang and force close.
 Not anymore!
After favoriting or unfavoriting a song in Now Playing, the song’s state was not updated in any widgets—and vice versa. This has been fixed.
After an extended period of no use, pressing play from widgets 
wouldn’t start the last song; this has been fixed.

Offline Song Fixes
Now stops and starts when needed which saves battery.
It prevents the phone from sleeping while any downloads are queued or active—so they won’t fail.
Songs being downloaded to Offline Songs during a connectivity transition (e.g. 3g to wifi) will seamlessly download the song.

Sounds like they’ve been quite the busy studio. Scan or touch (on your Android browser) the QR code below to get started, or just search “Grooveshark” in the Android market.

Samsung’s been working around the clock trying to get the upgrade to Android 2.2 ready for their flagship line – the Samsung Galaxy S series of phones – and it looks like a release may be impending. Today, they’ve released the source code for the Samsung Galaxy S GT-i9000 (also known as the international Galaxy S.) This doesn’t mean an update is right around the corner – especially for those of us here in the states – but it does mean we’re damn close. I imagine the source for all of the other versions of the phone won’t be too far behind as they’re as similar as similar can be. We’re sure XDA and SDX folks have already gotten their hands on this so if you’re the rooting and ROM flashing type of user, then I’d keep close eye on those scenes from here on out.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Keep your eyes wide open for some hot Android 3.0-related info coming next week, maybe screenshots, maybe some details about the platform’s features, as the operating system’s SDK will debut in a couple of days or so. Rumor has it that the Gingerbread SDK will drop next week, but some say the version number might as well be a mere upgrade from Froyo – Android 2.5.

Access to the latest Android SDK means we’ll find out interesting stuff like the new API calls showing the OS features and see an emulator in action for details concerning the looks of the stock Android 3.0. Since Froyo was announced on May 20th of this year and Android has a rollout cycle of 6 months, we’re getting pretty close to its release.

However, the rollout could take a while, since not all handset makers will be ready at once, so the updates could drag into 2011. The arrival of Android 3.0 means that a bunch of tablets will also pop up, since there are some nifty devices that big companies have been holding back, waiting for Gingerbread to launch.

Turns out TweetDeck’s recent statistics were teasing more than just a few unreleased devices and the Gingerbread update to Android. The full app is now available free-of-charge in the Android Market for all to download, enjoy, and tweet away. The release appears to be for the most part the same as the most recent beta release of the app, which, by the way, you will want to uninstall before downloading the final release from the market. The new version won’t overwrite the beta and you will be dealing with the confusion of two identical applications. Grab it with the QR below.

[via DroidLife]

It appears some T-Mobile G2 users have been getting an OTA update recently, but it might be a limited test, not the final software. No direct link to the OTA download was found so far and screenshots from the already updated devices show features like native tethering and WiFi calling. Pictures are available courtesy of Stryf3.

Also, for those who already rooted their devices, the expert folks of the g2root IRC channel advise against performing the OTA update right now. Some commenters on Android Police have claimed that T-Mobile’s implementation is not UMA, as it doesn’t transfer the calls between WiFi and T-Mobile towers.

Android 2.2 (v2.25.771.1) will begin its push to HTC Desire handsets on the UK carrier Three tomorrow, October 14th, according to the mobile provider. They are so ready to push the update that they have its launch pinned down to an exact hour (now that’s something you don’t see everyday). That time would be 9AM when you can begin to feverishly refresh your “System Updates” menu item until Froyo descends from the Android heavens unto your Desire.

[via AndroidCommunity]

The recently leaked Android 2.2 ROM for the Dell Streak has to mean the official update is coming soon right? Well if you haven’t installed it already, Froyo isn’t too far off though Dell won’t commit to anything other than their “before the end of the year” stance. The timeframe was reconfirmed, but users are promised the update will come “much sooner” than December 31st.

In fact, due to the additional resources necessary to get Froyo ready for its push to the Streak, Dell is calling off any future Android 2.1 updates and ceasing to push the update to users who have yet to receive it. That’s a bummer, especially if Android 2.2 manages to get delayed. However, it’s a small price to pay if it means we will see Froyo that much sooner.

[via StreakSmart]

Evernote is continuing development on their note-synching and productivity app, and they’ve recently announced that the latest version – 2.0 – is in beta. The best thing about this announcement is that you can go and grab it from their site right now to try it out for yourself. They warn that – because this is beta software  - you’re at risk of losing any notes you take with this app. I wouldn’t bet on that happening, but a warning is a warning. So just what can you expect upon installing that .apk file? Glad you asked.

Take a nice look at this long laundry list of changes before heading over there to get your fix. (Remember that the file does not automatically update when Evernote releases a new version. You’ll need to make your way back to this page to download any future updates.) [via AC]

What’s new in Evernote 2 Beta
The Evernote 2 Beta is an almost total rewrite of Evernote for Android, here’s an overview:

Great new user interface
You’ll immediately notice our new, more intuitive home screen, which allows you to make notes, gives you a great snapshot of the things you have in your account and shows synchronization status.

Easier sorting and browsing
We made browsing notes, tags and notebooks much easier. You can group your notes by notebook, location, or month and use the scroller to switch between sections. Note sorting happens lickity-split and even works offline. You can also press and hold on any of the notes in a note list to quickly access options like edit, delete, note info, email or tagging.

You’ll noticed that we’ve changed the interface, adding a convenient header bar to make it easy to switch among searches, notes, tags, and notebooks.

Dramatically faster
Evernote 2 Beta dramatically improves browsing, viewing and searching through notes by downloading all data about your notes, such as tags, notebook names, saved searches, note titles, and thumbnails when you first launch the app. It will also do this periodically in the background to make sure you’re always up-to-date (only available on Android).

In addition, whenever a note is viewed or created on the device, it will be stored offline for easy access even when there is no network connectivity. This feature is available for both free and premium users.

The initial sync may take some time, so we recommend connecting your phone to a power source and turning on WIFI.

Offline notebooks for Premium users
Premium users get even more. If you have an Evernote Premium account, then you will be able to specify the notebooks that you want to be saved for offline viewing. Evernote will then download all the notes contained in those notebooks, including any attached images and files, and saves them all onto your device’s SD card.

Simpler note creation and multiple attachments
Creating new notes is now much more powerful, allowing you to attach as many images, PDFs or audio files as you’d like. In the new note and note editing screens, use the buttons in the header to add a picture, assign tags, switch notebooks, or pull in data from other application or your local files. We still have the quick snapshot note.

Sharing from other apps
You can capture information in other apps on your Android and send them to Evernote using the sharing option. We’ll grab the info and turn it into a note.

When viewing a note, you’ll see a little tab at the bottom of the screen. Flip this open and you can see all the notes in your current search. Scroll back and forth through the thumbnails to quickly switch between the notes. Also, you can tap the note title to see more note details.

Work in progress
There’s a few things we haven’t finished yet or aren’t working perfectly.

We’re still working out the kinks with sync, it’s a little early to rely on it offline for critical information. The initial sync takes a while.
Highlighting search results isn’t fully implemented
Editing notes is still in the early stage of implementation
Play back and recording of audio now requires a 3rd party application
Note tag dialog does not yet auto-complete tag names
Upgrading from 1.5 to 2.0 Beta a little rough so you may need to uninstall Evernote 1.5 before installing 2.0 Beta
We still have some polish to add to the UI