So it seems that there are a few that still want to know how to upgrade their Droid X to 2.2.  We’ve all seen the Motorola post attempting to discourage people from using the leaked version of 2.2. … No one cares.  There is always a way to upgrade … Sanctioned or not.

If you can’t wait for Motorola to drop the official 2.2 update (they’ve been wrong about update releases before) and you understand the risk you are taking … then proceed with the following:

** Not responsible if you break/brick your device or if your dog gets diarrhea**

• Download the gift that was released from mydroidworld.com here
• Copy the update.zip file to the root of your sdcard and shut down your Droidx.
• Restart your Droidx in the recovery console … Power+Home until you see the moto logo.
• Once in recovery, press your search button to bring up the recovery options.  Use volume to navigate the menu and the camera to confirm a selection.
• Select apply update.zip and have fun … the update.zip already has flash 10.1 included.

Oh boy!  Looks like Skype was updated recently to allow calls over WiFi.  Oh the joy!  The innovation!  The convenience!  The … wait wut?  This had the potential to be huge.  <Sigh>, now for the fail detail.

You still need to have a cellular signal just to login to Skype.  If you are in the basement of a 16 story building that doesn’t get reception, this update probably doesn’t do you any good … Even if you “has the WiFis” down there.  It still needs a cell signal to authenticate who your carrier is and your phone number.  You might be able to get away with running outside to authenticate then run back into the building … might … but I doubt it.

Second fail I noticed.  Even though you are calling through “the WiFis”, It’s still counted against your regular minutes according to your plan.  That awards the new and improved Skype android app for Verizon a “Double Failbow” in my book.  Full on double failbow all the way.

Source: androidcentral.com

Quick blog post for those that follow.  Just saw a series of tweets from @ChrisSoyars indicating to check RomManager.  I’ve been a rabid fan of the nightly builds and two thing that I’ve been waiting for was compcache and apps2ext … Quickly looking over the features of CM6, I don’t see either of those in this build.  More than likely it will be in future releases.  The absence if compcache and apps2ext is by far not a deal breaker.  I love CyanogenMod and all the small tweaks they do to the OS as a whole.  Tried the stock droid FRG22D build and could only take it for a day.  I quickly developed a spastic neck twitch missing my CM6.  For a list of features, check their changelog here

Source: @ChrisSoyars

So I had a co-worker that got an EVO 4G.  Unfortunately he was still in a contract with the android hating carrier known as AT&T.  He wanted to see what he was missing all the while taking advantage of the 30 day return policy.  First thing he does once we get back to the office from the lunch time purchase was hand me the phone to root.  All I could offer at the time was wireless tether but I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to hack away at another phone that I never touched before.  It was easy enough to root … Many have done so with the reflash app created by the awesome devs at unrevoked.com … If you’ve been to the site to download, you can see what 5 phones this rooting application applies to.

Needless to say, I had to unroot and bring his phone back to stock.  Understandably, he couldn’t keep up with 3 lines on AT&T and his own line on Sprint.  Searched as I may, I could not find a quick writeup on how to truly unroot (recovery partition and all) and bring back to stock.  This is what drove me to write one up myself.  If all you’ve done is ran the reflash app to gain root and change the recovery … then proceed with the following:

• Download the latest reflash untility from unrevoked.com
• Download the stock EVO recovery.img … The one I’m providing was extracted from the Supersonic_1.32.651.1_Radio_1.39.00.04.26_release_171253 RUU.
• Boot your phone into the recovery console and connect it to your computer.
• Mount the system partition
• adb shell
• rm /system/bin/su
• rm /system/app/Superuser.apk
• unmount the system partition, unplug your phone and reboot your phone back into the full OS.

• Start the reflash utility but make sure your phone is not plugged in.  It should give a status that its waiting for your device to be plugged in.
• Click on File and Custom Recovery.  Point it to the recovery.img file that I liked earlier.
• The bottom of the window should change from Clockwork Recovery to Custom.
• Now plug your phone in and let reflash do its magic.  Once its completed, congrats.

You will still need to manually uninstall your applications that take advantage of root like wifi tether or root explorer.

Here’s a fabulous app that I stumbled upon while sitting in California traffic this afternoon.  I play games … MMO’s, FPS’s, RTS’s … everything.  I’ve wondered if there was a ventrilo application for android phones.  So many times I wanted to listen in on how a raid was going or how someones 2v2′s were hashing out … Wanting to hear the guild douche scream that theres an aimbot on the server or just chatting with friends.

Well my friends we have such an app and its called Mangler.  Its surfaced back around when the moto droid launched and its still in its alpha release.  In my honest opinion, its a solid working beta to me.  The only issues I’ve seen is that I had a force close once after configuring to connect to my vent server … But after relaunching, it went right in.  Another issue is that it doesn’t like being navigated away from.  It will FC if you go to another app with it running.  It works in standby as you can put it an and bring it back out of standby w/o issues.  Other than that, it works great for my froyo’d moto droid running BB v0.4.

direct download

Source: Mangler.org

This is going to be just a quick screenshot review of our beloved SetCPU.  Looks the the dev of SetCPU finally got around to responding to the beta requests  he asked for  No worries.  As I was getting this post ready he already sent out a beta2 update.  Wowzers.  He’s working fast.  Since this is a paid app that everyone should gladly pay for, I cannot post the link or apk.  This isn’t a warez blog.

For the most part, in his email, the major change will be the UI.  You can see it looks a great deal better from the screenies below.  My main concern was will it work with my droid running a froyo rom (Kanerade v1.1) with a 32 kernel … yes my friends … It does. =D

So a few of my friends that have froyo loaded on their phones are having issues with updating their google maps app through the android market.  It fails to install the update and it looks like the market doesn’t even register that its installed … But the old version still works.

Here’s what you do.  All of my friends already have the android SDK installed on their computers so I assume you do to.  Plug your droid into your computer.  Do not mount the SDcard.  Make sure debugging is enabled and run these commands:

adb shell

su

mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 dev/block/mtdblock4 system

busybox rm system/app/Maps.apk

cd system/bin

sh pm uninstall com.google.android.apps.maps

cd ..

cd ..

mount -o ro,remount -t yaffs2 dev/block/mtdblock4 system

sync

After you do all this, you will be able to go back into the android market and install that google maps update with no problems.

Source: Droid-Life

Just passing some information on for the few that actually watch my blog.  I’ve been following the cyanogenmod team on twitter and it looks like they are working like beasts on building froyo loads for the major phones out right now.  Nexus One, G1, Moto Droid and the Incredible … Oh my!  Thank goodness I posted a “HowTo” on loading clockwork recovery for the Incredible.

Looks like they might have a Moto Droid test build out this weekend too!  I’ll be watching my nightlies in Rom Manager =D

The folks at unrevoked.com have done it again.  They promised and delivered on figuring out the nand to flash your own recovery on the recovery partition.  They’ve created a desktop app called “Painless Reflash” and it installs clockworkmod recovery v2.0.1.0 for you.  They even made 3 versions for Windows, Linux and Mac users.  For the most part, it is very painless and completely automated.  In order for this to work, you need to have already rooted your phone.  This app does not root your phone for you.  The steps I’m going to provide have worked for me and I only had one phone to do this on.

1. Stop any ADB process.  You can do this by using the “adb kill-server” command.
2. Uninstall the HTC Sync applicaiton.  This will cause the reflash process to hang.
3. You should already have the appropriate drivers installed from rooting.  If not, then follow this thread to root your incredible.
4. Download the Painless reflash app from unrevoked’s website.  There are 3 versions so choose the one that applies to you. (windows for me)
5. Install the app.  Personally I just created a folder on my desktop called “unrevoked” and chose it at the “choose destination folder” prompt.
6. Plug your phone in and make sure USB Debugging is enabled.
7. Run the “reflash.exe” file in the destination folder you chose earlier and wait for about 5 minutes.  The phone will boot, reboot and boot some more.  But it should not take longer than 5 minutes.  Once completed, you should be looking at the ClockworkMod Recovery v2.0.1.0 screen.

If your phone is stuck at any point longer than 5 minutes then it needs to be done again.  Check steps 1, 2 and 3.  You can also now download Rom Manager from the android market and update the recovery to the latest with no problems!

Quick entry.  Looks like cyanogen and koush noticed that froyo’s source has hit the Android Open Source Project site.  I personally cant wait to see what cyanogen and koush can implement from source in their roms.