Android!

[Amarr HM]

Cool I found it, thanks, was in security settings never even heard of it til now. Shame it doesn't replace the slider but still cool.

[Pennilenko]

My aging samsung galaxy S has always had pattern unlock.

[Quinton]

Ice Cream Sandwich Source now Available.  Enjoy!

Instructions for the curious:

Follow the instructions at http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html

Check out the 'ics-release' branch:
repo init -u https://android.googlesource.com/platform/manifest -b android-4.0.1_r1

That's it!

The following details are reposted from JBQ's announcement here: http://groups.google.com/group/android-building/browse_thread/thread/cb467ea7026679e2

You can go ahead and sync ICS from AOSP.
I strongly recommend syncing new clients: our implementation of git and repo can deal with those better, so you're likely to sync a new client faster than an incremental one.

The branches that you care about:
-android-4.0.1_r1 is the release branch, ITL41D, that is expected to ship on Galaxy Nexus. That's the one you want to be using to port to devices.
-ics-mr0 is the ICS development branch. It contains a few changes that aren't in the release branch, so it might not be as stable. That's the one you want to use if you plan to contribute to CTS.
-master is the usual master branch, it contains all of ics-mr0 plus a few extra changes. That's the branch that you should use if you want to contribute to the platform.

A few notes:
-All the external contributions that had been accepted in AOSP before the servers went down have been merged into ICS.
-The release and development branch require the "classic" host configurations (Ubuntu 10.04, or MacOS 10.6 with XCode 3). The master branch had a few tweaks to make it work better on newer systems (Ubuntu 11.10, Mac OS 10.7 with XCode 4.2) but it's not 100% there yet.
-In addition to the usual emulator targets and Galaxy Nexus (a.k.a. maguro), the master branch works experimentally on PandaBoard too (a.k.a. panda).
-Proprietary binaries for 4.0.1 will be available in the next few hours from their usual location
http://code.google.com/android/nexus/drivers.html

JBQ

[rattran]

Hooray! Now I can wait for the usual suspects to get me a ics rom months before LG gets around to it.

[01101010]

I figure CM9 will be out after the new year...  good way to start 2012.

[Yegolev]

That's great.  Waiting for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus now.  No time to fiddle around with ROMs.

Is the memory actually read-only?

[MuffinMan]

Still waiting for Gingerbread on my Samsung Epic.

[Count Nerfedalot]

My stock Verizon HTC Incredible finally updated to 2.3 this morning.  I don't think it ever had 2.2, but I could be wrong.  Things are slightly faster today anyway.  Stupid browser now forgets what orientation it was in when I locked the phone and ALWAYS opens in vertical mode when I unlock it now, no matter how I hold the phone. It did NOT used to do that and is an asinine regression in user friendliness.  Are all software developers idiots?  I'm a software developer and I don't think I'm an idiot but it's really hard to find software these days that doesn't have some really idiotic features/behaviors, and I worry about my own work now.  At least I'm not responsible for UI design anymore, but I pull my few remaining hairs out and have to forcibly prevent myself from throwing things pretty much every time I encounter a new (or revised) piece of software.

[TripleDES]

If you want the Galaxy Nexus "early" in the UK, that is on launch day, you'll have to get it from a carrier with a contract. Apparently this was neglected on the presentation. Anyone who wants it SIM-free has to wait longer.

[fuser]

Ice Cream Sandwich Source now Available.  Enjoy!

Fantastic!

Traded in my work phone iPhone 3g for an HTC EVO 3D, hopefully it will have an ICS build or custom ROM soon. I'm really surprised the battery life is much better then expected for a 1GB RAM/dual core. Last charge lasted 1d 16hr on the usage meter with 44% of battery usage of cell calls. Plus the notification led is icing on the cake.

[Quinton]

It's nice, after slogging through the insanity of shipping, to get the occasional really really enthusiastic review of a product you worked on:

http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/17/2568348/galaxy-nexus-review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeZ8sfJjoRI

[KallDrexx]

From here

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc may launch its own smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2012, Citigroup said, citing its supply-chain channel checks in Asia.

Putting this here since this will most likely be an Android phone (unless the rumors of Amazon bidding for WebOS turn out to be true, though I doubt it)

[Yegolev]

It's nice, after slogging through the insanity of shipping, to get the occasional really really enthusiastic review of a product you worked one:

http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/17/2568348/galaxy-nexus-review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeZ8sfJjoRI

WHEEEEEENNNNNNN?

[Quinton]

From here

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc may launch its own smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2012, Citigroup said, citing its supply-chain channel checks in Asia.

Putting this here since this will most likely be an Android phone (unless the rumors of Amazon bidding for WebOS turn out to be true, though I doubt it)

It would not surprise me if Amazon did their own phones.  It would surprise me if they bought WebOS given that they already are heavily invested in Android both for standalone apps that can run on well over 100M devices in the field and are building their own Android based tablets.

I think there's less value for Amazon in building phones in that the carriers are an annoying barrier to entry.  They have a lot more control with their tablets that they can sell direct and be fully functional without needing to interact with third parties.

[Ingmar]

What I want to know is, at what point will the Droid 4 get ICS (it is apparently going to ship with 2.3.5).

[01101010]

What I want to know is, at what point will the Droid 4 get ICS (it is apparently going to ship with 2.3.5).

My guess would be a long time from now if you are waiting for the OTA. Grabbing a custom ROM with ICS? January at the latest if the dev team for your phone were as rabid as they are for my INC2. CM9 will probably be doing nightlies by February. The devs for my phone have had a functional boot of ICS for a week now, but of course, nothing really works quite right and there is no stable kernal for it yet. But getting a functional boot before official Android release is insane. Makes me wish I had the know-how to help them. Now that the source is released, I'd say there should be a custom ICS ROM for some Android phone by Xmas...others by Jan. Stable? March maybe?

[Quinton]

Things that are OMAP4 based (like Galaxy Nexus) and Tegra2 (like Xoom) and S5PC11X (like Nexus S) will likely see a stable ICS build the fastest, given that those are the hardware platforms we actively develop against internally right now.  Of course sufficiently dedicated teams with the right talent may move faster even against less-well-supported SoCs.

It's nice to see the source out there again and the insanity spinning back up.  Love watching people take the open releases and do crazy things with them.

[Amarr HM]

My aging samsung galaxy S has always had pattern unlock.

Yeh it's there alright! After a week using and no in the pocket mishaps, you guys  

Android phones should just ditch the slider for pattern unlock and then tell Apple to suck a fat Android cock.

[Yegolev]

I used to have a curved slider.

[fuser]

It's great to have the source out, unofficial firmware updates are coming out for devices now (ics linky).

Notification LED on the Galaxy Nexus

[Count Nerfedalot]

Things that are OMAP4 based (like Galaxy Nexus) and Tegra2 (like Xoom) and S5PC11X (like Nexus S) will likely see a stable ICS build the fastest, given that those are the hardware platforms we actively develop against internally right now.  Of course sufficiently dedicated teams with the right talent may move faster even against less-well-supported SoCs.

It's nice to see the source out there again and the insanity spinning back up.  Love watching people take the open releases and do crazy things with them.

sadly, Verizion != "dedicated team" when it comes to upgrading phones already in the hands of consumers.  I just got Gingerbread (2.3.4) on my Incredible this week.

[01101010]

Things that are OMAP4 based (like Galaxy Nexus) and Tegra2 (like Xoom) and S5PC11X (like Nexus S) will likely see a stable ICS build the fastest, given that those are the hardware platforms we actively develop against internally right now.  Of course sufficiently dedicated teams with the right talent may move faster even against less-well-supported SoCs.

It's nice to see the source out there again and the insanity spinning back up.  Love watching people take the open releases and do crazy things with them.

sadly, Verizion != "dedicated team" when it comes to upgrading phones already in the hands of consumers.  I just got Gingerbread (2.3.4) on my Incredible this week.

Could be worse.... http://www.htc.com/us/products/thunderbolt-verizon#tech-specs lolz...

[BoatApe]

I just got Gingerbread (2.3.4) on my Incredible this week.

Same here. And I'm not one that expects to notice incremental changes, but my phone is zippier in nearly every way.

Now if I can just find a decent replacement for the idiotic flippy-number clock...

[MuffinMan]

Supposedly I'm getting Gingerbread but it's past the date where they said it was going to be rolled out to everyone and when I try to manually update from the sd card it fails.

[MahrinSkel]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to get the new Nook tablet.  Being able to slap an SD card into it and boot it to generic Android if I don't like what B&N does makes it worth the $50 margin over the Kindle Fire.  Better screen, same processor, SD slot, for the "bargain" tablets it seems like the clear winner.

--Dave

[TripleDES]

Hey, Quinton, you better be lobbying for the next Nexus phone being a not-Samsung. Because they apparently can't design phones for shit. The GSM version of Galaxy Nexus goes fucking bananas with the volume when on the GSM900 band. If your coverage isn't good enough anymore, the higher outgoing signal strength apparently causes so much interference, that the GPIO chip where the buttons are connected to (or rather the traces) picks it up and sends a flurry of interrupts causing the OS to think that some idiot is hammering on the buttons like crazy.

[Quinton]

I'm out of the office for the holidays this week, but I expect the team is chasing that down and getting it fixed -- can't wait to hear what the hell went wrong that this wasn't caught in European field trial.  Grr.

[Yegolev]

I see that wireless.amazon.com will sell me a fancy new phone for one penny with a new contract.  Any reason I cannot cancel my current account and create a new one via Amazon?  Seems too obvious and I'm both cynical and paranoid.

[CaptainNapkin]

My old iPhone 3GS has been running like a pig and the 4's don't excite me. Since my wife has been happy with her Incredible, I had them order me a Rezound. They say it will support Ice Cream Sandwich (oy the names of these versions) native in the future, which is nice because I don't like to bother tinkering with phones. Held one in the store and it felt good, screen is beautiful. I've screwed around evaluating various Android tablets at work but never used droid phones as my primary. I'm curious to hear if the better audio makes any difference pumped via bluetooth in the truck but suspect the included headphones will need to be used for the biggest quality gain.

Anyone have or used one of these yet?

[KallDrexx]

I see that wireless.amazon.com will sell me a fancy new phone for one penny with a new contract.  Any reason I cannot cancel my current account and create a new one via Amazon?  Seems too obvious and I'm both cynical and paranoid.

You have to pay an early termination fee to cancel a contract, and some carriers won't resign you to a new contract until you were supposed to be up for renewal anyway unless you change your number.

[TripleDES]

I'm out of the office for the holidays this week, but I expect the team is chasing that down and getting it fixed -- can't wait to hear what the hell went wrong that this wasn't caught in European field trial.  Grr.

So now it is being said that the volume buttons aren't properly debounced, confirmed by one of your coworkers. Is that done in hardware (e.g. in the GPIO chip that's mentioned in the log files) or in software?

[Quinton]

I'd need to look at the schematics and see how everything's set up in this case (or bug somebody working on the issue), but in general it's a mix.  Modern GPIO controllers sometimes provide some amount of noise immunity, depending on configuration.  If the measures available in hardware are insufficient, you make up for it in software, generally by starting a timer when you first receive an interrupt and then when the timer expires (in a couple milliseconds) seeing if the line is still asserted.  The fix is likely a combination of either adjusting the configuration of the hardware block (writing different values to the registers) or adding or enabling software debouncing.

It's unlikely that there's a separate external GPIO chip involved -- we're probably talking about the OMAP4460's integrated GPIO controller here.  Some designs use external IO expanders (typically controlled via I2C), but I'm pretty sure that this one does not.

[TripleDES]

Well, my phone arrived today after all, despite the retailer telling me it was delayed in a support ticket. Nice device. Altho I can still see the Pentile on bright surfaces. Spent fucking 2/3rd of my time awake in my life in front of CRTs and TFTs, and I still have eagle eyes! Well, it looks cool on pictures and subpixel rendering of text actually works here and doesn't do visible fringing, unlike on the Nexus One, so it's fine.

I have to barely deal with low signal GSM900, but please fix it anyway? 

[Quinton]

Yeah, I was *really* skeptical of doing a pentile display again.  I hated it on Nexus One, was annoyed by it on Nexus S, but on Galaxy Nexus the screen is so dense it's pretty hard to notice unless I'm paying a lot of attention and looking really closely.

The no-emission blacks really sell me on it though -- the way the edges of the screen (particularly the bottom when the system bar is showing the BACK/HOME/RECENT icons) just blends into the bezel is wonderful.  And video and game content looks fantastic.

[Draegan]

http://youtu.be/X4VHzNEWIqA

This commercial is lulzy.