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May 23, 2012 By: FallenWriter
One of the most common questions here at XDA over the past several months has been, “When will my HTC device receive Ice Cream Sandwich?” Now, thanks to a tip from XDA Senior Member neoofoox we have our answer.
Although we previously mentioned the devices confirmed to get ICS from HTC’s blog back in March, it was only recently that HTC finally confirmed their timeline for this year’s releases. According to HTC:
What is the overall timeline of Android 4.0 updates?
The majority of devices will receive upgrades in June and July 2012 and we expect to finish upgrades in August 2012 for all announced devices.
When will my device get the Android 4.0 upgrade?
The target timeline for announced devices is below. Because of partner and network testing, and approval processes for device updates, it can take up to 45 days for all carriers and countries to get the update after a rollout has begun.
Device
Schedule
DROID Incredible 2 by HTC To be determined (by the end of August) HTC Amaze 4G May-June HTC Desire S June-July HTC Desire HD July-August HTC EVO 3D June-July HTC EVO 4G+ May-June HTC EVO Design 4G June-July HTC Incredible S June-July HTC Sensation March-June HTC Sensation 4G March-June HTC Sensation XE March-June HTC Sensation XL April-Jun HTC Rezound June-July HTC Rhyme June-July HTC Thunderbolt July-August HTC Velocity 4G March-June HTC Vivid March-June
Please note these dates are targets and may shift due to testing and approvals.
For a detailed look at when your specific device will be getting a taste of frosty Android goodness and several other questions answered, head on over the official page and salivate over your upcoming good fortune.
May 12, 2012 By: PoorCollegeGuy
For owners of many HTC device such as the HTC Amaze 4G, EVO 3D, MyTouch 4G Slide, Sensation, and the Vivid/Raider/Velocity, this has been a long time coming. A fully functional method to restore a device from a full brick is a pretty big deal. This then gives users more confidence when performing potentially risky tasks such as HBoot updates, ROM flashes, or turning S On.
XDA Senior Member dexter93, along with a host of other developers, has finally released this project after several months of beta testing and waiting. This is great news for many HTC users who have bricked devices under certain circumstances, and is much better news for users who unintentionally—or even intentionally—brick theirs in the future.
The method is pretty complicated and requires a number of things on the user side. The method also requires the use of a Linux-based computer and the most up to date RUU for your device. Finally, the most important thing, according to dexter93 is as folllows:
a device bricked by writing security flag 3 with an unsigned hboot, or caused by a damaged hboot via interrupted OTA update/RUU flash on a S-ON device
In other words, this will not work for all kinds of bricks. Rather it will only work for devices bricked by setting S On with an unsigned HBoot or if your HBoot was somehow damaged. While this unfortunately doesn’t help those who may have bricked their devices through other means, it will undoubtedly help many previously helpless users. It should be mentioned, though, that dexter93 and crew are looking to find way to fix other bricks as well.
For all of the information—and there’s quite a bit—as well as download links, screen shots, the full instructions, and discussion, head on over to the appropriate thread to get unbricked:
May 9, 2012 By: PoorCollegeGuy
Not long ago, we brought you a write up for a HTC Sensation camera mod that took the Sensation camera and improved it in almost every conceivable way. It was easy to install, easy to revert from if there were problems, and it just made using the camera a better experience for everyone. Well, there’s good news for HTC Vivid users. They can now install the same mod and make their cameras just as awesome.
XDA Senior Member zacgoesrawr has brought the camera app to the HTC Vivid in what looks to be a pretty complete port, which should bring all of the awesome without any problems. The mod comes in the same flashable update.zip format as the original. There are two available versions for users to choose from. One is for a specific ROM—namely the Inquisition ROM—and then a second should be compatible with all Sense 3.6 ROMs. For those who don’t remember, here’s a few of the key features of the mod itself:
Uncapped JPEG File size. Great photo quality.
Uncapped Video, recording 40MBPS.
Beta ISO 1250
Further increases in quality from before.
While smartphone cameras won’t replace a good Digital SLR, they’re “good enough” for most typical users who only need to take a quick snapshots. And since most of the time, lugging around a large camera is impractical, any modification to make your phone’s camera better benefits everyone.
For additional information, downloads and more, hit up the modification thread.
May 9, 2012 By: PoorCollegeGuy
Tool kits are often one of the most useful things a user will ever download. They usually let users efficiently perform a variety of tasks including acquiring root, installing a custom recovery, and flashing various development work ranging from ROMs to kernels. In other words, it lowers the entry cost for new users, and allows even the more experienced users to enjoy easy flashing.
Now, thanks to XDA Recognized Developer hasoon2000, there are a variety of tool kits for many HTC devices. Currently supported devices include the HTC myTouch 4G Slide, HTC One S, HTC One X, HTC Amaze 4G, HTC Rezound, and the HTC Vivid.
For some users, this tool kit is not exactly a new experience. This is the tool was recently used in the post-update root tutorial for the HTC Sensation. However, it’s worth mentioning all of the great things this tool does for devices. In the case of the One X, the features include:
- Get Token ID
- Unlock Bootloader (Must place Unlock_code.bin in the folder)
- Install Recoveries
Interim Custom CWM
DoomRecovery Custom CWM
CWM 5.8.0.9 (Touch)
Stock
-Flash Kernels provided
Stock
- Link to this thread (Android-Dev / XDA)
- Link to PM me if you need a phone unlocked (Android-Dev / XDA)
- Link to the One X Development thread (Android-Dev / XDA)
- Boot Into Recovery
- Boot into Bootloader
- Relock Bootloader (must be in fastboot)
- APK Batch Installer (Credits to hamsteyr)
- Donate to me (Hasoon2000) -> Donating to yours truly for putting time into this!
In terms of tool kits, this does pretty much everything you’d expect, plus a whole bunch of other stuff as well, such as linking back to the device’s respective XDA-Developers forum. Users looking to get in on the tool kit action should proceed to their appropriate thread:
May 9, 2012 By: pstevep
With Ice Cream Sandwich quickly spreading across Android devices like wildfire right now, new drivers for the Adreno 220 GPU found in the Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 have surfaced. These drivers can potentially lead to improved 2D UI rendering performance in ICS and, of course, increased benchmark scores.
XDA Senior Member gjcamp has produced recovery-flashable update.zip files that work across multiple devices with this hardware. Every phone running the Adreno 220 from the HTC Evo 3D to a couple variants of the Samsung Galaxy S2 may be able to benefit from these drivers, and there are currently seven different devices for which gjcamp has created threads. In his words:
…I have seen dramatically improved result on my Quadrant 3D scores with “Force 2D GPU rendering” UNCHECKED in the Setting->Develop Options Menu of this ICS Release. With this option checked I have seen improvements on both 2D and 3D. Although results are slightly degraded for 3D from post update the 2D results have doubled in value.
I can confirm this myself on my own Evo 3D that Quadrant scores were improved with these new drivers. Similarly, the 2D UI rendering does seem to be smoother, but this is always hard to measure objectively. As anyone who flashes bleeding edge tech to their phone knows, there could be side effects.
You can get started by visiting the threads in their respective sections listed below:
Even if your device isn’t explicitly, the drivers may potentially work on your device, provided that you’re running an Adreno 220 GPU and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. However, if your phone’s not on the list, be extra careful and be sure to have a working backup to revert to.
April 23, 2012 By: egzthunder1
HTC’s locking of the bootloaders during last year was nothing short of a spectacular feat. It was really a battle of the titans, where the original line-up of Sensation-like devices came with a locked bootloader, which was later unlocked and S-OFFed, only to be updated to yet another revision of the HBOOT. But the second time around, it was locked to an almost unlockable state. Having heard many complaints from the user base (and us), HTC decided to offer the olive branch and simply gave up on locking the HBOOT. In fact, they themselves provided a way to unlock this and allow the flashing of custom code on the devices (of course, your warranty flew out the window if you did). Several giants came along such as Revolutionary, but now the next step in the evolution of S-OFF has arrived, and its name is Juopunutbear, and it has been delivered by XDA Forum Members Fuses and globatron.
Details on the unlock process are somewhat scarce (and quite frankly, that is indeed a good thing), but it seems to be that the devs found some sort of exploit common on most dev unlocked devices. The process seems to include what the devs have called a “wire trick”, which according to the pictures involves placing the device in download mode by touching a contact in the device’s board with one end of a wire (accessible without having to take it apart) and the other end of the wire to the device’s sd card slot metal casing. Everything else is done by the software, but your timing in doing everything must the right or else it will not work. Also, since the devices are somewhat different from each other, the devs have added a set of instructions, with video demonstrations, for each one of them.
The program has been extensively beta tested by a closed yet somewhat large group of people. However, as it is customary, the devs do state that the process is not perfect and that there is the likelihood that the devices could be bricked in the process. Having said that, proceed with extreme care and ensure that the device that you are going to S-OFF is in fact the one for which you are following instructions on.
The main unlock webpage can be found here. However, there are threads in each individual device section, such as this one for the Amaze 4G.
Want something published in the Portal? Contact any News Writer.
April 10, 2012 By: Will Verduzco
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: touch-based recoveries are the future. Aside from giving end users easier access to device firmware modification, they add a much needed element of polish to the Android hacking experience. While some may say that these upgrade recoveries take away from the feelings of thrill and excitement, I argue that they offer a more efficient interface and enable some truly unique new features not available in the recoveries of yesteryear.
In a rather large update to what is arguably the most popular touch-based recovery around, XDA Recognized Developer Dees_Troy presents to us Team Win Recovery Project (TWRP, for short) version 2.1. Aside from simply bringing a friendly UI, TWRP 2.1 packs a healthy feature punch by offering zip queuing, a basic file manager, and dual storage support for backups.
TWRP supports scripting via a new scripting engine called OpenRecoveryScript for use with GooManager. With ORS, users can install multiple update.zip files from within Android, wipe cache & dalvik, and run a backup. Furthermore, in the name of openness, Team Win has submitted ORS as a commit to ClockworkMod.
In the words of the developer:
Team Win Recovery Project 2.0, or twrp2 for short, is a custom recovery built with ease of use and customization in mind. We started from the ground up by taking AOSP recovery and loading it with the standard recovery options, then added a lot of our own features. It’s a fully touch driven user interface – no more volume rocker or power buttons to mash. The GUI is also fully XML driven and completely theme-able. You can change just about every aspect of the look and feel.
New features for version 2 of the recovery software:
Zip queuing as seen in TWRP 1.1.x is back
Dual storage capable (backup, restore, and install zips from internal or external storage – you choose)
Slider control (swipe to confirm most actions aka swipe to wipe)
Lockscreen (with slider to unlock)
Basic file manager (copy, move, delete, and chmod any file)
Added support for devices with /data/media (most Honeycomb tablets, new ICS devices like Galaxy Nexus)
Displays sizes of each partition in the backup menu
Added listbox GUI element (currently used for listing time zones)
Updated stock XML layouts to be more consistent and easier to port to different resolutions
XML layout files are significantly smaller
Partitions available backup are more accurate for some devices
Removed unneeded error messages (/misc errors, unable to stat sd-ext, etc.)
Fixed a bug with blkid detection code
Fixed bug where a blank line was inserted between every line of text during zip installs
Fixed a bug during zip installs where an invalid zip would cause TWRP to get stuck in the zip install
Added setting for themers to toggle simulation mode to make theming easier
New devices added – Galaxy Nexus GSM & CDMA (preview only, manual install), Acer Iconia Tab A500, HTC Vivid, Motorola Defy
Added support for .jpg images in the theme engine
Changed images for stock tablet theme – makes tablet builds about 500KB smaller
Removed unneeded non-GUI images from GUI – makes all builds about 100KB smaller
If you’re itching to get started, please visit the development threads listed below. If instead you are looking to theme the recovery, visit their theming guide.
March 20, 2012 By: Ian Stacy
HTC has always had a good relationship with its users, by industry standards. They’ve made several game-changing decisions in the past year, including unlocking device bootloaders and confirming Ice Cream Sandwich support for a wide range of handsets, including some that were lower range than most competitors bothered to support. Now, continuing in an effort to improve that relationship, HTC is challenging the idea that the company is slow to deliver source code for its devs and fans!
HTC ‘s relationship with the community definitely grew tighter this past weekend when the company released the Ice Cream Sandwich Kernel Source for the HTC Sensation, the HTC Sensation XE and the HTC Vivid. Developers can now get their hands on the code necessary to truly compile functioning ROMs that fully utilize the device hardware. This is great news for all HTC fans, as the source for the rest of the ICS line will undoubtedly follow!
The heads-up was first spotted in our forums for the Sensation here thanks to XDA Senior Member erto90 and for the Vivid here thanks to Senior Member come at me bro. Developers, head on over to the HTCDev download page here to nab the new kernel sources. You can also follow HTCDev on Twitter if you’d like to thank them!
March 14, 2012 By: Will Verduzco
The billion dollar question right now in the Android world is whether or not your device will receive Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. As they so humorously put it:
Few innovations have improved upon ice cream as much putting it between two cookies and making a sandwich. Which is why we all want Ice Cream Sandwich! Ok, that’s not the real reason, but we’re all excited about Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, coming to HTC.
While there is constant speculation as to which devices will be added to the ICS list, not very many firm answers are to be found. Luckily, HTC has just released a public statement as to which devices are slated to receive Google’s latest tasty treat.
Timing is the next important question. HTC has spoken up on this issue as well, stating that the updates for the Sensation and Sensation XE would begin in the coming weeks, with the Sensation 4G andSensation following thereafter. However, the schedule still remains unclear for the other devices slated to receive the OS update.
As for timing, we’re in the early stages of rolling out Android 4.0 for the HTC Sensation and HTC Sensation XE and upgrades will be more widely available in the next few weeks. The update for the HTC Sensation 4G and HTC Sensation XL will follow. Please note, once we start pushing out updates it will take time for all carriers in each country to get the update. We are working closely with our carrier partners to nail down update schedules for our other smartphones and will have more to share very soon.
While many of us are still irked at the fact that HTC’s first generation Snapdragon devices such as the original HTC Incredible and the legendary Evo 4G are not on the update list, their omission is understandable given that not even the HTC-built Google Nexus One is receiving ICS in official capacity. However, the fact that these devices will be receiving Sense 3.6 rather than Sense 4 is a bit of a bigger blow. However, you can bet that our developer community will have that covered, as they have already begun to do so.
Source: HTC Blog
[Thanks to all who sent in the tip!]
March 10, 2012 By: PoorCollegeGuy
Sometimes, users who are new to a device require a little more than even the most precisely worded How-To thread in order to get started with the basics such as rooting their phones, unlocking their bootloaders, and installing custom recoveries. XDA Senior Member hasoon2000 has solved this problem for HTC Vivid owners and want to get their phones rooted, unlocked, and ready to go.
The HTC Vivid All-In-One Toolkit gives users a plethora of aids including permanent root, CIQ removal, ClockworkMod Recovery, and a debloater that will remove the bloatware. The full list includes:
- Install HTC Drivers
- Unlock Bootloader (Must place Unlock_code.bin in the folder)
- Install Recoveries
CWM 5.5.0.4
-Flash Kernels provided
Stock Vivid Kernel
Holicakes OC Kernel
- CIQ Removal v1.1 (credit to 8125Omnimax)
- Link to this thread
- Link to the FAQ thread
- Link to the Vivid Development thread.
- Boot Into Recovery
- Relock Bootloader (must be in fastboot)
- Debloater and Debloater Remover (Credits to Bling)
The user interface is very plain and easy to understand, so there’s no real guess work involved. Just plug in your HTC Vivid and start going.
Check out the original thread for download links, screenshots, instructions, and everything else you’ll need to get started. Once you’re rooted with that custom recovery, make a full Nandroid backup—just in case.
December 28, 2011 By: azrienoch
Today, Peter Chou makes good on his word to no longer lock the bootloaders on HTC Android phones. Just in time for those New Year’s Resolutions.
XDA Junior Member nightwings noticed, when trying out HTCDev’s bootloader unlocking tool on his HTC Rezound, his bootloader was successfully unlocked. Similar reports came in on the HTC Vivid forum, even though neither were named on HTCDev.com’s list of supported devices.
And it’s bigger than just the HTC Rezound and Vivid. I just tried out the tool on the HTC Rhyme. I asked RussellHolly to try it on his HTC Thunderbolt. We now both have unlocked bootloaders. With the backing of an unnamed source at HTC, I feel comfortable going out on a limb to say at least every device released after HTCDev launched is now supported by their bootloader unlocking tool. Scratch that, HTCDev just posted this:
All HTC Android devices launched after September 2011 are unlockable. The website will be updated accordingly to reflect this in the coming weeks. We continue to work on models launched prior to September 2011, please check back often for the status of older devices.
For now, head over to HTCDev to unlock your device. If you find that your device doesn’t unlock, let us know so we can get a clear picture of how far the unlocking goes.
Congratulations to all persistent consumers who knew what they wanted. And congratulations to HTC and HTCDev for making it happen. We know it wasn’t easy.
November 9, 2011 By: egzthunder1
As we said last time, we are getting closer to the all mighty holiday (shopping) season and because of that we will likely see a flurry of new devices coming at us from all different directions. Several manufacturers started this game a tad early, HTC and Samsung to be more precise. However, there are a few odd manufacturers who will release new devices in order to stay competitive, even if you don’t expect them to. Barnes & Noble is one such company. They just released a brand new device into their already famous Nook family of devices. This time, the Nook Color received a big brother dubbed as the Nook Tablet, which boasts a dual core 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of on board storage, and a low glare, quasi-180º viewing angle screen capable of 1080 playback. This neat piece of technology is aimed to be a direct competitor to the Kindle Fire by Amazon. Let’s see who wins this race.
On other news, HTC released a new Verizon device named HTC Rezound, which aside from being similar to the Sensation XE in a few areas such as the 1.5 GHz dual core processor, this one comes loaded with much heavier specs in other departments such as a boost to 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. However, the biggest feature on this device is the HD (not qHD but actual HD) Super LCD screen with resolution of 1280×720, which really is a first for any mobile phone out there.
Last but not least, we also added a new forum for the HTC Vivid. This device is pretty much up to par with the Rezound in most departments with the exception of the screen resolution (not that a qHD screen is a bad thing). However, what it doesn’t have in the resolution department, it makes up in size. The Vivid offers a slightly larger screen at 4.5 inches (as opposed to 4.3 on the Rezound). So, if you needed an excuse to get out of your old Inspire 4G, now you got one.
If you already have any of these devices or are planning on getting one (or all 3), make sure that you visit the new fora for up to date news, hacks, tips, and more.
You can visit the Nook Tablet forums here.
You can visit the Vivid forums here.
You can visit the Rezound forums here.
Want something published in the Portal? Contact any News Writer.
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