Michael Grace, Yajin Zhou, Zhi Wang, and Xuxian Jiang have closely examined the HTC Legend, the HTC EVO 4G, the Wildfire S, the Motorola Droid and the Droid X, the Samsung Epic 4G, the Google Nexus One and the Nexus S and found security leaks. The researchers immediately shared their findings with the corresponding companies, and while Motorola and Google readily accepted the results, HTC and Samsung were not so keen to admit the fault on their devices. The vulnerabilities the researchers pointed out can potentially send SMS, record conversation, obtain the user’s geo-location and even delete personal information without asking the user for permission.

The researchers have developed their own application called Woodpecker to test the mentioned smartphones and the Woodpecker has obviously done its job very well. While all mentioned phones had vulnerabilities, the HTC Evo 4G had worst characteristics as to its protection of personal information.

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One of the developers decided to get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on Nexus One. This is the best option ever, as we do have the chance of porting Android SDK on a device, which was manufactured by HTC as a Google device.

The results are not that impressive; as we mostly have unstable functionality combined with dysfunctionality of some other features. The device doesn’t support Wi-Fi and video decoding and the playback is poor. There are also a few bugs connected with audio files. This means there’s no way to use this version of Android on your device for everyday use.

Anyway let’s keep in mind that the original Nexus One was running on Android 2.1 Eclair. Thus even this kind of partial support for the ICS is still quite amazing.

So far the Nexus One has been announced the best Google device, some claim this is due to the fact that it’s the first one, while others claim that it’s due to the manufacturer.

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This will be the first official Gingerbread update for the HTC manufactured Nexus One bringing in NFC capabilities to Nexus S.

This is just great. Can not forget about the idea that when Andorid 2.3 was released last year, everyone was wondering when it will finally land to the devices, but it never did. In contrast in early February its updated version of Android 2.3.3 was introduced and that’t the one that appeared to be available on this cool Nexus gadgets.

What’s going to be the next Android device to receive this update? Well, there’s a rumor that the rest of the HTC devices will not face an Android 2.3.3 and they will straightly go for Android 2.4. Well, this is great news despite the fact we are not sure about the release date of Android 2.4, which means that the updates will still not take place for some period of timing.

If you haven’t received the update yet, don’t hesitate to wait for a couple of days.

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But this is the rumor that was released by MobileCruch. Guys do really believe that this finally take place.  They claim that the rumor is just not like any other rumors that were surfacing alongside the fake info. They say that this time there are even a few side sources proving the fact making everything more realistic.

The sources claim that the update will be coming as an over-the-air update. This is pretty cool. We do believe that in case if Android 2.3 will be landing to the Nexus One, then we will have lots of cool updates coming soon. The thing is that Google has been delivering its updates first to its branded gadget and then continuing to distribute it among the rest of Android OS smartphones.

Android 2.3 is long expected to land to the gadgets, but we do not really want to stop it there as we want to make use of Android 3.0, which will hopefully land to the gadgets (so far it’s announced to be capable only for the Android tablets) and get more functionality to those.

The smartphone is now clear of having the buttons but this doesn’t mean that we are fully confident about its usage. The thing is that the smartphone is going to have any kind of trackball, which is a little strange. There are no other specs known about the device except of those from the photo leaked.

Most likely the device will appear during the Mobile World Congress already this month, which means that there’s not much left to wait. As for HTC, the company must be a little bit more attentive while handing  not-yet-released smartphones to the company employees.

The price and the name of the smarpthone are unknown and we cannot get a name for the actual device, as the leaked HTC Saga doesn’t seem to be an actual name of HTC smartphone, as it doesn’t into the HTC tradition of naming.

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The gadgets will have pre-installed News Feed, messaging and chat functionality required for the full Facebook support. Next cool thing is the fact that devices will appear with the Facebook brand and will have the same colors as Facebook itself. The last thing means that we are going to have blue-colored devices.

The main possible release date of the smartphones is announced to be Mobile World Conress 2011 in Barcelona. This might be the most convenient event for the release of the smartphone to the world market.

The last thing to make clear is whether two smartphones will be the same as Google Nexus One or this time HTC will start up having something extraordinary. The main specs of the smartphone are the following:

• Coupons pushed based on the location and interests
• GPS that checks your Facebook Places
• Small storage/ more of cloud storage
• Messages to appear in a single box for the convenience

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The update comes up with an over-the-air version. But if you are too excited and cannot wait while it will hit your device, you can see get the update from Google and manually install it.

For the manual update you need to follow the steps described above:

• Download the update file
• Copy the update file to the root directory on microSD card and rename it as update.zip
• Turn off the smartphone
• Hold down the Volume Down button and turn on the smartphone
• Wait until the screen is being loaded, scroll down to recovery and press Power button
• When you see “/!\” sign you should press Power button and Volume Up at the same time. You will face a menu and must see  ”apply sdcard:updat.zip”
• Use the trackball to navigate to “apply sdcard:updat.zip”, then select it
• Wait until you get the “Install from scard complete” remark and select “reboot system now”.

The overall process of the manual update takes around 5 minutes.

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There’s no need to have computer or any PC for the download, as it’s going to be an OTA one.

This means that Google finally gave up and decided to release the final official Gingerbread ROM based on AOSP source-code. This might be the main technique  to fight against the custom ROMs that are being offered by multiple enthusiasts.

Via: talkandroid.com

It’s known that the screen of the Nexus One is worse than of HTC Droid Incredible  and actually this is the main reason that the enthusiasts started his work over the smartphone. Earlier the device could only handle 2 touches at a time. The new kernels increases the number of the touches up to 3-10, still the enthusiast advice is to use only up to 5 finger gestures.

You can download the kernel itself and find the necessary instructions from the thread of the official website of XDA.

Recall the device is equipped with Android 2.2 and has a powerful 1 GHz processor, which are among the best features  for now. As for the question, whether the smartphone will get Android 2.3 or no, we should pay attention to the rumors that Google Nexus One is going to get it. Thus there might be no reason for avoiding to put it on HTC Desire, as truly said those devices are almost identical.

Via: unwiredview.com