HTC has unveiled some more details about its plans to launch Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for some of the company’s most recent smartphones.

In March, the HTC Sensation 4G, HTC Sensation XE, and HTC Sensation XL should get software updates. Later this year we’ll also see updates for these phones:

• Amaze 4G
• Desire HD
• Desire S
• EVO 3D
• EVO 4G
• Incredible S
• Rezound
• Vivid

Noticeably absent from that list is the original HTC Sensation smartphone. When the company first plotted its roadmap for ICS updates late last year, the Sensation was one of the phones listed. But now it’s nowhere to be seen.

Fortunately independent developers are already taking up the slack. Several unofficial builds of Android 4.0 are already available for the Sensation. You can find more details about these custom ROMs at the xda-developers forum.

The Nokia N9 is one of the only phones ever to ship with the MeeGo Harmattan Linux-based operating system. Pretty much the only reason to choose the N9 is if you want to give the dead operating system a try. But if you don’t want to be stuck with MeeGo, it looks like an alternative may be on the horizon.

A group of developers have been working to port Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to run on the N9, and it looks like some serious progress is being made.

The goal is to create a dual boot solution so that users can run both MeeGo and Android on the phone.

The Nokia N9 has a 3.9 inch, 854 x 480 pixel curved AMOLED display, a 1 GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, and an 8MP camera with a 28mm lens. It’s a nice piece of hardware — but unfortunately it never went on sale in the US.

via Maemo forum and The Verge

Microsoft OneNote is an app that lets you create and organize notes and synchronize them with the web or between devices. The company has released versions of OneNote for Windows Phone, iPhone and iPad… but it wasn’t until this week that an official OneNote app for Android found its way into the Android Market.

OneNote for Android lets you create notes that include text or pictures, and you can either add photos from your gallery or snap new photos using your camera.

The app also includes support for to-do lists with checkboxes and text formatting. You can also add hyperlinks to web pages.

You can synchronize your notes with Windows Live SkyDrive, but notes saved on your device are also accessible when you’re offline.

OneNote Mobile for Android lets you create or access up to 500 notes for free. If you hit that limit you can make an in-app purchase for $4.99 which will remove the limit.

OneNote runs on Android 2.3 and up.

The default web browser on Android phones and tablets uses the same WebKit rendering engine as the Google Chrome web browser for desktop and laptop computers. But it’s not Chrome.

But today Google has launched the first version of Chrome for Android. It looks like the desktop version of Chrome and features the same omnibox that lets you enter a URL or a search query — with suggestions popping up as you type.

When you sign in with your Google account you’ll automatically be able to access your bookmarks, search history, and other data from the desktop version of Chrome.

There’s also an option to view browser tabs that are open on other devices. If you’re signed into Chrome on your desktop, you can fire up Chrome on your mobile device and quickly open the pages you were just reading on your PC.

Google Chrome requires Android 4.0 or higher to run. I took it for a spin on my HP TouchPad today, and it feels ridiculously fast — especially when visiting pages that it can preload in the background.

Chrome also makes it easy to open an incognito window when you don’t want sites you visit to be saved to you history.

The Chinese developers behind the MIUI ROM and app suite for Android devices have announced that they’re opening the source code for their software.

MIUI is a custom version of Android that, quite frankly, looks a lot like iOS. The default MIUI home screen, for instance, replaces common application icons of all shapes with square icons — and there’s no app drawer. Instead all of your apps are displayed on the home screen. Unlike Apple’s mobile operating system, MIUI does support home screen widgets though.

The software also has a series of custom apps, a custom notification tray, and a consistent look and feel that was missing from Android until fairly recently.

MIUI is already available for a number of Android phones and tablets. Now that the project is going open source it’s likely that it will be ported to even more devices — and third party developers may have an easier time customizing the software or writing apps that feel like they were designed for MIUI.

The developers have already released the source code for  handful of apps including the compass, sound recorder, and file explorer apps.

via Android Central

Aviary offers a popular free, web-based photo editor, as well as apps for editing your photos on Facebook or on an iOS device. Now the company has also launched a free Android app.

The Aviary Android app behaves in an unusual way — it doesn’t show up on your list of apps. Instead, you open it by firing up the Gallery app (or any other photo app), finding a picture you want to edit, an then “sharing” it with Aviary Editor.

Once you do that you can apply a number of digital effects, crop, resize, or adjust colors, or make other changes. Out of the box, Aviary includes a decent number of basic tools — but you can also buy additional effects through in-app purchases.

Aviary is available for Android 2.2 and up.

via Android Police

It seems like every other day there’s a new story about some new virus, spyware, or other malware-ridden app finding its way into the Google Android Market, and potentially millions of Android phones and tablets. But just because the Android Market is the Wild West compared to Apple’s App Store walled garden where every app must be approved by hand, doesn’t mean Google doesn’t take malware seriously.

While anyone can publish an Android app to the Market in a matter of minutes, Google is taking steps to scan apps to detect malicious software automatically.

For the last few months Google has already been using a new scanner which is codenamed “Bouncer.” It looks at new apps as they’re uploaded and also scans existing apps and developer accounts to look for potential problems.

Bouncer looks for known malware, but also identifies behavior that could be an indication that something shady is going on. Google says the number of downloads of potentially dangerous apps dropped 40 percent between the first half of 2011 and the second half (when Bouncer was implemented).

So what do you think? Do you feel any safer? Or would you prefer if someone from Google examined each Android app manually before it was added to the Market the way Apple does? Because that’s not going to happen… it’s not how a company that doesn’t even offer customer support works.

Mobile game developer Gameloft has launched a new app store for its Android titles. It’s called Gameloft Live, and if that sounds a lot like Xbox Live, there’s good reason.

Like Xbox Live, the new Gameloft app isn’t just a store for buying and downloading games. It’s also a social hub that lets you send messages or chat with your friends, invite them to play games, or share your achievements. You can also create custom avatars for you account.

This isn’t the first time the company has taken inspiration from outside. Many of the top Gameloft games are blatant rip-offs of other titles. Order and Chaos, for instance, is a World of Warcraft clone, Eternal Legacy draws heavily from Final Fantasy, and NOVA is basically Halo for Android.

Even if you don’t care about the social aspects, Gameloft Live might be worth checking out. The company promises to offer exclusive discounts to members, and the service should make downloading and installing Gameloft titles on an Android device a little simpler. Some of the company’s many games aren’t available in the Android Market.

via EuroDroid