Need to clean up some storage space on your Android phone? You might want to think about moving some apps from main memory to your storage card. If you’re running Android 2.2 and up, many apps include an option that lets you move them manually to the storage card — but other apps do not. For instance, Adobe Flash Player 10.2 insists on hanging out in your primary storage area — even though it takes up about 12MB of disk space.

There are a number of apps that let you move stubborn programs like Flash Player 10.2 to the SD card, but most of them require root access. But it turns out you don’t need to root your phone to move Flash Player and other apps to your SD card. You just need to download the Andorid SDK on your computer and run a simple command.

Here’s how it works:

1. Download the latest Android Software Developer Kit for your phone. The SDK is available for Windows, OS X, or Linux.
2. Install or unzip the SDK on your computer.
3. Open a command terminal and navigate to the Tools folder in the SDK directory (If you’re using Windows, just click the Start Menu, select “run,” and type “cmd” (without the quotes) and hit enter to open a terminal window).
4. Make sure “USB debugging” is turned on in your phone’s settings.
5. Connect your phone to your computer via a USB cable.
6. In the terminal window on your computer type “adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2″ (without quotes).

That’s it. Now you can go into the application menu on your phone and select apps one by one and manually move them to your SD card. Also, by default most apps that you install from now on will be installed to the SD card automatically.

You can restore the original settings by typing “adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2″ into the same terminal window.

Note that not all apps can be moved. System tools like the Android Market or Google Maps, for instance, are going to stay in your main storage. This trick won’t work with devices running Android 2.1 or earlier versions of the operating system.

There are also some apps that you probably don’t want to move to your SD card. Home Screen widgets for instance, or other apps that load when you boot your phone are probably left in your primary storage.

via reddit and Luis Rei

Verizon has released the official Android 2.2 update for the Motorola Droid X smartphone. In order to grab the update, just fire up the Settings menu on your phone, go to About, and then select System Updates and follow the instructions.

Among other things, the software update includes:

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1, which comes preloaded
• Faster JavaScript performance
• Ability to rotate the display 270 degrees in either direction
• You can now customize Android Market to auto-update certain apps
• Improved 3G mobile hotspot

You can find more details including step by step directions for applying the update at the Verizon Wireless Droid X support page.

via Droid Life

Two developments are rocking the world of Android geeks who happen to use the shiny new Droid X smartphone. First, a hacker figured out how to create a ClockworkMod recovery for the Droid X.

If you don’t know what that means, here’s the short version: The Droid X was first rooted shortly after it came out. That means users can gain root access to settings that would otherwise be unavailable — but not all settings. For instance, you couldn’t access the recovery partition. Now you can… sort of.

Apparently the hack “hijacks” portions of the boot process, allowing users to load custom ROMS, start a system recovery, or make some other changes. But it won’t let you replace the kernel or boot images… yet.

The second major development in the Droid X world? A system update that brings Google Android 2.2 to the Droid X has been leaked.

Verizon is expected to start pushing the Android 2.2 Froyo update soon, but if you don’t want to wait until the over the air update is available, you can download the update file and install it manually. Of course, there are always risks involved in going this route. This might not be the final version, it could harm your phone, and so on… but the update is available for download right now for the impatient types.

via Android Police

It’s been almost two weeks since Verizon started rolling out an over-the-air update for Motorola Droid customers, upgrading the phones to Google Android 2.2 Froyo. The update brought a faster Java compiler, better security features, the ability to install some apps on an SD card, and other features including persistent phone and web browser icons on every home screen.

But the version that’s currently rolling out doesn’t support Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for Android. The app can only be installed on devices running Android 2.2, but for some reason the first Froyo update for the Motorola Droid wasn’t enough to add Flash support. Verizon now says it will be rolling out a second update soon which will allow users to download and install Flash Player 10.1 from the Android Market.

via Engadget

Google changed the way it handles streaming audio in Android 2.2 Froyo. Theoretically, the new Stagefright media framework is designed to let you stream high quality codecs over a WiFi connection than it uses when you’re connected to a 2G or 3G network. This sort of makes sense, since you might not want your phone to eat as much bandwidth when you’re using mobile broadband service.

But users have noticed that streaming audio quality sounds much worse over a 2G or 3G connection after upgrading to Android 2.2. You can really tell the difference when you plug in a set of headphones.

Anyway, long story short the good news is that Google is aware of the problem and the company is working on a fix which should be available soon. the bad news is now that you’re aware of the problem, you’re going to notice it a lot more every time you plug a set of headphones into your phone.

One of the new features in Google Android 2.2 Froyo is the ability to store applications on an SD card, freeing up space on your phone’s main memory. Developers need to enable this feature in their apps, so not every app available can be stored on an SD card, but I’ve already freed up plenty of storage space on my Nexus One by moving a handful of apps to my 8GB microSD card.

So I was pretty excited to learn that Barnes & Noble had released a new version of the Nook eBook reader for Android. When I first checked out the Nook app a few weeks ago, I was pretty impressed with its features, but underwhelmed by the fact that it took up more than 17MB of storage space — making it by far the largest app on my phone. I quickly uninstalled it.

Today I tried downloading the latest version of the Nook app and then I moved it to my SD card. You can see the results above. It still takes up more storage space than any other app on my device — and that’s main storage. When I uninstalled the Nook app, my phone storage available space jumped from about 28MB to 40MB.

In other words, moving an app to your SD card doesn’t actually move all of the files to your SD card. Some files will be left behind, and in the case of the Nook app, they still take up an awful lot of space. If you have a phone with a huge amount of internal storage space, or if you only plan to install a few apps, this might not be a problem. But with the Amazon Kindle app using less than 4MB and the Borders app taking up less than 1MB, it seems strange that Barnes & Noble’s eBook reader takes up so much space.

On the other hand, the latest version for the Kindel app also adds a few other features such a new search function in the library, four new themes, and new screen settings. You can also copy unencrypted ePUB files from a computer to your device and open them in the Nook app.

Nook for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via Gizmodo

Google recently introduces the capability to push data from a desktop web browser to a phone running Android 2.2. In other words, you can visit a web site using Chrome, Firefox, or another desktop browser, and with a click of a button you can send that page to your phone, where it will automatically open in your mobile browser. No need to touch your phone.

Scan to download

Android2Cloud is a tool that does the exact opposite. You can visit any web site using your Android phone and with a few clicks push that page to your desktop browser — assuming your desktop browser is Google Chrome.

In order to use Android2Cloud, you need to download the mobile app from the Android Market and install a Google Chrome extension on your desktop browser. Once that’s done you can visit any web site with your mobile browser, click the menu button and select “more” and then Share page.” Select Android2Cloud from the options, and a few seocnds later the web page should open in your desktop Chrome browser.

The first time you run the app you’ll need to configure it to work with your Google account so that it can send data through the cloud. But you only have to do that once.

You can also fire up the Android2Cloud app without opening your web browser, and manually enter a URL to send to your desktop browser. But most of the time it would be faster to just grab your mouse and keyboard and type the URL in your desktop browser. The key benefit of Android2Cloud is that you can use it to send pages you’ve already opened on your mobile device to your PC.

Android2Cloud is available as a free download from the Android Market. There’s also a $1 version which is donationware if you want to support the developer. Both versions have the same features.

via Lifehacker

credit: Droid Life

The Froyo parade continues. Yesterday HTC Evo 4G users started to report that they were getting over the air updates bringing Google Android 2.2 Froyo to their handsets. Today updates are starting to roll out to Motorola Droid users on Verizon.

If you’re not the patient sort, you don’t have to wait for the update to magically appear. Some users have discovered the source of the file needed to update the operating system.

Droid Life has posted step by step instructions for downloading and installing the Android 2.2 Froyo update on your phone right now. No waiting required.

Of course, you should probably proceed with caution. If there’s one thing I learned by constantly applying pre-release updates to my Nexus One, it’s that just because we think we’ve found the correct update file doesn’t mean we actually have. My phone never exploded or anything, but it would have been a lot safer to just wait for Google to push the update over the air.