Droid Hype

Droid-Life is reporting that the Droid Incredible 2 is launching on the 28th of this month. The specs for this 3G phone are not too bad with the standard 1Ghz CPU (second gen Snapdragon) and Super LCD screen. If you’re still stuck in non-4G land or in an area that will never get it, this might be what you are looking for. It also has global capabilities if you are traveling.

Personally, there’s no reason to get this otherwise since it’s not really an upgrade to anything that’s not already out there now for VZW.

The wait is over, Gingerbread is available for all the Droid X and Droid 2 users out there. My Droid World just released (early) the official updates for these two handsets. Have at ‘em folks, download links at MDW.

The folks at My Droid World just got the Flash 10.2 apk that is supposed to be released on the 18th of March. This will work on the Xoom tablet and just about all popular Android phones. I’ve loaded it on my G2 running CM7 and it works as expected.

Download your local copy below.

Flash 10.2 apk (registered users only)

The latest Cyanogenmod (CM) 7 Nightlies have added a few notable updates to the latest builds. One of the more requested ones (at least for me) is the battery percentage in the status bar. This was available in CM6, but CM7 had some previous problems in getting this done, but that has been overcome with the latest builds.

The new battery percentage is slightly different in that the percentage isn’t inside the battery icon. The new style has the numbering to the left of a small battery bar.

To update to CM7, grab it from the CM site or if you are a premium Rom Manager user you can download it directly from the app.

The Droid Incredible (Dinc) and the Tmobile HTC G2 share the same type of battery. However, in the Dinc battery’s stock form it will not fit without a quick 30 second hack. If you take a look at the battery, you will notice that the charging leads are flipped backwards compared to the G2. The only thing preventing you from flipping it around and inserting the battery are two notches on the left and right of the battery.

Take a small pair of cutters and simply snip off the little tabs. Then flip the battery around and you got yourself another battery that fits in the G2. Try a test fit before cutting and you will see exactly where to snip the tabs.

So why bother doing this when the G2 has batteries readily available?

I’ve grown to really like the 1800mAh battery from HTCExpress. Although it states that it’s for the Evo, it will fit the Incredible and now with this hack, the G2. Keep in mind your battery door will not fit right because of the size. Some people have suggested that you can remove the label that is wrapped around the battery to make the battery door fit. I didn’t bother trying this since I am using the Otterbox Commuter case. I just left the door off and the Otterbox slipped right over it without a problem. This keeps the size as close to stock as possible, but with a larger battery.

With this setup, I am able to get roughly 15hrs of heavy use with sync on. Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed.

There are a few new custom kernels available now for the Droid Incredible that will enable multi-touch. If you are into gaming and emulators, multi-touch can be enabled to allow 2-5 simultaneous presses.

My current favorite is chad0989′s Incredikernel. You can also try HeyItsLou’s version or invisiblek’s version. Just keep in mind that some are for Sense roms and some are for AOSP  based roms. They’re all in the update.zip format for easy flashing, just clear cache beforehand in your recovery and you are good to go.

After being on a Droid X for about month, I felt something missing. Only after I went back to a Droid Incredible today did I realize it was the ability to flash kernels. I happily loaded up KingKlick’s BFS#5. With overclocking speeds built in, interactive governor, loads of speed increments, undervolting and a slew more options, it’s a phone nerds best friend. This is what I’ve been missing and it’s a damn shame this kind “openness” is disappearing it seems.

If you are thinking about rooting your Droid Incredible, do not install the latest over the air (OTA) update. Reports are showing it stops the Unrevoked rooting method.

You can opt to root first, then install a custom rom that has the OTA update incorporated if you are itching to be updated.

It looks like there’s really nothing that a locked bootloader can hold back. A few days ago, a method to overclock the Droid X was released and it works perfectly.

This has been tested and it does indeed overclock your Droid X’s CPU. I’m currently running at 1.1Ghz with undervolting. That’s right, not 0nly am I running faster than the stock 1Ghz, I’m doing it with less power (54 vsel). I’m hoping this combo yields some savings in the battery department.

The argument of whether or not overclocking is useful or not will not be detailed in this post. Just bear in mind, it does carry a risk and you can toast your handset or send it into an endless boot loop.

Basic adb/terminal knowledge is definitely a requirement. Some background in overclocking will make this easier as well.

It’s not at all difficult and many folks are now clocking in insane Quadrant scores with the bump in CPU speed. I have the basic install guide as well as a quick write up on how to customize your speeds.

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Here’s my current layout on my Droid Incredible.

- SkyRaider Vanilla 3.0 RC3
- Hydra 1.15 Ghz kernel
- LauncherPro Plus w/custom dock
- Beautiful Widgets smaller home