| Moto X tipped to go on sale as soon as this weekend Jul 29th 2013, 17:38, by Cory Gunther Many of us are counting down the days to August 1st, where Motorola and Google will finally unveil the new Moto X smartphone. They’ve been busy teasing us about it all month long, and last week sent out invitations for the announcement. Today though, we’ve received yet another tip suggesting that the Moto X has actually started shipping to carriers already. 
There is a lot of hype and anticipation surrounding this new smartphone, for multiple reasons. Obviously with Google being basically in charge makes it important, not to mention the customization options, and most importantly the price. Which is rumored to under cut the Nexus 4 and be a stellar device for just $199 outright. We’ve seen countless leaks of the hardware and even the software, so today we have something else for you. The notorious Taylor Wimberly, who’s been deadly accurate as of late with his Motorola leaks, just revealed some interesting info over on Google+. According to his “unverified sources” the device has actually started shipping to US carriers already, and it should arrive in stores starting tomorrow. Of course it won’t be up for sale yet, but we all know how that goes. Taylor goes on to mention they are shipping to carriers this week, and then takes things up a notch by suggesting they could in fact go on sale THIS WEEK, following the big reveal by Google and Motorola. All the details will be released on August 1st at their event, which is Thursday, so possibly Friday and all weekend we’ll see them hit the shelves. This hasn’t been confirmed but the device has cleared the FCC for all major US carriers already, so expect pre-orders to probably fire up right away Thursday evening. |  | Nexus 7 (2012) getting performance boost with Android 4.3 update Jul 29th 2013, 17:31, by Robert Nelson The new Nexus 7 is the hot tablet in the Android world right now and while there are some decent improvements in terms of the specs, that doesn’t mean your older model Nexus 7 will instantly turn into trash. Then again, some of those older model Nexus 7 tablets have been suffering from serious lag issues in recent months. 
If you happen to have a 2012 model Nexus 7 that is sluggish — the Android 4.3 update should bring some improvement. It seems the issue of sluggishness with the Nexus 7 is due to a feature called TRIM. This is described as being something that basically acts as a garbage collector picking up the trash. The folks at AnandTech mention how TRIM will run when your tablet is idle with the screen off and sitting with a battery life of 70 percent or greater. The issue with the previous model Nexus 7 is that while TRIM support has been around since Android 4.2 — it wasn’t enabled. And regardless of how good a feature can be, if it is turned off then it will not do anything. Anyway, looking forward you will likely want to grab that Android 4.3 update because it has enabled fstrim. The one important factor to remember — this is not an instant fix. In other words, you are not going to have a magically faster Nexus 7 immediately after your tablet first boots into Android 4.3. Instead you should update, make sure you have a good battery life and let your tablet sit so this can work some magic. That all being said, while it is nice to see Google has addressed this issue with the 4.3 update, this was something that could have been taken care of in the past. There are some ‘fstrim’ related apps in Google Play, however those were limited to those who had rooted their tablet. | | Nexus 7 sign-up page for users outside the US goes live Jul 29th 2013, 16:45, by Cory Gunther The brand new and highly anticipated Google Nexus 7 is finally available. Well, available to those in the US at the moment, while other regions were simply told “in the coming weeks” from Google’s event last Wednesday. Google hasn’t been very straight forward as to when other regions will be able to enjoy the new slate, as well as when we can expect to see those LTE models hit the street. 
Don’t worry though folks, because good old Google has you covered. They’ve just launched a brand new Nexus 7 sign-up page on their UK site, which will allow eager buyers and Nexus fans to sign-up for additional details as they become available. Regions such as the UK, Japan, Canada, Germany, France and many other places are all still waiting for a concrete date. So while for now all we have to tell you is “in the coming weeks” hopefully the UK, Canada, and many other larger regions will get the slate in the next week or two, but some leaked documents have others waiting until September for it to arrive. We’re hoping the wait won’t be over a month, but who knows, as it’s already flying off the shelves. 
The page simply states that if you sign-up now, you’ll get notified by the folks at Google with a little heads up as to where you can get it, what retailer near you, and when. If you’d like to join the list to be notified hit the link below, otherwise we’ll update the minute we know more, as usual. Don’t forget some UK retailers are already accepting pre-orders, so you might want to hurry. SOURCE: Google | | CyanogenMod considers removing the need for root access Jul 29th 2013, 16:16, by Robert Nelson Rooting an Android device is often associated with installing third party ROMs. And while that is a step in the process, you could simply root your device and keep the stock firmware installed and running. Those who root without using third-party ROMs likely do so for a variety of reasons. One of those is for backups. But it seems there is now some discussion about running CyanogenMod without root. 
This topic was recently brought up by Steve Kondik. In a Google+ posting he talks about how many of the ‘root required’ types of apps can actually be done without the need to expose root. Or perhaps more important, he talks about how they can be done in a very secure way without the need to have root. Aside from backups, root can also be used to get something like Google Wallet working on an unsupported handset. Kondik mentions a few other reasons to need root as being the ability to manage the DNS resolver, tweaking the sysfs notes to control the kernel and even to mess with firewall and network software. Perhaps key here though, Kondik talks about how “all of these can be done without exposing root, and they can be done in a very secure way.” With that in mind, it looks like there has been talk of pushing things to a point where root is no longer needed. Of course, we should make it clear that a root-free version of CyanogenMod is not currently in the works. At the moment Kondik simply mentions how he is “interested in building framework extensions and APIs into CM to continue to abolish the root requirement.” On the flip side though, what has recently gotten underway is work on CM10.2 (Android 4.3). It was confirmed the work began last week and more recently we got a “general order (not a steadfast rule)” timeline that showed work will proceed with Nexus, Qualcomm, OMAP, Tegra 3 and then Exynos devices. SOURCE: Google+ Steve Kondik and CyanogenMod | |
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