HTC ChaCha Facebook Phone Now Up For Sale in UK

The arrival of HTC's ChaCha, its first smartphone with Facebook integration via a dedicated button, has snuck up on us. First we thought it would be here in late June, then on June 6, and now it's upon us already, showing up as in-stock with several UK-based smartphone retailers. 

Available for the equivalent of about $375 off-contract, the ChaCha lacks the huge screen and powerhouse processor you'd find in many of the other Androids premiering this summer. Instead, HTC is trying to sell this smartphone based on the experience it offers, encompassing changes ranging from the sprinkling of social networking across every nook and cranny of Android, to the revamped Sense tailor-made for the 2.6-inch HVGA screen. 

While the UK is now taken care of, what about plans for the ChaCha elsewhere? We haven't heard from any US carriers yet, but there's some evidence that the smartphone might find a home at AT&T. If it decides to go through with those plans, and when it might do so, are anyone's guess. 

Source: GSM Arena 
Via: Unwired View

Samsung Galaxy S II To Hit Sprint As 'Galaxy Within' Late July?

We've seen Samsung trademark some names which we attributed to possibly the U.S. carrier variants of the Galaxy S II, namely the Attain, Function and Within for most probably AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. 

According to an anonymous Sprint inside source, the Samsung Galaxy Within -- image above is a mock-up -- might reach Sprint at the end of July. No other details were given out -- such as an exact date or pricing -- but we know it's coming -- well, we never doubted it actually after all the success the Galaxy S and its variants enjoyed. 

The Samsung Galaxy S II got 5 points out of 5 in our review and it appears to be THE smartphone of the moment with its great performance and Super AMOLED Plus screen. We expect to see the same internals on the Galaxy Within too, with hopefully added WiMAX support! 

Source: AndroidSpin

Can Your Android's Compass Be Used to Receive Data?

NFC is "the next big thing" and you're probably sick of hearing about it because, unless you have a Nexus S, you probably don't have any NFC bells and whistles. 

But we're Android users, a little thing like missing hardware isn't enough to stop people like us! So what can we do? One guy decided to rework his electronic compass into a low-bandwidth, read-only, "poor man's NFC". It's not really NFC, it's simply an Arduino microcontroller, a bit of custom code to drive the Arduino and a custom app on the Android to read the data. That said, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to imagine an NFC reader that transmitted the read data to the Android using a method similar to this. 

Useful? Probably not. Fun? Absolutely! 




Source: Joe Desbonnet's web log

With Google's recent announcement of Google Wallet and other fun goodies using NFC, they got our collective hope up -- only for us to realize that owners of the Nexus S and new phones with NFC built in will be able to take advantage of all the NFC fun, and not the rest of us. To get around that a Chinese company called Netcom (no relation to the Norwegian carrier with the same name) has put together a microsd card with NFC built in. Much like the EyeFi card (which combines Wi-Fi and flash storage), this card will combine an NFC chip and antenna with a flash memory card. Sounds great, right? Before you pull out your wallet, there are some restrictions. Your smartphone's back cover can't have any metal in it, nor can the microsd slot be made of metal. Since the antenna is tiny, scanning is reportedly "tricky" -- especially if the reader has a small sensing area. The phone needs a special app running in the background to communicate with the NFC circuitry. Lastly, the device hasn't been released yet, so even if you wanted to, you couldn't buy it. None of those restrictions makes it any less cool! Source: Engadget

The Android Gallery is the app that most Android-powered smartphones use to display photos and videos. Unfortunately it also picks up other folders that contain images -- not necessarily photos. For example, I use LauncherPro as my launcher app, which allows me to set a custom background image behind the dock. These images show up in my Gallery alongside pictures of my family and friends. It's not a problem, it's just annoying to have to sort through all those non-photo images every time I'm looking for a picture. 

To remedy the situation you can place a .nomedia file inside each folder that you want to exclude from the Gallery. While not terribly difficult, doing so is not as easy as it sounds. Luckily we've got creative developers writing apps for us, and, yes, there is an application to help us out! 

Gallery Excluder lists the folders on your sdcard and allows you to place a check mark next to folders that you want to exclude, and vice versa. The app is simple and does exactly what it's supposed to -- most of the time. Some phones, particularly those from Motorola, do things differently and the .nomedia trick doesn't work. 

In any case, it's got a place on my phone, and if you've got images that you don't want in your Gallery I suspect the app will have a permanent home on your phone, too! 


Download from the Android Market

The Android Gallery is the app that most Android-powered smartphones use to display photos and videos. Unfortunately it also picks up other folders that contain images -- not necessarily photos. For example, I use LauncherPro as my launcher app, which allows me to set a custom background image behind the dock. These images show up in my Gallery alongside pictures of my family and friends. It's not a problem, it's just annoying to have to sort through all those non-photo images every time I'm looking for a picture. To remedy the situation you can place a .nomedia file inside each folder that you want to exclude from the Gallery. While not terribly difficult, doing so is not as easy as it sounds. Luckily we've got creative developers writing apps for us, and, yes, there is an application to help us out! Gallery Excluder lists the folders on your sdcard and allows you to place a check mark next to folders that you want to exclude, and vice versa. The app is simple and does exactly what it's supposed to -- most of the time. Some phones, particularly those from Motorola, do things differently and the .nomedia trick doesn't work. In any case, it's got a place on my phone, and if you've got images that you don't want in your Gallery I suspect the app will have a permanent home on your phone, too! Download from the Android Market

If you're like me, you've got way too many apps installed on your Android-powered smartphone. Although it's relatively easy to uninstall an app, it's a bit more time consuming and has far more steps than should be necessary. Multiply that by a few dozen apps and it's a pretty powerful disincentive for even the most organized among us! 

Wouldn't it be nice if you could bulk-remove all the apps that you never use anymore? That's exactly what one developer thought, and he did something about it! 

Silent App Uninstaller displays a list of apps that you have installed and lets you select which apps you want to backup, or which apps you want to remove. The removal process is super easy: check the box next to any apps you want to get rid of, tap the delete button, and let the app go to work. 

Other apps exist that do the same thing, but most make you repeated hit the "confirm" button to tell the OS that you're really serious about the removal of each app. That's not the case with Silent App Uninstaller. 

There is a drawback: this kind of power requires that you have rooted your phone and pass those permissions on to the app. In my opinion, it's well worth rooting your phone just for this one app. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below! 

Silent App Uninstaller ROOT 

NEW

by Geek Software Technology Inc.

500 downloads, 5 ratings (4.4 avg)

Free

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Download from the Android Market