HTC Desire silver
Some users in Sweden are reporting that their HTC Desire’s are receiving a minor firmware update over the air. The update weighs in at 6.5MB, and will bring the Desire to version 2.29.405.14. We don’t have a chanlog for this particular update as of now.
It’s great to hear that HTC is still pushing updates to a device that is over 1.5 years old.
It has not been completely clear whether HTC will release Gingerbread for the Desire or not. HTC first announced that it will be released, and later said that it will not be released due to hardware restrictions. Well, not it seems that Desire owners will get an official Gingerbread update after all. HTC posted on their Facebook page that the update will be made available later this month. The Desire is not powerful enough to run the newest Sense UI version, so HTC had to leave out some features of the Sense UI.
HTC UK did a U-turn today when they corrected that the Desire will in fact get updated to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Yesterday they told that the Desire will not be getting it due to low memory. HTC UK wrote both of these news on their Facebook page. Good that they corrected it this way!
HTC today told via their UK Facebook page that their Desire smartphone will not see an official Gingerbread ROM. HTC claims that the Desire doesn’t have enough memory on board to support Gingerbread with HTC Sense inside the device. It’s of course possible that we’ll see an unofficial port of Gingerbread for Desire owners out there.
HTC UK wrote the following on their Facebook page:
Our engineering teams have been working hard for the past few months to find a way to bring Gingerbread to the HTC Desire without compromising the HTC Sense experience you’ve come to expect from our phones. However, we’re sorry to announce that we’ve been forced to accept there isn’t enough memory to allow us both to bring Gingerbread and keep the HTC Sense experience on the HTC Desire. We’re sincerely sorry for the disappointment that this news may bring to some of you.
Cnet UK reported that HTC will wait for the Desire S to hit the market before they release Android 2.3 Gingerbread for the HTC Desire, Desire Z and Desire HD. We know that the Desire S will launch in May or June, so it will still take months before Gingerbread is released for the triplet in question.
After the Desire S hits the market, it will take a month or two before the update goes live. Desire Z and Desire HD will be the first ones to receive it, while owners of the original Desire will have to wait a little bit longer.
The HTC Desire 2 has been spotted in Taiwan. The user who posted the images above said that it runs on Android 2.2.1 with the Sense UI. It’s possible that HTC isn’t ready with Android 2.3 yet, and that this device would be released with Android 2.2.1. There’s also a front-facing camera on the Desire 2. We can expect this device to be officially announced at Mobile World Congress.
According to analyst firm Independent Equitu Research, sales of the Nokia N8 have been very strong. They don’t have exact sales numbers, but they base their analysis on several factors around the Nokia N8. According to them, the Nokia N8 has sold between 3.5-4 million units during Q4. They get this number by analyzing component manufacturers reports, the publicity stunts with the N8, overall mobile sales during this quarter and the fact that Nokia recruited 200 new workers to their Salo factory in Finland. One of their strategies is to analyze search engines and what people are actually searching (Google Trends). By using this tactic they’ve successfully estimated the sales of for instance the iPhone 3GS in 2008 when it was released.
In the image above you’ll see search trends for the Nokia N8, Samsung Galaxy S and the HTC Desire. The image shows data from the past 4 months, from September to December 2010. You can see that the Nokia N8 is almost equal with the HTC Desire, and both of these are above the Samsung Galaxy S.
Highest sales of the Nokia N8 come from Finland, India, United Arab Emirates and Malaysia.
Hit View Post to see the sales trend for the iPhone 3GS in 2008.
HTC has given the green light to an OTA update for the HTC Desire. This time around we have version 2.29.405.2, and it is a 28.87MB download. Due to the rather small update size, I’d say this is just a minor performance/security update. I’ll update the post if I find a changelog for this update.
GaaS, or Gaming-as-a-Service, is a hot new subject which will eventually enable high-performance games on almost any device with a browser. The basic idea is that the game runs in the cloud, and it is just streamed to your device. This will move all the hard graphics and physics calculations away from your device, to a server somewhere else.
Hardware/environment setup for this shoot:
In this vide you’ll see World of Worldcraft demoed on a HTC Desire. Really cool graphics, a must see video!
HTC has released an update to the HTC Desire HD, this time to version 1.32.405.6. The update is distributed as an over-the-air update, and contains the following changes:
So, those of you wondering if this is Gingerbread, no it’s not.
