Refresh Roundup: week of January 16, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery from the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!
Official Android updates
Motorola Droid Bionic: A maintenance release known as build 5.9.902 found its way to testers this week. It includes security patches, removes the pre-loaded VCast Music app and replaces it with Amazon MP3 instead and makes a few small changes to the Terms and Conditions. [Droid-Life]
Samsung Galaxy Note: A small update, it adds new features and enhancements to the Note, such as a number row on its stock Android keyboard, "one hand operation" mode which shrinks the keyboard and dialpad for better one-handed access, optimized screen brightness and a new torch widget on the home screen. [the::unwired]
Samsung Epic 4G: A new minor refresh adds a security update and a speaker feedback fix, and removes Qik and Asphalt 5 from its list of pre-loaded apps. We have a feeling that the security update involves the removal of Carrier IQ, as we saw on the HTC EVO 4G earlier. [AndroidPolice]
Samsung Epic 4G Touch: An update to remove CIQ should be ready for download before the end of the month. [SprintFeed]
HTC EVO Design 4G: Minor refresh, much like the Epic 4G, which involves a security update, battery life improvements, 3LM access for Enterprise users and an updated Peep client. Again, the security update most likely means CIQ is gone. [AndroidPolice]
HTC Desire HD (Telus): Android 2.3.5, which offers Sense 3.0, is now rolling out. [AndroidCentral]
Unofficial Android updates, custom ROMs and misc. hackery
HTC: Bootloader Unlock support has been added for the original Droid Incredible, Desire Z, ChaCha, Aria, Status and G2 (T-Mobile). [Twitter, Droid-Life]
Other platforms
Nokia N950: The PR 1.2 firmware update intended for the Nokia N9 is first being released to developers using the N950 to undergo testing. This likely means we're about four to six weeks away from it being available for the N9. [Nokia]
Refreshes we covered this week
