Nokia X rooted, now has flashed ROM and proper Google apps

What’s the saying? Oh yeah: You can lead a Developer to a smartphone, but you can’t make them use the weird OS you put on it. That goes for any device, and the newest “Android” handset, the Nokia X, has already been rooted and flashed with a custom ROM.

Who’s got these things already, you ask? Developers, of course. The Developer-only (for now) Nokia X devices have already been shipped, and giving Developers a device means they’re going to tinker. Using Framaroot, one Developer has easily made the Nokia X their own. Sounds ho-hum, save for one thing: Google Services.

The Nokia X does not ship with Google services, meaning buyers lose out on all sorts of things that make Android great like Maps or Search. The current method of providing apps to the Nokia X is for Developers to submit their Android apps to the Nokia store, which Nokia says can usually be done without any rewriting of code. Third party apps are great, but some just can’t stack up to Google’s offerings.

While the Nokia X doesn’t pack much in the way of specs, we find a different reason to raise an eyebrow here. First, we love a good root story. More importantly, if KitKat is really meant to be optimized for lower-end devices, what better example than the Nokia X? We’re hoping a root/KitKat duo will show us just how low KitKat can really go. At 512MB memory and 4GB Memory with a 1GHz Snapdragon, the bar is set really low.

Source: XDA Developers

Via: Ubergizmo

Story Timeline

• Nokia may have two more Android smartphones after the "Nokia X"


• Nokia X packs Android OS, Lumia UI and next-billion price


• Hands on with the Nokia X


• Nokia XL hands-on from MWC 2014

How to: load widgets with the Google Now Launcher

For those of you who have upgraded to the new Google Now Launcher, you’ll notice some things have changed quite a bit. A swipe to the left will get you right into Google Now, and you no longer have five screens by default. One thing we’ve been asked quite a bit is where the widgets are. Moved from settings, widgets are now right up front — sort of.

Widgets can be found in different places, depending on your device. The HTC One is a touch different, for instance, but finding widgets there isn’t too hard. More often than not, the widgets are housed with the apps in the app drawer. In stock Android, there is a section in the app drawer just for widgets — but the Google Now Launcher changed all that.

Getting widgets is still really easy, though. All you have to do is long press on any screen, like you would to change the wallpaper. From there, a menu will pop up, and you see the widgets option front and center (literally). Selecting that button will bring you to the widgets menu, and away you go.

This is pretty simple, but there have been several questions on where widgets are housed in the new launcher, leading us to write this. We will admit that, in loading the launcher onto a new device, Google didn't provide a solid walkthrough of where stuff was. The new launcher just rebranded our device anew, removing all the widgets and such we’d placed so carefully. If you had the same experience, but didn’t know how to get your stuff back on the screen, this should help!

Story Timeline

• Google Now airport cards offering a "leave home by" time


• Google Now refresh adds a Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics card


• Google Now lets you call friends and family without naming names


• Google Now launcher available in the Play Store to Nexus and GPE devices


• How to: Get the Google Now Launcher on almost any Android device

New video shows Samsung Galaxy S5 settings icons are flatter, brighter

Samsung’s interface has changed with the Galaxy S5, bringing in a flatter appearance. The icons in the settings menu have been altered, and the look might be polarizing. While flat may be the new black when it comes to user interface, we’re not sure everyone is going to like Samsung’s take.

Via SlashGear, we see that Samsung’s new TouchWiz settings flair is, as we said, flatter. The icons are simple, clean, and easy to read. There colors pop, and the plain white outline of the utility it fronts is plain to see. From a point of being new, Samsung has done a good job in going a wholly new direction with their settings icons.

On the other hand, it’s all really simple. We don’t want to cheapen the experience, but some we’ve shown this to say the icons are almost child-like. They’re laid out effectively, though, falling into categories rather than a bulk list of icons. In some ways, it looks a bit too simple. In others, it could be considered subtly brilliant.

We’ve long felt TouchWiz needs an update, and we won’t say this one is necessarily bad. It will have it’s detractors, but everything does, right? We do like that Samsung took the liberty of changing the quick launch settings icons, too. We’ll see those a lot more than system settings, and we think it adds a nice little update for the Galaxy S5.

Story Timeline

• Samsung Galaxy S5 octo-core variant confirmed


• Samsung Galaxy S5 will feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801


• Samsung Galaxy S5 cases and charging pad: eyes-on


• Galaxy S5 may not be the low cost flagship we heard it could be


• Samsung Galaxy S5 has three new ways to extend battery life

Survey: Less than 1% of mobile gamers make up 50% of spending

Do you play games on your tablet or smartphone? If you do (and we’re willing to bet you do), a new study shows you’re probably not spending anything. If you are making in-app purchases or buying apps, you’re likely doing it quite a bit, as less than 1% of us comprise 50% of total spending.

Swrve, an analytics and app marketing firm, recently conducted a survey. In that study they found that a small percentage of us were responsible for the majority of spending, and we probably make a monthly purchase of some kind. Around 49% of us make a purchase monthly, while 13% make five or more purchases each month.

When it comes to making those purchases, we’re as addicted to spending as we are the game. The average time between the first and second purchase is just under two hours. Over half (53%) of us will make another buy within two weeks, while 13.7% rack up more than four purchases in their first two weeks. So how much are we spending? the average in-app purchase is $5.94. Purchases between $1-5 make up about 67% of spending, but purchases of $50 or more make up just under 1%. That helps bring the average up and revenue flowing; 9% of all revenue is from those massive purchases.

Swrve is going to make these “Mobile Game Monetization Reports” avaialble monthly from now on. This was their first, and it brings to light some interesting statistics about our spending habits. We’l look forward to finding out how 1% of us are going broke playing Clash of Clans over the course of 2014.

Source: Venture Beat

Story Timeline

• Samsung spending millions on Galaxy Note Super Bowl ad


• Google Play Store trumps Nintendo, Sony in gamer spending


• Google leads in acquisitions, spending $13 billion over the past two years


• Play Store allows 30 minutes of unsupervised spending, double the App Store [Update]


• App Annie: Game app spending on the rise, digital media spending up 30%

Comprehensive Guide for Building PAC ROM for Your Device

Pac-Man isn’t just a funny-looking character from the earliest moments in gaming. PAC ROM is also the name of one of the most popular ROMs available for many devices here at XDA. The developers of PAC take the best features from popular ROMs like CM, Paranoid Android, and AOKP, and put them together while adding their personal flair.

PAC is pretty easy to port, even with a moderate amount of Android building knowledge. If you’ve ever tried to take a stab at building PAC, you might be interested in reading a guide by XDA Recognized Developer iurnait. The developer put together all the necessary information and wrote a step-by-step guide for building PAC. If your device has a working CyanogenMod device tree, you should be able to compile it from existing sources or even add official support for your device. The build process is scripted, so compiling should not be a big challenge. But nevertheless, the guide is very helpful.

To learn more about compiling PAC for educational purposes or building a new ROM for your device, head over to the original thread in Custom ROM Central to get started.

[Thanks to my fellow news writer Samantha for the tip!]

Asus Transformer TF300T Gets Unofficial MultiROM Port

The Asus Transformer TF300T is probably one of the earliest and most refined convertible tablets that the market has seen. It came with a well built and sturdy keyboard dock that featured a trackpad mouse, a full sized USB port, and even its own battery. Its insides weren’t lacking for its time either, packing a quad core processor clocking in at 1.2 GHz. With a spec sheet like this, it was no doubt a popular device with some great development history.

Two years later, the TF300T is still going strong, receiving its own unofficial port of MultiROM thanks to the efforts of XDA Senior Member f69m. As we can all assume, MultiROM lets you easily boot multiple ROMs without having to wipe and restore ROMs. F69m does make it clear that the port is still in its early stages, hence a couple of features that you would expect to see will not work as of yet, including:

• Store secondary ROMs on external SD cards (including both the tablet and keyboard dock slots)


• Install Ubuntu Touch as a secondary ROM

Other than that, the port still retains the core functionality of running a primary Android ROM, and booting secondary ROMs from internal memory as well as an external USB drive. The MultiROM port will also need a modified version of TWRP in order to run, and this is also provided in the original post.

If you would like to check this out, visit the original thread for more information.

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