John's Nexus Saga (post 1)

I was checking eBay and the galaxynexusforum.com a few weeks ago looking for cool accessories and I found a  nice little LED dock for under $10 for my bedside. When it arrived, it didn't fit, and although it charged the phone, it was painfully slow compared to straight cable charging. I might tear it apart this weekend and see if I can get it to actually work, but in the mean time, I decided to go the do-it-yourself route and make my own.

The material is laminated amber bamboo, and it assembles in seconds. My home made version looks more stylish than it's plastic counterpart, it uses my existing cable, and when I get a new phone in 2 years, it's 100% recyclable, all for about the same price I paid for the cheap eBay knockoff, which, needless to say, is about 25% what any peripheral through Verizon would have cost.

If you have a Verizon Galaxy Nexus, just click the image above to go to the Ponoko making page. Otherwise, I'm open to doing custom one-off's for other phones if anyone is interested. Post in the comments if you want one of your own. With shipping it's about $20 bucks.

Power to the people!

Hello imaginary readers whom I post for to drown out the voices in my head! Today I'm serving up a hot slice of battery/charging related linkage:

1) Android battery breakdown

Brian Klug of Anandtech has posted a side-by-side comparison of battery specs between the current Android front-runners. While the article targets the Razr Maxx, the original Droid Razr, HTC Rezound, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and even the iPhone 4S are all are included for comparison.

If you don't care about all the Maxx "hoo-hah," scroll down a couple paragraphs to find the breakdown.

Meet my friend Maxx

I haven't been quite as....active on Droid Smith as I originally intended, but that stops now! Mostly because I want to brag about my new Droid.

When my OG Droid kicked the bucket last week after years of faithful service, I wasn't sure I could ever love another Android device the same way. That may just change, after receiving my new Droid Razr Maxx in the mail today. Full breakdown to come (it's only been in my sweaty hands for about an hour), but here's what I care about most:

The Nitty Gritty....

3300 mAh Li-Ion battery (rated @ 21.5 hours talk time...we'll see)

TI OMAP 4430 SoC:

 - ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core CPU @ 1.2 GHz (Arm v7 instruction set)

 - PowerVR SGX540 GPU @ 304 MHz

 - Dual-channel memory controller

Storage:

 - 16 GB Flash EEPROM (internal)

 - 11 GB Storage (internal)

 - 16 GB Micro SDHC (accommodates up to 32 GB Micro SDHC)

Memory:

1 GB LPDDR2 SDRAM (will post clock speed later)

Root Droid Razr OTA update without rootkeeper

Mobile security consultant Dan Rosenberg of Vulnfactory.org has developed a direct root method for the new 6.12.173 OTA update to the Droid Razr platform (credit to mattlgroff of DroidRazr.com for posting about this On XDA) Please note that this method is applicable only to Razr CDMA variants.

I haven't tried this exploit yet as I'm holding off on flashing the OTA update until we know more about it, so try it at your own discretion. If you have a more "leap before looking" attitude towards flashing, then make sure you check out his site for more details, or view the thread at XDA-Developers for user feedback.

All-in-one Droid Razr/Maxx root tool

Rejoice children! Credit for the work goes to mattlgroff of DroidRzr.com.
View the thread HERE.
Note the discrete XT910 and XT912 versions (each with 'lite' and 'full' builds. Read thread for more info)