Refresh Roundup: week of February 27th, 2012
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. 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 we could find during 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
HTC Sensation & Sensation XE: HTC is set to release Ice Cream Sandwich -- complete with Sense 4.0 -- for these two phones at the end of the month, but in the meantime, it's made previews available for download by way of its Elevate program. Those who don't care to take surveys will be glad to know the ROMs have also been leaked through less official channels. [Android Community, Pocketnow]
Motorola Droid 2: The QWERTY slider will soon undergo a soak test in anticipation of a future update. No word on what's to be fixed with this one, though Motorola specifically states that the soak test won't include the Droid 2 Global or the R2-D2 edition. [Android Central]
Toshiba Thrive: A minor update was released for Toshiba's 7-inch and 10-inch tablets this week. It's said to deliver newer versions of apps from Google, improve performance of the Toshiba File Manager and correct errors in the Calculator utility. [Android Central, Toshiba]
Unofficial Android updates, custom ROMs and misc. hackery
Motorola Droid X: Device hackers (and those with bricked phones) should take note that a system boot file (SBF) was recently made available for download that plays friendly with the latest .621 firmware from Motorola. [Droid Life]
Other platforms
Nokia Lumia 800: A Vodafone-branded firmware update, 1600.2487.8107.12070, was leaked to the forums of xda-developers. It's thought to deliver enhancements to the camera app, and users also report longer battery life. [My Nokia Blog]
Refreshes we covered this week
HTC unveils new APIs, opens Beats, lockscreen and more to devs
Android and iOS expose your photos to third party apps, promise fixes
Verizon lets loose its stance on locked bootloaders in letter to the FCC
Samsung updates S Pen SDK to 2.0, SCanvasView brings Note animation and narration
Download APKs from the Android Market with a Chrome extension
