PC Magazine tested several smartphones for death grip signal loss and other than the iPhones. Their tests revealed a little attenuation on the Droid Incredible and Droid X. The Droid X required a super two-handed death grip.

Sascha Segan noted "... we also just couldn't get the Droid X's signal to drop using one hand. As you can see in our video, we had to completely cover the body of the Droid X in an awkward, two-handed grip to get the phone's signal to drop. That's very different from the one-handed grip we found on the iPhone 4."

It's about time that a low-cost all you can get prepaid carrier offers an Android smartphone. The Kyocera  Zio M6000 was revealed at CTIA earlier this year. The Cricket website is now taking reservations for the Zio and offering free overnight shipping coupons.

It may be the first Android phone to come to a prepaid low-cost carrier, Cricket.  The tri-band CDMA EVDO Rev.handset has Wi-Fi, Stereo Bluetooth and GPS, 3.5-inch screen and 3.2 megapixel camera with video capture at 30 frames per second.

Other features include a digital compass, accelerometer, and support for microSD cards. No price has been shown yet for the Kyocera Zio,   It has been suggested the the Android Kyocera Zio would cost between $169 and $219.

On the Motorola facebook page, they revealed the next Droid X, ad and Droid X does not do jackets and doesn't need a special case to cut down on attenuation.  Their new ad points out that the Droid X has an antenna on the top and the bottom.

The ad states,

At Motorola, we believe a customer shouldn't have to dress up their phone for it to work properly.  That's why the DROID X

comes with a dual antenna design.  The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like to make crystal clear calls without a bulky phone jacket.  For us it's just one of those things that comes as a given when you've been making mobile phones for over 30 years.

The Motorola Droid X advert also points out the Android 2.2 FroYo is coming to the Droid X in the late summer. Rumors have been circulation when Droid X owners will get the coveted update.  Droid Life erroneously reported July 19, while others suggest next week.  When the update appears on the Verizon support page then we will know it is ready-to-go.

The New York Post reports that Google's Andy Rubin has been in negotiations with music digital publishing firms and rapidly acquiring rights to music.

Andy Rubin is the Vice President of Engineering at Google and oversees the development of Android.

It is believed that Google will launch a music service using technology it obtained when it bought Simplify Media.  The Post contends that because of negotiations with Harry Fox Music, for 27,000 sonsg, Google Music could open as early as this November. It May, at the Google I/O Conference, a streaming music was demoed by  Google.

A  ChangeWave smartphone survey found that the next 90 day projections show the most extensive growth in consumer smartphone sales ever recorded in a ChangeWave survey. They looked at demand for the new Apple iPhone 4 and the HTC Droid Incredible, along with the impact these and other offerings are having on the rest of the smart phone industry.

Apple and HTC are taking over from Motorola and RIM. There's a huge increase in demand for the Apple OS and an accelerating downturn for the RIM OS.

The iPhone 4 isn't the only smartphone getting antenna attenuation attention. Along with the Droid Eris, the Apple forces are showing attenuation on the Motorola Droid X.

An Apple photo points out that the antenna of the Droid X is on the back of the Droid. They show a video with a hand over the back antenna, showing a bar decrease from three bars to no bars after holding the Droid X tightly for 22 seconds.

Android HTC Aria Rated 3.5 out 5 by Wireless and Mobile News' Review of Reviews

Reviewers found the lightweight Android HTC Aria (AT&T) to live up to its name. The Aria sings when it comes to web browsing, social networking, camera and voice quality. The HTC Aria was called cute, fun, and exceptionally goo.  All reviewers found the HTC Sense to be a great add-on user interface making social updates, email, and multimedia easier and smother.(For HTC Sense Tips check out tips revealed to Wireless and Mobile News by HTC's very own Eric Linn.)

All the reviews did not like the fact that AT&T only allows apps found on Android Market to be loaded onto the HTC Aria, you can't install beta apps or outside (home-brewed) apps. Reviews also found the processor responsive, fast and smooth. Some reviewers raved about the onscreen keyboard, while one found it to be small and cramped.  The screen on the HTC Aria  is smaller than other Android phones at 3.1 inches, which looks fine indoors but it harder to see in direct sunlight. Although Bluetooth works well, you can't give the voice commands over Bluetooth (an Android glitch). The good news is that the Android operating system will be updated to the super fast Android 2.2 FroYo.

AOL is mobilizing with a new mobile web portal and two AOL-powered Adrdoid apps. m.aol.com, offers AOL content and optimizes it for any mobile device. The AOL Android App also offers dozens of AOL's most popular properties, and the DailyFinance app for Android

AOL's smartphone portal works on any mobile phone and supports HTML5, including iPhone and Android devices.

The Google Voice blog reports that they have increased the speed of Google Voice for Android and Blackberry. They have improved the Google Voice apps on Android and Blackberry phones, which makes placing calls much faster. The feature is called “direct access numbers.” Here’s how it works:

Until today, the Google Voice app had to make a request to the Google Voice server every time a call was made, and sent the number to the server. Then the call would be connected via a Google Voice access number. With direct access numbers, Google assigns a unique phone number to every person called.  This means that they no longer need to use your data network to access the server each time a call is made, , so calls will be placed much faster.

The updated Android app is available from Android Market starting today. For Blackberry users, you can download the app by visiting http://m.google.com/voice from your BlackBery. You will need a valid Google Voice account to use the app, and at this time, Google Voice is available in the US only.

Cellular South is pushing out an update of the Android 2.1  for the HTC Hero advanced touchscreen smartphone. Features of the update include voiced Google Navigation, pinch-to-zoom in maps/photo gallery, Leap, multiple Gmail logins, Yahoo! mail and voice commands.

Customers are receiving e-mails and other communication from Cellular South with download instructions for the new HTC Hero Android 2.1 software update. Printed and video step-by-step instructions on how to perform the download and a link to the software update are available on the company's website. Be sure to backup your data (contacts) and have at least 30% of battery charge before the upgrade.

ACCESS has brought back Graffiti, the popular Palm handwriting recognition software. The new Graffiti application is now available for free for Android users. The application gives Android device users an alternative input method for entering data on a touchscreen.

They claim that originally developed for the popular Palm handheld devices, Graffiti was well ahead of its time, merging real world shorthand writing with modern computing to simplify data entry for mobile devices.

With Graffiti for Android, users can input letters, numbers and characters quickly and easily by sliding their fingers on the to the toucHscreen. The Graffiti for Android application also features built-in screens to guide users in learning the Graffiti strokes.

The MOG mobile app for iPhone and Android is now available for unlimite on-demand music. For $9.99 per month,  get access to more than 8 million songs with unlimited listening and all-you-can-download downloads.  So what do you call yourself when you use MOG, a Mogger which rhymes with "blogger."

Included in the service is MOG's desktop service which can be accessed using any PC and any browser. MOG claims to be is the first mobile service that lets subscribers download any song or album directly to their iPhone or Android phone.

MOG Mobile for iPhone and Android features include:

• Unlimited downloads: Subscribers can download any song or album directly to their phones and continue to listen to music even when out of cell or WiFi range.
• On-demand streaming: Unlimited listening to any artist, album, or song at any time.
• MOG Radio: Only MOG offers the patent-pending "MOG Mobius" music discovery engine, which enables users to control the mix of similar artists, from true "artist only" radio up to a full mix of similar artists.
• Playlist access between website and mobile: Make playlists on MOG.com and access them on your phone. Favorite tracks that are bookmarked from the web are then integrated into a user's personal library and appear in favorites on the mobile app.
• High quality audio: Songs can be downloaded at the standard rate of 64 kbps or users can turn on HQ downloads (up to 320 kbps) to save the song as a larger file with higher audio quality. This gives listeners the option of receiving high quality downloads for maximum audio fidelity.
• Multi-tasking: Android users can continue to play music with MOG while using other applications. In the coming weeks, MOG will add multi-tasking for iOS 4 users.

Sprint announced that the Motorola i1 Nextel Direct Connect - will be available first on Sunday, July 25. They claim that the i1' s strong body construction that meets military specifications for protection against dust, shock, vibration and blowing rain, i1 is designed for those who work and play hard.

Features of the Motorola i1:

• Popular business tools such as Microsoft Document Viewer and corporate sync ensure Word or PowerPoint files can be accessed on the go.
• Message entry is a breeze with both Android standard virtual keyboard and Swype(TM) virtual keyboards being offered.
  
• A 5 megapixel camera with flash, geo-tagging and panoramic capabilities provides crisp photos and clearly displays them on the vibrant 3.1-inch HVGA screen, and video can also be recorded and stored on a provided microSD for sharing or future viewing straight from the device.
  
• The Android browser allows you to see web pages and Flash 8-enabled sites in full view using Wi-Fi,
• The latest Opera Mini 5 browser enables quick browsing over the Nextel National Network and Wi-Fi.

When you enter the universe of Android an' Droid smartphones, you also find new ways to drain your battery very quickly. We reviewed all the best major resources for Android an' Droid support to find the top ten plus best ways to save battery life for Android smartphones such as the Droid Incredible, Droid X, EVO 4G , HTC Aria, myTouch 3G Slide, LG Ally, Samsung Captivate (which launched today), Nexus One and all the over Android smartphones. 

Our favorite best thing to do first is to add the power control widget that controls many of the functions that drain battery power.

Add Power Control Widget (Android) - eHow suggests you go to menu, add, widgets and "Power Control".  This widget shows you what features are draining your dear battery. This widget makes it easy to shut off Wi-Fi and bluetooth, as well as syncing. Tapping the screen icon, dims the screen to very low brightness.

Check Battery Use in Settings - From the Menu -> Settings, go to "About Phone", scroll and tap "Battery" status and level, then Battery use, it will show what is using what power so that you can mange power.  The Display on our Droid Incredible was at  9% power until after we changed the Display settings then it went down to 2%.

Set screen time-out to short - from Settings-> Sound & Display -> Screen Timeout, set the screen time-out to the lowest setting you can handle. We found that 15 seconds was too short a time for us, you play with the setting to find a short setting you like.

Turn on Auto Brightness - Go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Brightness. Slide the brightness switch to the left to lower it or check the "Automatic brightness" box.

Turn off phone vibratation - wikiHow suggests you go to Settings -> Sound & display -> Phone vibrate, uncheck the box next to"Phone Vibrate. The vibration uses power every time it use.  In settings you can also shut-off the haptic feedback, if you don't like it.

Turn off Live Wallpaper - tap the menu button, then tap wall paper and select a wallpaper that is simple, darker and not a "Live Wallpaper."

The Droid X has landed and sold-out online and in many Verizon stores. If you buy the Droid X from Verizon Wireless online it will not ship until July 27.  This super popular well- reviewed Motorola Droid X does have have a few glitches that will be  fixed in a software update, that is coming very soon.

The fixes in the Droid X update 1.13.604 affect the battery charger indicator, camera, weather widgets, ActiveSync, app downloading, contacts, Bluetooth, date/time, GPS, 3G mobile hotspots, and visual vocie mail. The update will although users to take advantage of the enhanced, preloaded My Verizon application and loads the Amazon Kindle application for Kindle book reading.

According to the Verizon support page, you will be notified that a system update is available on your Droid X. Press "Install now" and your Droid  will power off and back on and the installation process will begin.
Note: If you choose "Install later" this will delay installation and you will be taken back to the home screen. The system update message will appear every 60 minutes until you install the update.

If you are roaming, you will not receive a system update notice. You will need to enable Wi-Fi and wait for the update notice to appear or, you can manually update by going to "Home" > "Menu" > "Settings" > "About phone" > "System updates". Press "Install Now".

The Android Samsung Captivate goes on sale at AT&T today.  This 2.1 Android OS smartphone is a Samsung Galaxy under the hood with a 1 GHz processors, 4 inch AMOLED touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi,(802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth, HTML browser, SWYPE and a special social hub UI. It is a world phone with international calling and data.

Right now this is the Android smartphone with the faster 1 GHz Hummingbird processor while the HTC Aria runs a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 processor.

The Social Hub integrates the user's social networking services, messages, personal and business email, calendars and contacts.

The 5.0-megapixel camera/ camcorder has auto-focus and HD video recording (720p). Other features include an  MP3 player, 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and expandable memory for photos, videos and music, up to 16 GB.  It ha 16 GB of storage allows for up to 32 GB of capacity for music and video.

Those lucky people who were able to get a Droid X are unlucky if they want to load non-MOTO-sanctioned software. It seems like the first thing some new Android owners do is try to load custom ROMs and bootlegged operating systems.

If you try to load unauthorized software on a Droid X, the eFuse technology will send the Droid X into recovery mode and users will have to install approved software. Some Droid X crackers have complained that their Droid X became "bricked' in other words it can only be used a brick.  Some people have tried to load leaked versions of Android 2.2 (FroYo) and HTC Sense (the competitors UI add-on) Engadget contacted Motorola about the problem, and received this reply:

Droid X landed yesterday from Verizon Wireless and although in the early morning, our readers were still able to buy the Droid X online, it is now sold-out online and in many stores. Therefore it is Droid Incredible sell-out deja vu all over again.

Verizon really tried this time. Yesterday, there were reports that there were at least fifty Droid X at many stores. Verizon stocked-up Droid X in their warehouses.

We did have some clues that Droid X was going sell-out, the frenzy in the voice of some sales reps who were saying about their midnight hot dog party, "You better come, early we may not have enough to go around."

Customers who listened to our advice and were night owls, hit the Droid X jackpot. There were server overloads, but refreshing the page worked when we checked early in the morning. Now,  Verizon online orders will ship July 23.

"Customers have been enthusiastic about the launch of the Droid X by Motorola and inventory is either out or very low in some parts of the country," Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney said in a statement. "Customers may continue to order their phones and our expectation is the phones will ship on or before July 23."

So how can you get a Droid X?

Today,at 9:18 am PST  we are still able to find a few Droid X available.Wirefly which is showing a limited supply of Droid X with a price too low to show. Follow this link to get to the Droid X page.Wirefly: DROID X by Motorola at a Special Wirely Price!

Shazam is offering  two new versions their music finding app for Android with free and premium services. New features include song lyrics, tour information and YouTube videos for tagged artists, " Shazam Encore and Shazam freemium.

With Shazam you can discover and buy music, find tour dates for tagged artists, browse videos, as well as share your discoveries with friends on Facebook and Twitter.

For the first time, Shazam's premium app - Shazam Encore - will be available to download on Android Market for $4.99 wikth unlimited tagging and unlimited Recommendations. Shazam users in the US can also directly access Pandora through Shazam Encore to listen to a station from their Tags.

The Droid X launch this morning seemed to be Droid Incredible deja vu all over again. We know that our readers who were early birds and night owls were able to nab Droid X online from Verizon Wireless, and sales were incredible.

However, when we tried the link from the notification email, we received from Verizon, the "Gateway Timeout", meaning the server is overloaded. After waiting a few minutes, we revisited the Verizon website directly and we were able to get to the "buy" page(after re-landing.)  Therefore it looks like Verizon is handing the load for Droid X buyers. If you want something, just keep trying.

Update 7/17/10: The Droid X is sold-out online and in most stores. Wirefly which is showing a limited supply of Droid X with a price too low to show.

One thing we did notice, when you go to the Droid Does webpage, if you accessed it before, it may not show how to buy the Droid X. In your browser, you have to reload/refresh the page (from the View menu) to be able to order the it. Our refreshing tip for today, is reload the Droid Does page for ordering.

If you really can't wait to get your Droid, you can go to store in person. It's already too late for the east coast, but have no fear Californians, Verizon stores are opening up early.  It's not too hot outside, yet, and there are bunch of stores that are opening at 7:00 or 8:00 am. in California (scroll down to the end of the article) which we posted last night.