It looks like two rather lackluster Android handsets are meeting their demise on AT&T in the coming months. The Motorols Backflip will reach end-of-life on February 2nd, while the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 will do the same come March 6th. Both phones fell short of anything spectacular, so it is questionable how much they will really be missed once AT&T stops pedaling the handsets in their retail outlets.

In the meantime, the carrier suggests the Motorola FLIPOUT and Samsung Captivate as the perfect substitutes, but we’re more excited about the bigger and better things being shown off here at CES. If the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc makes it to the US, you better bet it will be on AT&T.

[via AC]

Remember when that rumor was brought up the first time? You know, the one where the newer versions of Android would require a specific set of specs? Remember when it was debunked? Remember when that rumor came back up again? Remember when that one was debunked too? Yep, Dan Morrill has put yet another ax to these claims: Honeycomb does not require a dual core processor. (Note that he doesn’t say anything about the screen resolution.) Though he may be telling the truth, all of the tablets that are supposed to be shipping with Honeycomb will have Tegra 2 dual-core processors and have screen sizes and resolutions of 10-inches and 1280×720 or higher. Coincidence? Eh. Even if it isn’t true, that would mean these tablet makers have no desire to stink up the joint, and I’m just glad to see a new wave of tablets with such high specs. Twitter for the confirmation. [via AG]

After almost a year since an SMS sending bug that would deliver messages to the wrong recipient was uncovered in the Android operating system, Google is finally working on a fix. Google had been investigating the issue that seemed to spike in occurence last summer, but said it was difficult to reproduce the glitch that occurs pretty rarely.

With some work they did manage to pinpoint the cause of the problem and  have developed a fix that should be rolling out to handsets shortly.

[via Cellular-News]

We know Netflix is trying their hardest to bring instant streaming goodness to all Android handsets, but dammit they’re trying. The LG Revolution was announced at CES this week, and while we’ve already gotten our hands-on time with it, we completely missed the fact that it has a Netflix app installed. The spot was made by an Android Central tipster who scrubbed through Unwired View’s video to uncover what should be a big deal to many. I can feel we’re getting closer to an announcement, at the least, so just sit tight guys.

The freshly announced HTC Thunderbolt is still a little while out for Verizon, but that hasn’t stopped the phone’s RUU from leaking. And with that comes a system dump measuring a whopping 500MB, of which not  lick of Bing has been uncovered so far.

An evening meeting between a group of us press folk and HTC PR revealed some interesting tid-bits about the hardware design of the new handset, including antenna located in the removable plastic battery cover to allow for a unibody metal casing without hampering signal strength. Another cool fun fact is HTC’s adoption of a policy to always expose some of the internal elements of the phone for those extra-techy brownie points. In the case of the Thunderbolt it is the vibrating motor, which you can see in this video capture by our friends over at Android Central.

If someone were to tell you that your cell phone could stop a speeding bullet from penetrating your skin, would you believe them? Yea, me neither. That’s probably what a valet for an Atlanta nightclub thought when purchasing his DROID Incredible. He probably didn’t even think he’d ever be put into a situation where his life would be at stake at the hand of a gun as a valet. Thankfully, whatever scumbag shot him didn’t know that he had one of the toughest Android phones in the market sitting in his pocket. (Remember the DROID Incredible that got burned alive and still lived to make phone calls?) Anyway, the battery is what ultimately did the trick in saving this man from what would  have otherwise been a very horrible tragedy. Video below if you’re interested.