Here are the instructions to manually update your Google Nexus One to Froyo:

1. Download the new Android 2.3.4 firmware update.
2. Rename the file to update.zip. Note that if you’re using Windows, just rename it to “update” (no quotes, of course) because it’s already a zipped file.
3. Copy the update.zip file onto your SD card.
4. Turn your Nexus One off.
5. Hold down the “Volume Down” button as you power the phone back on.
6. A screen should appear showing your phone’s system searching for various files. Scroll down to “recovery” and press the “Power” button.
7. When you see the triangle with an exclamation point symbol, press the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons at the same time.
8. From the menu that appears, select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”
9. When the screen displays “Install from sdcard complete” select “reboot system now” and wait for the phone to power back up.

• Phone, applications Launcher, and Browser now have dedicated shortcuts on the Home screen, making it easy to access them from any of the 5 home screen panels.
• LED Flash enabled for camcorders; allowing for videos to be shot at night or in low light settings
• Camera onscreen buttons provide easy access to a new UI for controling zoom, flash, white balance, geo-tagging, focus and exposure.
• Updated Google Search bar to include dropdown for All, Web, Apps or Contacts search. Plus choose which items are searchable, not just those previously mentioned yet specific apps; Messaging, Twitter, Music, etc.
• Portable Wi-Fi hotspot that can be shared with up to 8 devices; Wi-Fi/USB tethering
• Improved performance with better kernel management, enhanced browsing performance & Dalvik performance boost
• Task and application manger; ability to upgrade all apps at once and add background updating
• Bluetooth Voice Dialing for hands-free calling while driving
• Different trackball colour notifications; blue for bluetooth, red for low battery, and the usual white for new messages & call notifications
• Voice input settings let you specify your regional accent (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Generic).
• Multi-language stock keyboard (but doesn’t support Chinese)
• New Car Home design
• plus a whole lot more …

However, the dazzling highlights for me were undoubtedly:

• Better Performance. It’s like an upgrading of RAM – so much more free space makes everything faster. Up to 271M of free as compared to up to 91M previously.
• Auto Brightness. Power widget for the home screen now lets you select auto-brightness. Previously, you had 3 lighting options and my Christmas wish was for an auto brightness option to come so I didn’t have to change it everytime I walked into bright sunlight or meander around in a dark room. Looked like Christmas came early and the auto brightness is probably the best addition to Froyo. Had reservations about what effect it would have on battery life but so far my worries have been unfounded.
• Vibrate. Watching a movie, in a meeting? Need to silent the phone urgently? Lowering the volume quickly could mean totally silencing the phone. Not anymore. Vibration can now be set to always, never, only in silent mode, and only when not in silent mode.
• Colourful Trackball. New SMS – white. Low battery – white. New notification – white. Imagine my surprise when my trackball suddenly flashed RED for dangerously low battery. Blue when my bluetooth was turned on. Why did they even wait with all these? It’s not a useless navigational tool anymore. Red, Stop, Green, Go, I wonder how many hues does the trackball have.
• Flash. For those flashy websites and the not so flashy games, you need Adobe Flash.
• Better call log display. This might just be a minor change, but I still feel a much needed one considering it just summarizes how you might have had 5 calls from the same person appearing once instead of five. Perhaps it’s just me.
• The Google Apps. Google definitely make their apps work best on their own operating system. Strangely, Gmail wasn’t exactly all that smooth previously but now you can browse & tag emails with much more ease. Oh and YouTube videos in HD!
• Voice input now recognizes swear words. No, I hardly even use voice input.

Android 2.2 theoretically supports installing apps to the SD card which undoubtedly would even free up more space, but developers need to first enable this in their apps. My previous concern was eventually the apps would take up all the in-built memory, but it seems this will eventually be worked around as developers slowly enable this.

Google obviously needs to cater to more users from elsewhere to enable multi-language stock keyboards for languages like Mandarin, and what’s up with no accent support for Singaporeans? I reckon Singaporeans are distinguishable anywhere you go in the World. You can fake a British or Australian accent, but not a Singaporean one.

All in all, Google simply amazes with every Android update; it seems to only unlock more and more capabilities each time – from multi-touch ability, to automatic lighting, and multi-coloured trackballs and such in a faster Froyo, simply makes me salivate at what Android 2.3 would unleash on the Nexus One.

mSpot allows people to upload their music- be it purchased, ripped or downloaded (via various means) and access it from any Windows or Mac computer, or a Google Android device. It currently only supports Android mobile devices.

Rather than trying to recognize the music files on your computer and replicate it in the cloud, mSpot practically uploads your music collection from iTunes, Windows Media Player, and/or any folders you specify, effectively saving any ratings and metadata (album artwork) you may have set up in iTunes by scanning its XML database. The upload process takes at least several hours depending on processing power and connection speed, but once it’s there, you’re good to go. It took me approximately 5-6 hours to sync my data onto mSpot.

mSpot plans to offer “north of 2 GB” of free music storage or more for a monthly fee. All files are converted into 48-Kbps aacplus files (a standard format for mobile music streaming services), meaning that you can store over four days of music in a free 2-GB locker account.

Having tried out the service, I would say it simply rocks – it totally eliminates the need to try and sync your music from your PC’s library onto your phone or anywhere else! Of course, the current downside is that the limit is 2GB for free users, which essentially cannot contain my library of nearly 3,000 songs and 11 GB of data, though I would be interested to see how much they plan to charge for a larger account. The conversion though has meant that about 50% of my songs have been sync onto mSpot.

mSpot is currently in private beta mode, but users can sign up on the company’s website (www.mspot.com) to try the web and/or Android version using the password “phandroid“.

mSpot’s freemium music locker service for Android smartphones and computers will be available to the public at some point in June, with apps for RIM, Windows and possibly iPhone to come thereafter.

About mSpot
mSpot is a digital entertainment company that offers instant streaming of movies, music and other entertainment to more than six million consumers across North America. mSpot helps consumers easily access music, custom ringtones, live radio and videos from major music labels, movie studios and top brands. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, mSpot is on the Web at www.mspot.com.

To download the app to your phone, you will need to open the Download Flash Player 10.1 beta on your Android 2.2 device. Flash 10.1 cannot be installed in any other way right now.

After installation, you can visit websites like Reckless Ericka & play popular Popcap games such as Bejeweled Blitz!

Here are the instructions to manually update your Google Nexus One to Froyo:

1. Download the new Android 2.2 firmware update.
2. Rename the file to update.zip. Note that if you’re using Windows, just rename it to “update” (no quotes, of course) because it’s already a zipped file.
3. Copy the update.zip file onto your SD card.
4. Turn your Nexus One off.
5. Hold down the “Volume Down” button as you power the phone back on.
6. A screen should appear showing your phone’s system searching for various files. Scroll down to “recovery” and press the “Power” button.
7. When you see the triangle with an exclamation point symbol, press the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons at the same time.
8. From the menu that appears, select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”
9. When the screen displays “Install from sdcard complete” select “reboot system now” and wait for the phone to power back up.

You now have Froyo (Android 2.2) on your Nexus One, making it much faster, automatic upgrading of apps, ability to define Google Search options, default phone & web shortcuts on every screen (instead of just the apps shortcut) and a whole lot more!

The best update for Froyo would probably be the auto lighting option – can’t wait to see how it would work in bright daylight! My Advanced Task Killer is also showing up to 271MB of free memory as compared to around 81M previously.

Google Buzz for Mobile is available if you visit http://buzz.google.com on your iPhone or Android phone, and once again Google has given first priority by updating Google Maps. Google Maps 4.0 for Android was released just after news of Buzz broke, and now supports Buzz and is available in the Android market.

Personally, I haven’t had the opportunity to see it in my Gmail yet, and Google is promising to roll it out in the next few days: “We’re still rolling out Buzz to everyone, so if you don’t see it in your Gmail account yet, check back soon.” Trying it out on my Nexus One, my initial thoughts were – it’s Twitter with location-based enabled (something Twitter has already run tests on), albeit one with a poorer connection and that I couldn’t find anyone nearby (!) Therefore, insufficient reason to use it unless you have friends all using it too, which is all the more unlikely when most of them would be on Facebook or Twitter instead.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall into gutter as did Google Wave (where at one point of time a Wave invite could have drawn US$2).

About Google Buzz
Google Buzz is a social integration tool by Google, designed to integrate into the company’s web-based email program, Gmail. Shared links and messages show up in users’ inboxes. Buzz focuses on integrating photos, videos, and links as part of the “conversations” aspects of Gmail like conversation threading. Buzz allows users to choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time they post. Buzz is currently integrated with Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter.

Personally, having tested it on my Nexus One, it’s a breeze to use. It allows for moderation of comments, basic editing of posts, adding new posts, etc. Simply put, it does what it needs to do for someone maintaining a blog on the go.

It is currently available in the Android Market, search for “WordPress” or scan the image below using a QR scanner on your Android phone.

Features include the ability to:

• Configure and manage multiple blogs
• Comment moderation including the ability to reply to comments
• Create and Edit Posts including categories, tags and photos
• Create and Edit Pages
• Get notified of new comments in the Android notification bar

Users of the popular wpToGo app for Android will feel right at home in WordPress for Android 1.0, as the source from wpToGo has been used as the foundation for the WordPress app. wpToGo will be discontinued as all development efforts move forward with the Open Source WordPress for Android app.

If you are having difficult getting an automatic over-the-air update from Google, here is how to manually update your Google Nexus One.

This release comes amidst reports that Steve Jobs had a go at Google recently, saying that Google had encroached on Apple’s territory by going into the phone business when Apple hadn’t entered the search business. Apple and Google reportedly had a gentleman’s agreement that Android wouldn’t encroach on what Apple believed to be its property, certain multi-touch gestures, like pinch-to-zoom.

Of course, Google’s stance is that it was that Android 2.1 “powers a new class of devices” with more horsepower and bigger displays, and “based on these new capabilities and numerous requests from Android users, we decided to provide pinch-to-zoom capabilities with this new over-the-air software update for Nexus One devices.”

Palm and Microsoft’s Zune player also have multi-touch on them, which might be why Google seems ready to take the gamble to allow multi-touch on the Nexus One without incurring a possible patent suit from Apple.

The Apple vs. Google war is definitely heating up, and with the recent announcmenet of the iPad, Google already has new Chrome OS tablet mock-ups lined up. Apple have also just announced that they have released iPhone OS 3.1.3 to improve battery life & a couple of smaller fixes.

All the fixes with this update in detail:

Google Goggles: it is now available directly on your device by launching it from your All Apps menu. Just use your Nexus One camera to start searching the web

Google Maps: upgraded to Google Maps 3.4, which will include:

• Starred items synchronized with maps.google.com – access your favorite places from your phone or computer
• Search suggestions from your personal maps.google.com history – makes it easy to search for places you’ve searched for before
• Night mode in Google Maps Navigation – automatically changes your screen at night for easier viewing and driving

Nexus means a series of things connected together, an appropriate name for a phone where Google is taking more control of both the hardware and software, and therefore much more of the user experience.

In Google’s own words,  the Nexus One is a convergence point for mobile technology, apps and the Internet. Nexus One is an exemplar of what’s possible on mobile devices through Android — when cool apps meet a fast, bright and connected computer that fits in your pocket. The Nexus One belongs in the emerging class of devices which we call “superphones.”

Manufactured by HTC, the Nexus One features dynamic noise suppression from Audience, Inc., a large 3.7″ OLED display for deep contrast and brilliant colors and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ chipset for blazing speeds. Running on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, the software includes innovations like a voice-enabled keyboard so you can speak into any text field, fun Live Wallpapers, a 3D photo gallery for richer media experiences and lots more. Of course, it also comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation.

Features of the Nexus One:
– 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ processor
– Android 2.1
– Thin and light
– Compass
– GPS
– accelerometer
– light and proximity sensor.
– 3.7-inch AMOLED display
– multi-color notification LED under the trackball.
– 5 megapixel camera with LED flash
– Stereo bluetooth and 3.5mm headphone jack.
– Active noise suppression (one on bottom, one on the back)
– Google Maps Navigation for turn-by-turn
– Facebook integration
– Quick Contacts
– Customization of software (home screen panels)
– New widgets for news and weather
– live wallpaper
– 3D app launcher
– voice to text for all text fields (email, tweets, etc.)
Full list of the Nexus One features.

BillShrink has a comparison chart done on the Nexus One, iPhone, Droid,. Palm Pre

Running Gmail on the Nexus One

On top of all the features, Adobe Flash will be one of the feature not coming to the iPhone.

The Nexus One costs US$529, shipping the Nexus One to Singapore via DHL costs an additional US$28.32. What is not indicated is that the Nexus One pricing doesn’t come with an adapter, so you would have to fork out another US$19,99 for the adapter. Get yours now!

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