As you are aware that Motorola XOOM’s biggest drawback is the absence of Adobe Flash, essential to view Flash-powered pages and play Flash-based games. When rolling out its tablet, Motorola promised us that in few weeks, it will bring Flash to its devices, and it seems the time is ripe.

With Flash 10.2 ready for release, Xoom tablet is gearing up instant installation of Flash. The rollout will start in phases and will likely take a few days to complete, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t get prompted to apply it right away.

Oh, by the way Motorola says those who rooted/unlocked are out of luck and must restore to stock and relock.

A Polish Android forum posted a thread claiming to contain a download for an official Gingerbread build for the Samsung Galaxy S i9000. Before you get too excited, let me remind you this is for European and Asian devices and not for US devices, like Captivate/Vibrant/Fascinate/Epic.

That said, in no time we expect the community to get their hands on this ROM development. Soon you may be seeing unofficial Gingerbread ROMs floating for US phones. It also provides some concrete evidence that Samsung is well on their way to preparing a Gingerbread release for Galaxy S phones, it’s just a matter of time.

The link to download the ROM is here.

For all those who wanted to try out the Honeycomb boot animation on a CM7ed Nexus S, here we are with the same. The original work is the courtesy of XDA member zul8er, and tnpapadakos. Don’t believe see it for yourself in the video below.

The best part is that this boot is not restricted to Nexus S or CM7, apparently, but also to EVO, and many others. Te rooting of the Honeycomb is simple, but the usual disclaimer says: this has not been thoroughly tested, and if you back up the original beforehand, there shouldn’t be much to worry about.

Here’s the list of smartphones on which it works:

• Captivate (Firefly 2.1, Cognition 3.04)
• EVO 4G (CM7)
• Nexus One (CM7)
• Nexus S (Stock ROM, CM7)
• Milestone XT720 (stock 2.1, 2.2.1)
• MyTouch 4G (CM7)
• Vibrant (Stock ROM)

Here are the instructions to install it.

Step 1: Download the boot animation.

Step 2: Using root explorer, copy bootanimation.zip to the /system/media/ folder. (Copy over the existing ones.)

Remember: Even though it’s easy to reboot, but there’s some risk involved.

Let us know how well it worked?

Cyanogen, DamageControl, ROMmanager sounds alien to you? Or perhaps you are aware of what these are but are hesitant to try custom ROMs on your phone because you don’t know how to install them or don’t want to lose your data and current OS state?

Well, today is your lucky day because we will show you how to:

• Install a custom ROM
• Back up your current system and exact phone
• Restore to that exact state with a click of a button

This procedure will take 30 minutes and your phone will go back to your original OS. Sounds good? Let’s go.

Let’s look at the steps at a glance:

1. Root Your Phone
2. Install ROM Manager App
3. Back Up
4. Download The Choicest ROM  
5. Flash It
6. Restore It, if you want to go back to original OS

 Step1: Root Your Phone

Rooting is usually a 5- minute process; many guides on the web explain the process as per your exact phone model and Android version combinations. Google “YOUR_PHONE_MODEL root” and you will receive instructions.

Step 2:  Install ROM Manager App

Visit Android Market and install ROM Manager. It will help you to handle backup, restore and flashing new ROM. But you must follow Step1, as it requires the phone to be rooted.

Step3: Back Up

Let the ROM Manager perform the backup for you. No manual intervention required, except you simply access the manager.

Step 3.1: Flash A Recovery Image

Prior to installing new ROM via the ROM Manager, it is essential to follow this one-time step, and that is flashing a recovery image. Remember to unplug the USB cable, else you may find problems flashing recovery while plugged in.

This recovery image contains a boot loader that replaces your original boot loader. It enables you to run Nandroid backup and restore commands outside of the OS.

Step 4: Download The ROM and Copy It To Your Phone’s SD Card

Perform Goggle search- “YOUR_PHONE_MODEL ROM” to pin down your choices ROM. Or you can purchase ROM Manager Premium for $3.99. The Premium version downloads ROMs compatible with your phone straight from ROM Manager. Simply select “Download ROM” and browse the best-fit for your phone model.

After you’ve decided the ROM that you wish to try on, begin the download process. Download the ROM image as a zip archive and copy it into the root folder of your SD card.

You can do download it by attaching the phone with a USB cable and selecting the option of mounting the SD card to be used as a drive on the computer. Alternatively, physically remove the SD card and insert your own card reader. Or, download the ROM straight from the phone browser.

Step 5: Flash It

Flashing is the process of installing new firmware or low-level system software. Flash the new custom ROM over the original ROM that came with your phone.

Begin the process by opening the ROM Manager and clicking “Install ROM from SD Card”

The downloaded ROM should reflect in the list. If it doesn’t, ensure you’ve put it into the root folder of the SD card.

Click on the ROM and receive a popup invitation to back up existing ROM and wipe data and cache. Do this only if you want to do a clean install. Follow the remaining prompts. Voila! ROM installed!

The flashing process takes up to 10 minutes and then another 20 minutes during the first boot. Please wait until the process is completely finished. Once the phone boots, you should find yourself in the new ROM.

You’ve done it! Enjoy your fast and clean phone.

[via AndroidPolice]

Recently thing has gotten worse between Apple and Adobe (like it was ever good before). The issue is that Adobe is trying to get flash on the iPhone while Apple continues to resist. Apple strongly believe that HTML5 is the future of the web, but we all know that most of the good web sites today run flash. Adobe’s relationship with Google, however, seems to be get better. In the video below, Adobe is apparently using the pre-release beta version of Android 2.2 to test their flash on the Nexus one. This will definitely improve web browsing and gaming on Android until most websites become HTML5, maybe ten years from now.