Samsung Indulge

Across the bottom of the Indulge are chunky physical Android buttons–Menu, Home, Back, and Search. A chrome accent rings around the Indulge, which has a volume rocker on the left, a headphone jack and power button up top, and a covered microUSB port and dedicated camera button on the right. The back cover houses the lens for the 3-megapixel camera and a speaker; underneath the cover resides a 1500mAh battery, SIM card slot (under the battery), and a microSD Card slot. A 4GB card is included, and the Indulge supports cards up to 32GB.
As it’s not a Galaxy S phone, the Indulge doesn’t have a vibrant Super AMOLED display. A high-quality YouTube trailer for the movie Thor looked great during close-ups, but background details got lost in the murky resolution. First, the good news: The Indulge’s keys are large, and they offer decent tactile feedback and a dedicated number row. Metro PCS pre-loads the Samsung Galaxy Indulge with a ton of branded apps. MetroWEB is the standard Android browser branded by Metro PCS. Metro411 is a local business search app, Metro BACKUP stores contacts for $1 a month, and MetroPCS Easy WiFi displays nearby public wireless hotspots. The @Metro App Store contains a list of Metro PCS-specific apps, such as Boingo Mobile Wi-Fi for accessing Boingo public networks, Cellufun Social for social gaming, and Flirtomatic and MocoSpace for mobile dating.

Droid X and Droid 2 likely impossible to root

It seems like once every new smartphone is out, or even before most people can get their hands on them, the hacking community starts rooting or jailbreaking them. For Android phones rooting the phones an installing a custom ROM is part of the appeal to many people. It let’s you get the great hardware of say an EVO 4G, but put the newest version of Android up there, or add whatever enhancement the community put into the OS version you choose.

Motorola doesn’t seem too happy about having their phones rooted by the community, and is looking to block that ability on the Droid X and Droid 2. To do this, Motorola is using a system called eFuse which will routinely check the bootloader, kernel and ROM on the phones and compare them to those that are coded in. If any of these elements are different, eFuse will corrupt the bootloader, and effectively brick the phone, rendering it useless. To get the phone back to a working order you’d have to talk to Verizon and hope that the company helps you fix the problem somehow.

If this does mean that the Droid X and Droid 2 cannot be rooted, it’s fairly depressing news. It likely won’t make much of a difference to most users, but it seems to go against the whole ideals of Android. Being able to change the experience as you see fit goes along with the open-source ideals of the platform. Without that, you have to rely on Motorola and Verizon to put out updates, and can’t do it yourself. There are bound to be some people who just want the chance to run stock Android 2.2 or even a Cyanogen ROM on the Droid X rather than Motorola’s 2.1 with Blur.