The Droid X has a new operating system available.
If you haven’t yet received an automatic update to your Droid X phone, then you can get one manually by pulling a system update, which is described in my book Droid X For Dummies.
The new operating system is the Gingerbread version of Android. While it still works basically the same, there are some differences — and improvements. Needless to say, this update does affect my book.
Overall. The look of Gingerbread is different from the Froyo version of Android. The design is a little sleeker, customized for higher-resolution phones. The Status Bar is black instead of white, which is perhaps the most obvious difference.
Home Screen. The Home screen now features a Dock along the bottom. Four icons are fixed for each Home screen panel. The fourth icon is the launcher button, but you can swap out the first three icons — including the Dialer (phone) app — by dragging another app icon to the Dock.
Pressing the Home soft button twice displays an overview of all seven Home screens, from which you can choose which screen to instantly navigate to.
Apps Screen. The Launcher now opens the Apps screen, which is different from the Applications Tray. The Apps screen has various views, which are chosen from a Group menu at the top left of the Apps screen. You can choose All Apps to see all the apps in your phone, Recent to see recently-opened apps (and more than just 6 of them), or Downloads to see apps you’ve downloaded from the Android Market.
A shortcut button to the Android Market is found at the top right of the Apps screen.
You can also create your own app groups using the Group menu.
Notifications. It’s easier in Gingerbread to dismiss individual notifications: Simply touch the red Delete button to the right of a notification to remove it.
Other changes. They’ve cleaned up a lot of stuff with Gingerbread, but most of it is subtle. Things just look different, but overall your Droid X should operate similarly to how the book describes things work.
I’ll keep you informed later as to how the book will be updated to reflect the new changes. Until then, if you have any questions, feel free to send me an email. My address is found at the end of the Introduction in the front of Droid X For Dummies.
