It's a story we're hearing all too often these days. An update comes down for a phone, and the phone starts acting up. Such is the case, apparently, for a number of Sprint Motorola Photon 4G users, who are reporting such problems as overheating to failed updates. It's not everybody, of course, but it's enough to raise eyebrows.

So what's the word? Yay or nay on update issues?

Source: Sprint forums; Photon 4G forums

And in this corner of the LG U.S. National Texting Championship we have the brand-new LG DoublePlay on T-Mobile. Just announced, the Android 2.3 device features a 3.5-inch main display and 2-inch sub-display that splits the four-row QWERTY keyboard. While secondary screens have yet to really take off (hi, Kyrocera Echo and Samsung Continuum), this one's different as it's got a layer of functionality the others lacked with the keyboard.

The DoublePlay, which is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, also has a 5MP camera and is the phone contestants will use at the National Texting Championship on Oct. 26 in New York. No word yet on when us mere mortals can pick one up.

Source: T-Mobile

We've seen some inspiring Lego stands people have made for their smartphones.  Legos are affordable, accessible, and fun as hell to play with (admit it) so they are the perfect building materials for all sorts of projects.  This one, for the Sprint Epic 4G Touch, from AC member mlsanders83 takes the cake though.  It's simple. unobtrusive, and looks like a little tiny Android geek working on a giant sized Super AMOLED plus screen.  When asked what Lego kit was used ('cause who wouldn't want to make one of these) mlsanders83 said it was "some combination of a boat and a plane mostly. I'm sure there were some other parts thrown in there too though."  Hit the break to see a couple more pics, and if you'll excuse me, I have some Legos to go buy.

Source: Android Central forums

Thanks, mlsanders83!

A bit of new kit from Motorola is available today in the United States. First up is the Motorola Atrix 2. That's the obvious ssequel to the original Atrix 4G (read our full review). It's been nipped, it's been tucked, it's a bit faster, and it's probably got Atrix fans who bought the first version in February a bit riled up. Oh, and it's available for $99 on contract.

Then there's the Motorola Xoom Family Edition. It's a lot (if not exactly) like the original Xoom. Same 10.1-inch display, NVIDIA Tegra 2 internals, 5MP camera. And it's got a slew of apps preloaded, included, including the kid-friendly Zoodles, Quickoffice, Asphalt 6 and SIM City Deluxe. It's going for an entirely reasonable $379 at Best Buy.

More: Atrix 2 at AT&T; Xoom Family Edition at Best Buy

Two of Sony Ericsson's more interesting devices have just made their way onto Three UK at subsidized prices. The Xperia Arc S and SE Live with Walkman are now available for free on any of Three's standard 24-month contracts.

The Arc S, SE's new flagship device, can be yours for £28 per month, while the Live with Walkman is offered for a more frugal £18 per month. With its shiny new 1.4 GHz CPU, the Arc S gives a modest boost from the original Arc's 1 GHz chip, and boasts new functionality like 3D panoramic recording. The SE Live with Walkman, which represents the manufacturer's current budget offering, is offered free on contracts of £18 or more per month.

We'll have a review of the Arc S appearing in the next week or so, so keep wathcing. In the meantime you can check out our first impressions of the Arc S and Live with Walkman from last month's Xperia Party.

Source: Three UK

It is always nice to see the minimum advertised price leak out for a device so we know about where we could expect it to be on contract pricing. The folks at Engadget received a tip about MAP pricing on the HTC Rezound (aka the HTC Vigor) and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus device and both of them show as $299. Interesting note about it is that the pricing is effective as of November 10, 2011, which is just shy of a month away from the upcoming announcement. What is that we hear? Excitement in the air?

Source: Engadget

The Motorola Atrix 2 should be hitting AT&T store shelves Sunday Oct. 16, but in at least one location they are already sitting pretty and ready for fondling.  A reader sent these pics in, saying that the manager of his local AT&T store has already put them out "by mistake".  He goes on to tell us two pretty interesting things -- the H+ icon in the status bar has been replaced with a "4G" logo, and the screen on the new models is good enough that he doesn't think it's a pentile matrix display.  While the network icon is pretty lulzworthy, the news about an improved screen is good to hear.  Maybe this is a worthy refresh after all?  hit the break for another pic, and check out our hands-on.

Thanks, anon!

If you're eyeing the Motorola Atrix 2 (releasing on Oct. 16), or the Samsung Stratosphere (released Oct. 13), and are a member at Costco, you may want to hold off until next week, when both are available at the warehouse giant.  A lot of little perks come with buying a phone from Costco, the best of which is their generous return policy, and whatever news comes on Oct. 19 from Hong Kong from the Ice Cream Sandwich event may just make you want to take advantage of it.  Costco isn't firm on the exact dates in this memo, and we don't know exactly how much you'll save buying it from them versus the carriers storefront, but a little patience may just pay off.

Thanks, Anon!

Make sense?

This happens a lot, folks, so let's explain it again: A website that sells phones -- a third-party retailer, if you will -- knows just as well as you or I that the Galaxy Nexus (aka the Nexus Prime, aka the Samsung GT-i9250) is going to be announced next week. So it takes a leaked picture and slaps it up on its site, and gets us all to write about it. It's an SEO play. Oh, and that $749 asking price and $949 retail price? We'd be shocked if that's really what an unlocked Galaxy Nexus costs.

In fact, we're not even going to list the website that's listed the Galaxy Nexus. The Galaxy Nexus is coming. It'll be announced Wednesday in Hong Kong. (That's Tuesday evening in the States.) We'd wait until then before plopping down any money.

But in the meantime, you can visit our Galaxy Nexus forums, which we absolutlely have had live long before the phone is announced in hopes that you'll click on it and give us better SEO. But then again, we're not selling it to you for $749.

(And in other news, yes, the phone we first told you will be coming to Verizon is showing up in Verizon's inventory systems. Whodathunkit?)

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Youtube link for mobile viewing

You'd think by now people would have learned to stop comparing other smartphones, spec-by-spec, to the iPhone. It's apples and oranges. But that hasn't stopped the latest unsourced rumor from BGR, which claims to have the lowdown on the upcoing Motorola Droid RAZR, which we fully expect to see unveiled on Tuesday in New York.

So what are the specs? Let's break it down:

• 4.3-inch display. OK.
• 1.2 GHz dual-core processor. Par for the course these days, right?
• 1GB of RAM, which BGR (as well as anyone else who can count) notes is twice as much as the iPhone. And so what? The iPhone also multitasks very differently than Android phones. The OS runs differently. It's less graphically intensive. It's not like the iPhone is slow because it only has 512MB of RAM. And, as we find ourselves repeating a lot lately, what exactly does "faster" mean? Faster at doing what?

No, the only thing rumored here we're really interested in is the claim that it's thinner than the iPhone 4/4S -- and that it's an LTE device. We've seen Samsung slim up the 4G Wimax-enabled Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, and we're also expecting to soon see thinner (and hopefully lighter) Xoom tablets.

Here's what we want from any manufacturer of an LTE device: Thinner and lighter, with better battery life. "Faster" is always going to come. Moore's Law and all, right?

Anyhoo, we'll be there Tuesday to find out. Stay tuned.

Source: BGR