A few crafty HTC Vivid owners have been able to pull down the Ice Cream Sandwich update thanks to a little dialer trick. A forum member over at Android Central was surprised to find Ice Cream Sandwich and Sense 3.6 waiting for him after performing a system update by dialing *#*#682#*#* . Quite a few people have since had success using the same method while others say the number just disappears from the screen when they try to dial it. Either way, it’s worth a shot to have Ice Cream Sandwich running on your Vivid ahead of most other devices.

In the latest patent war saga, a Dutch court ruled that Samsung cannot assert 3G patents against Apple products using Qualcomm’s baseband chips — as Samsung has a licensing deal with the U.S. chipmaker — thus denying their bid to ban the sales of the iPhone and iPad in the Netherlands. However, Samsung didn’t consider the ruling a complete loss as the Hague court also ruled that Samsung could seek damages over the use of Intel chips. While Apple doesn’t use Intel chips, this gives Samsung ammunition against those that do.

When HTC unveiled their One series of phones, their wasn’t much info about the One V. They told us about its Legend design (which I don’t really care for) and at MWC they showed us a charcoal-colored version that wasn’t quite ready to be powered on. We now know the HTC One V is expected to be an entry level device and thanks to Japanese site Blog of Mobile, we also know it will come in a variety of other colors.

Google has announced the addition of four cities and 11 new partners to their relatively new Offers service. If you live in Austin, Houston, Philadelphia or Miami, you’ll now have access to one local deal a day from Google Offers. Users also have access to a myriad of other deals thanks to 30 deal providing partners, including the 11 recently added partners:

Google Earth for Android received an update today bringing it to version 6.2. In this updated version, users will be able to view real-time information such as flights, earthquakes, etc., thanks to a curated list of layers in the Earth Gallery. Users will also be able to share current views through Google+ and other social networks to let others know where they virtually are at any moment. Other features added in version 6.2 include: