With this morning starting off rough for Verizon 4G LTE users, we’re rolling into the evening on a some better notes. There was quite few app updates coming from various places today and announcements coming from all corners. So if you missed out on anything, get yourself caught up. Once done there, hit up the Android Central Forums, you dig?

Check out our Ubuntu for Android forums!

Many a sleepless night has been spent by Android hackers getting Ubuntu to run natively on our Android devices. It’s hard work, but fun and the end result is something super-functional as well as super-cool. The folks at Canonical, the minds behind Ubuntu, think so, too. That’s why they did it the right way, and have announced Ubuntu for Android.  This isn’t some janky, twisted hybrid designed by the people who make your phone. We’ve seen that, and went away still wanting. This is software, from the people who write the software, specially tailored for our devices.

US Cellular’s Samsung Galaxy S II may hit stores on March 1, according to an internal document sent to Android Central. The memo, titled “Samsung Galaxy S II Equipment Launch Announcement” is dated Feb. 20 — the day before the regional carrier actually announced the device. The memo reads as follows:

LG has been busy selling various flavors of its high-end Optimus LTE over the past few months, but that doesn’t mean it’s forgotten about its entry-level line-up. A new budget device, dubbed the LG E400 Optimus L3, has appeared over on Swedish retailer CDON, running Android 2.3 (and LG’s Optimus UI) on a 3.2-inch screen. Other specs include a 3 megapixel camera, HSDPA and Wifi connectivity and a microSD card slot. There’s no information on what CPU you’ll find powering this thing, but we wouldn’t expect anything beathtakingly fast — maybe a 1GHz single-core chip, if that. Nevertheless, from the outside the Optimus L3 looks like a stylish little device for anyone on a budget.

Slingplayer for Android devices has been around for a while now. Sadly for Kindle Fire owners and their lack of the Android Market, they haven’t been able to indulge upto now. Jan. 31 is the day though, as Slingplayer for Kindle Fire will be arriving in the Amazon Appstore for $30.

Lenovo are the latest company to jump on the Ice Cream Sandwich update bandwagon by announcing its plans to update the ThinkPad tablet.

The Thinkpad has been around since last summer, and while we don’t have a specific date Lenovo have stated that the update will roll out during Q2. The IdeaPad is also slated to make the jump to Android 4.0 as well. It’s easy to forget about these in our tablet filled world, but Lenovo makes some pretty nice hardware and the ThinkPad has a pretty killer keyboard dock as well. An ICS upgrade will be most welcome. 

While you guys in the United States have a whole range of LTE Android devices to choose from, in the UK we’re still a long way from the point of getting LTE at all. An on-going trial being run in Cornwall by BT and Everything Everywhere (Orange UK and T-Mobile) is now set to extend until Summer 2012.

If you’re one of the more than 28 million users of Formspring, you’ll notice that there has been a lack of an official application from the social network. That all changes now as the official Formspring for Android application is available right now in the Android Market. 

The winner of this week’s Android Central photo contest is August with his picture of a compact in a quiet street scene, taken with his Samsung Galaxy S II using Retro Camera .  This week’s pictures were as amazing as last time around, and picking just one was no easy feat.  It’s the kind of work we all enjoy though, so we love doing it.  Keep an eye on your e-mail August, I’ll be contacting you about getting your battery shipped out.

We see Google working hard to provide better support for Android developers, and that’s a great thing.  We want developers for our platform of choice to be well taken care of so it’s worth learning to code for Android and releasing great applications.  Google’s not perfect in this regard, but they keep improving, and that’s the only way to make it better.  But el Goog needs to start focusing a little more on user support.