GetJar has spoiled us all, offering great paid apps for free. Now they are going one step forward, making this scheme official. The name of the game is GetJar Gold and it will give consumers free ongoing access to premium applications that they would have to pay for on other app stores.

 

The official pitch goes like this (from the press release):

The same premium Android apps that cost up to $10 on Android Market or Amazon App Store are offered free as part of GetJar Gold. New premium apps are added to GetJar Gold every day and remain on the store. All apps are available for download at no cost, saving consumers potentially hundreds of dollars over time. With 30 million active monthly users, GetJar is set to give away millions of dollars worth of apps.

 

 

 

Phones 4U has an awesome deal for the HTC Sensation. The phone retailer is offering the Android-powered smartphone for 9.99 GBP with a 21.50 GBP per month plan from O2. The mentioned plan is also pretty solid, offering 200 calling minutes, 3,000 text messages and 500MB of mobile data every month.

Aside from the HTC Evo 3D, the Sensation is the best Android phone HTC has made thus far. It does not have the Super AMOLED Plus screen like Samsung Galaxy S II, but other than that its pretty on par with Sammy baby. And now that its offered with this deal, there is no need to wait hit this link, select O2 and you will see this plan listed on the first place.

 

 

The premier market intelligence firm IDC released its Q2 2011 mobile phone shipment estimates in Western Europe today, marking a fundamental shift in the market for mobile phones. For the first time, the smartphone shipments outnumbered the feature phone ones on the Old Continent. This change is mostly attributed to the significant rise of Android OS adoption (352-percent year over year) according to IDC. The Google OS devices account for 48.5-percent of the total smartphone shipments.

 

As far as manufacturers go, Samsung has the top spot in smartphone shipments with 22% market share, followed closely by Apple, which has 21% of the smartphone market. The Korean giant performance can be considered more than impressive, as the company smartphone shipments have grown by 700% year over year, compared to 64% for Apple. Nokia is the big loser in the smartphone race with a 60% decline in shipments, compared to the same period of last year.

However, the Finnish company is still the top mobile phone vendor in Western Europe, when smartphones and feature phones get combined, with 37% market share.

 

 

Yesterday was a big day for Twitter as the company confirmed that the number of active members has exceeded 100 million. Thats a whopping 82-percent increase compared to the beginning of this very year.

 

The total number of registered users on Twitter was not quoted, with the last revealed figure of 200 million dating from a few months back. Whats quite impressive though is that 50% of those 100 million active users log onto the 140-character network daily.

 

 

As far as news from the electronics business go, it does not get much more exciting than this. If the latest bit of online rumor is true we are just a week away from seeing the first Windows 8-running tablet. And the first tablet with a quad-core CPU. And the first Windows device with an ARM processor. And the best bit is, those are not three different devices.

 

 

According to the industry source that went all chatty in front of the Korean newspaper, Samsung will manufacture the slate that will be given to developers at the upcoming Microsoft BUILD event next week. It will be running the software giant newest OS and will rely on NVIDIA Kal-El chipset.

Now, the unnamed Samsung slate probably will not make it to the market as the Windows 8 OS is still some way off completion and by the time Microsoft is done with the i-dotting and t-crossing, Samsung will probably have better hardware to offer. So developers attending the event will be the only lucky guys and gals to get a taste of the described awesomeness this year.

 

 

All of us Windows users shutdown our computers, even though options like Sleep and Hibernate are available. We do it because we like to have a fresh system when we start using it again. Microsoft statistics reflect this behavior, which shows a majority of people prefer to shutdown their computers. But the downside of doing this is having to wait for your computer to boot all over again and then re-open all your applications. Depending on your PC hardware, this can take several minutes.

If all this sounds familiar to you, then you will probably welcome Windows 8 with open arms. Because Microsoft has now improved the standard shutdown method that we all know and love and made it much, much faster. How fast? Well, on a powerful enough hardware, Windows 8 can boot in 8 seconds flat.

The reason for this speedy behavior is in the way Windows 8 shuts down. The new shutdown is similar to hibernation found in the current and older version of Windows, except it does save and re-open all your apps upon startup. Instead of saving everything, Windows 8 saves just the OS kernel in a file on the hard drive and then uses it to while booting up, speeding the whole processing considerably. Windows 8 also makes full use of multi-core processors to load the hibernation file. Also, since it does not save your applications, the hibernation file is also much smaller than usual.

Demo Below!

 

 

The reports of MeeGo death are greatly exaggerated says Intel Vice President, Doug Fisher. And he should know he us also the General Manager of Intel System Software Solutions. Fisher also said that "nothing is changing" and reiterated Intel commitment to MeeGo. So, MeeGo fans can breathe a sigh of relief, the second backer of the OS is not pulling out like the first one did.

But another quote from Fisher suggests that Intel would love it if someone took Nokia place: "We will continue with development. It's just a question of who is going to help us shape that."

 

Samsung was rumored to be interested in buying MeeGo, but neither they nor Intel commented on that.

 

After Three, we have another British carrier listing the newly announced Samsung Galaxy W on its "Coming Soon" pages. Its Telephonic O2, which have not specified the exact launch date, though we think it will start selling during the next few weeks. Hopefully, we will not have to wait for too long to see the white version of the device available alongside the default black one.

As a reminder, the Galaxy W is an all-touchscreen Android smartphone which may not beat the Galaxy S II, but it certainly deserves a place in the high-end part of the spectrum. It comes with a single-core 1.4GHz processor, 3.7-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera on the back, while Android 2.3 Gingerbread is running the show with Samsung own TouchWIZ 4.0 singing on top.

 

 

We hae got some great news for you, our dear Bada-loving friends. Samsung has just confirmed that it will be bringing the latest version of their proprietary OS, 2.0, to all the devices in its Bada lineup before this year has ended.

Have in mind though that due to hardware limitations some of the Wave smartphones will not get the full feature set that Bada 2.0 brings.

 

 

 

 

10 days ago we told you CyanogenMod ROM is heading to HP TouchPad and now we see the tablet running Android 2.3.5 with touchscreen drivers, compliments of Team Touch-Droid. Of course, this is hardly the final and stable build and as such is not made for the mainstream users rather, some knowledge is required in order to get Google OS running on your TouchPad. If thats not a problem, proceed to this page where you will get all the instructions needed.

As for the rest of us, we will have to wait for some installer app that will do all the hard work with a click of a mouse.

Video Below!

 

 

Today, Nokia and Microsoft announced that they would deliver Symbian software updates called Microsoft Apps. These updates will add some serious business productivity tools for anyone buying a new Symbian Belle device, as well as anybody looking to upgrade from Symbian Anna to Symbian Belle. Read on to find out exactly what’s coming, and when.

If you are into downloading apps that wil increase your productivity and we know you all are you will be happy to hear that during the fourth quarter of this year you will be able to start up the Software Update app from within your phone and find the following free apps:

• Microsoft® Lync™ 2010 Mobile – for cost efficient IM, presence, audio and web meetings on-the-go.

• Microsoft® PowerPoint® Broadcast – quick broadcast of presentations directly from PC to mobile.

• Microsoft® OneNote™ – rich note taking with images. Syncs with Microsoft® SkyDrive®.

• Microsoft® Document Connection – single view to documents stored on mobile, including email attachments as well as documents on Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 sites.

A second update in early 2012 will add:

• Microsoft OneNote sync with SharePoint (in addition to SkyDrive)

• Adding Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint as native applications for the first time outside the Windows platform.

 

 

 

 

Google has once again updated its Maps app for Android. Version 5.10.0 does not bring a whole lot to the table its mostly about reviews, allowing you to see places you have rated 4 and 5 stars right on the map view. Now when you are writing a review, you will be able to attach a photo alongside text.

You will be definitely prompted to update and since we like to keep your softwares up to date. Enjot the New Version

 

 

LG has not officially introduced the LG Univa E510, which is supposedly the Optimus Two, but the smartphone has surfaced yet again, starring in a quick hands-on. The hands-on confirms most of the specs of the Optimus One successor, including that it runs Android Gingerbread (v2.3.4).

 

Its powered by a Qualcomm chipset with an 800MHz CPU, 512MB RAM and Adreno 200 graphics. Unfortunately the CPU uses ARMv6 architecture (just like the Optimus One processor), which means no support for the Flash plugin, the Android version of Firefox and other apps that require ARMv7 processors.

The screen of the Univa E510 measures 3.5" and has HVGA resolution. That makes it bigger than both the Optimus One and the Optimus Net screens. The camera is a 5MP snapper, again better than what the One and the Net have to offer. Screen and camera aside, the Univa and Optimus Net look pretty close though.

 

 

Apple has filed yet another lawsuit against Samsung Electronics this time with the Tokyo District Court in Japan. The Cupertino-based company wants the suspension of Galaxy S, S II and Galaxy Tab 7.7 sales in Japan as well as 100M Yen or approximately $1.3M.

 

According to Reuters, the first hearing was held on Wednesday and concerned patents that the above-mentioned Galaxy devices are supposedly infringing.

As some of you might remember, Samsung was the first to sue Apple in Japan, way back in April coincidentally the month all of this web of litigation between the two tech juggernauts began. Apple did have some success in the Netherlands, but had less luck elsewhere. The company got a German court to ban the Galaxy Tab 10.1 shipments in Europe, but that decision was later suspended outside of Germany. The latest development was the injunction on the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in Germany.

 

 

When Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 8 a week ago, the reaction from most circles was positive. The new Windows 8 user interface looks clean, attractive, and thoughtful, and in a first for a Microsoft desktop operating system, its finger friendly. But one aspect of the demonstration has the legions of Windows developers deeply concerned, and with good reason: they were told that all their experience, all their knowledge, and every program they have written in the past would be useless on Windows 8.

Key to the new Windows 8 look and feel, and instrumental to Microsoft bid to make Windows a viable tablet operating system, are new-style full-screen "immersive" applications. Windows 8 will include new APIsfor developing these applications, and here is where the problem lies. Having new APIs is not itself a concern there is simply never been anything like this on Windows before, so obviously the existing Windows APIs will not do the job but what has many troubled is the way that Microsoft has said these APIs will be used. Three minutes and forty five seconds into this video, Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green, in charge of the Windows Experience, briefly describes a new immersive application a weather application and says, specifically, that the application uses "our new developer platform, which is based on HTML5 and JavaScript."

 

Windows developers have invested a lot of time, effort, and money into the platform. Over the years, they have learned Win32, COM, MFC, ATL, Visual Basic 6, .NET, WinForms, Silverlight, WPF. All of these technologies were, at one time or another, instrumental in creating desktop applications on Windows. With the exception of Visual Basic 6, all of them are still more or less supported on Windows today, and none of them can do it all; all except Visual Basic 6 and WinForms have a role to play in modern Windows development.

Hearing that Windows 8 would use HTML5 and JavaScript for its new immersive applications was, therefore, more than a little disturbing to Windows developers. Such a switch means discarding two decades of knowledge and expertise of Windows development and countless hours spent learning Microsoft latest-and-greatest technology and perhaps just as importantly, it means discarding rich, capable frameworks and the powerful, enormously popular Visual Studio development environment, in favor of a far more primitive, rudimentary system with substantially inferior tools.

 

Tests were performed on ATT brand new LTE network using the HTC Jetstream 4G, one of their first LTE-enabled gadgets, and the results are fast enough to make some home Internet plans nervous.

Keep in mind that ATT other 4G goes up to about 6Mbps real-life speeds.

Here are the results, complete with video proof: 22Mbps peak download with 18-19Mbps on average and 6Mbps peak about 5Mbps average. Not bad for a real world performance and LTE has plenty of room to upgrade.

 

 

Samsung launched a novel app for Windows Phone Mango devices, High Fidelity Position, to enhance GPS positioning, relying on Russian GLONASS system (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System) and other sensors like accelerometer and compass to determine your location.

We are not sure if anything wrong with the built-in location/navigation capabilities, but I guess you could always use an extra hand in urban jungles where high-rises could affect the GPS signal.

 

 

The legal battle between Apple and the Rest of the World continues, with one of their opponents HTC making a surprising move. It is suing Apple back with its own patents, but not just any patents but patents purchased from Google.

 

Yes, Google has decided to step in and protect one of its partners by selling some key patents to HTC for an undisclosed amount. Its interesting why Google did not choose to sue Apple directly. Perhaps they just wanted to make some money, after losing a lot purchasing Motorola Mobility. Or they just did not want to get their hands dirty. But anyway, HTC patent portfolio is now bolstered and it is ready to fight Apple on its own turf.

 

 

 

Sony Ericsson is really doing well this year. All of its latest Xperia phones  arc, neo, PLAY, mini and mini proturned out to be really great devices, with even more coming soon up ray, active and arc S.

 

All the latest Xperia are based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and as we found out have quite good performance. Recently, Sony Ericsson announced it will update all of them with Android 2.3.4, which brings tons of new features - USB on-the-go, Sony 3D sweep panorama for the camera, even better Facebook integration, Swype-like text input (T9 Trace), integrated screen capture, video chats via Google Talk and more.

 

And today the company confirmed that all those Xperia phones will be updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, when that becomes available. The Android best-of-both-worlds edition should come out this October or November, so early next year is when the Xperia updates can realistically be expected.

 

 

As promised, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play has been announced for ATT before the end of the year. The device will be launching on September 18 for 49.99 USD on a two-year contract, and will be available in an exclusive blue tinge. As a PlayStation phone, it comes loaded with a couple of solid titles, like Madden NFL 1, The Sims 3, and Crash Bandicoot, along with having a bunch of tailor-made games available in the Android Market.

The Xperia Play is unique for its slide-out game controller, right down to the shoulder buttons and dual capacitive joysticks. Specs-wise, the Xperia Play does reasonably well. Its running Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, has a 4-inch 480 x 854 display, a 5 megapixel camera on the back plus front-facing VGA shooter, all running on a 1 GHz processor with 512 MB of RAM.

 

 

After many months of waiting, Verizon has finally started selling the DROID Bionic. The handset is now available throughout the carrier retail network and will set you back by $299 on a 2-year contract.

The DROID Bionic has a 4.3-inch qHD display, TI OMAP4430 SoC with 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and PowerVR SGX540 GPU, 1GB RAM, 32GB storage space (16GB internal + 16GB microSD card), expandable up to 48GB, 8 megapixel camera with auto-focus and LED flash, 1080p video recording, HDMI out and Android 2.3.4. It will be powered by a 1,735mAh battery.

 

 

The evidence that the Samsung I9250 is nearing its launch is becoming overwhelming yesterday it was a leaked user agent profile and today brings us a dummy support page for the I9250.

The page is pretty much empty besides some FAQ and How-to entries that do not belong to the Samsung I9250 which is supposed to be the next Nexus phone the Nexus Prime. It will be the first device with the next generation Android Ice Cream Sandwich, which is hopefully coming out in October.

Those rumors are pretty certain, unlike the rest of the specs for the Samsung I9250/Nexus Prime. A tipster who is a well informed source from the industry has dropped us a few tidbits of info, which give us a clearer picture of the I9250 but also negate some of the earlier rumors.

For one, our tipster says that the final name of the next Google flagship is Samsung Galaxy Nexus rather than Nexus Prime. It will have a 4.65-inch screen of HD resolution not 4.5-inch WVGA.

 

 

The mobile industry is foaming at the mouth at this point, waiting for news on what Apple is going to bring to the table with their fifth generation iPhone. T-Mobile Germany even started taking preorders for the iPhone 5, or iPhone 4S depending on who you talk to, because they think its going to be an incredibly hot selling product. Understatement of the century. Sources who have spoken toDigiTimes, which has an above average track record when it comes to Apple rumors, say that Foxconn, that huge Chinese manufacturing company where working conditions are so dire that a string of suicides took place last year, is already pumping out 150,000 iPhone 5 units per day. The sources go on to say that they will likely be 5 to 6 million iPhone 5 units made during this month alone, and another 22 million during the last 3 months of this years, for a total of 28 million.

What we know about the iPhone 5 so far does not amount to much. It will have the A5 processor found in the iPad 2, it will pack an 8 megapixel camera, and it will come out in late October if a Best Buy computer is to be believed.

 

 

 

At a recent Dreamforce conference in San Francisco Eric Schmidt has confirmed that Ice Cream Sandwich, the next Android version, will debut this October or November.

The next droid OS is said to combine Honeycomb (Android for tablets) with Gingerbread, with no home-brewed UIs and with a unified look and more.

Video Below!

 

 

Today, BlackBerry App World 3.0 finally officially launched, with a fresh UI, improved channels for finding new apps, better handling of your BBID and account info, a more social App World experience and more. So lets take a quick look.
We originally caught site of BlackBerry App World 3.0 a month ago, almost to the day. Back then we looked at the revamped UI, the new channels and navigation and basically everything that it had to offer. The App World was only available via BlackBerry Beta Zone back then, but today it appears that the finished product has begun rolling out on Berry all over the world.

 

As well as the new UI and revamped channels, sharing your app discoveries has been made easier with integration of BBM, Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS, you can also more readily rate and review apps too. Its nothing we have not seen from the other leading mobile market stores, but its good to know that BlackBerry users will now be getting an App purchase experience, more on par with the leading competitors.

 

 

 

This photo claims to have been taken by an iPhone 4, but the rest of its EXIF data tells a different story: although the image has been cropped to 2235x2291 (5.12 megapixels), the original picture was a much larger 3264x2448 or just shy of eight megapixels.Also the lens was recorded as a 4.3mm f/2.4, which is closer to that of a point-and-shoot than the iPhone 4 actual 3.85mm f/2.8.

Its still unclear if Apple will be releasing a single iPhone 5, or if there will be an iPhone 4S launched this fall as well, but we are expecting that there will at least be a bigger screen on whatever Apple launches, and it would not be surprising to see something thinner and faster. Software-wise, we have already seen plenty of cool stuff from iOS 5, namely a new notification system.

 

 

The Sony Ericsson Nozomi is still happily living in rumorland, but we keep getting more information about it. The latest bit of online gossip has it that the future Sony Ericsson flagship will feature a dual-core processor and one thats clocked at 1.5GHz. Previous rumors suggested otherwise, but the new CPU seems more worthy of a flagship device.

The rest of the Nozomi specs include Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 4.3-inch 1280×720 resolution display with the amazing 342 ppi (pixels per inch), which is more than the one on the Retina display, 12 MP camera, 1 gig or RAM, a 1750 mAh battery and a microSIM slot.

According to the source, the Nozomi should be announced January 2012 and ship as early as March next year.

 

 

News coming of Taiwan suggests that Apple third generation iPad will have a battery thats both thinner and lighter than the battery used in the current iPad 2. Said battery will also have a longer "service life", which we assume means its able to go through an increased number of charge cycles before giving out and needing to be replaced. Its believed that the suppliers of this new battery, Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology, will charge 20% to 30% more than what Apple currently pays for the iPad 2 battery. Whether or not Apple plans on passing that cost down to consumers remains to be seen, but we have huge doubts that the entry level $499 price tag is something Apple will want to deviate from. If you are wondering how battery life will be impacted by having a smaller battery, then note that Apple iPad 3 will likely have a new processor, probably called the A6, that'srumored to be built on a 28 nanometer process. For comparison, the A5 in the iPad 2 is built using a 45 nanometer process. The smaller process, and thus smaller transistors, mean less power consumption.

 

The news we are really waiting to hear about the iPad 3 is whether or not it will ship with a "retina display" that doubles resolution of the current iPad, 1024 x 768, to 2056 x 1536. In order to push a display with 4x the number of pixels, the graphics processor in the A6 will likely receive a substantial upgrade, which of course means fancier graphics for those videogames you cannot stop buying.

 

 

 

Symbian Belle will debut with the Nokia 600, 700 and 701 trio, but the older Symbians should be getting it soon after that. Yet if you are knowledgeable and brave enough to flash your smartphone with a custom ROM, Belle has been available for a few weeks now. And now there is a newer ROM for the Nokia N8 available that should be much closer to the final deal.

Still, as with all software that is not fully finalized, there is a risk of trouble, but Nokia Head of Social Media, Mark Squires, has already installed Belle on his N8.

 

The new firmware is N8-only and supports only English and Russian languages. You can grab the files from Symbian Coders, where you will find flashing instructions, too. Again, this is a proceed at your own risk deal.

 

 

Last night, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz announced in a company-wide e-mail that she had been fired by the chairman of the board of directors, which was quickly followed by rumours that Yahoo! would be willing to sell the company if the price was right.

 

Now, Yahoo! has a longstanding history in mobile; once upon a time, they were quite cozy with both ATT and T-Mobile, and even now, they are still active with Japanese service provider SoftBank. Yahoo! has also pushed some pretty compelling apps, likeLivestand, IntoNow, and Sketch-a-Search. Even on the developer side, Yahoo! has this cool service called Fire Eagle that shares location data across multiple apps that use the same API.

 

The obvious choice for an acquirer is Microsoft Microsoft already tried purchasing Yahoo! back in 2008 for $44.6 billion, and they still have a partnership in place so Bing powers Yahoo! search. Windows Live services could easily absorb various Yahoo! counterparts.  So, there us already plenty of history between those two giants, but maybe Google would be interested in swooping in, if only to maintain the significant lead they still enjoy over Microsoft web efforts. A move from Google is a bit less likely, since they have actually been busy shutting down projects rather than starting new ones.

 

At first it leaked through some spy pics and then someone actually bought a damaged unit off Craigslist, just to photograph and put up its pictures on the Internet. But now we have some proper pictures of the ATT-bound HTC Holiday, courtesy BGR.

There is nothing dramatically new about the device that we did not see in the pictures below. Except the gold contacts that we saw on the battery cover on the Craigslist device are now missing again, the way they were when the device was first spotted.

 

BGR also managed to get a feel of ATT upcoming LTE network on the Holiday. The results are mighty impressive, with 29.71Mbps down and 6.43Mbps up. Having said that, the high speeds are likely due to the lack of any users on the network at the moment.

 

 

 

Facebook has just pushed out version 3.5 of their iPhone app to Apple App Store. The changelog says its added the ability to tag friends and places in posts, and to share sites you are exploring in the web browser; note that they mean the web browser inside their app, not Safari. If you want to share things from a browser, may we suggest you try "Dolphin". Back to Facebook, they have also tweaked the design of profiles and group walls, improved the sharing tool to add privacy controls, improved how quickly you get notifications, fixed a number of chat bugs, made it easier to select filters in News Feed, fixed a bug with the notifications bar disappearing, something that only recently started happening to us, fixed a number of photos bugs, and improved performance and stability overall.

We are still kind of bummed that they have not released an iPad version, but whats most infuriating is that there is still no way to apply custom privacy settings per shared item. If we want to share something with our friends that we very well know offends two or three people, we want the ability to not share said post with those few friends. Its something thats easy as cake to do on the Facebook desktop website, but its impossible with both the mobile app and mobile optimized website.

 

 

Microsoft tablet strategy has always been Windows but previous computer slates it has shown off had Windows 7 on it and this did not fit the form factor because that operating system was never built with tablets in mind. That should change with Windows 8 , as the building Windows 8 blog constantly says that this version has been designed from the ground up with touch input in mind.

We have seen the Metro-style home screen before and it brings a tile-like interface to Windows 8 and elements of this can already be found in Windows Phone and on the Xbox. This is supposed to be a finger-friendly interface that will allow Windows 8 to work properly on a tablet, where touch interface is critical. But Microsoft has to please many masters with Windows, as hundreds of millions of users are familiar with the standard desktop interface and some will freak out with radical changes.

Microsoft Steven Sinofsky addresses this in a somewhat vague way in that blog post about design: Microsoft is taking the middle road where it can still leverage its millions of traditional users, apps and APIs while still designing something that can fit nicely and work elegantly on a tablet.

Windows 8 brings together all the power and flexibility you have in your PC today with the ability to immerse yourself in a Metro style experience. You do not have to compromise! You carry one device that does everything you want and need. You can connect that device to peripherals you want to use. You can use devices designed to dock to large screen displays and other peripherals. You can use convertible devices that can be both immersive tablets and flexible laptops.

Of course, its far more difficult to execute that vision and its unclear if Microsoft is capable of doing it or if thats even the right approach.When Steve Jobs first introduced the first iPhone, he made a big deal about how the OS was OSX.

As time progressed and the iPhone and iPad became tremendous hits, that association has been downplayed if not completely ignored even if there are technologically similar underpinnings. Apple iOS is now the company main platform and many of its elements went upstream with the introduction of Lion.

When Jobs talks about the Post-PC era and the iPad, he means that Apple is trying to strip out many of the frustrating elements of traditional computing to make it easy and elegant for the mainstream to use these devices to check the web, do e-mail and social networking and consume apps. The fact that the iPad has been more successful than any other tablet to date show that its on to something.

 

 

A Romanian online retailer has listed the MeeGo-running Nokia N9 for €550 on pre-order. If you want a more trustful source, Amazon.de takes pre-orders, too, but its demanding €620. This Romanian retailer is taking the N9 pre-orders for €550 . For a gray market price it sounds reasonably for the launch, although its more expensive than most of the high-end droids today.

 

The German Amazon also has the N9 on pre-order, but its even more expensive €620. So these prices should give us the basic idea of what to expect at Nokia N9 launch. It will cost a small fortune for sure, but we bet it will drop price in a month or so.

 

After all the N9 is a smartphone with limited availability and doubtful support, so pricing should reflect that.

 

The Samsung Nexus Prime has appeared in a user agent profile (UAProf) on the Samsung website. The device model number will be I9250 and it will have a 480x800 (WVGA) resolution display. Previous rumors hinted at 720p screen ala Galaxy Note, but that's obviously not happening.

There is nothing else that we can deduce from this leak, but previous rumors suggested that the Nexus Prime will pack a 4.5-incher of the SuperAMOLED (Plus or not) variety and an Exynos chipset with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor.

 

 

 

No more waiting on details for the Verizon BlackBerry Torch 9850 we spotted earlier this summer. As expected, RIM's latest all-touch smartphone will be available online starting on September 8, and will be in stores on September 15. Pricing will sit at $199.99 on a two-year contract, which is a bit pricier than what Sprint's asking, but I'm sure that cost will go down quickly enough.

 

The BlackBerry Torch 9850 lines up with the other new OS 7 devices from RIM, packing a 1.2 GHz processor, 768 MB of RAM, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash and 720p video recording, a solid 3.7-inch 800 x 480 capacitive touchscreen. Augmented reality is finally a go on the newer devices, but this one does not have NFC, and the rumoured inclusion of mobile hotspot sadly did not pan out. As far as connectivity goes, the 9850 plays on both GSM and CDMA 2G and 3G networks, ensuring solid world roaming. The software nicely polished and responsive, but more or less the same experience you have come to expect on a BlackBerry. I reviewed the Sprint model, if you are thinking about picking up the Verizon one.

 

 

Imagine being stuck in a room watching re-runs of terrible reality shows, or a collection of some the worst movies ever made. Well, thats what this patent war feels like: nauseating. Apple, in a message to the ITC claims it inspired Andy Rubin to make Android. This claim could have major legal implications for a future Apple lawsuit against Google or possibly even for Apple dispute with Google recent $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola.

Andy Rubin worked at Apple long before the days of the iPhone and iPod. Apple mentions in the filing to the ITC that it has a legal obligation to make truthful representations of fact and that Rubin superiors at Apple were the inventors of the realtime API patent and he worked for them at the very time they made that invention. Basically, Apple is discrediting Andy Rubin for his part in the development and implementation of the new realtime API invention, because he was not a senior engineer.

 

 

Whether you are holding out for the Droid Prime (SCH-I515) or Nexus Prime (GT-I9250), both handsets are very real and Verizon upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich offering has just received its WiFi and Bluetooth certification.

Sure, there is little interesting about a handset receiving its WiFi and Bluetooth certification but these less than interesting certifications make way for the more juicy news. What will likely be the answer to the Galaxy S II on Sprint, T-Mobile, and ATT, as well as the upcoming iPhone 5, the Droid Prime is expected to launch around October, ready to do battle.

With the Bionic set to launch in a few days, Verizon will likely give Motorola offering some breathing room as the go-to LTE handset. A lot of people have been waiting for Motorola dual-core/LTE handset, but with the Droid Prime on the way, we are inclined to pass.

 

 

 

After the recent leak of an RUU, was found to contain an early beta build of Android 3.2 Honeycomb destined for the HTC Flyer, hacking masters including Paul OBrien from MoDaCo, set about making it into a usable ROM for users with rooted devices to try out.

 

 

One such user from the XDA forums has provided screenshots to the internets of this Honeycomb ROM running on their 32GB 3G HTC Flyer. As the "Settings" image states, we are seeing the same 1.1 for Tablet version of Sense UX as with the cripplingly expensive HTC Puccini/Jetstream.

 

The HTC Jetstream is now official and heading to AT&T with LTE connectivity, 10.1inch screen, a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 1 gig of RAM, 8 MP camera on its back and HTC Sense on top of its Android Honeycomb OS. Its a very appealing slate by any standards. But its steep  prices start from 699.99 USD on a two-year deal.

 

You can also see these two benchmarks results to show how powerful its hardware actually is.

 

However at An3DBench it falls slightly behind competition, despite the fact that its dual-core processor is clocked at the impressive 1.5GHz.

 

 

The newly announced Android smartphones, Samsung Galaxy Note is already available for pre-ordering in the UK through Clove.

 

Clove has no clue when Sammy huge superphone will be available nor how much it will cost. They show a "speculative price" of 600 GBP without sharing any dates whatsoever. As for the rest of us actually some of you who do not mind carrying around such a big device you can always wait a month or two for the carrier subsidized options.

 

 

Sonim recently became the proud recipients of a Guinness World Record, certifying that they manufacture the toughest mobile phone on the planet. The Sonim XP3300 Force withstood a fall onto concrete from a height of 25.29 meters without sustaining operational damage. This achievement followed the previous record held by the Sonim-made JCB tough phone, which set a record of just 3.25 meters.

It now appears that they have no intention of slowing down, on the contrary, speeding up in more ways than one, as information regarding Sonim's next creation, the XP5300 Force 3G leaks out.

The XP5300 promises UMTS support across 900, 1700 and 2100 frequencies, twinned with a 1950mAh battery resulting in an impressive 22 hours of talk time and an unbelievable 1500 hours of standby. Alongside the 3G connectivity, there is now Bluetooth 2.1 too allowing greater compatibility with Bluetooth peripherals such as car kits, more so than many past Sonim's at least. The Force 3G looks to be available in black or black with yellow accents too.

 

 

Hardware wise the Force 3G will have a 2-inch QVGA display, covered by Gorilla Glass, a background noise filter, GPS receiver, Java support, a microSD card slot allowing up to 16GB capacity an FM radio, a media player and an LED flashlight. The latest Sonim will tote a 2MP camera on the back offering video capture too.

Beyond the respectable phone specs, its clear that Sonim focus is still undoubtedly on toughness. The XP5300 as with its predecessor comes IP68 certified, meaning that it has extremely high resistance to dust, shock and water damage.

 

 

Some pretty insane rumors are floating around the internets right now. People who have spoken to MeeGoExperts and NetbookNews say that Samsung is looking to take over MeeGo development, which was originally lead by Nokia, but sadly progress has recently slowed to a crawl after the Finnish handset maker decided to focus on Windows Phone. The rumors go on to say that Samsung would stop selling Android devices at some point in the future since they are not too pleased with the legal issues that Google mobile operating system is currently facing.

That does not jive with what JK Shin, President of Samsung Mobiles Global Operations, said after Google purchased Motorola. Here is a bit of a refresher: "We welcome today news, which demonstrates Google deep commitment to defending Android, its partners, and the ecosystem."

Considering Samsung already develops their own mobile operating system, known as "bada", which by the way they do not license to anyone, why would they want to contribute to an open source project? MeeGo, as it appears on the Nokia N9, is gorgeous, but its not MeeGo, its Maemo 6 "Harmattan", which just so happens to be MeeGo compatible. 

 

The Galaxy Note managed to snag a score of 3,624 on Quadrant Bnchmark. To put that figure into perspective, the Galaxy S II with a 1.2GHz processor achieved 3,538 in our tests. One must also remember that along with a faster processor, the Galaxy Note also has a 1280 x 800 resolution display, with nearly 2.5 times the number of pixels on the Galaxy S II display. Also, the Galaxy Note at the IFA are probably pre-production units and the scores could improve later on. This means you can expect some pretty solid performance from the Galaxy Note when it launches by the end of the year.

Now for the bad news. Samsung has announced the price for the Scandinavian countries and it does not look good. The Galaxy Note will be sold in Denmark in November for 5,600 Danish krone, which is approximately $1,066 (€750). Meanwhile, Norway will be getting it for 5,700 Norwegian krone ($1,052, €742), Sweden will get it for 6,000 Swedish krona ($929, €655) and Finland will get it for €799 ($1,133).

That price takes the Galaxy Note beyond the realm of smartphones and into tablet territory. In fact it is more expensive than even the most expensive iPad 2 ($829), which is where the problem comes in as the Galaxy Note cannot match full-fledged tablets like the iPad 2 or the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in terms of screen real estate. It will already be alienating smartphone buyers looking for something more compact. And now with a price like this, it remains to be seen who and how many will actually buy this device.

Video Below!

 

 

 

Deutsche Telekom, better known as T-Mobile, has told Bloomberg that they have recently started accepting preorders for the next Apple iPhone, but want to emphasize that they have absolutely no idea when it will come out, how much it will cost, or what new features the fifth generation Jesus Phone will bring to the table when it hits the market.

Deutsche Telekom spokesman who spoke to Bloomberg, said that the the operator is not going to advertise the iPhone 5, or 4S, or whatever it will end up being called, but instead they will issue coupons, which act like placeholders, to customers who specifically request the next iPhone. They say that they are concerned that demand will exceed supply, which is something thats likely going to happen when the next iPhone launches in Germany since it will be the first iPhone that will not be locked to a specific operator at launch. The iPhone 4 was initially locked to Deutsche Telekom when it came out in June 2010, but it then hit Vodafone, O2, and even Apple own webstore.

 

 

Nokia has added another country to the list that will be getting the N9 and unless you live in Mexico you have no reason to rejoice, Mexico will is not just on the list, its the First on the list too, Yes, Mexico is one of the first countries to get the N9, even before the US and Canada which Nokia will not release the phone there.

 

 

 

 

Yes, some lucky Mexicans will getting their hands on the N9. Meanwhile their neighbors, the Americans, along with several other countries are finding it hard to believe that Nokia would deprive them a chance to buy the one really good phone they made in years. Nokia probably thinks we are better off with Windows Phone 7 but we cannot help but crave for a slice of that sweet MeeGo OS.

 

 

Aside from the new Android-ready speaker docks, Philips also announced a new GoGear media player. The GoGear Connect 3 is an Android 2.3 Gingerbread-based device with a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and Wi-Fi connectivity, allowing its owners to expand its functionality with third-party apps. Also included with the GoGear Connect 3 is a Pandora-like app for discovering new music, as well as preloaded codecs to ensure all popular video formats can be played. Speaking of videos, Philips says its baby can handle 720p HD clips, which is nice.

 

Of course, the electronics giant made sure the sounds quality is on place. In that sense, GoGear Connect 5 features FullSound, Sound Personalization and Surround for Movies, delivering the "superior sound that the Philips GoGear range is renowned for."

 

 

Bad NEWS For Our Fans in USA, At the moment Samsung has no plans to launch two of its newly unveiled devices, Galaxy Note and Galaxy Tab 7.7 in the US, THis info is straight from the horse mouth Samsung spokesperson.

Before you go "thats outrageous" let me add that no one knows when the two products will be available in other parts of the world. I would bet Sammy wants to ship them just in time for the Christmas shopping season and that its also pitching the US carriers as we speak. However, they may want to focus on the Galaxy S II launch first and then to introduce new devices at some point next year.

 

 

Nokia Tune is one of world most recognized audio brand assets and is estimated to be heard over one billion times a day. Nokia is launching a global crowdsourcing campaign to find a fresh version of the Nokia Tune. This is the first time Nokia is inviting people to work with the iconic tune with the winning tune to be placed next to the standard Nokia Tune to all New Nokia products of 2012.

If you want to submit a tune, the website rwquire "The tune should be fresh, expressive, original, creative yet distinctively a Nokia Tune" in order to be submitted. Prize is $10,000 and 5x $5,000

 

Vote & Submit

 

 

 

After HP announced that they will no longer be producing webOS products, and after watching people stampede their local Best Buy stores in order to snatch up one of those the newly discounted $100 TouchPads, folks started wondering if webOS, which has some amazing potential, will disappear.

 

According to two internal HP memos leaked to PreCentral, webOS will live, but now in the way that you would expect. The first memo, from Todd Bradley, Head of HP Personal Systems Group , otherwise known as the division that is responsible for personal computers and webOS devices, and the division that HP wants to either sell off or spint out, says: "The teams in webOS software engineering, worldwide developer relations and webOS software product marketing join the Office of Strategy and Technology) under Shane Robison. This change is effective immediately. The remainder of the webOS team, under Stephen DeWitt, will continue to report into PSG, later today, Stephen will reach out to these teams with an update."

As for the second memo, this time from Shane Robison, he details how things are going to work: "The webOS software engineering, developer relations, and software product marketing teams will become a part of OS&T, effective immediately. Ari Jaaksi, senior vice president leading webOS software engineering, and Richard Kerris, vice president leading webOS worldwide developer relations, will report to me. Lee Ott, the senior director of webOS software product marketing, will report to Ari. The webOS software employees join HP Cloud Services, Vertica, and Business Solutions as an incubating business group. However, while these teams will be joining OST we have decided not to initiate any integration activities. These teams will continue to operate under their current systems and processes until further notice."

 

 

Now when exactly are we going to know what the iPhone 5 looks like, what type of specifications it will have, and how much its going to cost? Those questions remain unanswered, but there is a strong likelihood that Apple will soon start sending out invitations for an event that will either take place in late September or early October where Tim Cook, the new CEO.

 

 

The luxurious phone manufacturer Gresso just announced yet another customized version of the Apple iPhone 4. Dubbed ArtPhone Lady Noir, this version of the iPhone 4 comes with either black diamonds or Swarovski crystals ornaments.

 

For your $30,000 (diamond version) or $7,000 (crystal one) you are also getting diamond-coated mineral glass to replace the regular iPhone 4 glass panels. There are also three hand-assembled clocks at the back that offer Swiss precision.

 

 

Google has issued a small updated for its Google Voice app for Android. The new release (version 4.2.34) adds only one thing tablet support, allowing those of you with Honeycomb tablets to make cheap international calls, send free text messages, listen to the voicemail and read transcripts from the comfort of your sofa (presuming this is how/where you use your tablet).

Unfortunately this is still the US only service but folks from across the world will be able to join the fun in the near future. In the meantime, US readers with Android-powered tablets head to the link below!

 

Android Market link

 

 

If you have been waiting for the Sprint version of the Galaxy S II, the one with the painfully long name, your wait will soon be over. Sprint has now started accepting pre-orders for the device on their website.

Sprint is offering the Samsung Epic 4G Touch for $199.99 on pre-order. However, you can save some money and choose to get it from Wirefly instead, who are offering it for $149.99. In either case, you will have to sign a 2-year contract with Sprint. The device will start shipping from September 16.

In case you are not fully aware of the specs of this device, let me fill you in. The Sprint Samsung Epic 4G Touch has a 4.52-inch, 480 x 800 resolution, Super AMOLED Plus display, dual-core 1GHz Exynos processor with Mali 400MP GPU, 1GB RAM, 8 megapixel camera, 1080p video recording, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The device is powered by a 1800mAh Li-Ion battery.

 

 

We have seen shots of the upcoming HTC Ruby on a couple of occasions before. This time, the device got caught in Thailand, sporting a black outfit, and lacking any mobile network logos.

  

As you can see from the photos above, the specs, which we have already reported to you are all but confirmed. They include a dual-core CPU, clocked at 1.5GHz, a gig of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. The device will feature an 8MP camera, and a 4.3" qHD screen.

 

Strangely enough, the HTC Sense UI seems to be missing from the device, caught in the shots. The menu launcher appears to be a stock Android one. Rumor has it however, that, when launched, the HTC Ruby will be sporting Sense 3.5, along with Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

 

The toughened Motorola Defy+ is starting to pop up on British etailer sites for pre-order. The Defy+ is the result of the original Defy going survival training and is IP67 certified (dust tight, can survive a dive in up to 1m of water for half an hour) and has grown its CPU (now 1GHz) and battery (1700mAh) muscles.

 

Right now, Clove lists the Motorola Defy+ for £246 including VAT (€281) this is a preliminary price, however, as the official price and availability date is yet to be confirmed. They expect the first stock to be available later this month.

 

Expansys also list the Defy+ but they did not hazard a guess how much Moto’s tough Android will cost or when it will be out.

 

For comparison, the non-plus Defy costs £234 right now. So, if you were thinking of buying it, you might want to hold off for a couple of weeks if Clove price estimates are not too far off, you would get more rugged phone for just £10 or so.

 

 

Samsung LTE enabled variant of theGalaxy S II, which also comes with a slightly faster processor (1.5 GHz) and larger screen (4.5 inches), was announced a little over a week ago, but the South Korean handset vendor failed to disclose how much it will cost and when it will actually come out. Seeing as how Rogers Canada recently announced that they are going to start selling the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE this fall, one would think that other territories are going to get this powerhouse of a device during roughly the same time frame.

 

 

Arepresentatives from T-Mobile told us that the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE is not going to launch in Europe until the end of Q2 2012. The reason? T-Mobile, and every other operator in Europe with an LTE network, still has not deployed the necessary equipment to handle voice and SMS over LTE. If you are wondering how come Verizon Wireless has been selling LTE enabled smartphones for over half a year now, its because their devices simultaneously connect to Verizon 3G and 4G network, the former handling voice and SMS, the latter being used exclusively for data and now you know why the battery life is so terrible.

 

 

 

This week could see the official introduction of the iPhone 5, if a leaked document from Best Buy is to be believed. The retailer internal document talks about an upcoming Sprint version of the iPhone 5, which would launch in October.

 

The rumor mill says that the next-gen iPhone will be a dual-mode device and work on both GSM and CDMA networks so the iPhone 5 in question might just be a Sprint-subsidized unit, rather than different hardware. While the September 5th launch rumors did not pan out, there was a lot of chatter of an Apple event for Wednesday but thats rather iffy too.

Anyway, Best Buy document says "October week 1 launch" so we could be a month away from the first iPhone 5s getting into people hands. Furthermore, the doc claims that pre-orders start as soon as this week, which obviously implies an impending official announcement too.

 

 

One complaint that is always made about the iPad is the lack of Flash support. But after Apple loosened the restrictions on the App Store guidelines, we started seeing browsers that would let you play Flash videos on the iPad. However, Flash-based games, such as ones found on Facebook, were still a no go.

 

Not anymore though. iSWiFTER lets you play all those Flash games that you love on the iPad. Whether it is Facebook, Google+ or any other site that offers Flash-based games, you can now play them on the iPad through this nifty little browser. Of course, you can also view other Flash content in iSWiFTER, such as videos.

 

 

iSWiFTER is free to download but offers only 30 minutes of play time, enough to give you a feel of how it works. If you want to continue using it, you can use the in-app purchasing option to purchase the full version of the app for $4.99.

 

iTunes link

 

 

With three major social networks out there now (Google+, Facebook, and Twitter), I find myself explaining the difference between Facebook and the others more often than ever. How Twitter is best for real time sharing en masse, how Facebook focuses on personal relationships, and how Google+ allows you to create small communities out of the people you know for know your audience style sharing.

Since Google+ entered the ring, Facebook has been feeling the pressure to step its game up. They launched video chat with Skype from within Facebook, no extras needed. Most recently, they have launched Facebook Messenger, an app that makes it easy to communicate with Facebook (and non-Facebook) friends to really build those personal relationships.

 

 

What Is Facebook Messenger?

Facebook Messenger is an app for Android (and iOS) that allows you to contact your friends through mobile IM, Facebook Chat, and SMS. Other features of the app include group chat, push notifications, and the ability to share photos or your location.

The first thing you will notice after downloading the app is that if you have the official Facebook app, you will not need to log in separately, Facebook Messenger sees that you are logged in already.

 

Login and Contact List

After logging in, you will see a list of any messages and chat conversations you have held on Facebook. With Facebook new web-based messaging, there is no longer differentiation between chat and messages. They are all considered messages. From Messenger, you can continue the conversation through either of these.

Simply press one of the conversations in the list to go to the chat screen for that conversation. From here you wull see the most recent messages, a way to send text, images, and your location, and a settings button unique to that particular conversation. This screen, as well as the app overall, is really well designed and very clean.

 

Single Chat and Settings

 

Pressing the Settings button for a single conversation will allow you to manage alerts for that conversation and add more people. For the alerts, you can choose from On, Off for 1 Hour, Off Until 8am, and Off. I think this was a pretty nice touch by the people at Facebook, I would imagine a frequent request for this young app is the ability to specify a time to turn alerts back on. I would definitely like to see that.

On top of alerts and adding people, you can also view a map of locations posted by the participants.

 

Map Screen

 

You can also start new conversations using the icon in the top right corner of the home screen. Since we already saw how a one-on-one chat works, let’s take a look a group chats.

 

Group Chat

 

When adding people to a conversation, start typing in a name and Facebook Messenger will suggest people that either have Messenger (and are logged in) or people from your contacts list (offline), who get added as SMS recipients, its worth noting that you can mix and match chat and SMS recipients. There is no advertised limit to the number of people you can add, but I am sure as the number grows you’ll see some performance issues.

 

Group Chat and Settings

 

When you send a message to a group of mixed recipients, Facebook handles sending everything out as well as displaying incoming messages all in one place. It doesn’t rely on your phone SMS app at all, so you will not see a list of text messages next time you open up Android Messaging app. Whats really cool is Messenger will also send incoming SMS messages to the other SMS recipients. For example, if Amy starts a conversation with Bobby, Chis, and Dana, and Chris and Dana are using SMS, Messenger will make sure Chris gets Dana SMS messages, and vise versa. I thought this was a nice touch, and incredibly important to making group chat work well.

Group chat allows you all of the functionality of one on one chat, including messages, sharing locations, and sending photos. This functionality is MUCH better than most stock SMS apps, since if you send a message to multiple people, you will get individual responses back. I can definitely see Messenger being used most to coordinate and make plans with several people at one time.

The settings for group chat are the same as the settings for one on one, except that you can also add a title to the group, as well as customize the photo. If you don’t select a photo, Messenger will make a grid of everyone photos to display on the list of conversations.

 

Settings and Other Features

 

On top of continuing conversations and starting new ones, as long as you are logged in to Messenger, you will get notifications for any new conversations started by your friends. This can be changed in Settings.

 

General Settings

 

The settings for Messenger are pretty standard; you can turn all alerts on or off, and choose between being alerted through sound, vibrate, blinking light, or some combination of the three, as well as what sound you would like to hear. You can also turn location sharing on or off, which you can do for each individual message by pressing the blue arrow in the text box for a conversation.

There are also a couple of advanced settings: Clear image cache and Clear conversation cache. I imagine these two functions will free up some memory on your phone, although it may take a bit longer to load a conversation next time you enter a chat you have previously entered.

Download from the Market

 

 

Google announced that it will be performing some optimization of its business, shutting down ten of its minor projects. The company says its done in order to streamline and simplify the user experience as most of these are already integrated in its other services.

Here comes the list, along with the reasoning:

Here is a quick overview of where a number of products and features are headed:
• Aardvark: Aardvark was a start-up we acquired in 2010. An experiment in a new kind of social search, it helped people answer each others questions. While Aardvark will be closing, we will continue to work on tools that enable people to connect and discover richer knowledge about the world.
• Desktop: In the last few years, there’s been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems. People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline. As this was the goal of Google Desktop, the product will be discontinued on September 14, including all the associated APIs, services, plugins, gadgets and support.
• Fast Flip: Fast Flip was started to help pioneer news content browsing and reading experiences for the web and mobile devices. For the past two years, in collaboration with publishers, the Fast Flip experiment has fueled a new approach to faster, richer content display on the web. This approach will live on in our other display and delivery tools.
• Google Maps API for Flash: The Google Maps API for Flash was launched to provide ActionScript developers a way to integrate Google Maps into their applications. Although we’re deprecating the API, we’ll keep supporting existing Google Maps API Premier customers using the Google Maps API for Flash and we’ll focus our attention on the JavaScript Maps API v3 going forward.
• Google Pack: Due to the rapidly decreasing demand for downloadable software in favor of web apps, we will discontinue Google Pack today. People will still be able to access Google’s and our partners’ software quickly and easily through direct links on the Google Pack website.
• Google Web Security: Google Web Security came to Google as part of the Postini acquisition in 2007, and since then we’ve integrated much of the web security functionality directly into existing Google products, such as safe browsing in Chrome. Although our previous sales channel will be discontinued, we’ll continue to support our existing customers.
• Image Labeler: We began Google Image Labeler as a fun game to help people explore and label the images on the web. Although it will be discontinued, a wide variety of online games from Google are still available.
• Notebook: Google Notebook enabled people to combine clipped URLs from the web and free-form notes into documents they could share and publish. We’ll be shutting down Google Notebook in the coming months, but we’ll automatically export all notebook data to Google Docs.
• Sidewiki: Over the past few years, we’ve seen extraordinary innovation in terms of making the web collaborative. So we’ve decided to discontinue Sidewiki and focus instead on our broader social initiatives. Sidewiki authors will be given more details about this closure in the weeks ahead, and they’ll have a number of months to download their content.
• Subscribed Links: Subscribed Links enabled developers to create specialized search results that were added to the normal Google search results on relevant queries for subscribed users. Although we’ll be discontinuing Subscribed Links, developers will be able to access and download their data until September 15, at which point subscribed links will no longer appear in people’s search results.

 

 

Philips has decided to make its line of Fidelio iPod audio docks Android friendly. Their trick is to use the so called "adjustable micro USB connector" which can work with various smartphones and tablets. What is more, the company also unveiled a new Android app to make the docks sing along in harmony with your Android device.

Three products will be available:

• Fidelio for Android AS851 - the high-end model that delivers a superb crystal-clear sound. It comes with Philips Digital sound processing for life-like, distortion-less music and 30W RMS total output power.
• Fidelio for Android AS351 - which can also work with batteries, offering Dynamic Bass Boost to "preserve low tones for deep bass" at any volume level and comes with 10W RMS total output power.
• Fidelio for Android AS111 - although pretty small, it will supposedly produce a "pure balanced sound" so you can "wake up to a great sound" from your Android phone.

 

 

When we got our first glimpse of HTC Sense 3.5 a few days ago, we could not help but wonder if the latest HTC UI will be made available to the older droids, offered by the Taiwanese company. Today, we have an answer to this question, albeit an unofficial one.

 

 

The screenshots which you are seeing above, are courtesy from the guys from XDA Developers, who have managed to unofficially port the latest Sense UI to an HTC Desire HD. This occurrence all but confirms the fact that Sense 3.5 can indeed work properly on older HTC devices.

 

 

 

Intel is reportedly planning to discontinue development of the MeeGo platform, due to lack of interest by the hardware makers. Originally created by combining Intel Moblin and Nokia Maemo platforms, MeeGo was envision as a powerful Linux-based OS that could work on smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and netbooks. Nokia's decision to adopt Windows Phone as its mobile platform for high-end products pretty much killed the deal. To be fair, the Finnish giant has recently unveiled the Nokia N9, which is the first MeeGo-running smartphone, but it also stated its like an experimental device.

 

 

Meanwhile, it is said that Intel will focus on hardware products, and its handset platforms will be paired with either Android or Windows Phone in 2012.

 

 

 

In the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Samsung, one more round has gone in favor of the Cupertino-based company. Apple won the second preliminary injunction against Samsung in Germany, causing the court to ban the sales and promotion of the Galaxy Tab 7.7 in the country.

A few days back Samsung had announced the Galaxy Tab 7.7 at the IFA 2011 in Germany. The devices had large stickers on them that stated that the device wull not be offered on sale in Germany.Next day, the devices suspiciously vanished from Samsung booth, along with every mention of the device’s name, as if it never existed. The reason for this is now clear, as Samsung had to honor the courts decision and hence could not promote the device anymore at the show.

 

See Galaxy Tab 7.7 Specifications

 

 

INQ decided to top let all Android smartphone owners get their social apps, which up until this point were available only for INQ-based devices like the INQ Cloud Touch. The company launched three apps in the Android Market:

• People by INQ - which lets you keep track of your top Facebook friends based on Facebook Social Graph API. You can check your buddies latest update, browse their walls or tap on their profile picture to contact them directly.
• Social Widget Suite by INQ - takes different types of content and displays it straight on your handset homescreen. Moreover, you can access the posts of your closest friends on Facebook.
• INQ Social Sync - the engine behind INQ social networking integration, it allows your phone to connect to Facebook and keeps all of your INQ widgets and apps up to date so you will not miss whats happening online.

 

 

We just stumbled upon photos of a new Nokia smartphone. The device dubbed to be the Nokia N8 successor, is said to be called N8-01 (considering Nokia new naming policy Nokia 801 seems more likely) and feature a qHD screen.

 

 

The images come from this Nokia 700 hands-on video. While testing the Belle-running 700 video player, the review runs a video, which features the unannounced smartphone with an edge-to-edge curved screen.

 

 

Its raining ultrabooks. Hot on the heels of Toshiba and Lenovo, Acer too has their own ultrabook out among all the shiny gadgets at the IFA 2011.

The Aspire A3 has similar specs to the two ultrabooks we saw recently, namely a 13.3-inch, 1366 x 768 resolution display, Sandy Bridge Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and 240GB SSD or 320/500GB SSD+HDD options. The attractive design makes use of aluminum and magnesium alloy. It has a spacious non-backlit keyboard and a fairly large trackpad. The Aspire A3 is 0.51-inch thick and weighs 3 pounds (1.4kg).

The Acer Aspire A3 will be available in select regions in September, with prices ranging from $1,135 to $1,704.

 

 

We have got some good Kindle news and some bad Kindle news for you. The good news is that the Amazos Android-based Kindle tablet is real and one reporter even got to play with it.

Whats even better the 7-inch Amazon Kindle tablet will launch with a really cool-sounding $250 price tag. It will be, reportedly, very similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook in terms of form factor and it will a pack a full-color LCD. Then there is also this rumor that a one-year subscription to Amazon Prime will be included in the price.

Now for the bad news it appears that we will not be getting a 10-inch Kindle until next year. Whats even worse the Amazon tablet will be running a heavily customized version of Android that is, according to the TechCrunch reporter, based on a release prior to Froyo.

The will not be a camera on board and the 7-inch Amazon Kindle might end up with a single-core CPU, whereas dual-core will only come with the 10-inch version. Also the $250 unit will be Wi-Fi-only.

 

Patents. The thing that most average consumers do not care about is has become a major issue in the mobile world and the good folks at BusinessInsurance.org have thrown together an infographic to help explain what is is and how the patent wars started

 

 

 

Samsung have just developed and released their Pure Breeze UI. An Android based UI that has a focus on widget organization and app management.

The first thing you notice is the inverted take on the typical Android interface. The app grid is displayed by default with four tabs to get you started, "All Apps" which shows you’re full app library, "Connect" which focuses on messaging applications,"Surf" which alongside the browser, contains apps like Android Market and YouTube, and "favorites".

 

 

Besides the "All Apps" tab, each group is denoted by a color allowing you to quickly switch to the group assigned to said color. Each of these tabs is customizable, allowing you to change name, color and order along the bottom to suit your needs.

 

 

Pressing the home button will bring out the "kite" a special tray designed primarily for your widgets, but you can put apps or links to your groups on there too if you wish. It allows you to add as many widgets as you want along a vertical, scrollable pane, which on pressing the home button again, flies up into the top right corner of your screen. The kite is accessible as an overlay whilst in apps too, so you do not exit your app when you press the home button.

 

See DEMO Below!

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Try it on your Samsung ^FREE

 

Get The Full Version

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HTC Titan and Radar were officially announced yesterday at a public event that we covered live for you. And while that did give us most pieces of the puzzle, one of the most important ones was missing we knew nothing about the pricing of either WP7 smartphone.

Now we hear that an HTC representative went on record saying that the HTC Titan will cost €609 ($868), while HTC radar will go for €399 ($569). Granted, those are European prices, and they include 19% VAT, but they still seem a bit too high to us.

Maybe HTC sees its Titan and Radar babies as some high-end monsters that will be able to battle it out with the Galaxy S IIs and the iPhones of this world, but we believe WP7 is not there yet. And with the platform still playing catch up, there is no way that the smartphones carrying it will be valued higher than their competitors.

 

 

 

A small update on yesterday CNET report that an iPhone 5 prototype had allegedly gone missing in a San Francisco bar in a scene reminiscent of last year Gizmodo scoop. The San Francisco police department are saying that they have no record of such an investigation. SF Weekly are reporting that Officer Albie Esparza said "I do not know who source is, but we do not have any record of any such an investigation going on at this point".

The story from CNET was that the device had been found in a man home when police went to speak with him. However, Esparza stated that neither of the two police stations nearest that address had any record of such a visit. Even more interesting though is the fact that Esparza told SF Weekly that even though the lack of an investigation was discussed with CNET they still ran the story.

 

 

 

Acer and Scuderia Ferrari have been successful partners for quite some time now, with Ferrari branded, Acer laptops being the most prominent product to come from the relationship. The latest addition to the Acer Ferrari product line is significantly more pocket friendly than any of its predecessors it is an Android smartphone.

The Acer liquidimini Ferrari Edition droid is aimed at all the Ferrari fans out there, who cannot afford the Vertu made handsets, which are also endorsed by the Italian car maker. The smartphone is essentially a Ferrari themed, Acer Liquid mini E310.

The droid is powered by a 600MHz CPU, and comes with 512MB of RAM on board. The device has 512MB of built-in memory, which is expandable through a microSD card. The screen is 3.2-inch LCD unit with HVGA resolution and multitouch support. A 5MP camera will help you capture your racing moments with video recording available at the lowly 480p. All this entry level Android goodness will come in a Ferrari red body, which weighs only 105 grams. Another important addition to the droid's retail package will be the exclusive Bluetooth headset.

The Acer liquidmini Ferrari Edition will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread with UI, which has been Ferrari themed as well. Logically, the pre-installed sounds of the droid will include Ferrari engine sounds too.

 

 

With HP all but killing off webOS as a smartphone platform rumours immediately started as to who might be interested in possibly acquiring the OS. Top of that list for many people was Samsung. It was a pretty flimsy rumour to begin with of course given that Samsung are already using three different platforms i.e. Android, Windows Phone 7 and their own Bada. Nevertheless the rumours persisted.

Well Samsung head man, CEO Choi Gee Sung, has firmly quashed any such hopes. Speaking at the IFA he stated that Samsung would never get onboard with webOS. You cannot get much more final than that now can you? Just for good measure though he went on to say that he did not think very highly of the trend of acquiring an operating system.

 

 

 

Apple is continuing to fight HTC over Android and have pulled an ace out of their sleeve Andy Rubin, the man behind Android, worked at Apple when the company was working on a key patent. A patent that Android might be infringing on.

 

The patent in question was filed in the distant 1994 but seems directly related to processing data in real time. Andy Rubin was a low-level engineer working on the patent for Apple at the time. Android may be infringing on this patent and working around it would require changes that go very deep maybe as deep as the kernel itself.

 

For now, Apple is only bringing this up to point out that HTC were not completely truthful in their statements. Here is the quote from Apple statement:

 

"Android and Mr. Ruben relevant background does not start, as HTC would like the Commission to believe, with his work at General Magic or Danger in the mid-1990s. In reality, as the evidence revealed at the hearing, Mr. Rubin began his career at Apple in the early 1990s and worked as a low-level engineer specifically reporting to the inventors of the '263 [realtime API] patent at the exact time their invention was being conceived and developed. It is thus no wonder that the infringing Android platform used the claimed subsystem approach of the '263 patent that allows for flexibility of design and enables the platform to be "highly customizable and expandable" as HTC touts. While Mr. Rubin inspiration for the Android framework may not be directly relevant to the pending petitions for review, that HTC felt compelled to distort this history is illustrative of the liberties it takes in attacking the ALJ [initial determination] and the substantial evidence supporting the ALJ findings."

 

 

We would say we are surprised, but we are not. The September 8th date has been around for quite sometime, so while we are more than happy that we now have a solid date, its a bit underwhelming. Either way, Verizon first dual-core/LTE phone looks like it will be in the hands of the people next Thursday.

We first heard of the Bionic way back in January of this year, and the handset had been delayed due to battery issues, and eventually underwent a radical design change. The new design is much more slick than the original, even if it does look pretty similar to the Droid X. The delays and design changes has only hyped the phone up more, and more and more people are wondering just how good this phone will be when it debuts, especially as theiPhone 5 nears.

 

 

Its easy to forget that at one time Google and Apple made a pretty cosy couple.The two companies were on friendly terms, so much so that Eric Schmidt was even sitting on Apple board of directors. You would not know that now of course given the increasing anomosity between the two, especially when it comes to the massive global patent war Android find sitself embroiled in. However, we saw something of a harking back to former times in an interview Eric Schmidt recently gave where he rated Steve Jobs as the best company boss of the last century.

Schmidt was speaking on stage at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference when he made the comments. He saisd that Jobs was "probably the best" company boss in 50 or 100 years, responding to a question from the audience. Justifying such exalted praise Schmidt cited the fact that Jobs had built up Apple into apowerful company, not once, but twice.

 

 

Toshiba has announced the Portege Z830, a new series of ultrabooks. The 13-inch model is only .63-inch thick and weighs just 2.45 pounds (1.11kg), light enough for it to earn the "lightest 13-inch ultrabook" moniker.

 

The Portege Z830 uses a sleek aluminum and magnesium allow case, which makes it light as well as sturdy. Also, the thin design does not come at the cost of connectivity options, as it still has two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, SD card slot and a headphone jack. You also get a large backlit keyboard with a chiclet design.

 

 

On the hardware front the Portege Z830 offers Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3, i5 and i7 series processors, integrated graphics and an option of multiple SSD capacities. The 8-cell, 47Wh battery is said to give a battery life of up to 8 hours. No exact models and configurations were mentioned, but Lenovo said the base model will be just under the $1000 mark.

 

 

The HTC PR team just released the first batch of video ads for the HTC Radar WP7 smartphone, which was announced yesterday. So grab the popcorn, make yourselves comfortable and get ready to be treated to a few dozes of Mango goodness.

 

HTC has identified four key selling points of the Radar and has dedicated a video to each of them. According to the Taiwanese company the main reasons to go for the Radar are its cool looks, its great camera, its spotless connectivity and sharing options and the great entertainment option it provides.

 

 

Just like the HTC Radar earlier today, the HTC Titan just got to star in a bunch of ads published on its manufacturer website. The WP7 Mango smartphone with a 4.7-inch screen is unsurprisingly looking pretty hot in the four videos that you are about to see.

 

Actually those videos cover pretty much the same bases as the HTC Radar ads, but for one exception. The Taiwanese company obviously thinks that the Titan will be more skilled at multitasking than its smaller-screen would sibling and with a 1.5GHz CPU we can see where this is coming from.

 

Video Below!

 

Google has just issued another update for its Nexus S smartphone, which brings the version number up to 2.3.6. And while that kind of change might make you believe that the update is quite a big deal, its actually pretty minor.

 

Android 2.3.6 is a bugfix release, which comes to solve the voice search issues that have plagued the Nexus S recently. Many users reported voice search would activate by itself, while they were using some other app and you can see how this could be terribly annoying. Luckily, Google acted quickly and the healing process has started.

 

Users in Canada have reportedly been among the first to get the update, while its availability elsewhere is still a mystery. Still, there were not that many Nexus S units sold, so it should not take too long for the Android 2.3.6 to reach them all.

 

Sony Ericsson has started shipping the Xperia ray to various retailers around the world. It seems the shipments are small, because some of the sellers are already nearly or completely out of stock.

There is no official information on which countries are getting those shipments first but we have confirmations that Xperia ray is indeed available in some UK, Russian, UAE and other Asian retailers.

The Xperia ray is selling for £300 in UK but the price may vary up to £350. Other online retailers are offering the ray on pre-order on similar prices with launch date in a few days from now (September 9).

So, the Xperia ray is most probably flying (or sailing) to your country right now. If you want one, now is the right time to spare some cash. Meanwhile you are welcomed to check our preview.

 

 

 

After reading this article, you will be able to use your Android phone as a webcam for Skype, Google Talk, Facebook, or any other program on your computer that can use a webcam. I was frustrated that Skype did not allow video chat for my phone when they recently updated their app to allow this, and decided to figure out a way to do this using the existing video camera on my phone.

Your phone should already support video and have either wi-fi or bluetooth. You can connect via USB cable but I was not able to do it, you need to do port forwarding which is not easy to do with certain setups.

For reference, I did this using a Samsung Galaxy S phone, with other phones it may be a little different.

 

Getting Started

First you will have to choose which app you would like to use. This is not as big a task as you might image, as there are only really three such apps for Android that are active and have good reviews. Each app has its good and bad things, but hopefully you can find one that works for you and your phone.

All of them work with some kind of client program on your computer so you will need to download and install that before you can get it working. This allows you to sort of trick your computer into thinking the device is a webcam which can be used in Skype, Google Talk, Facebook, and so on. I tested all of the apps in Skype and Gmail chat.

Choose Your Webcam

 

 

A new HTC Sensation is on its way with a faster Qualcomm 8260 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, internal storage has been upgraded to 4 gigs and finally it will have a beefier battery by some good 210 mAh (1.730 mAh in total).

The HTC Sensation with Beats by Dr. Dre audio technology will also ship with complimentary special edition headphones with remote control for faster music selection.

The expected price for the device will be about $847, which is a bargain considering that a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones cost around $119.

 

 

Sony has announced the HMZ-T1, a new Head Mounted 3D Display, which they like to call Personal 3D Viewer. Its basically the equivalent of watching a 750-inch 3D TV from a distance of 20m, along with a pair of surround sound headphones, except this time its personal.

 

The crux of the HMZ-T1 are the two OLED panels. Each of these panels is only 0.7-inch in size and have a resolution of 1280 x 720, which gives them a mind-blowing pixel density of 2098-PPI. Each of these displays on the HMZ-T1 are positioned in a way that they recreate the experience of watching a 750-inch 3D TV from 20m. Also, since these are two separate displays, it takes care of the cross-talk and the headache of watching a single display creating two images, as each eye is shown a different image, making the 3D experience more natural.

 

 

 

The HMZ-T1 has its own pair of headphones on the side as well that create a 5.1 surround sound effect, so you do not have to worry about the sound. The HMZ-T1 connects to a separate box from which it gets its signal. The box has HDMI input on the back for connecting your source and an HDMI out for through output. The HMZ-T1 can work with sources such as 3D Blu-ray as well as PlayStation 3 3D games.

 

 

All this comes at a cost though and that cost is 60,000 Japanese yen, which is approximately US $779. Still, it is not prohibitively expensive and about the same as what you would pay for a 3D TV. Except, the experience on this would be more personal but a lot better. The Sony HMZ-T1 will be launched in November 2011.

 

Video Below!

 

 

Just when you thought the location troubles in the mobile industry were finally over, Microsoft is now facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly tracking the location of Windows Phone 7 users without their permission. Apparently, when a user decides to turn off all location services on their device, Microsoft ignores the request and proceeds to store location data.

Rebecca Cousineau, a bold Windows Phone 7 customer, claims the camera application in particular transmits the latitude and longitude coordinates of a device when in use. The lawsuit states Microsoft built the camera app specifically for this purpose, and that Microsoft falsely told Congress it does not track the location of customers once they specify not to.

Earlier this year, Apple and Google faced very similar problems over accusations that both companies were using location services for their own benefits. The stored data was supposedly being shared for marketing purposes without users ever knowing. Weeks laterApple released iOS 4.3.3, which served to relieve any security concerns. The update reduced the size of the cache, put an end to backing up the cache to iTunes, and completely deletes it when a user switches location services off in Settings.

 

 

Good news for those of you looking to grab RIM first tablet, BlackBerry PlayBook. Thanks to Best Buy you can get the 7-inch device for up to $150 off.

 

The 16GB and 32GB versions are now available for $50 less $449.99 and $549.99, respectively. The best deal, however, is when you grab PlayBook with 64GB of built-in storage it too costs $549.99, which is $150 off of its regular price.

 

 

Toshiba has announced the AT200 (Excite), which is reportedly the thinnest and lightest 10.1-inch Honeycomb slate to date. Its just 7.7 mm thick (the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is 8.6 mm) and weighs only 558 g (565 g for the Galaxy slab).

 

 

Among the other specs is Android Honeycomb 3.2, a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor, 1 GB worth of RAM and up to 64 GB of internal storage.

 

 

While some of us are looking at the just released beta 7 of the upcoming iOS as a fresh delivery of bugfixes for our iPhones, some are taking a more serious approach to it. Obviously someone took the effort to go through most of the files  that the new release contains and stumbled upon this new generic icon that supposedly depicts the iPhone 5.

 

The giveaway is the rectangular home button that will, reportedly, replace the circle one in the next iteration of the iPhone. And since the image contains that altered button we assume it's also representative of the overall design of the next Apple smartphone.

 

Now if you analyze the image more carefully you see that it also carries a different screen-to-bezel ratio than the iPhone 4, which also corresponds nicely with latest rumors of a bigger screen. The new ratio means that the iPhone 5 will come with a 3.7" screen, assuming that it has the same surface of the front panel as its predecessor.

 

 

Rumor has it that Intel will be temporarily discontinuing development on MeeGo development which coming after Nokia basically put MeeGo in the background as a platform for "long-term market exploration", may well mean the end of the platform.

Intel is, of course, denying such rumors, saying that they are still committed to the Linux-based OS.

 

 

MeeGo had high ambitions to power anything from smartphones through car infotainment systems to netbooks. So far, we have seen only one MeeGo smartphone, but thats about it.

 

Now the rumor mill is pointing towards Android and Windows Phone as the OSes of choice for Intel handset platforms and saying that the chip giant will stick to hardware from now on.

 

 

SPB Software keeps bringing its SPB Shell 3DUI software to new platforms. After Android, the company is going for folks with Symbian^3 smartphones such as the Nokia N8, C7 and E7. If you have been reading our previous articles on SPB Shell, you know it replaces the phone default homescreen with a 3D interface from where users can quickly access various phone functions, favorite contacts and apps, as well as run widgets.

 

Like its Android counterpart, Symbian^3 version also costs $14.99, which may sound a lot, until you actually start using SPB Shell 3D. 

 

 

 

Update is currently Rolling-out to all users, Improvments of this Update:

• Download Manager App:

New App to manage all of your downloads from web browsing, email attachments and other apps.

 

• App and Power Management Details:

Under Manage Applications, a new Running tab displays a list of active applications, as well as the storage and memory being used by each.

 

• Multi-Touch Key-Chording:

New ability to enter numbers and symbols with keyboard shortcut combos, without having to change to the numeric keyboard mode.

 

• Improved Word Selection and Copy Functionality:

New capability to select a word via press-hold. A second press of the selected word copies the selected characters.

 

• New User Interface and Color Scheme:

New widgets, icons and screens with refreshed colors.

 

• Dock Icons:

Three swappable icons and the App Launcher icon are fixed to the Dock at the bottom of all home screen panels for easy and instant access. The Phone, App Launcher and Contacts icons are now within this customizable dock.

 

• App Groups:

New App Menu allows creation of custom app groups, in addition to 3 default groups: All Apps, Recent and Downloaded.

 

• Security:

Added Device and SD Card encryption. VPN enhancements integrate IPSec VPN clients into device security settings.

 

Web Browsing and Data Access

+ Improved battery life while using Wi-Fi.

+ Fixed issue that caused frequent data connection drops.

+ Mobile Hotspot status is displayed accurately.

 

Email and Messaging

+ Email application:

• Improved contact syncing from multiple accounts.

• Email pushes now work correctly when using Exchange ActiveSync.

• Exchange ActiveSync account setup will accurately present server option.

+ Correct contact name is displayed when receiving SMS messages.

+ Emoticons are displayed in messages.

+ Forward SMS message conversations accurately.

+ Notification LED will flash when new message is received.

 

Applications and Widgets

+ Access My Verizon without any force close errors.

+ Compass calibration within Google Maps syncs accurately with your location.

+ Geo-tagging features available for camera applications.

+ Clock widget updates time correctly.

+ Callback numbers now populate in Dialer app.

+ GPS apps and programs no longer cause unnecessary device resets.

+ Google Books is now preloaded.

+ V CAST Media Manager is now preloaded.

+ Blockbuster movie rentals license remains active after download.

 

Additional Improvements

+ Keypad backlight turns on in darker settings.

+ Improvements in screen display no longer causes display screen to turn black.

+ Fixed issue that caused factory resets when the device’s mobile number is changed.

+ Fixed issue that caused device reset and a black display screen after over the air upgrades.

 

 

Samsung has released two videos of the Galaxy Note smartphonlet. The first one is your typical music-accompanied promo video while the second one features YH Lee, Senior Vice President of Samsung Mobile Communications Business, Global Marketing.

 

Here goes the promo video below. It highlights the SuperAMOLED "HD" 5.3-incher, the minimum scrolling and screen transition features, the 1.4 GHz dual-core Exynos processor, the S pen drawing functionality and more.

 

 

If the recent TouchPad ordeal is any indication, people want cheap tablets and Lenovo just showed the IdeaPad A1. Its not a $99 tablet, but it costs the easy $199 and you get more than a discontinued product running an OS with uncertain future.

 

Instead, the Lenovo IdeaPad A1 is a 7-inch tablet that runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread and offers specs very similar to the original Samsung Galaxy Tab, for example. The 7-inch screen is an IPS-LCD unit with 600 x 1024 pixels resolution.

 

The A1 is powered by a 1GHz Cortex-A8 processor and runs an almost untouched version of Gingerbread. There is just a Lenovo-made widget and a Lenovo app store. You’ll have access to the real Android Market too, so you get the hundreds of thousands of apps that Android has to offer. There’s also an offline mapping solution courtesy of Navdroyd.

 

Other specs for the IdeaPad A1 include a 3MP main camera and VGA secondary camera. The tablet is 10.1mm thick and weighs around 400g. Its a Wi-Fi only device, there is no Wi-Fi+3G version.

 

 

For about a month we have known HTC plan of nine upcoming Windows Phone 7 Mango devices. Today, we believe HTC may have something brewing. Its widely expected the Taiwanese manufacturer plans to announce several new smartphones, including the HTC Omega (a Windows Phone 7.5 device with a single-core 1.5GHz CPU), the HTC Eternity (another Windows Phone 7.5 device with a huge 4.7-inch display), plus potentially the HTC Runnymede, which is a beast of a phone sporting the latest 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon chip and Androidoperating system.

 

 

HTC Eternity

• Single-core 1.5GHz processor
• 8 megapixel camera, with autofocus, dual LED flash and 720p movie mode,
• Front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera
• 16GB of internal storage
• DLNA support
• Bluetooth 2.1
• WiFi
• GPS
• 1,650mAh battery
• Quad-band
• 130.6 x 70.6 x 9.9 mm
• 14.2mbps HSDPA

 

HTC Omega

• 3.8 inch LCD display
• MSM8255 1.5Ghz processor,
• 512MB of RAM
• 8 megapixel camera
• Quad Band
• FF camera?
• BT 2.1
• 14.2mbps HDSPA

 

Get ready for a new Galaxy Wi-Fi device the 3.6, which is a multimedia-centered droid with a 3.6-inch HVGA TFT LCD display, single core 1 GHz OMAP processor, Gingerbread 2.3, 2 MP fixed-focus camera with LED flash and wide-range codec support for music and video playback.

 

The Galaxy Wi-Fi 3.6 is aimed at those of us who want to get the all-you can eat smart experience but do not want to cash out for an expensive smartphone at an expensive monthly contract. Prices start from £149 for the 8 gig model and £169 for the 16GB version. Both Galaxy Wi-Fi 3.6′s will be offered in both black and white color versions.

 

Apart from getting the full Android experience from the Galaxy Wi-Fi 3.6 you also get DivX video support, WMV support (up to 720p resolution), GPS receiver, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support, a 1500 mAh battery and additional microSD card support up to 32 GB.

 

 

 

Samsung announced the Series 7 Slate PC it packs new generation dual-core Intel processors, runs Windows 7 and puts an emphasis on sleek looks and a compact frame.

Not to be confused with the Sliding PC 7 Series, the Samsung Series 7 Slate PC packs a 11.6-inch capacitive touch display with 1366×768 pixels resolution and 400 nits of brightness. The tablet comes with a Wacom digitizer.

The aluminum body of the Series 7 Slate PC is only 12.7mm thick and weighs 860g not bad for a full-blown computer. On the connectivity side of things, there’s a full-size USB 2.0 port, micro-HDMI port and a SIM card slot. You also get a 3MP main camera and 2MP cameras.

 

 

The Samsung Series 7 Slate PC will come with a choice of Core i3, Core i5 or Pentium processors. The RAM is 4GB DDR3 and the tablet uses the processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU.

The Samsung Series 7 Slate PC should be out in October. The cheapest version has a 64GB worth of storage and costs $1,099 with Windows 7 Home Premium and $1,199 with Professional.

 

 

Today at IFA 2011 in Berlin Samsung announced two devices that, from a hardware perspective, are practically the same. Both the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 have a dual core 1.4 GHz processor, both have 1 GB of RAM, and both have screens with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Now lets get to the key differences. The Galaxy Note has a 5.3 inch screen, runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, has an 8 megapixel camera, 2500 mAh battery, is 9.65 mm thick, and it will come in two versions; one has HSPA+ connectivity, the other does LTE. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 has a 7.7 inch screen, runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb, has a 3 megapixel camera, 5100 mAh battery, is an astonishing 7.89 mm thick, and it will do 21 Mbps HSPA+.

Carrying around a 5.3 inch smartphone does not really make sense from an ergonomic perspective, Then there is the Tab 7.7-inch, and while there are Honeycomb fans out there this Tab is runing the 3.2 latst Honeycomb version

BTW, Galaxy Note comes with a stylus!

 

 

 

HTC recent $300 million purchase of a majority stake in Beats Audio, a company that offers headphones that are markedly more expensive than your average set of cans, yet sound only marginally better, has been heralded by many as a huge waste of money. Similar to how everyone knows you have an Apple product due to the white headphones shoved in either side of your skull, HTC is looking for the same type of brand recognition, except with red cords streaming out of your questionably empty head should you happen to own a pair of said Beats Audio headphones.

The question on everyone mind since the deal went down has of course been how long until HTC starts slapping the Beats brand on their products? According to a recent leak, the wait might not be that long. Rumor has it that HTC will launch a refreshed Sensation dubbed "Special Edition 2" that will have a faster processor (1.5 GHz dual core versus 1.2 GHz dual core), larger battery, and of course a pair of Beats headphones inside the box. The rumor goes on to say that this device will cost about $845 off contract in the UK.