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!

 

 

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!

 

 

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.

 

 

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."

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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 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.

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

The Mozilla team is actively working on their Android offering and one of them took the time to show off their latest work Firefox for Android Honeycomb tablets. The changes affect the UI, making it more Honeycomb-like and more suitable for big screens.

 

 

The theme is the first thing that changes its cleaner, so it fits better with the Honeycomb style, which differs quite a bit from the non-tablet versions of the OS. The distinctive Firefox elements have been preserved howeverb.

 

 

Speaking of tabs, how they are displayed changes according to the screen orientation. In landscape mode, they are thumbnails and in portrait mode, they are put together in a single dropdown menu to save space. In either mode, tabs are permanently visible.

 

 

 

Google has just announced that the latest version of the Android SDK in now available to developers. Classified as a minor feature update, the new Android SDK brings, as usual, a new set of APIs that should allow developers to create better apps that are compatible with a wider range of devices.

 

The focus of the SDK update is mainly on making compatibility with different screen sizes and resolutions easier. Previously Android 3.2 was said to be the Honeycomb version best suited to 7-inch tablets and now you can see why its just that it will be much easier to developers to make apps that fit better on those now.

 

Samsung legal department has sent a Cease and Desist letter to a person claiming it is in possession of leaked Nexus Prime firmware. The Korean manufacturer wants it back, because its obviously an exclusive Samsung property and not to be released to the public.

Yes, thats the confirmation you have been looking for the third Google phone Nexus Prime will be once again made by Samsung.

According to the rumors, it will sport 4.5-inch new generation Super AMOLED screen and might be based on Samsung Exynos SoC with a powerful 1.5GHz dual-core processor.

Google Nexus Prime is supposedly the first droid running on Ice Cream Sandwich and as the rumor has it, it might get an October release. We expect even more leaks as we get closer to the official announcement.

 

 

 

When it comes to Twitter clients, Android users are really spoilt for choice, there is a wealth on the Market that are worth looking at. You can, of course, go with the default Twitter for Android application, however this is a little lacking in features and you may want try out one of the many third-party offerings available, such as Seesmic, TweetDeck or Tweetcaster. But the burning question is, which one is the best?

I look for three things in a good Twitter client:

• Features: I want something more than simply being able to tweet and re-tweet.
• Usability: I don’t want to spend an hour learning how the program actually works before I start using it.
• User interface: I like bling and eye-candy, so naturally I want a Twitter client that does its job with a little flair!

 

As an avid Tweeter, I have tried out pretty much all the Twitter clients available for Android and I can safely say that I have finally found one which fulfills all three of my requirements! Plume is a feature-rich and well designed Twitter client available for Android devices running Android 1.5 and above. The app is free, though you will have to put up with ads intruding your timeline if you want to remove these, then Plume Premium is available for €1.99 from the Market.

Looking at Plume, you get the feeling that the developers have really kept these three things in mind whilst they were designing the application. Lets take a closer look at Plume to find out whether it is the Twitter client to have out there.

Introduction

Plume, from developers Level Up Studio is a feature-packed, highly customisable Twitter client available for Android devices running Android 1.5 and above. The application has also been optimised for Honeycomb tablets. The developers say that Plume will "change the way you feel about Twitter" and whilst I was testing this program, I certainly did get whiffs of this.

The previous Twitter clients for Android have been a bit bland and boring especially if you have migrated from iOS. They did their job well but tended to be quite simple and not exactly eye-catching. But Plume is different. Its crawling with features and the best part about it is you can play around and tweak almost every aspect of the program to give you an ideal tweeting experience.

 

Features

Plume has everything you will need in a Twitter client. You can tweet, retweet, upload pictures, shorten links and so on. Your mentions and direct messages are easily accessible via icons at the bottom or, on devices running Android 2.0 and above, you can swipe through columns.

 

To tweet, you pull down on the top of the screen to reveal the New Tweet box, which I find aesthetically pleasing and a refreshing change to most Twitter clients, where you simply tap on an icon.

 

In the tweet box, there are icons allowing you to shorten links automatically and insert mentions and hash tags. This feature does save you a lot of time hunting round your keyboard to try and find the relevant keys. Plume saves all the hash tags you use and can also analyse your timeline or your individual tweets for the most commonly used hash tags, allowing you to pick them out easily.

 

If you are a keen Bit.ly user, then you can enter your details into Plume as well, allowing you to track your posted links. Links in tweets can either be viewed via the default Android browser or via the in-built browser in Plume, however this can be a little temperamental at times and does not offer the best browsing experience.

Customisation

Plume is probably the most customisable Twitter client out there on the Market. You can tweak and adapt the app exactly to how you want it, such as the colour of your tweets, whether you want to hide user avatars to allow for a faster loading time, or whether you want to use the pull to refresh system.

You can also choose different themes to suit your mood. Personally I am fond of the dark theme, but if this depresses you then you can change to a nice bright one!

On a Tablet

Plume makes excellent use of the larger screen on Honeycomb devices and presents you with a column view for your tweets, mentions and direct mentions (though this can be customised), a bit like TweetDeck.

Plume on Honeycomb devices has all the features of the phone version. Another useful hint is that the Honeycomb-optimized version and the normal phone version are one and the same, so you can use the same client on both devices.

Download _{(Android Market)}

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Carrier billing for Android has landed in Europe Vodafone is the first operator to do it, starting with the UK and it will soon enable it in Germany too. Vodafone is expected to expand the service to other countries and other carriers should follow suit.

 

Carrier billing works by charging your phone bill for the apps purchases, so you do not need a credit card. The simpler process should boost app sales, or so Vodafone hopes.

 

The service will initially work only for people who bought their droid through Vodafone. It should eventually offer it to everyone of their customers, regardless on where they got their phone.

 

Carrier billing works for both pay monthly and pre-paid users. To avoid any shocking bills at the end of the month, single purchases are limited to £30 and the total cost of apps is limited to £250 per month.

 

 

Mobiado has been around for quite some time now, establishing itself among the premier makers of ultra luxury mobile phones. With its latest creation, dubbed Grand Touch, the Canadian company adds, for the first time, an Android device to its portfolio.

As you can probably tell from the picture above, the new Mobiado droid is no other but a Google Nexus S, which has gone through some serious gold treatment. Using the Google phone should give Mobiado a relative edge on the market for ultra premium Android devices, because Tag Heuer and Ulysse Nardin’sofferings are certainly not up to date in the software department.

 

The Samsung made device has gone through a serious visual transformation including 139 carats of sapphire crystal and 24 carat gold plated body which has been CNC machined. The device buttons are also made from sapphire crystal. You also have the option of having inlayed crystals in the corner facets of the droid, should you decide that it might look too plain.

 

 

 

Last week a few bits and pieces of the Samsung smartphone roadmap leaked and now we add more pieces to the puzzle. We just got the expected release dates for most of the smartphones and the two tablets as well as a whole new addition to the Samsung lineup.

 

 

Future Android smartphones

Samsung I9250 (W48) - 4.65" SuperAMOLED of HD resolution (1280x720 pixels), Android Ice Cream sandwich, 5 MP camera.

Samsung I9220 (W43) - 4.3-inch Super AMOLED of HD resolution (1280x720 pixels), Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, 1.4 Ghz dual-core processor, 8-megapixel camera.

Samsung I9210 (W48) - 4.5" WVGA SuperAMOLED, Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, 4G connectivity, 16 GB of memory, 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi b/g/n, 1750 mAh battery.

Samsung I8150 (W40) - 3.7" WVGA LCD, Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, 1.4GHz processor, HSDPA, 4GB of memory, microSD support, 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, DLNA, GPS and FM radio.

Samsung B5510 (W41) - 2.8" display, Android 2.2.2 Froyo, 800MHz processor, QWERTY keyboard, 3 megapixel camera, FM radio, WiFi.

Samsung S5610 (W42) - 2.4" QVGA display, Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, 5 megapixel camera, 150 MB storage, HSDPA.

Samsung GT-S5360 (W42) - 3" QVGA screen, Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, 2 megapixel camera.

Samsung P6200 (W44) - 7" Super AMOLED of SVGA resolution (1024 x 600 pixels), Android Honeycomb, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, 3 megapixel and 2 megapixel cameras.

Samsung P6210 (W44) - Wi-Fi-only version of the P6200.

 

 

The good thing about Android is that everyone can have a go at it Fusion Garage are the latest to throw their hat into the ring with a phone, the Grid 4, and a tablet, Grid 10. Both run the so-called Grid OS, which is a deeply customized version of Android. If you have not heard of Fusion Garage before, you are not alone. The tech company is known for the not really successful JooJoo tablet, but their products never really took off.

Fusion Garage Grid 4

 

The smartphone, the Fusion Garage Grid 4, packs a 4" WVGA TFT screen in a slender 122.4 x 63.9 x 9.6 mm body that weighs 137g. It's powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon, which Fusion Garage oddly calls a dual-core. The smartphone also has 512MB RAM and 16GB of built-in storage.

 

 

Other specs on the Grid 4 include quad-band GSM, tri-band 3G (with HSDPA), 5MP camera with LED flash 720p video recording, VGA secondary camera, Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS, microSD card slot and 1300mAh battery. The Grid 4 uses microSIMs for a change.

 

 

Fusion Garage Grid 10

 

As for the Fusion Garage Grid 10, its a 10.1" tablet, powered by a Tegra II chipset with a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and 512MB RAM. The TFT LCD screen has 1366 x 768 pixels resolution.

 

The Grid 10 runs the same modified Android as the Grid 4. It has Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity, quad-band 2G/3G (microSIM again), 16GB storage expandable with microSD cards and a docking port.

 

 

The Grid 10 measures 274.2 x 173.5 x 13.9mm and weighs 690 g. Prices for the Grid 10 start at $499 for the WiFi-only version and it's $599 for the 3G+WiFi version. Only US pre-orders are accepted right now and it should ship on 15 September.

 

 

 

For the gamers amongst you, Mojang Specifications smash indie title Minecraft should be no stranger to the likes of your mouse and keyboard. With 11,963,015 registered players and 3,144,868 of those playing the paid survival version, they have already amassed a huge following and E3 brought us news that Minecraft would soon be making its way into the mobile world.

Today that news was realized as Minecraft: Pocket Edition has just been launched on the Android Market. Here is what Mojang said about the new title on their blog:

The first version (Alpha 0.1) will focus on the creative aspects of Minecraft. We have tried to put in the features that make sense for playing on a mobile device while still keeping the core of the Minecraft experience. You will be able to select blocks on the touchscreen or just scroll through them with the circle and square buttons on the Xperia Play device. The first version also supports multi-player on a local wireless network allowing you to create a world and invite friends to build together.  Some of the features in this release include:
• Randomized worlds
• Build anything you can imagine
• Build with 36 different kinds of blocks
• Invite and play with friends to your world (local wireless network)
• Save multi-player worlds on your own phone

The title itself is "Xperia PLAY Optimized, meaning that its yours, provided you have an Xperia PLAY. For the rest of us Minecraft fans in the Android camp, we will have to wait. Although there are no announced plans to bring it to other droids anytime soon, chances are, it will not stay an Xperia PLAY exclusive for long, whether that be an official release or a download of the less legitimate variety.

 

 

Google has announced its going to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion ($40 per share). The Mountain View-based company plans to use Motorola rich patent portfolio to help its Android platform in the numerous legal battles it's currently fighting, while Motorola itself should continue to function as before.

The first thing that should be noted is Motorola Mobility is not the entire Motorola. You might remember that the company split in two in January 2010 - Motorola Solution and Motorola Mobility.

 

So, Google is buying Motorola mobile division responsible for smartphones and tablets. The reson for the move is quite simple to defend Android in the ongoing patent war.

A few days ago Google explained that Microsoft, Apple and other corporations are working together to acquire important patents before Google so they can get licensing fees of up to $15 from the manufacturers for each Android device sold.

So, now that Google owns Motorola it is in a much better position to offer assistance to its partners in their court struggles. After all, Motorola is one of the companies with the largest patent portfolios in business and we are led to believe the whole Android community will have access to it once the deal is done.

 

As far as leaks go, they do not get much bigger than this. We just found specs sheets of no less than 9 upcoming Samsung smartphones and two tablets. The scoop includes the 7 new Android devices, two 7" Honeycomb tablets and finally two new Bada smartphones, one of which will be packing a 4" SuperAMOLED.

The droids are:

The Samsung I9250 is the most interesting of the bunch. Sitting on the fence between smartphones and tablets, it features a 4.65" SuperAMOLED of HD resolution 1280x720, a 5 MP camera and runs on Android Ice Cream.

This will probably be Samsung first droid featuring the yet unreleased version of the Google OS.

Samsung I9220 will make do with Gingerbread 2.3.3 and a 4.3" SuperAMOLED with the rumored 1280x720 (thats HD again) resolution, a 1.4 Ghz dual-core processor and an 8 MP camera. It's certainly another one worth keeping an eye on.

Samsung I9210 comes next with its Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OS, a 4.5" WVGA SuperAMOLED and 4G support. This is probably the Celox that leaked a couple of days ago.

The I9210 has 16 GB of internal storage, 8 MP snapper with a LED flash on the back and a 2 MP front-facing camera on the front. GPS and Wi-Fi are covered as well as Bluetooth 3.0 and finally a 1750 mAh battery.

After this trio the Samsung I8150 is looking quite uninspiring with its 3.7" WVGA (480x800) TFT display, HSDPA support, 4 gigs worth of internal storage and a 1.4 Ghz single-core processor.

However, with its Android 2.3.3. Gingerbread OS, microSD card slot and a 5 MP snapper with 720p video recording it makes up for one decently looking mid-range device.

Then we move into low-end territory with the Samsung B5510. The smartphone will reportedly come with a 2.8" display, and will run Android 2.2.2 Froyo.

Its CPU will be clocked to 800 Mhz processor and heavy texters will appreciate it for its physical QWERTY keyboard. The rest of the Samsung B5510 specs that have been unveiled including a 3 MP snapper, FM-radio, Wi-Fi and GPS.

We are back on the Gingerbread train with the Samsung S5360 and Samsung S5610. The decidedly entry-level duo comes with QVGA (240x320 pixels) displays - the unit on the S5360 measures 3" in diagonal, while the S5610 only has a 2.4" screen.

However the S5610 leads in the camera department, where it offers 5 megapixel stills to the S5360 2 megapixel shots. Connectivity-wise, though, both should be doing well with GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA on board.

The story of the leaked tablets is much shorter. First, we haveve got the Samsung P6200 7-incher with Android Honeycomb, a SuperAMOLED 1024x600 display, 3 MP and 2 MP cameras (back and front) and HSDPA support.

The other tablet is the Samsung P6210, which is basically the same kind of deal, but with Wi-Fi support only.

The Bada 2.0-running Samsung S5380 has a 3.2" display, Bluetooth 3.0, a 2 MP snapper, while theSamsung S8600 Wave III will come with a 4" SuperAMOLED display, a 5 MP camera, Bluetooth 3.0 and 3 GB of internal storage.

 

Getting a bit sick of those endless helpings of Gingerbread and Honeycomb being forced down our throats in the mobile market right now?

 

Well, it looks like Google may be preparing to launch the next version of Android Ice Cream Sandwich sooner than we thought.

 

From what we know so far ICS is set to be a pivotal release for the Android platform, as its likely to bring the divergent smartphone and tablet strains of Google mobile OS back into a single line.

 

And according to BGR sources, Google is looking to push its introduction forward to as early as October in an attempt to cover off Apple iPhone 5 launch the reason being it does not want customers coming out of contracts and being faced with a choice between a nice shiny new iPhone 5 and yet another variation on the existing Gingerbread theme.

 

Plausible thinking, we have to say, though it may be a brave move to plan your entire strategy on the movements of your chief rival. Especially when its abundantly clear that few people outside of the Apple inner circle have any clear fix on just what the next-gen handset will offer.

 

 

Watch phones are still fairly popular, but their main problem is that the models available aren’t very good. What if you could have a watch that’s powered by Android, is not a phone but can remotely control a smartphone and handle calls, show you incoming texts, notifications and so on and finally comes with a titanium or gold casing?

Here are the basic specs of i’m Watch 55 x 40 x 9mm and 70g, 1.54″ TFT with 240×240 pixels resolution (220ppi), Android-based OS, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and last but not least, i’m Watch was designed in Italy (for what that’s worth).

The watch itself doesn’t have phone functionality but connects to your smartphone (droids, iPhone, BlackBerries and WP7 phones are all supported). Over Bluetooth, the phone can make/receive calls, read texts and emails, show Facebook notifications and so on. The 350mAh battery is good for 3 hours of talking (though I can’t imagine that’s very comfortable), 30 hours standby (with Bluetooth on) or 48 hours (with BT off, but then you lose most of the features of i’m Watch).

 

i’m Watch runs an Android-based OS, but it does not seem to support standard droids apps. It does have an app store though, which can extend the functionality further. It runs on a Freescale i.MX233 CPUand 64MB RAM.

 

 

Anyway, if you are interested you can pre-order i’m Color (the plastic version, available in several colors) for €249 (that’s $360), i’m Jewel (titanium casing) for €599, or go for the pricier i’m Jewel options Yellow/Pink/Black gold for €11,999 or White Gold & Diamonds for €14,999. There is a i’m Special version too with "only with luxury materials” and price "to be define upon request"

 

 

 

Have you ever wished to speed up your Android, but now known how? Have you tried task killers, but found it hard to tell whether you made an improvement? In this post, I will look at Autokiller Memory Optimizer, an app that gives you more control over how Android releases its system resources.

 

"You should not be using a task killer with Android" clearly explains why the task killers are not a good solution to fasten up your system in the Android interface. Briefly, we might say that the reason that task killers are no good for Android is that the same system regulates itself for releasing RAM memory. Process are not killed when you close the app, instead the process stays open until the system itself realizes it needs more memory to run a new process. This way, you can actually gain some speed when you restart the app, as its resources may still be in memory.

 

Just like a computer, a smartphone uses Random Access Memory (RAM) for processing the functionality of softwares and apps. When you are running low on RAM, your phone will start to slow down, because it needs more memory than is available. As a solution to this problem, Android devices has an autokiller that automatically shuts apps down when the memory used is close to the limit. Obviously this limit depends on the capabilities and configuration of your phone.

 

As the developer says: "AutoKiller Memory Optimizer is designed to fine-tune Android system inner memory manager routines to keep your device fast and smooth. It also features a full-powered process manager which lets you control your whole system."

 

Going for It

The system itself divides the process into six different types, and here is where it gets technical. The six types are as follows.

• FOREGROUND_APP:  This is the process running the current foreground app.  We would really rather not kill it! Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.
• VISIBLE_APP: This is a process only hosting activities that are visible to the user, so we would prefer they don’t disappear. Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.
• SECONDARY_SERVER: This is a process holding a secondary server killing it will not have much of an impact as far as the user is concerned. Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.
• HIDDEN_APP: This is a process only hosting activities that are not visible, so it can be killed without any disruption. Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.
• CONTENT_PROVIDER: This is a process with a content provider that does not have any clients attached to it.  If it did have any clients, its adjustment would be the one for the highest-priority of those processes.
• EMPTY_APP: This is a process without anything currently running in it.  Definitely the first to go! Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup. This value is initialized in the constructor, careful when refering to this static variable externally.

 

For every type of app, the system has a limit of pages (1 page=4 kilobytes) predefined. Autokiller Memory Optimizer allows you to modify this.

 

Video Review Below!

 

For the changes you can make you have the freedom to set as you wish, but there is a lock on the three first types of apps and there isalso a list of presets configuration as follows: Moderate (30, 35, 40), Optimum (40, 50, 60), Strict (60, 70, 80), Aggressive (82, 90, 98), Extreme (150, 160, 170), Ultimate (200, 225, 250) and (a wink from the developer about the TV series) Lost (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42).

Within these presets, you should try different ones, because every phone has its own RAM capacity and it would not be a good idea to set a killing parameter that is very close to your RAM total capacity as your phone would be killing apps constantly and you wouldn’t be able to use it at all.

The app also categorizes the running apps in the six types and you can kill them manually for RAM release in the tab processes and the same occurs with the services in the current tab.

This app has also a donate version with some more features like the Chuck Norris mode when you can configure the app to use aggressive killing to release memory. It also gives the ability to set a different preset when the screen of the phone is off.

 

 Download from Android Market FREE!

 

 

On the heels of that Droid Charge deal we covered few days ago, Amazon informed us about their latest offering. The online retailer has slashed prices for two additional 4G smartphones Sprint Nexus S 4G and Verizon HTC Thunderbolt. The first of the two is available for $0.01 for new users, which is a single cent more than what Best Buy offered on that one-day sale. Existing users, however, will have to shell out $99.99 to upgrade their contract.

 

As for the HTC Thunderbolt, new users will get it for $49.99, while those upgrading will pay $129.99. Moreover, if you are upgrading and you are also a part of a family account, you will have to pour out $189.99. No such complicated pricing comes with the Nexus S 4G, though.

 

 

In the short time that Android has been around, its evolved at an unprecedented rate to become one of the leading smartphone and now tablet OS out there.

 

Android Infographic!

 

 

 

According to Google latest report based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market within a 14-day period till August 1, 24.3 percent of Android users are now running on Gingerbread-based devices. Froyo, however, continues to have the majority of the stake, with 55.9 percent of the total Android users. Although the adoption to Gingerbread by OEMs happened a lot faster compared to the previous versions it seems its not fast enough as a lot of users are still stuck on the older version.

Looking at the historical distribution from February 2011 to August 2011, we can see that Gingerbread user base only started picking up around May 2011. However, the Froyo user base remains almost identical to what it was in February, its just that the usage of the older versions such as 2.1 has dropped significantly.

 

 

Meanwhile, Android Honeycomb-based devices are not doing so well. With only 1.3 percent of the total Android users who access the Market there clearly are not enough Android Honeycomb-based tablets out there, despite being in existence for almost six months now.

 

You certainly remember that this spring HTC took a rapid U-turn in their smartphone policy and decided to start locking their bootloaders to prevent unauthorized hacking and modding of the preinstalled software. The Taiwanese company was then quickly made to regret its decision as users from all over the world went online and made their discontent public. In the end, HTC CEO was quick to respond with a promise that they will revert to their old policy.

Except that no action has been taken about bringing the old ways back ever since and everyone is understandably getting impatient. Well, today the company stepped on stage to give us some more details about the "when" and "how" of the unlocking bootloaders.

As it turns out, HTC will still be releasing all its devices with locked bootloaders, but soon they will be providing a web tool that will let you unlock them if you want to. However, you will need to create an account in order to use it and "accept legal disclaimers that unlocking may void all or parts of your warranty".

 

 

We came across a very interesting tablet that came all the way from China and landed in our inbox. The Marvel TBT-10C 7″ Mercury Pad Tablet is a 7-incher, running Android 2.3.1 Gingerbread, with a 1GHz Samsung S5PV210 A8 processor, 512MB RAM and has a 800×400 (WVGA) multi-touch display among other specs. And it looks ghastly similar to the iPhone 4.

 

 

This tablet is certainly nothing out of the ordinary, especially coming from China, and is easily outclassed by the current crop of Android tablets with its so-last-year single core processor, WVGA-only screen, 2 MP camera and the fact it just looks like a cheap iPhone rip-off.

 

Top 10 Android Apps to

 

Work with No Wires!

 

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Google Maps for Android just got bumped to version 5.8, with the main focus falling on making Places and Latitude better. The new version lets you add a new place to check into, if one is not already available, and you can snap and upload your own photos of a place which will help other users decide if thats a place they want to visit.

 

A photo of a place is a great way to add to its description your own photos get uploaded to your Picasa album (filed under "Photos for Google Maps"), where they can be removed if you like. And if the photo is good, it may even become the profile picture of a Place.

 

 

If you happen to be situated in the United States and own an Asus Eee Pad Transformer, its your lucky day. Version 3.2 of Android Honeycomb is now out for the popular tablet-slash-netbook and with it come stretchable widgets and the compatibility zoom which will make smartphone apps much better to use on the bigger screen.

 

The 3.1 Honeycomb update came in the first half of June those are some super-fast update cycles. Also if you have the Transformer plus the keyboard dock you can enjoy the dock USB host functionality.

 

The update also brings support for lower-res displays and those of smaller size so this means that Honeycomb will not remain a high-end tablet territory and some of the smaller slates can join in the fun.

 

 

Now you can find apps and games, rent movies and buy books in Android Market on your phone directly from the New Android App Store that was Officially available yesterday. You can Exclusivly Download it from our Servers as a (.apk) file to Update your default Adroid Market to this New version automatically with no additional fees or memory space needed. but Note that Books and Movies available only in the U.S. but all other services are available Worldwide to all Android users.

 

Download from our servers

 

The name "HTC Vigor" surfaced a few days back through a leaked imaged taken through its camera but today we have some more information regarding this phone. This information comes through benchmark scores that were ran on the phones and they are not exactly difficult to forget so take the following information with a pinch of salt.

According to the NenaMark1 benchmark score, the Vigor with be available on Verizon 4G LTE network. It has a 1280 x 720 resolution display of unspecified size and a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC with a 1.5GHz CPU and Adreno 220 GPU, quite likely the MSM8660 found under EVO 3D and the upcoming "Puccini"  tablet. The device is also shown to be running on Android 2.3.4.

 

 

 

 

Google announced the updated version of the Android Market app a while back but there was one small problem, the update was not available for download then. But now we are hearing Google has finally started rolling out the update to device with Android 2.2 and higher. And we could not help ourselves and we went to see what its all about.

 

The version number for this latest update is 3.0.27. Apparently, if you were running the previously leaked version you will automatically be updated to the new version. Personally, I did not received the update automatically so I got impatient and sideloaded it. I have been using it for some time now and here are my quick impressions of it.

 

First of all, it definitely looks a lot better. Was not a big fan of the previous version which looked like someone puked all over my screen after eating some radioactive waste. The new one uses green more subtly with a lot more black thrown in. Also, curved lines have been dumped in favor of straight lines. And there’s not so much space wasted.

The app categories are not in a hierarchical order any more but placed next to each other and you need to swipe horizontally on the screen to move between them. There are also a lot more categories, such as top grossing, top new paid, top new free, trending apps and staff picks. I didn’t find the Editor’s Choice apps that Google mentioned. The app will also contain Google Music Beta and Google Books if you reside in the US.

The new square grid layout is definitely better. You see a lot more apps on screen at once and hence it is a lot more functional at the same time being better looking. Click on an app and you can see the screenshots prominently on the top above the description. You can scroll through the screenshots horizontally the way you can in the App Store app in iOS. Click on them to view them full screen. The full screen view is loaded along with the thumbnails so it displays the images immediately after you click on them. All the other things that were there before such as reviews, developer info and related apps are still there below in the same order.

 

 

 

The Wi-Fi only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been selling in the States since June, but those of you holding out for Verizon LTE model will be pleased to hear that they only have to wait a couple of days more until a promise launch thats due in this Thursday.

An official-looking, but not officially released slide pins the launch date of the 4G LTE-enabled Galaxy Tab 10.1 on July 28th.

 

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 for Verizon is available on the carrier site, but only for pre-order right now. Here is what you need to know before Thursday the 16GB version costs $530 with a 2-year contract (or $630 without), while the 32GB version is $630 on a 2-year contract ($730 without).

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 for Verizon will be available in Verizon stores and on their web site. You have a choice between Metallic Grey and White colors for the tablet, but keep in mind that the White version is available only through direct fulfillment. By the way, the tablet takes only microSIM cards.

 

 

Google has done it again: completely revamped the design of their Android Market. Back in the end of 2010 the Market app was given a green theme and some new graphical changes such as the featured carousel, and now Google have drastically altered the design again to make it more user friendly. The updated market is meant to be rolling out over the coming weeks, though there is an updated APK floating around on the Internet for those who want it right now.

 

Getting Started

When first opening the updated market you will notice the change immediately. Google approach with these tiles is clearly meant to be more friendly on the eyes with large images, however its hard not to see the similarities to the Metro UI of Windows Phone. Nevertheless, the experience is vastly improved as it allows for much easier and more fluid browsing. Depending on your country you may see a different start screen.

 

 

Following suit from previous Google apps like YouTube, you can scroll from one page to another by swiping from left to right. For example starting on the Featured page, a swipe to the left will bring you to the Top Paid page, and similarly a swipe in the other direction will take you to the Categories page. This is a really intuitive way of using an app and makes it much more pleasurable to browse through the new sections like Top New Paid and Top New Free as well as Trending. Google says it is "faster, easier and more fun to discover great apps, movies and books" and from my experience I have to agree.

 

New Features and Enhancements

 

Aside from the new Featured page and the updated tiles, embedded within are new sections as well: Staff Choices and Editors Choice. There is nothing hugely innovative about this, and the Editors Choice seemed only to contain seven apps, yet this is still useful for discovering new apps. I have found the Amazon Appstore Editor Choice section to be very helpful here, and I hope Google makes theirs just as useful.

 

 

Google is also highlighting the quick buying/downloading of apps as one of the main additions or updates to the Market. This can now be done is just two steps. If you look in the screenshots above you can see when you are presented with the app page, in the top bar there is a blue button with the price on it a simple tap of that will bring you to the "Accept and Buy" option. The same occurs for free apps, minus the paying part.

What you may also notice from the screenshot above is the share icon in the top right next to the search icon. Tapping this will bring up the usual options such as sharing it via Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox and so on. This is actually very handy and although this feature did previously exist, it has been made more accessible and easier to use.

Another minor change in the app description has been to the screenshots; previously, they required you to click on them and scroll to see them all, whereas now you can flick through them much like on iOS. Its not much, but I feel these little things are what distinguishes a user interface from a user experience its what Apple is magical at and its why people love their products the small details matter.

 

Demo Video Below!

Shows the New Android App Market in Action

 

 

If you have an Android-based smartphone and do not like to pay for games, here is some good news for you. Halfbrick Studios has just launched an ad-supported version of Fruit Ninja and you can get it for free from the Android Market right now.

 

 Well, you can have it for free right now. If you do not mind having some ads around and want to slice some fruit, the game is waiting for you in the Android Market. The game was launched back in March in the Amazon app store for free, then hit the Android Market for $1.29.

 

 

DOWNLOAD

 

 

 

Still waiting for your Samsung Galaxy S II, Well, maybe its time for a roadtrip because us Canadians can pick one up today from Bell (or its subsidiary Virgin) for $169.95 on a three-year contract or $599.95 up front.

 

The Samsung Galaxy S II is an impressive little number, boasting a 4.3-inch 480 x 800 display, 8 megapixel camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording, dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with DLNA home media sharing and mobile hotspot support, GPS, and 21 Mbps HSPA 3G connectivity. It runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with some light Samsung customizations through TouchWiz. We have got a full review over here if you want to take a closer look.

 

 

 

Archos has just reveled the pricing of its ninth generation of tablets. The bad news is that the two Android 3.1 Honeycomb running slates are a bit more expensive than the French company estimated at launch.

Now at $300 for the 8″ Archos 80 G9 and $370 for the 10.1-inch Archos 101 G9 still remain among the most affordable devices in their respective classes. What you should keep in mind, though, is that these are prices for 8GB worth of storage, whereas most competitors start at 16GB.

 

And the bad news does not end there the base models do not come with the promised 1.5GHz dual-core CPUs. Instead, the base options have Cortex-A9 dual-cores that go only as high as 1GHz, which made me feel cheated. Not only that but with the 101 G9, both the 8GB and 16GB versions come with the lower clock speed, so the only way to get the promised 1.5GHz CPU is to go for the 250 GB HDD variant, which costs $470.

 

Thats still not too bad a price, but not everyone needs that much storage on their tablets and the HDD adds to weight and thickness, so Archos is basically making you choose your priorities here, instead of giving you the best of both worlds. At least the 80 G9 does not have that problem you can buy its 16GB version for $330 and get the faster CPU.

 

 

If you have ever had your phone stolen then you know how crushed and distraught you feel when you realise someone else has one of your favourite gadgets not to mention all the data stored on there. Though it will always be an awful experience, there are a few techniques available to help keep the information thieves could gain to a minimum, as well as giving some extra hope of catching them, or finding your phone.

Applications

There are some great applications available to Android users to help protect their phone in the event that it is stolen or misplaced.

Lookout Mobile Security

This is a fantastic application which has two very useful features if your phone is stolen: GPS Location and Backup Restore. The GPS feature works even if you had the GPS on your phone disabled when it was stolen. When installing, you grant Lookout the ability to enable your GPS from a remote location. To actually get the location on a map, sign into Lookout website, and click Find My Phone. It may take a minute or two, but your phone will be contacted and a precise location established on a Google Maps overlay. That is probably the most useful function anyone can have at their disposal if their phone was stolen. It even regularly updates so you can watch the phone move around.

The other useful function is its contacts backup. If you use Google Apps or another form of contact synchronisation then you probably will not need this, but for those who do not already back up contacts, Lookout can do weekly backups of your contacts database to their servers. That way if your phone gets stolen, at least you will not have the hassle of asking around for numbers, you can just re-synchronise them from Lookout’s server to your new phone.

If you ever get as far or lucky as being with the police at the house where Lookout leads you to, you can activate a siren from the same page as the map. An increasingly loud siren is pretty damning evidence if you are looking around the house.

Download Lookout

 

ZDBox

ZDBox has many functions: Data allowance checker, Mass App Uninstaller/Remover, Battery time calculator and Task Killer. Another useful feature in that bundle is Applock.

Applock is a simple additional security layer you can add on to some of your personal applications like PayPal and eBay. The settings are about halfway down the main menu in ZDBox. From the list of applications presented, just double-tap the ones you want to protect. When you go to launch them, a password input box appears with a similar style to a chip and pin pad. Type in the correct code to be able to use the application. Just make sure you do not forget the code!

Download ZDBox

 

Google Latitude

Google Latitude is a program which shares people locations with one another. It can be set to automatically update using your phone GPS. If you get access to a computer or a friend’s phone, then you can see where yours was in the last fifteen minutes or so.

If the thieves turn off the GPS, the Wi-Fi and mast-location system continues running to give an approximate location. Google Latitude is totally unannounced and silent, so its very useful in a stolen phone situation since the thieves will not know it is running. Unlike Lookout, Latitude cannot turn on your GPS remotely, so if you do choose to have Latitude as a part of a post-theft system, make sure you leave the GPS on all the time. It may be a battery drain, but it could be worth it.

Stored Passwords

If your phone is stolen and you have passwords remembered in critical applications, then the thief now has access to all of those services too. Some services like the PayPal application do not support password remembering for obvious reasons. However other applications like email clients do. If you do lose your phone whether it was stolen or not change ALL your passwords immediately.

If you change your eBay password but neglect your email, a thief can just go through eBay password recovery which sends a reset link to the compromised email address. By changing every password you can think of, you are ensuring far better security by stopping some applications from unlocking others.

You might want to use an app like LastPass or KeePass to keep track of all these passwords.

Remote Deactivation

Most phone providers offer a service to help stop phone thieves dead in their tracks. This service is a remote deactivation, usually by blacklisting the SIM card in your phone. All the masts and servers of network providers are interlinked, so your SIM card will be useless wherever it goes.

Though this does not stop a thief using your WiFi and applications, it does stop them racking up huge phone bills at your expense. The number you need to call to deactivate your phone should have been made clear by your provider. If it wasn’t, have a flick through your provider’s documents and copy the number to somewhere which is clear and easy to find, like a Post-It on the wall.

If you cannot find the number anywhere, try to find it out now. In an a panic situation ring the standard support line, odds are there will be some kind of redirect feature to get you through to the right person pretty quickly. Some network providers even work hand-in-hand with you and the authorities to locate your phone for you. Using signal triangulation between phone masts, the phone can be pinpointed fairly accurately, at least to the general region . Even a rough idea of where your phone is can be of help.

You should write down your phone IMEI number too. Each phone in the world has a unique IMEI number, so if a thief has removed your SIM and any identifying marks, you can still prove you own the phone with this number. It is usually located behind the battery on the phone body somewhere. Your provider probably has it on file, but you can also find it in Settings > About Phone > Status > IMEI.

 

 

The Android 3.2 Honeycomb update is now official and Google has released an SDK for it. We also have a list of improvements that this update brings along with it and the buzzword seems to be "compatibility", whether it is the compatibility of the current Android smartphone apps on Honeycomb or the compatibility of Honeycomb itself with devices with multiple display sizes.

 

One of the first major features is a new compatibility zoom for fixed-size applications. This lets you either view the application on the screen in 1:1 aspect ratio or zoom it to fit the screen.

 

 

Next is support for a wider range of devices. Thanks to the optimization in this new version, you can now have Honeycomb running on devices with smaller display sizes such as 7-inch at lower resolutions. This means the OS is no longer restricted to running on high-end devices only.

 

Android 3.2 also supports media sync from SD card, so for devices with an SD card slot, you can now load media files directly from the card to apps that use them.

 

 

my6sense uses a magic formula to serve up exactly what you want to read. They call this formula Digital Intuition and it makes finding cool content a snap. No more digging through RSS readers, search engines, or flipping from site to site; just fire up my6sense or glance at the my6sense home screen widget and ita all right there.

This secret formula allows my6sense to bring unique and relevant content to each individual that uses it. It filters your information streams and pulls out the gold nuggets you are looking for based on your own personal tastes. Just follow your Digital Intuition to become more productive and stay on top of the latest news and updates.

What’s unique about our technology is that there is no need for you to set preferences or give any explicit feedback. ‘Digital Intuition’ learns whats valuable to you by translating your consumption behaviour into a personalized ranking function. Not only that, its a dynamic system so the more you use it, the better it gets.

Getting Started

The nature of my6sense makes it ideal to run an Android device; most Android users do not actually want to spend all day digging through feeds or bouncing from blog to blog on their mobile browser. To get started, you will need to sign up to my6sense. The app allows you to do this by providing just a name, e-mail address, and password. You also have the option here to sign in with an existing account.

Once you are in, you will probably want to connect your social networks. my6sense currently supports connecting Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz. Connecting these services provides you with two major benefits. Primarily, my6sense will be able to dig up content from your social networks that you may be interested in seeing. This makes sure you do not mess those ever-important updates as your friends and others you follow post new stuff. The other benefit of connecting your social networking accounts is in sharing what you are reading. With two taps, you can share stuff you find in my6sense to your own Facebook, Twitter or Google Buzz stream.

Design and Interface

The my6sense design is clean and simple. The home screen centers around a My Content button, which leads you to your main data stream. This is all the best stuff from all your sources in one place. You will also find buttons here for Streams, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz.

• Streams – These are specific sources or sites that you add manually. You can choose from a set of select Topics and my6sense will add matching feeds from popular sources around the web on those topics. The Import option allows you to connect my6sense to your Google Reader account, where most of us store our RSS feeds. This makes sure my6sense knows all about the content you’ve manually subscribed to. Finally, the Websiteoption allows you to add a specific URL for a web site you think is awesome.
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• Facebook - This section allows you to browse through the most important people and posts from your Facebook feed. Opening individual items here will allow you to Comment on or Like the update. Excerpts and images are automatically pulled into the interface. Hitting your Android’s Menu button gives you sharing options for Twitter, Facebook, and Buzz.
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• Twitter - These are all the best Tweets that have come through your Twitter stream. As with Facebook, my6sense does a good job of pulling in photos and excerpts from articles. You can easily Retweet or Favorite a tweet. Hitting the Menu button allows you to view the Original Post, Reply to the tweet, or Direct Message the user who posted the tweet.
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• Google Buzz – As with Facebook integration, you can view items from Buzz as well as Comment on and Like them.

Functionality

There are a few basic functions that remain consistent throughout the app. By default, each stream will sort items by how relevant they are to you. By opening your Menu while viewing one of your streams, you can sort your items by time. This is useful for keeping track of current events and conversations. You can also Save individual items for reading later.

A Compose button allows you to post a message selectively to Facebook, Twitter, and Buzz. While viewing individual updates, you can use the back and forward buttons to navigate through the stream item by item.

 

Download My6Sense (FREE)

 

 

There is been a lot of chatter about the Amazon tablets and a new report from theWall Street Journal suggests one could land before October. This fits in nicely with what we have heard before and it may also be going up against a new iPad at that time.

There is no solid information on what the Amazon tablets will be called or what these devices will look like but previous reports indicate we could see a 10-inch device and a 7-inch tablet in the not-too-distant future. The larger one is supposedly code-named "Hollywood" and this would likely include built-in access to the company’s streaming video, which would be a first for mobile devices.

We’ve also heard that the Amazon tablets will be using NVIDIA Tegra chips as its processors. NVIDIA has continued to tell us that its quad-core Kal-El chip will be in a commercial product in the August time-frame and that could fit in well with this latest report about the Amazon tablets.

 

 

Android Honeycomb did not have the best of starts in terms of performance, but Google is obviously dead set on fixing the issues as quickly as possible. The company already released the 3.1 update, which was a nice step forward and now, just five months after the XOOM was announced, we are getting a second Honeycomb update.

The update, which pushes the Android version number to 3.2, is already being seeded to Wi-Fi-only XOOM units. In addition to bringing further performance improvements and bugfixes the HTJ85B release brings the long-awaited SD card support. It will also allow apps that aren’t designed for the high-res Android tablet screens to be zoomed to fill the entire screen.

 

 

They took their sweet time with it but Twitter has finally updated the Android version of their mobile app to include two of the most requested features; push notifications and multiple accounts.

 

As the name suggests, push notifications gives you updates about your @mentions, direct messages and tweets instantly without you having to manually refresh or set an automatic refresh duration. Having personally tested this feature I can say it works as advertised.

 

Multiple account feature is also here to make our lives easier. You can just switch from your timeline by pressing the Menu button and selecting Accounts. Each account also has its own push notification settings you can choose to disable it for a particular account if you wish. Actually, that would beenable, because push notifications are disabled by default for some reason.

 

 

PayPal has announced a cool new way to transfer money from one person to another. It involves the use of the NFC technology found in some of today smartphones.

 

To make this work, all you have to do is install the PayPal widget on your phone. Then you enter the amount that you want to receive in this widget and touch your phone to the person phone who will be sending you the money. Once the phone vibrates, the other person is asked to enter their pin number, following which the transaction is completed and you get the money along with a confirmation email.

 

This feature was demoed on the Google Nexus S, which is one of the few phones to have NFC built-in right now but should hopefully run on all NFC enabled devices in future. Paypal has informed that the feature will be available starting late this summer.

 

Video Below!

 

 

While taking a screenshot with iOS devices is as simple as pressing the power and home buttons together, accomplishing the same thing on Android smartphones and tablets is a somewhat cumbersome process. Basically there are two ways to do this:

• To root your phone and download an app for taking screenshots, or
• To use Android SDK.

 

Today we will talk about the latter method. Here is what you should do to take screenshots without rooting your device:

• First of all you  will need to download, install and configure Android SDK, along with the USB drivers.
• Enable USB Debugging mode. You can do that from Settings -> Applications -> Development.
• Connect your Android device to a PC via USB cable.
• Go to the "tools" folder in Android SDK and start the batch file titled "ddms" to launch the Dalvik Debug Monitor Service. You should be able to see your device connected on top.
• Under the "Device" menu, within the Debugger window, click "Screen Capture" or press Ctrl + S.

Now that you have your screenshot, you can rotate it, save it or copy it to clipboard. If you opt to save the screenshot as a file, it will be saved in PNG format. To save another screenshot, simply click Refresh and finally Done when you are finished.

 

 

While there were plenty of people charging to get into Google+, only US users get to try the Android app. Not any more you can download the APK file and install it manually, regardless of where you roll. You will need a Google+ account for that and most people report that the loophole, which allowed many to sneak in despite not having invites, has been closed.

 

Still, you can head over to the XDA-Developers forum topic and get the Google+ app, version 1.0.2. The app is better than the mobile site because it receives instant notifications, Huddles are enabled, too. Also, whatever photos you snap with your droid are automatically uploaded and once thats done, you can share them on Google+ from any device. There is an option to switch that off if you want.

 

 

The Amazon Android tablets are almost definitely coming soon and a new report from DigiTimes suggests that the company is preparing to have 1.2 million tablets ready by the third quarter. This would put it behind only one other tablet maker: Apple. DigiTimes has been hit or miss with these types of things before but it generally is spot on with supplier information. The report said:

Among orders from non-iPad vendors, those from Amazon are said to be the most positive, with demand for touch panels likely to reach two million units for the August-September period, the sources indicated, noting that shipments of tablet PCs to Amazon are expected to reach 1-1.2 million units by a conservative estimate in the third quarter.

The Amazon Android tablets are still pretty much under wraps but a few things seem certain: it will run Android and it should be powered by the NVIDIA Tegra processors. We have heard reports that this portfolio will include a 10-inch tablet that will rock the upcoming quad-coreKal-El chip and the 7-inch tablet should have the dual-core Tegra 2 chipset. The smaller one could possibly be branded with the Kindle label but I am not sure on that one.

 

 

Gameloft, the developer of some of the finest Android games will be giving away some of its works for free this weekend. There will be three titles in the giveaway, one for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

 

To participate you need to follow the Gameloft UK account on Twitter, so you can learn on time when a free game has been made available. Each of the giveaway games will only stay free for a couple of hours so unless you pay close attention you might miss it.

 

It is not quite sure though which Gameloft games will be given away, but knowing the quality of their products you probably will not be disappointed if you participate. So fire up those Twitter clients and stay tuned for the upcoming three days.

 

Are you bored of the lock screen of your Android phone? 

Check Apps Below!

LockBot

LockBot is one of the most comprehensive lock screen apps available for Android phones. The app has some amazing features to offer. However the app still needs some finishing and lacks quality at present. In the free version you get three lock screens: iPhone, Hero and Eclair styles. The pro version has Froyo, X10 and Galaxy styles. Also in the Pro version you can access the theme gallery and choose from the various themes available there.

Market link: LockBot
Price: $3.49 (Free version is also available)

WidgetLocker lockscreen

WidgetLocker gives you the total control of the look, feel and layout of your lock screen. You can choose the widgets and shortcuts  you to place on your lockscreen, allowing you to access them directly from it.

Market Link: WidgetLocker
Price: $1.99

Ripple Lock

This app is for all those who have not yet updated to Android 3.0 but still want its amazing lock screen on their phones. A ripple effect is created upon dragging the circle. To unlock, you need to drag the inside circle to the outside circle.

Market Link: Ripple Lock
Price: $1.30 (Free version is also available)

Lock 2.0

Lock 2.0 will give you a lock screen very similar to that of the iPhone. To unlock the screen you need to slide the bar from left to right. The app has a good collection of backgrounds and battery skins which can be easily downloaded, giving you the ability to keep changing your lock screen look.

Market Link: Lock 2.0
Price: $1.99

WP7 Lock

WP7 Lock is currently available for free as a lite version. Customization features are not yet available in the app, but the app works fine and brings to your Android a lock screen very similar to that available on phones running Windows Phone 7. It shows the message and email count, and also the number of missed calls.

Market Link: WP7 Lock
Price: Free

3D Koi Pond Live Screensaver

This is a free app which allows you to transform your boring lockscreen to something really amazing. As with others, it looks very much like the iPhone lockscreen. The lockscreen features a live wallpaper You can tap on the screen to scare away the fish, or drag the leaves anywhere in the pond.

Market Link: 3D Koi Pond
Price: Free

Sky Lock Screen

This is a very simple lockscreen: to unlock the screen you need to slide the bar from left to right. The application has four sky-themed backgrounds from you can choose.

Market Link: Sky Lock Screen
Price: $1.19

LockMenu

This app is similar to WidgetLocker, using custom sliders. You can set each of the sliders to perform a specified function. The app is currently available for free, but has an advertisement banner at the bottom of the lockscreen.

Market Link: LockMenu
Price: Free

GOTO Lockscreen

This lockscreen has a very different design and definitely stands out from the others. The lockscreen slider has four icons: Messaging, Call Log, Gmail, and Unlock.When you move the slider arrow over an icon, you get a preview when you release the arrow you are taken directly to the app. The lockscreen also displays the number of new SMS messages over the text message icon and unread email over the Gmail inbox icon.

Market Link: GOTO Lockscreen
Price: $1.49

 

Android 3.0 Honeycomb came out four months ago with the launch of the Motorola Xoom tablet and it was followed by a variety of tablets by several manufacturers. But so far the platform is yet to see a significant growth in the number of applications for it. In comparison, the iPad has racked over 100,000 apps, developed exclusively for it.

First reason is that the developer do not seem too keen on redesigning their apps for the bigger, higher resolution displays on the tablets. Almost every current Android smartphone app can run on Honeycomb but not all of them scale well. Even if they do the text and images will no look good because they were not intended on being displayed on such a large display. Unlike on the iPad, Android developers are not rushing to create specialized versions for Honeycomb, rather relying on their current apps to get the job done, which hurts the users in the long run.

App discovery on Honeycomb is poor as well. There is no proper way to search for Honeycomb exclusive apps and even if there are such apps out there its difficult to tell because they do not mention this fact anywhere. Some have also speculated that developers may be waiting for Ice Cream Sandwich to come out, which is supposed to unify the smartphone and tablet versions of Android into one.

Lastly, and the biggest reason for the lack of apps is the lack of interest in Honeycomb. Apart from the Android fans, few people have interest in Honeycomb. Most people just want to buy an iPad. They probably do not even know what a tablet is. Honeycomb is also yet to give a compelling reason why anyone would choose a tablet running on it instead of an iPad and most people clearly are not interested in things like USB ports.

This lack of interest in the platform prevent developers into putting in any effort in developing for it. This results in a chicken and egg kind of situation, where the users see that Honeycomb does not have enough apps so they decide not to buy and developers see that users are not buying so they decide not to waste their time with it. The iPad was a guaranteed success, anyone could have predicted that, which is why developers were on-board as soon as Apple made it possible for them. The same cannot be said about Honeycomb.

 

 

somewhat popular photo sharing application for the iPhone, has finally made its way to Android. One of Path’s biggest limitations, besides its self-imposed 50-friends limitation, was that it was limited to iOS users only. The app allows users to shoot photos and share them with friends or family, and the photos can be geo-tagged, captioned and tweaked with the number of filters that Path has. In staying true to its name, however, photos have to be taken from the smartphone in order to be shared with others.

 

 

Now Android users can get in all the fun and action. Here is what you can do with the Path for Android:

• Capture and share life’s moments through photos.
• Stay connected to a small group of 50 close friends & family.
• Tag your moments with people, places, and things.
• View your friends’ moments.
• Let your friends know how each moment makes you feel with Emotion.
• Have intimate conversations around each moment with Chat.
• Know when your friends have seen your moments.
• Publish the occasional moment on Facebook for all of your Facebook friends to see.

Path for Android is in the Android Market now as a public beta, so you might expect a few bugs or kinks here and there, but the Path team has made it very clear that it will continue to work on the app and give it all the love that it has given to the iOS version.

 

 

The latest version of Skype is finally out for Android and it brings the long-awaited two-way video calling. You can now make video calls to anyone who is on Skype whether they are on a PC, iPhone or a Mac.

 

 

Unfortunately, currently only four handsets are officially supported for video calling and the lucky ones are the Samsung Nexus S, HTC Desire S and Sony Ericsson Xperia pro and Xperia neo.Presumably, more handsets will join the list soon, but we will have to wait a while to see which ones exactly.

 

 

Get Skype 2.0 for Android

 

One of the more common complaints about Android is its lack of aesthetic appeal or polish, especially compared to that of iOS and even Windows Phone 7. While Android is not by any means ugly, it almost certainly seems to lack that special something its competitors have. In all likeliness, a quick glance at your phone will reveal a random array of icons, widgets, and folders scattered among your home screens in no particular order.

 

Now, if you are anything like I was, chances are your home screen looks pretty similar to the image above. You will have your core apps that you access frequently like Gmail, Maps, and the camera, a few games like Angry Birds that you like to have easy access to when you need to kill some time, and a few widgets lying around just to make things a little more convenient. Its all functional, yes, but its cluttered.

Preparation

The first of those apps that you need is a custom launcher like ADW.Launcher, Go Launcher EX, Zeam Launcher, or my personal preference, LauncherPro, all of which you’ll find have free versions in the Market. Using any of these launchers will allow you to choose everything from the number of home screens you have, to which apps you will have set for quick access on your dock. A launcher goes a long way in keeping your home screen looking clean, as they will allow you to keep a lot of the clutter that your icons create confined to the dock area. And, importantly, they don’t restrict you to the 4×4 grid of default launchers.

The second app you will want is SiMi Folder Widget, also available for free in the Market. Unlike Android built-in folder functionality, SiMi Folder Widget gives you the ability to choose a custom icon, hide the name of the folder which usually appears under the default icon, and set how you want the actual folder popup menu to appear. Its a hugely versatile app that does wonders for reducing the amount of clutter on your screen.

Getting Started

There is an unlimited number of ways in which you can customize your layout, all of which I obviously can’t cover, so I’ll just give you a general guide on how to get started. Therefore, I am moving forward under the assumption that you’ve chosen to use LauncherPro.

The first thing you will want to do is set your new launcher as the default. If you downloaded it from the Market, you will find that you get a prompt asking you which one you want to use. Select LauncherPro, tick the box that says “use by default”, and you are good to go.

Once you have that completed, the first thing you are going to want to do is tweak its settings. Do this by pressing your Menu button, then going to Preferences. Here you will be able to change everything from the number of home screens you have to whether or not you want the notification bar at the top to show. Play around with the settings until you find what you’re comfortable with, and restart if prompted.

After getting all that set up, the next thing you will want to do is set what applications you want to have launch from the dock. In the case of LauncherPro, the dock is set to launch the dialer, your contacts, the app drawer, messaging, and your browser by default. To change any of these, simply long press on the icon and you will get a menu that offers you the ability to select the app you want to launch as well as the icon set for it. One of the great things about LauncherPro is that it comes bundled with a very attractive set of icons for you to use by default.

Changing the Look

Go through your home screens and take note of what you really need on there and what can be safely tucked away in your app drawer without being missed too much. Now remove everything. Do not worry, we will eventually be bringing back the apps you need in some form or another, but if you want a clean home screen, you have got to start with a clean slate.

Now that everything cleared out of the way, its time to start repopulating everything. Before you touch your phone, take a look at the list of apps you would considered absolutely necessary for your home screens. More likely than not, you’ll be able to categorize those apps in some form or another. For example, my "absolutely need" apps are categorized as follows:

• System Apps (things that are or affect core functions) – ASTRO, Quadrant, Voodoo Control, Calculator, Notepad, and Market
• Media (sights and sounds) – Camera, Gallery, YouTube, Pandora, Music
• Games (exactly what it sounds like) – The list is too long, but just know that I’ve got about 20 different variations of Angry Birds in there
• Social – Facebook, Reddit is Fun, Yelp, Movies, RedBox, ESPN ScoreCenter
• Utilities (things that make life a little bit easier) – Maps, Goggles, SearchLight, Wikipedia

What we are going to do is make each of those categories you created its own folder. But, before you jump the gun and start using the built in Android folders, remember that the purpose of this is to make your phone attractive and those default icons are anything but.

So, now that you have got SiMi Folder installed, go ahead and long press on an empty area of your home screen, select Widgets, and scroll down until you see the SiMi Folder listings. Select the size you want your new folder to be, and you will get pulled into the SiMi Folder application.

Once in there, tap Settings, and then select "Add Folder". From there, its straight forward. Choose the apps you want residing inside the folder, the layout, the label, the text for the label, and of course, the icon. After finishing, save the folder’s settings, select it, and voila! You will have your nice, new, attractive folder icon on your desktop.

Play around with the amount of rows/columns in your launcher settings to get the spacing right, then rinse and repeat for your other categories and you are set! No more apps randomly scattered about, and you have got a nice, consistent looking theme throughout as well.

 

 

Not all phones are created equal and we do not just mean hardware or software here. There are those phones that market themselves to the 'elite', usually toting a mix of expensive materials, hand built and precision manufactured parts and a four to seven figure price tag  that would make your eyes water.

 

Tag Heuer have already stepped into the phone market with their Meridiist line of handsets, all precision engineered and designed to reflect Tag strong design language, but now they are bringing a new device to market, one that actually offers more than just a platinum back plate or a sapphire screen. The Tag Heuer LINK smartphone is a premium/luxury handset that right off the bat proves that you can have a luxury and everyday functionality, strangely a combination that has been sorely lacking in this market so far.

 

 

You may remember back in December Andy Rubin, Senior VP of Mobile at Google, tweeted that over 300,000 Android phones are getting activated everyday. That was over six months ago and over two years from the launch of Android. But in those six months, the figures have almost doubled and according to his latest tweet, over 500,000 Android phones are getting activated everyday.

 

 

Thats not all. The activations are growing at a rate of 4.4% per week, which means by the end of October, three years after the launch of the first Android phone, the number of Android devices getting activated will be just over 1 million. Whichever way you slice it, thats a lot of phones being activated everyday.

 

 

 

Twidroyd for Android has been recently updated with the integration of UberBar, which is already launched on UberSocial for BlackBerry. As you may know, the UberBar features multiple customizable tabs at the top of the screen, allowing users to quickly navigate through different parts of the app and easily share tweets.

 

Thats the main new feature of Twidroyd for Android 6.0, including:

• A new login method that supports Twitter Web-based oAuth workflow
• The ability to show an exact timestamp when Tweeting
• Auto-shorten option for tweets larger than 140 characters
• Send, attach and shorten buttons included at the top of the compose screen
• Back button history for tabs
• Expanded font size options

 

 

The start of the week brought some great news to the Acer Iconia Tab A500 users around the globe. The Honeycomb 3.1 update has just surfaced and those brave enough to try a manual flash might get it right away.

The update is the real deal, meaning an official Acer update, which just burst out ahead of its time. It could all be on purpose to test if there are any problems with it but as usual with such updates those willing to risk it and try it sooner rather than later are in no short supply.

 

 

The start of the week brought some great news to the Acer Iconia Tab A500 users around the globe. The Honeycomb 3.1 update has just surfaced and those brave enough to try a manual flash might get it right away.

The update is the real deal, meaning an official Acer update, which just burst out ahead of its time. It could all be on purpose to test if there are any problems with it but as usual with such updates those willing to risk it and try it sooner rather than later are in no short supply.

 

The upcoming Toshiba Thrive tablet has certainly generated a lot of buzz both before, and after its official announcement. As a fairly late attendant to the Android Honeycomb party, the device has some serious competition to face. We managed to spend some quality time with the upcoming tablet at an event in New York and we have some early impressions for you.

In terms of build, the 10.1″ device feels quite solid. As far as weight is concerned, the Toshiba Thrive is in the Motorola XOOM territory, so we would not qualify it as light. The back of the tablet however, is made of textured, high quality plastic with a pleasant soft feel unlike its metal clad Motorola counterpart. This makes accidental drops highly unlikely.

The Toshiba Thrive also deserves compliments for its removable battery and changeable back covers with different color options. The back covers will be priced at $19.99 when the sales of the tablet begin. Overall, we came out very impressed with the Toshiba Thrive. It will certainly be a serious contender in the crowded tablet market when it launches. Like we told you before, it is already available for pre-order with a starting price of $429.99 from several retailers.

 

Android 3.2 Honeycomb is coming to a wide range of devices this summer and will add support for Qualcomm processors and 7-inch screens. It will also be the last Honeycomb iteration before the Ice Cream Sandwich rolls out in late autumn. This info answers lots of questions born with the Hauwei 7" Media Pad announcement yesterday. Even though the news does not come from Google itself, three independent sources spilled the beans on exactly the same information.

 

In addition to the Qualcomm CPUs (such as Snapdragons) and the optimization for 7-inch screens, the Android 3.2 Honeycomb upgrade will also offer improved hardware acceleration, bug fixes plus updated Movie Studio, Music, Movies and widgets.

Android 3.2 sounds pretty cool for the HTC Flyer users - their tablet will finally become compatible with Android 3 Honeycomb, but it will be up to HTC to decide whether to update it or not. Because if HTC Flyer is to get Honeycomb, it will lose the cool HTC Sense UI. The current Tegra2-based tablets should get the Android 3.2 update in the next few weeks.

 

Archos dropped a tablet bomb. Two actually as the new G9 Android tablets the 80 G9 and 101 G9 put Android 3.1 and 1.5GHz dual-core processors in the same package. Better yet, they will go for peanuts when they come out later this year. and they come with a full-sized USB port and there is an option for a 250GB HDD.

As the names suggest, the 80 G9 has an 8″ screen while the 101 G9 has a 10.1″ screen. The 80 G9 screen has 1024 x 768 pixels resolution (4:3 aspect) and the 101 G9 display has a 16:10 1280 x 800 pixels resolution.

 

Both will come out with Android 3.1 Honeycomb and are powered by the beefiest mobile CPUs yet a dual-core TI OMAP chipset with Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.5GHz. The only question right now is the amount of RAM available.

 

 

The flash memory version of the Archos 80 G9 tablet (16GB internal + microSD slot) measures 226 mm x 155.3 mm x 11.7 mm and weighs 465g, while the 250GB HDD version is 14.7mm thick and weighs 599g. The flash memory version of the Archos 101 G9 (16GB + microSD slot) is 276 mm x 167.3 mm x 12.6 mm big, weighing 649g, while the 250 GB HDD option pushes the thickness to 15.6mm and the weight to 755g.

The Archos 80 9G and 101 9G will be shown of during this year IFA and will be available at the end of September. The 80 9G model will be priced at $279, while the Archos 101 9G will go for $349.

 

 

On the heels of the recently updated iPhone app, Hulu launched an Android version allowing Hulu Plus subscribers to get their TV fix while on the go. The application itself is free to download and works on six phones including the Nexus One and Nexus 4G, HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X and Motorola Atrix with additional models getting the support later in the year.

 

Presuming you are a Hulu Plus subscriber with one of the smartphones listed above, you will be able to:

• Get a full season pass and watch every current-season episode of top TV shows from ABC, Fox, and NBC including Family Guy, Modern Family, Glee, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, The Office, GreyAnatomy, and many more.
• Enjoy full series runs or back seasons of classic shows like The X-Files, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Desperate Housewives, Roswell, Miami Vice, Angel, Saturday Night Live, Law and Order: SVU, Ally McBeal, My So-Called Life, and many more.
• Search and browse for shows and videos and manage your queue.
• Watch movies from Miramax and the Criterion Collection.
• Resume play from where you left off on other Hulu Plus devices.

 

On the heels of the recently updated iPhone app, Hulu launched an Android version allowing Hulu Plus subscribers to get their TV fix while on the go. The application itself is free to download and works on six phones including the Nexus One and Nexus 4G, HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X and Motorola Atrix with additional models getting the support later in the year.

 

Presuming you are a Hulu Plus subscriber with one of the smartphones listed above, you will be able to:

• Get a full season pass and watch every current-season episode of top TV shows from ABC, Fox, and NBC including Family Guy, Modern Family, Glee, 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, The Office, GreyAnatomy, and many more.
• Enjoy full series runs or back seasons of classic shows like The X-Files, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Desperate Housewives, Roswell, Miami Vice, Angel, Saturday Night Live, Law and Order: SVU, Ally McBeal, My So-Called Life, and many more.
• Search and browse for shows and videos and manage your queue.
• Watch movies from Miramax and the Criterion Collection.
• Resume play from where you left off on other Hulu Plus devices.

 

Android 3.2 Honeycomb is coming to a wide range of devices this summer and will add support for Qualcomm processors and 7-inch screens. It will also be the last Honeycomb iteration before the Ice Cream Sandwich rolls out in late autumn.

 

This info answers lots of questions born with the Hauwei 7" Media Pad announcement yesterday. Even though the news does not come from Google itself, three independent sources spilled the beans on exactly the same information. In addition to the Qualcomm CPU and the optimization for 7-inch screens, the Android 3.2 Honeycomb upgrade will also offer improved hardware acceleration, bug fixes plus updated Movie Studio, Music, Movies and widgets.

Android 3.2 sounds pretty cool for the HTC Flyer users their tablet will finally become compatible with Android 3 Honeycomb, but it will be up to HTC to decide whether to update it or not. Because if HTC Flyer is to get Honeycomb, it will lose the cool HTC Sense UI.

 

 

Another Android tablet was just thrown our way by Huawei. The Chinese company unveiled the 7″ MediaPad, which will be the first slate to run on the Android 3.2 Honeycomb, which is supposed to be the edition of the Google OS best suited to smaller-screen slates.

On the hardware side of the things the Huawei MediaPad 7″ sounds pretty attractive too with its 7″ IPS LCD capacitive display and 10.5mm slim waistline. The 390 grams of weight actually make the MediaPad a pretty portable device, while the Snapdragon chipset featuring a couple of Scorpion cores running at 1.2GHz should give you all the processing power you need.

 

The Huawei MediaPad also offers 14.4Mbps HSPA and Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity, plus a couple of cameras (5MP on the back and 1.3MP on the front) and 720p video recording. Given the oomph under the hood the 1080p video playback will hardly surprise anyone, while the HDMI port will let you easily stream the high-res videos to your HDTV.

 

Video Below!

 

 

It is not a secret that Sharp is a very well established maker of high-end Android phones for the Japanese market. About a month ago, we lusted after one of the company creations which was made only for local consumption. Then, several days later, we got excited when Sharp made a press-releasestating that the AQUOS line of Android phones will become available globally. Well, folks, it looks like the electronics giant might be on its way to make good on this statement one of Sharp AQUOS droids just made a visit to the FCC.

 

The device which we are talking about is most likely the Sharp AQUOS IS12SH an Android smartphone which was launched in Japan several weeks ago.

 

 

The highlight of the droid is definitely the 3D camera which consists of two 8MP units. There is a 4.2" screen with qHD resolution, and a tri-band CDMA radio, along with a full connectivity on board. No other specs can be confirmed from the FCC filing at this point.

 

 

Last month we talked about the Firefox 5 beta and the new faster update cycle that Mozilla has adopted to keep up with the new kid on the block, Google Chrome. Now the final version of Firefox 5 is available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux users.

With Firefox 5, you get support for CSS animations and improved performance over Firefox 4. The browser is yet to be launched officially though, which will happen on June 21. However, you can still head to Mozilla FTP servers and download the version appropriate for your computer operating system.

 

 

Panasonic is extending its Toughbook brand to the Android tablet market. At the InfoComm in Orlando, Florida – the Japanese company unveiled first such product to "address a current gap by delivering a product designed with security, functionality and real-world reliability in mind."

 

The "typical for Toughbook" rugged device rocks a 10.1-inch XGA high-brightness display which is said to be easily readable in outdoor environments and perfect for markets like field service, home healthcare and public safety. Moreover, GPS is also on board, as well as Wi-Fi and optional embedded 3G/4G mobile broadband connectivity. We are hoping Honeycomb is running the show though unfortunately do not have that confirmed. Also no information on availability date and pricing.

 

 

Good news for those with Nvidia Tegra based Android devices. Galaxy on Fire 2 THD is now available for you to download free of cost from the Android Market. This is the special version for Nvidia Tegra devices but there is also a version for other devices which is paid.

Now Galaxy on Fire is a gorgeous looking game and I am glad for all the Tegra based device owners. But I can see a trend starting here that worries me a bit. We are seeing more and more gamesoptimized for Nvidia hadrware on mobile, which is great for owners of that hardware but not for others. These games are not perfectly optimized for other hardware and at times do not work at all. This makes me wonder whether Nvidia is trying to monopolize the mobile gaming scene the way they did in PC gaming. More and more PC games started coming out that were optimized for Nvidia GPU and hence did not work to the full potential of the hardware on ATi GPU.

 

 

When Sony announced their S1 and S2 Android tablets, they left a few things out like a launch date for example. Now there is chatter that the tablets  will be arriving in Europe in September. An alleged note from Sony says that a tablet  will be available through three retailers in September, after a pre-order period in August. No prices were given, but the S1 or S2 tablets will be available through Sony Direct, UK John Lewis department store, and a third retailer. More retailers will be offering the tablets around the holidays.

 

According to the note, the Android tablet from Sony holds its own against the Apple iPad 2. Unique design features are characteristic of the tablet unfortunately both the Sony S1 and S2 tablets are pretty unique and I cannot guess which one Sony meant.

 

 

 

Google last week removed 10 Angry-Birds-related applications from the Android Market after a computer science professor reported they were infected with malware. Xuxian Jiang, a professor at North Carolina State, reported the apps on June 5 and Google removed them the same day. The news highlights the increasing threat of mobile malware and the vulnerability of mobile OSes to malicious software. All 10 apps were disguised as add-ons or cheats for the incredibly popular Rovio game Angry Birds.

 

On his academic blog, Jiang said his team calls the new type of malware Plankton and that it does not attempt to root Android phones. Instead, the apps simply want to run in the background in order to send phone information to a remote server.

 

"Plankton is the first one that we are aware of that exploits Dalvik-class loading capability to stay stealthy and dynamically extend its own functionality" Jiang wrote. "Our investigation indicates that there are at least 10 infected Android apps in the official Android Market from three different developers. Its stealthy design also explains why some earlier variants have been there for more than two months without being detected by current mobile anti-virus software."

 

 

iBuildApp already allows users without technical knowledge to make iOS apps and now they are expanding the service to include Android to the mix. Using the new Android Builder tool, pretty much everyone will be able to make his or her mobile app that runs of smartphones and tablets running Google mobile OS.

 

The solution presents users with a WYSIWYG editor, making the process of app creation completely web-based and requiring no special tech skills. To make things even easier, iBuildApp comes with a number of templates for many types of business and personal uses, including for restaurants, e-commerce stores, insurance and real estate agents, car dealers, doctor and medical offices, fitness centers, corporations, bloggers, bookstores, photo portfolios, travel guides, sports teams, music and personal social networking. Additionally, the iBuildApp team wowed to build 40-50 more templates.

 

 

The SMS, or text message, is seeing its last days and I sure am glad. Google is reportedly working on its own version of iMessage or BBM for Android. This means users will be able to send text and multimedia messages to each other, globally, without incurring messaging costs from the carriers. If true, I am thrilled that carriers will have to find new ways to gouge its customers for nickels and dimes.

VentureBeat reports:

For consumers, these new apps will offer faster and cheaper integrated ways to message friends. But the outlook is less rosy for carriers, who will likely see their lucrative text messaging revenue take a major dip. The messaging apps will move texting-like activity into cellular data networks and out of carrier’s aging SMS networks.

To date, the rate at which carriers charge for SMS plans, and even per-message rates, are astronomically high. A few years ago, the government inquired as to why SMS rates were so expensive, and the carriers really could not come up with a viable excuse. But with apps like iMessage, BBM, Kik, WhatsApp and now possibly an Android version of the aforementioned apps, carriers will not have to.

The Wall Street Journal says that for Android, Google "has also recently worked on a messaging application, a person familiar with the matter said."

 

 

 

After the Light and Light Pro, ZTE has another affordable Android tablet for the masses. This one is similar to the two before it but has improved hardware. It now runs on a Snapdragon MSM8225 chip with 1GHz CPU and Adreno 205 GPU, same as most Android phones these days, 1GB ROM, 512MB RAM, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, 3.2 megapixel camera and microSD card support.

It still uses the same 7-inch, 800 x 480 resolution display and Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread instead of the tablet-optimized Honeycomb. The ZTE Light Plus will start selling across Europe in September for a price tag of €250 ($365). Nevermind the Snow Leopard wallpaper or even the Sense UI icons and weather widget on the screen in the image above. It seems that some designer was feeling bit lazy and decided to flick images off from elsewhere instead of from the device itself.

Video Below!

 

 

Its no secret Android OS has some malware problems, but Google is trying its best to keep us away from them. Despite Google removed lots of malware infected apps from the Market, there is a new threat coming. DroidKungFu malware affects devices with 2.2 Froyo or less Android version and allows the hackers to take full control of your smartphone. So the guys can steal all of your data, do some serious damage or make your droid gadget serve as a bot in a botnet attacks.

 

The vulnerability exploited by the DroidKungFu is closed in Gingerbread, so you are almost safe there. Almost – because it is possible for the malware to steal some data.

 

The droids running on Froyo or earlier Android version seems to be affected by two or more DroidKungFu apps, but none of them is from the Android Market. The current versions of anti-virus apps do not detect this malware, but you can bet they are on the problem already and will release an update soon.

 

 

We caught wind of a pretty beefy looking tablet coming up over the horizon from Toshiba at CES 2011 and it reared its head again a couple of weeks back. Twitter even gave us a name courtesy of some chatty actors starring in what was expected to be its TV ad debut, the ‘Thrive’ and now said mysterious tab is officially here, almost.

 

The Thrive is now the confirmed name for Toshiba big tablet and pre-sales kick off as soon as next week! Its one of the thicker tabs, relatively speaking at 0.62-inch but thats not without its benefits. The biggest difference is the inclusion of both a full-sized USB port and a full-sized HDMI along the bottom plus this thing just looks sturdy as a result. Spec sheets still quote the Thrive as running on Android Honeycomb 3.0 but Toshiba are now saying that it will ship with 3.1 instead so its a win there too.

 

 

Hardware is solid and for the price, sits nicely in amongst some similarly specced candidates. For $429 you get a 10.1-inch tab running Honeycomb 3.1, a Tegra 2 powered interior with 8GB of internal storage and an IPS display. For $479 you get twice the internal storage and for $579 you get a full 32GB too. For the fashion conscious amongst you prospective buyers, you can also buy a selection of colored back panels at $19.99 each and underneath you also have access to a removable battery, which is handy.

 

Toshiba UK twitter account said:

 

So a somewhat cryptic, but positive response, its as usual a matter of watch this space but that certainly did not sound like a no, guesses would be that if the Thrive were to come to the UK, it would probably come to the rest of Europe as well.

 

After following the smartphone announcements lately. Barely two weeks after Pantech unveiled the world first Android smartphone with a 1.5 GHz dual-core CPU, KT Tech released Take Janus with similar specs, and only for the Korean market again.

 

As you can see from the picture, the specs of the device are nothing short of fascinating. The CPU is Qualcomm own MSM 8260 dual-core CPU which is clocked at 1.5 GHz. It is paired with Adreno 220 GPU and a cool gig of RAM to ensure some mouth watering performance. There are two cameras on board – an 8MP, full HD capable snapper with auto focus and flash on the back, along with a front-facing 1.3MP one for video calls. With 16GB of built in memory and a microSD card slot, there is little chance that you will run out of space. The strangely named phone runs on Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread on a qHD screen. Every bit of connectivity is covered with HSUPA/GSM, WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth on board.

 

 

Pictures of a yet to be announced Sharp slider phone have surfaced and it is said to be running on Android. This phone that looks remarkably like a Sidekick, but is probably the successor of last year Sharp FXfor ATT. The new guy should come with a 3.2-inch HVGA display, GSM/WCDMA connectivity, Wi-Fi, GPS and of course, a full QWERTY keyboard. The phone is supposed to launch on the ATT network in the US.

 

 

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is scheduled to receive Android 3.1 update in the first half of June. Sure enough, the update leaked out and it seems to be the final version. Some improvements were made along with some bug fixes for the dock. You could wait until the update is out officially but you could update now if you are willing to risk it.

 

Performance and responsiveness of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer was improved and there is a marked increase in 3D performance. Strangely, JavaScript performance is worse in v3.1. Scrolling is better and HTML5 videos can now play inline

 

AnandTech have updated their Transformer and have ran quite a few tests on it. They report that dock-related bugs have been fixed, support for USB devices is much improved and there’s a new power-saving mode when the tablet is docked too. The Eee Pad Transformer gets a few more goodies from the Android 3.1 update for one, the task switcher is a scrollable list and fits more items and widgets on the homescreen are resizable.

 

 

ViewSonic V350 was announced back in February at the MWC, but its just only now that its ready to hit the shelves. The dual-SIM droid, capable of running on two different 3G networks, has been redesigned since February though.

 

We already met with the V350 in Barcelona. It was a good looking fella running on Android OS, even if it came with specs that are mid-range at best a 600MHz processor, a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive display, 512MB RAM, a 5 megapixel snapper with WVGA video recording and the usual connectivity stuff.

 

 

The most interesting thing about the Froyo running V350 is the support for 3G network on both SIM cards. This means you can have both SIMs connected to a (different) 3G network.

   

While the hardware will remain the same inside, ViewSonic has slightly redesigned the panel. As you can see the shell has lost the rounded edges, the back looks different too, but the front is pretty much the same. There is still no official info on the pricing of the smartphone of if it will eventually get updated to Gingerbread. We guess the details should be revealed soon, though.

 

 

The multifaceted ASUS Eee Pad Transformer now has another feather in its cap. Thanks to the new Android 3.1 Honeycomb update, the Transformer now has full support for gaming controllers.

 

As you can see in the picture above, the person is gaming on the Transformer using what seems to be a PS3 controller , although we are sure the Xbox 360 controller or any other would work fine too as long as they use a USB cable. It seems though that the Transformer cannot connect to the controllers wirelessly, so USB connectivity is all you get.

 

Still this seems for a large portion of the available games better than banging your fingers on the cold, hard surface of the touchscreen and blocking half of it in the process.

 

 

With Computex going at full speed, it is only logical that Intel will make a few announcements, hinting of what it has in store for us. The world largest CPU manufacturer demoed Honeycomb tablets that run on its silicone, revealed the chips that will power the next-gen netbooks and promised a whole new class of devices, intriguingly called Ultrabooks.

Those Ultrabooks will be mainstream thin and light mobile computers that ambitiously target a market share of 40% by the end of 2012. Intel says Ultrabooks will achieve a thickness of under 0.-inch” and prices below $1000 thanks to their new 22nm Ivy Bridge chipsets.

 

 

As far as netbooks are concerned, Intel promises to speed up their development twice with a new generation of Atom processors appearing each year now, rather than every two years. The next-gen netbook platform is based on 32nm instructions, but we should see 22nm and 14nm solutions following in 2012 and 2013.

 

And the latest company to join the overhyped tablet market is  Alcatel. The handset maker which we usually know for their low-end products, may bring the same philosophy to this space, as well. In return, we may get an affordable Android tablet that would offer great value for the money to people not looking to break a bank with the tablet purchase.

Anyway, the Alcatel-made device called OneTouch T60 has been spotted at the FCC, packing Android 2.2 Froyo, ATT 3G bands, Wi-Fi, GPS, 3-megapixel camera on the back, VGA front-facing camera, 3.5mm headset jack and a memory card slot. It looks like the screen measures 7 inches.

 

 

Over the weekend, Google has pulled a batch of popular video game emulators from the Android Market, including N64oid, and all other -oid apps made by the same developer. The apps would allow you to play games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, Atari, Game Boy, and others. There are still plenty of other emulators available, but another popular option, PSX4Droid was recently pulled as well, indicating there is a Market-wide purge in progress. The developer of N64oid said his apps were pulled and his developer account removed without any warning or explanation from Google.

 

With the Xperia Play bringing more attention to brand-name commercial games on Android, publishers no doubt have a vested interest in claiming legitimate turf in the Market. Of course, emulators were at best in grey legal territory to begin with, but thats not going to stop developers from finding workarounds in third-party stores or simply hosting the files personally it just means they will have a harder time making money from it. Lesson? Get your quality video game emulators now while you can.

 

Online financial transaction service PayPal filed a California state lawsuit yesterday against Google claiming the search giant stole trade secrets from its mobile-payment business.

The suit claims former PayPal and current Google executive Stephanie Tilenius violated contractual obligations by recruiting former PayPal employee Osama Bedier, who is now leading Google’s efforts to bring point of sale technologies and services to retailers on its behalf, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The lawsuit comes just as Google has unveiled two new services that will allow consumers to pay business owners and redeem coupons using a smartphone, which would allow the company to expand into traditional brick and mortar stores.

PayPal is also hard at work on a new point of sale system that would allow it to expand its services beyond an online marketplace. The company is said to be working with major retailers on new equipment that would accept PayPal transactions in addition to swiping credit cards. While a violation of contract may be easy for PayPal to prove against its former employees, I am skeptical that the company would succeed in suing Google on the grounds that it stole trade secrets.

 

The Nexus line is the true and original Google phone and we have seen two already. And now we came across a photo of a third Nexus phone in its testing stage. The phone looks HTC-made and lacks the menu/home/back/search keys. It will probably run Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest Android version.

The photo does not show much, except a generic phone design, but the information, given to TechHog.com is pretty juicy and intriguing. It seems a Google developer sent this in and reportedly said that the next Google phone will feature some amazing specs. It will most definitely feature the latest Android version, which integrates with Honeycomb , has a HDPA+ and Sprint CDMA, front-facing camera and a rumored first appearance in December this year, along with Ice Cream Sandwich itself.

Thats about it for specs and as for the name, its not given yet but it may not be Nexus 3. Its still undecided. The Nexus phone line is not a mainstream gadget on its own. Its made to carry the latest software version, in order for it to be a platform for dev testing. And in the case of the original Nexus One it had an HTC twin brother in the face of the Desire. The Nexus S had one in the Galaxy S so we are hoping this yet unannounced 3rd Nexus to have a global market brother as well.

 

 

Google offer a growing number of in-house developed apps for their Android smartphone platform and they know that we, as users, expect a solid experience. We mentioned the improvements that came to the recent update of Google Goggles and now its Maps turn, for the second time this month.

 

Google Maps version 5.5 rather than adding features, improves on its existing repertoire. For a start check in and rate and review buttons have appeared on any Places pages you might pull up. This basically gives you better integration of Latitude and its location logging, alongside quick review access, for when you want to make or break that place you were just at.

 

 

Other amendments include the ability to more easily change your work and home locations for when you want to track how much time you have spent at either from your location history. Finally, Maps transit station pages have undergone a redesign to include upcoming scheduled departure times from various platforms and connecting lines information.

 

 

This update is not going to change the face of mobile navigation, but its nice to know that Google are not getting complacent in their existing projects anytime soon. Its mainly a user experience update that will probably be a welcome addition to over 200 million users of Maps, around the world.

 

Download Here

 

 

A couple of days ago, ASUS released the first teaser of an upcoming Android device, which will be announced at this year Computex show in Taipei. Logically, we got quite excited. Now, we have another shot for you and, this time, it is a lot more revealing. After we saw this picture in the ASUS Facebook page, we are all but fully convinced that the device in question is the ASUS MeMO an Android Honeycomb running, 7.1-inch tablet with phone functionality.

 

 

The MeMO teased us at CES 2011 when it appeared along with this year upcoming tablets from the tech giant. We know it will be the most compact tablet to be released from the company, and will feature a Snapdragon CPU unlike its Tegra equipped larger siblings.

 

 

Today Google pulled the wraps off its two new services set to change the way we shop. Google Walletand Google Offers are said to be the next big thing in commerce, making your ordinary wallet obsolete in a few years time as the programs gain the needed momentum.

As we told you yesterday, Google Wallet is an Android app and is going to operate thanks to the NFC chip found in some of the currently existing and many of the upcoming smartphones. For now the new mobile-payment method is supported only in the USA, thanks to Sprint and the Samsung Nexus S 4G, with other major partners being Citi Bank, MasterCard and First Data.

 

The first merchants and stores to accept mobile payment through Google Wallet are Subway, American Eagle, Macy and American Outfitters along many others. Google Offers is tightly connected with the Wallet app. After you make a purchase, depending on the store you are in, you will be able to receive special coupons or loyalty points, which you can use at a later point in time.

 

P.S.

Click on the Green Application Name to Download

Notes

Diaro

Diaro is a personal diary or journal application targeted at people who want to note down their thoughts, experiences and insights on a regular basis. Unlike a lot of other applications in this list, Diaro is not built for quick note-taking. The interface makes it easy to see which days you wrote, and shows a preview of the entries for each day. You can attach any number of images to each entry, making this a good tool to also capture key moments in a day. Most importantly, all your entries are password protected.

Price: Free

Evernote

Evernote is one of the most popular universal note taking applications out there with clients for the web and most desktop and mobile platforms. With the Android application, you can create text notes or image notes with your phone’s camera. All notes are stored in the cloud and you can search, edit or delete notes from the application. Categorization options include folders and tags. The only downside is that there’s no free offline access to notes, which means you need to be connected to a data network to be able to search and access your notes (unless you have a paid Premium account).

Price: Free (Premium costs $5/month or $45/year)
Full review: Evernote

 

Springpad

Springpad is similar to Evernote in many ways, with an excellent web app, a native Chrome application and mobile apps for the iOS and Android. Unlike Evernote though, Springpad comes with free offline access to your entire notes database and some excellent features for organizing notes. The visually rich interface with its notes stacks and custom backgrounds is innovative, but can take a while to get used to for new users.

Price: Free

Extensive Notes

Think of Extensive Notes as the swiss army knife of note-taking on Android. The application is chock-full of features – some of them not even remotely related to note-taking – I keep coming across new features every time I use it. Aside from a bunch of different note types, you get to-do lists, calculators of various types, unit conversion, Google Translate, lyrics search, album art search… I could go on and on. Just check out the insanely long description in the application’s market page.

Price: Free

Catch Notes

Another one in the Web and Mobile based notes applications, Catch Notes takes a much simpler, clutter-free approach. You register for an account at catch.com and all your notes are synced online, ready for you to access anywhere. Note types include text, image, image gallery, audio and reminders. In case you would rather avoid creating a new user account on another web service, you can also use your Google account to sign in to the application and sync your notes.

Price: Free

Note Everything

Note Everything is a very simple note taking application with support for multiple types of notes and the ability to categorize them in folders. The interface resembles a physical notepad, which I do not really fancy too much because of the added clutter, but might be a selling point for some. An interesting and potentially useful feature is the ability to import Palm and Outlook memos directly into the application.

Price: Free

Epistle

Unlike some of the higher profile applications in this list, Epistle takes a different approach to syncing your notes online it uses Dropbox. All your notes are saved to your Dropbox folder and therefore synced with every device you have Dropbox installed on. In terms of features, Epistle is pretty barebones and allows for only plain text notes, which makes it super snappy and a good option for quick, no-nonsense note-taking.

Price: Free

Mobisle Notes To Do

Mobisle Notes is one of the better looking note applications on the Android Market. This one again uses the physical notepad as a visual metaphor for its design, but manages to keep it subtle enough that you can focus on the writing part. Notes are of two types plain text and to do where the latter simply adds a checkbox at the beginning of each line of text. You can easily switch between both formats by tapping a button at the bottom of the screen. Although notes are locally stored in the free version, there is a Pro version that includes Google Docs sync.

Price: Free ($1.50 for the Pro version)

Tofu Notes

At first glance, it is easy to mistake Tofu Note for an iOS application. The beautifully rendered graphics and attention to detail is not a very common trait in Android applications. At its core, Tofu Notes is a very simple note-taking application that is best suited for quick lists and snippets of information. The coming soon list boasts some interesting features that the developers have lined up, including online sync.

Price: Free

 

InkPad Notes

InkPad Notes takes the pen and paper concept a step further; as well as having notepad-style background graphics, the font mimics a real life hand-drawn feel. One interesting feature in InkPad Notes is the ability to share notes with others as a text message, e-mail, etc. This can also be used as a crude way to back up your notes by sending them to your e-mail address.

Price: Free

 

ColorNote Notepad Notes

The granddaddy of Android note-taking applications. ColorNote Notepad Notes has been around for a while and has raked up in excess of 5 million downloads to date. And not without reason. The application is full to the brim with features like color coding for notes, checklists, calendar integration, password lock and more. It also has a pretty nifty set of widgets for quick access to your notes.

Price: Free

 

Google is preparing to unveil an NFC-based mobile-payment service tomorrow at an event in New York, allowing you to virtualize your cash and pay in stores using your Android phone. According to sources close to the matter, at first the service is going to be available for testing in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, DC If the new mobile-payment service turns out to be a success, a wider roll-out will follow.

 

The first stores to accept NFC payments will be Macy, America Eagle Outfitters and the fast-food chain Subway. With just a wave of your phone at the counter, you’ll be able to pay, redeem coupons and use discounts and even collect special loyalty points for a later use without ever reaching your wallet.

 

NFC technology is not limited only to paying for goods. The system can be used to get access to public transportation methods, getting into museums or art galleries and transfer money to other people.

 

 

With Computex barely a week away, ASUS has decided to stir some excitement by publishing a fresh teaser on their Facebook page. There will be a new Android-running device form the the creators of the popular Eee Pad Transformer, and it might be more than just another tablet or a smartphone.

As you can see, the tech giant suggests that their latest creation will aim to bring the best from the tablet and smartphone worlds. We are probably looking at another device in the Dell Streak category a compact tablet with phone functionality.

 

 

You rooted your Android, Well, you can leave the popcorn here, there is no Movie Rental for you. The Google Movie Rental service launched at Google I/O and lets you rent a movie and watch it on your droid smartphone. However it will not be working on rooted devices due to copyright violation concerns.

 

If you try to watch a movie through Google Movie Rental on your rooted Android you will get Error 49. The support page states that:

You will receive this "Error 49" message if you attempt to play a movie on a rooted device. Rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection.

 

I am guessing this is done to stop apps that can just copy the rented movie and let you keep it forever. Its not an unreasonable concern but it clashes with Android open nature any have rooted their device just to customize it to their liking.

 

 

It was only a couple of days ago that we saw Infobar, which looked like a more tweakable version of Windows Phone 7. Now the creator of LauncherPro, Federico Carnales, is creating a Windows Phone 7 music player look-a-like called Fede Music.

The look and feel of Windows Phone 7 is quite stunning and we are glad to see another option like this come to the Android OS. Fede Music is still being developed at the moment, and its easy to see that Carnales is not attempting to differentiate his music player from Microsoft OS. Because of this, the developer may get a cease and desist letter in the near future, but only time will tell.

The clean user interface is simple and to the point just like Windows Phone 7 itself. Artists, albums, songs, playlists, and genres are displayed neatly on top of the screen and you can either tap on one of these options or swipe to get to the next one. The player is dead simple and everything is displayed right in front of you, so there is no need to hit the menu button. That said, we can imagine that Carneles may add some extra features into Fede Music that may need to be tucked away.

Android is great for tweaking the look and feel of your phone and one could turn their handset into a Windows Phone without giving up the Android features they love. Even if its not the real thing this would also help users who are thinking of jumping ship to another OS get a feel for what they would be gaining and losing.

 

 

 

Last time we talked about the INQ Cloud Touch, it was available for 300 GBP SIM-free. Now TalkMobile is offering the so called Facebook phone for free on a two-year contract. Before you go "whats so special about it" let me assure you there IS something special here. TalkMobile offers the device on a 12 GBP per month plan, which really is a bargain. That money gets you 200 minutes, 200 texts and get this unlimited data!

 

As you probably know, the INQ Cloud Touch runs Android and its a pretty decent phone with specs that include a 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen, HSPA and Wi-Fi connectivity, 5-megapixel camera, 600MHz processor, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack and a memory card slot. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo with INQ own Facebook-centric customizations singing on top of it.

 

 

We have spoken of Toshiba upcoming 10.1-inch Android tab on numerous occasions before. It made an appearance at CES and we caught that back in January, specs popped up from BestBuy in early Apriland a scheduled release was slated for June in Japan. Now, however it would seem that the Toshiba tab in question might be finally making its way across to the US and not only that, it gets a new name too.

 

The Japanese market will get their first taste of the Toshiba tab under the guise of the not-so-catchy Regza AT300, does not exactly roll off the tongue, Although there is been no official announcement, it looks like elsewhere in the world we will be getting our hands on the Toshiba Thrive-instead. The source of a name change in the works comes from a 1, 2, punch of clues scattered across the net.

 

Firstly, Toshiba registered Thrive under a trademark mid-April this year, followed by a placeholder page on Toshiba US site, currently populated with information based on their Satellite E305 Notebook. Alongside this, Twitter lit up with a number of tweets from a host of actors all talking about shooting a new Toshiba ad, one mentioning the Thrive by name and even suggesting the ad has something to do with zombies.

 

 

The Thrive looks to be a pretty decent slate with a 1280×800, 10.1-inch display, an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor, a front facing 2MP camera and a 5MP on the back, a host of ports, including HDMI out, and of course. Wi-Fi. Toshiba already have a feature site for what most certainly looks to be the Thrive which you can check it out here for more shots, features, specs and so on.

 

 

Prepare to feast your geeky souls on one of the hottest Android devices you have ever seen. Sharp has just unveiled the waterproof AQUOS PHONE THE HYBRID 007SH (a mouthful indeed) with a 16 megapixel camera and a 3.4-inch FWVGA stereoscopic display that does not need glasses to work.

 

 

The Android 2.3 Gingerbread clamshell sports GSM and WCDMA connectivity so it should be able to operate on networks worldwide. Unfortunately, the handset will initially only be available in Japan and knowing Sharp we doubt they will expand its reach, ever.

 

Anyway, with the AQUOS 007SH you will also be getting a 0.7-inch secondary OLED display as well as GPS, Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity. There is also an infrared port on board a feature thats still pretty popular in Japan.

 

 

I guess overclocking dual-core CPUs in mobile phones to 1.5GHz is normal now a brave soul pushed the Tegra 2 chipset inside their T-Mobile G2x to the breakneck speed, 50% up from the stock frequency. A week ago we saw a Galaxy S II reach 1.5GHz though the G2x manages to beat its score at some benchmarks.

 

The T-Mobile G2x was running CyanogenMod 7 with a custom kernel the Trinity CM7 EXT4 1.5GHz kernel. It posted a whopping 4570 score on Quadrant, while on stock frequencies (1GHz) it only does around 2400. The switch to EXT4 probably contributes a good portion of that sizable increase though, its not just the CPU.

 

Others using the same kernel have reported Linpack scores of 54 up from the 36.85 we got from our Optimus 2X at stock speed. Thats major improvement in pure CPU performance.