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Motorola Droid Bionic now available
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Google, Handhelds,
Motorola's long-awaited Droid Bionic smartphone is finally here.
The device, Verizon's first dual-core, LTE phone, is available now at Verizon stores and online at verizonwireless.com. It doesn't come cheap, though: the Bionic will set you back $299.99 with a two-year contract.
For a limited time, those who purchase the Lapdock accessory, which essentially turns your smartphone into a 11.6-inch laptop, will get a $100 mail-in rebate when subscribing to the $50, 5GB data plan or higher. That Lapdock, however, is also $300.
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Samsung Galaxy Note 5-inch smartphone, 7.7-Inch Galaxy Tab announced
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Google, Handhelds,
Samsung expanded its Galaxy family with the announcement of a 7.7-inch Galaxy Tab tablet, and the Galaxy Note, a smartphone that blurs the tablet-phone line with its sprawling 5-inch screen and bundled stylus for quick memo-taking, or what Samsung terms "free-idea capturing." The Galaxy Note combines a Galaxy Tab tablet with a Galaxy S smartphone and adds the benefits of pen and paper, the company said in a briefing here at IFA.
Running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the 6.8-ounce Galaxy Note is .37-inch thick and packs an unspecified dual-core 1.4GHz processor, an 8-megapixel back camera that captures HD video, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 2500-mAH battery. Battery life was not disclosed.
But the most notable aspect of the Galaxy Note—which, again, is a slab-style smartphone, with an earpiece and a microphone, not a tablet—is its big 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED 1,280-by-800 (285ppi) WXGA display. Five inches, Samsung believes, is the perfect size to allow for 24/7 portability and single-handed operation, but still offer a large-enough display that eliminates the need to carry a tablet in addition to your phone. Consumers want to carry a single device when they're on the go, the company said.
Click to continue reading Samsung Galaxy Note 5-inch smartphone, 7.7-Inch Galaxy Tab announced
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Samsung Galaxy S II hands-on with Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile models
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Features, Google, Handhelds,
The galaxy has landed. Samsung, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile today announced three Galaxy S II smartphones for the three carriers. We got some time with the AT&T and Sprint models (T-Mobile was playing coy) and even ran some benchmarks.
The Galaxy S II has been Samsung's fastest-selling smartphone so far, with more than five million sold in 85 days, according to Samsung's press release. This model is coming out on fewer carriers than last year's Galaxy S did, with Verizon Wireless the most notable missing piece (Verizon is going with the Nexus Prime.)
But remember, Samsung is the master customizer of phones for carriers; just because a "Galaxy S II" isn't coming out for Verizon (or for Boost, for that matter) doesn't mean another phone won't appear soon with very similar features and a slightly different name on those carriers. The company is just introducing the first three models today.
Just like with the Galaxy S, the three Galaxy S II models are all a little different. The AT&T model looks a lot like the international Galaxy S II to which we gave an Editor's Choice award back in May, although Samsung traded the single home button at the bottom of the phone for the four standard Android action buttons.
Click to continue reading Samsung Galaxy S II hands-on with Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile models
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Video: Motorola begins teasing the Droid Bionic
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Google, Handhelds, Videos,
The Droid Bionic is a woman! Motorola on Wednesday released the teaser video, "Rule All Machines," for its upcoming Droid Bionic smartphone.
And like in previous ads, the video personifies the device rather than show any part of the actual phone (see below); the latest Droid incarnation is a black leather-clad assassin with a bit of a Black Widow-meets-Droid logo edge.
No, no details yet on an actual launch date or price. The Droid Bionic is arguably Motorola's most highly anticipated product this year, perhaps because it has been delayed since, well, January. The Bionic was hit with one delay after another, forcing Verizon to release a statement explaining that it was undergoing some design revisions. No price has been announced, but an alleged advertisement pegged the phone at $300.
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Why Google’s Motorola purchase is a genius move
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Editorial, Google,
I was just wondering what Google was going to do to prevent getting shut out of the mobile phone business. It was as if Google was down 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth. With two outs, Google stepped up to the plate and hits a walk-off home run, with its purchase of Motorola Mobility.
This scenario is fascinating for a number of reasons. First of all, somewhere along the line, both Apple and Microsoft took a terrible dislike to this Android nonsense. First, Microsoft cozies up to Nokia to subvert Android (to no avail). Then Microsoft, Apple, and others pulled a trick play to get the Nortel patent assets in an effort to develop a patent portfolio to screw Google.
So Google knows it’s toast if it doesn't do anything. But what would it do? Did anyone call this one? Certainly, not me.
Let's face it, when it comes to mobile phone patents, Motorola easily has as many or more than Nortel, which is more into fiber and other comm patents. Google is now one up on the rest of these folks.
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Samsung Galaxy S II set to take on iPhone 5
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Google, Handhelds,
Holding out for the iPhone 5? There's some strong temptation coming out of South Korea at the end of the month: the Samsung Galaxy S II.
An announcement for the super-slim, super-powerful, and super-popular Android smartphone is expected on August 29. Samsung sent out invitations for a "major product announcement" in New York that day and on Friday, Samsung Mobile U.S. tweeted: "Samsung Update: Hey Guys! Big announcement on the 29th ; )"
The Samsung Galaxy S II is Samsung's fastest-selling smartphone to date, based on its April debut in South Korea and parts of Europe, selling one every three seconds between April and July.
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China suspected in Google Gmail phishing attacks
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Google, Internet,
Spear phishing attempts to penetrate the personal Gmail accounts of U.S. officials, journalists, and activists, reported by Google in June, have not ceased, according to a security researcher who first discovered the attempts in February.
Spear phishing uses bogus emails to trick recipients into entering personal details, like home addresses and Gmail passwords.
"I am posting this only to highlight the fact that once compromises happen and are covered in the news, they do not disappear and attackers don't give up or stop. They continue their business as usual," wrote Mila Parkour, a D.C.-based security researcher on her Contagio Malware Dump blog, as picked up by ComputerWorld.
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20,000 film scenes now available on YouTube
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Google, Internet, Movies,
Google's YouTube has signed a deal with MovieClips.com to apparently replace the thousands of movie clips users have uploaded with authentic, licensed replacements.
The more than 20,000 licensed movie clips may be found at YouTube MovieClips, a partnership with the MovieClips.com site.
Using the company's proprietary technology, a team of Content Curators assigns up to 1,000 points of relevant data points to every scene relating to everything from action to mood to setting, and prop, the site said. "Our goal is to promote the discovery of movies," said MovieClips co-founder Richard Raddon, in a statement. "By making our clips accessible on the biggest video platform on the web, we unlock the power of movie clips to promote feature film purchase and rental."
What this means, then, is that users can search for "say hello to my little friend" and either see a number of clips on YouTube itself or the licensed, HD version of the climactic, violent conclusion to the Al Pacino classic, Scarface. It's worth noting that the clips on YouTube are just a few seconds long, while the Movieclips.com clip is 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
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How good (or bad) are apps for Android tablets?
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Google, Handhelds, Software,
The following is a column sent to us by Skip Ferderber. We though it hit home on a lot of points, and decided to republish it with his permission:
Let’s start with a popular tech-talk premise especially among Apple iPad afficionados: Among the reasons Android tablets come up short is because there are only a handful of apps specifically optimized for them.
If there’s no big bucket of optimized Honeycomb apps, then it’s too soon to get an Android tablet ... not when you can get an iPad with more than 100,000 tablet-optimized apps.
The tech blogosphere (including yours truly) reported early on that only 10 apps were specifically redesigned to take advantage of the Honeycomb operating system, the Android software specifically engineered for a new generation of powerful tablets with heavy-duty processing power and bright high-resolution screens such as the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. A March Wired article reported it had found only 50 Honeycomb-optimized apps.
Well, hold on there, buckaroos.
What happens when non-optimized apps — the same apps you use on your Android smartphone — are run on a Honeycomb tablet? What’s the user experience like? Can you live with it? I decided to find out.
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Android is running on half of the smartphones in the world
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Smartphones, Google, Software,
Are almost 50 percent of the world's smartphones running Google's Android? According to Monday data from Canalys, Android ended the second quarter with 48 percent of the market, with Asia Pacific leading the charge.
Globally, the smartphone market is up 73 percent from last year, with 107.7 million devices shipped in the last quarter. Of the 56 countries tracked by Canalys, Android topped 35 of them, with 51.9 million shipments overall.
Why the boost? Canalys pointed to strong Android support from major handset makers like Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE, and Huawei. Android holds 85 percent of the market in South Korea and 71 percent in Taiwan alone.
Apple came in second place with 20.3 million iPhones sold and 19 percent of the market, which was enough to overtake Nokia's Symbian platform and make Apple the world's top smartphone vendor.
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