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Sep

Samsung Galaxy Tab Hands-On Preview Roundup; Consensus: It’s The First Serious Android Tablet

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Editorials, Froyo 2.2, Galaxy Tab, News, Reviews

Ever since the first rumors about an Apple tablet started circulating around the blogosphere, we Android enthusiasts have been dying to see an Android tablet of equivalent caliber, and it seems like Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab might just be the one.

Unfortunately, Android Police did not have a chance to visit, simply because no member of the team lives close enough to Germany to drive there in a reasonable amount of time, and not one of our readers offered to pay for the plane tickets (how disappointing!).

However, several other tech blogs were there, and for…

Sep

App Review: Keep Your Car In Check With aCar

Posted by Brad Ganley in Applications

In this day and age, it’s increasingly difficult NOT to become at least a little interested in the small (or maybe not so small) charges that you incur on a regular basis. With gas prices soaring, tracking your vehicles fuel economy has become a regular practice for many consumers, myself included. It can be hard, though, to maintain a database of all your mileage information and aggregate this data in a pleasing and useful way.

Wait, let me back that up. Rewind. Enhance.

It can be hard, though, to maintain a database of all of your mileage…

Sep

SwiftKey Receives A Substantial Update – Multitouch, Better Voice Recognition, Less Lag

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, News

One of the more popular tip-tap software keyboards got a nice little upgrade today. SwiftKey, an aftermarket keyboard that uses intelligent statistical methods as well as scanning of your SMS inbox to predict the most likely next word, now has support for multitouch typing. As seen previously on the Droid X’s keyboard, this greatly enhances possible typing speeds… unless you have one of HTC’s infamously erroneous older touchscreen panels, that is.

What, DroidSans not good enough for you?

Moving on with a more positive spin, SwiftKey claims to have nixed many bugs, as…

Sep

[Epic Lulz Thursday] Prank Your Friends With Shavester And Watch Them Freak Out

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications

I’m not usually a supporter of apps that don’t have much of a purpose, especially the ones that fall under the "pranks" category. Now, I say "usually" because most of the time these apps are pretty stupid (I’m looking at you, iFarts) or not very prank-worthy.

Rarely, however, worthy apps do come out, and the recent Shavester is one of them – it caught my attention due to the freakout potential of turning your merry friends into something like Britney here, except not as happy, if only for just a few seconds.

The premise behind Shavester is…

Sep

Engadget Previews Viewsonic 10" Tablet – Dual-Boots Win7 & Android 1.6

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Donut 1.6, News, Tablets, Viewsonic

Last week, we found out that Viewsonic would be rebranding and selling a 7" and 10" tablet; the 7" tablet would be Android while the 10" would dual-boot Android and Win7. Now Engadget has a hands-on preview of the 10" with additional details, and suffice it to say there are some ups and downs.

Bad news first, though: the tablet runs Android 1.6. The reason for this lies in the CPU used, but that doesn’t make shipping a tablet with an OS that’s over a year old suck any less. Also bad news: Engadget was…

Sep

Samsung: Honeycomb (Android 3.5) Will Come After Gingerbread (3.0); Larger Honeycomb Tablet Coming

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Galaxy Tab, Gingerbread, News, Samsung

Disclaimer: initially, I was reluctant to pass this one on, but it looks like it may be more credible and less speculative than I first thought.

During IFA today, Samsung confirmed that Gingerbread is next and will be Android 3.0, and that it will be succeeded by Honeycomb (3.5). It is possible that things will change between now and then, but this is an official, public word from Samsung in direct response to a question – fairly concrete.

They also divulged that they’re working on a larger (presumably larger than the Tab)…

Sep

Now We’re Talking – Google’s Latest Follow-up To The License Verification Fiasco Showcases 4 Methods To Make Pirates’ Jobs Much Harder

Posted by Justin Case in Apps/Games, Dev, News

Update: Tim Bray responded in our comments letting us know Trevor Johns, a hands-on guy in the Android back-rooms, was the author of the post.

After we blew the faults behind Google’s License Verification Library out of the water last week, Google’s Tim Bray promised us some tips for protecting our applications against piracy, and in the latest post at Google’s official Android blog he delivered them. Tim’s article is loaded with easy to follow sample code, and advice that just makes sense. Mr. Bray covers several protection methods including:

obfuscation,
customizing the

…

Sep

T-Mobile G2′s CPU Clocked At A Paltry 800Mhz

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News, T-Mobile, T-Mobile G2 Touch / Vision

Chalk this one up under the ‘lame’ category: looks like the T-Mobile G2′s CPU ticks along at just 800 MHz. In a world of 1+ GHz smart phones, that’s definitely something of a letdown.

A slower clock speed doesn’t always equate to lesser performance – but without any solid previous benchmarks to illustrate what this new(er) CPU is really capable of, it’s hard to say whether this is going to be nearly as adequate as T-Mobile claims.

In hindsight, the fact that the G2 is a HSPA+ device could have been something…

Sep

Official Samsung Galaxy Tab Site Goes Live: Design, 360 View, Videos, Wallpapers, Specs, Accessories – It’s All There

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galaxy Tab, News, Samsung, Videos

The long awaited Samsung Galaxy Tab is now official. After finally getting revealed at the IFA 2010 conference just about an hour ago, all proverbial cats are finally out of their proverbial bags. While those members of the press who are actually present on location are playing with display units (unfortunately, that doesn’t include us, this time), the rest of us can browse around the official Galaxy Tab site which Samsung launched following the announcement.

Site

The site is jam-packed full of well designed content – you will find:

an interactive Tab presentation,
a 360 degree

…

Sep

We’ll Be There – Samsung Throwing A Mobile Event Announcing Media Hub And The Latest Android Device On September 16th

Posted by Brett Gmoser in Galaxy Tab, News, Samsung

Yesterday, Samsung sent out invites for a media launch event happening in NYC on September 16th. 2 announcements are planned:

Official unveiling of Samsung’s new Media Hub service and
Showing off the latest Android-powered device.

Android Police gratefully accepted the invitation and picked me to cover it, so expect a post-game report to float on the site sometime after the event concludes.

While we do not yet know for certain what this new "Android-powered device" will be, the invitation does include the "Galaxy S" brand logo. Speculation is abound that the device…