November 2010 Archives

Nov

Motorola Droid Pro Now Available From Verizon For $179.99, Amazon For $150, Wirefly For Only $50

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Droid Pro, Motorola, News, Verizon Wireless

The Motorola Droid Pro, Android's first real answer to Blackberry candybar style phones with a full QWERTY keyboard, is now available across the web and in VZW's retail stores.

You can view our unboxing and first impressions of the Droid Pro over here or skip over to the specs to help you make your decision:

CDMA/GSM/UMTS bands
HVGA 320×480 3.1" capacitive display with medium pixel density (160dpi)
TI OMAP 3620 1GHz CPU
512 MB RAM
2GB ROM
1GB built-in storage
5MP dual LED flash with auto focus
802.11 b/g/n WiFi
candybar form factor with a full QWERTY keyboard
Android 2.2
1420 mAh battery

Get Your Hands On One

VZW

If you want to buy the Pro directly from Verizon Wireless, you're going to be faced with $280 + taxes - a $100 mail-in rebate, which, in my opinion, is a very sub-par option.

Nov

Samsung Canada Announces Galaxy S Froyo Upgrade Timelines

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Bell, Captivate, Fascinate, Galaxy S, News, Rogers, Samsung, TELUS, Vibrant

Samsung, which has been under fire from consumers for repeatedly delaying Android 2.2. updates on their Galaxy S line of phones, recently posted an announcement for its Canadian customers on Bell, TELUS, and Rogers. In the announcement, Samsung apologized for delaying the long-awaited update and cited rigorous testing as the current stage of the rollout process.

Now, keeping in mind that these are just estimates, have a look at the upgrade timelines for your Canadian Galaxy S device:

Vibrant from Bell and Captivate from Rogers will be up first in the middle of December
Fascinate from TELUS will not get upgraded until all the way to the beginning of 2011

It's quite sad that Gingerbread, the Android version following Froyo, will be released long before Froyo itself makes it to the biggest flagship device series Samsung offers and long after their European and Korean counterparts.

Nov

Millennial Media Report Shows Android Continuing To Take Over

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in News

Millennial Media has released their Mobile Mix for October, and at first sight, the results are fairly impressive. Before diving in, though, it's important to note that the statistics are based on ad clicks, rather than a population sample. However, that doesn't mean they don't help express the overall trends, so with that in mind, let's take a quick look at the highlights.

· This month, for the first time, Android tied with iOS as the largest Smartphone OS on our network, with an 8% increase month-over-month and 37% impression share on our network.
· Apple, the leading device manufacturer on our network for the last thirteen months and accounted for a 25% share of impressions on our network in October.

Nov

Sony Ericsson X12 "Anzu" Previewed, Found To Be A "Suicide Committed By Blowing Yourself Up With A Stick Of Dynamite"

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in News, Sony Ericsson, Xperia Arc (Anzu, X12)

Last Updated: January 11th, 2011

Just about a week after Sony Ericsson's latest plaything was first leaked, Mobile-Review's Martin Elm has gotten his greedy hands on the device, and frankly, his initial impressions make the phone seem seriously underwhelming.

Rather than making a truly competitive high-end device, SE appears to have taken the original X10, which never sold well to begin with, and tweaked it here and there without making any major changes.

On the hardware front, Sony Ericsson's bumped the camera's megapixel count from eight to twelve, although Mobile-Review found that the prototype they handled was limited to taking stills at 3MP, with the maximum resolution for video being 325x288.

Nov

Lookout Launches Lookout Premium for $30/Year - We Have 5 Free Licenses To Give Away

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Applications, News

Last Updated: November 24th, 2010

Lookout Premium

Lookout Mobile Security, a free Android app that secures your device from viruses in addition to backing it up and allowing you to remotely locate it, yesterday launched a premium service that we've been expecting for a while. The Premium version is offered as an optional upgrade to a fully functional free base version for an annual fee of $29.99 or a monthly fee of $3. That's a pretty hefty price to charge, especially since regular, free accounts already have access to so many features, so let's take a look at the extras that you get:

Privacy Advisor protects your privacy.

Nov

[Updated] New Options In The Android Market App Publishing Interface: Promo Videos, High Res App Icon, Feature Graphics

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Android OS, Apps/Games, Dev, News

Whoa! Only a few hours after sending out a notification about a big Market maintenance, Google sneakily updated the Market publishing interface with a variety of new options, pointing to nothing less than an updated Market likely to launch very soon, probably together with Gingerbread. The presence of higher resolution graphics underscores Google's newly embraced support for tablets and TVs, and possibly suggests that Market web interface we've been waiting for since Google I/O is finally around the corner.

Here are all the new options available to developers publishing their apps, in addition to the 2 screenshots and the promotional graphic+text (I can't think of a place where the latter is used):

High Resolution Application Icon - 512w x 512h, 24 bit PNG or JPEG (no alpha).

Nov

US Cellular Announces LG Apex - An Optimus One With A Keyboard

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Apex, LG, News, Optimus U, US Cellular

LG's Optimus One series (which includes such phones as the Optimus T for T-Mobile, the Optimus S for Sprint, and the recently announced Vortex for Verizon), has been a great hit with customers, so it should come as no surprise that the company's expanding it quickly. Today's Optimus One news comes from US Cellular, who has just announced that the Apex, which is essentially an Optimus One with a keyboard tacked on, will be launching on November 19th for $79.99 after a $80 mail-in rebate. Its specs are essentially the same as the rest of the Optimus One series, but as a reminder:

3.2-inch glass touchscreen
3 MP camera with flash and video recording
WiFi
Android 2.1

Don't want a physical keyboard?

Nov

Winamp With Shoutcast Support Demoed, Coming Soon

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

Winamp, one of my favorite desktop music players, recently landed in the Android Market, and has since become one of my favorite mobile players as well, at least until PowerAMP came along. One glaring omission, however, has been the absence of Shoutcast streaming, meaning thousands of online radio stations (such as DI.fm) that are easily accessible via the desktop version, weren't available on mobile. I don't like having to use a whole different app just for radio, but, alas, I had to resort to using TuneWiki or XiiaLive, neither of which I was a fan of.

To patch up this hole, Nullsoft, the company behind Winamp, is concentrating on adding Shoutcast support in the next version.

Nov

Native Google Docs Editing Rolling Out In The Next Few Days

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

One of the most sought for features of the Google Docs mobile interface has always been support for editing documents. As its stands now, you get read-only access, and any editing functionality can be achieved by using external apps, which is far from ideal, especially for quick edits. Note that I'm talking about documents and not spreadsheets here - those have been editable for quite a while now.

Thankfully, today Google announced that proper document editing support is finally ready for your consumption and will be rolling out in the next few days. One really cool part about the new capability is that it's near real-time, meaning whatever you edit in your mobile browser will be uploaded back to the server almost instantly, keystroke after keystroke.

Nov

Motorola Droid Pro Unboxing And Hands-On

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Droid Pro, Motorola, Phone Reviews, Reviews, Verizon Wireless

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

So... what can I say? It's the Droid Pro, Android's answer to the Blackberry, the Blackberry running Android - in short, the phone that's supposed to kill off RIM once and for all. But is it? Our review unit just arrived in the mail today, and while I'm not ready to do a full review just yet, I am ready to give you my initial impressions as well as an overview of what's in the box. Ready? Read on!