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The Scandinavian online retailer CDON.com has been spotted harbouring a certain "telefon med Dualcore processor" by one of Swedroid's observant readers. LG's dual-core forerunner may not be the only Tegra II kid in town, but it sure looks like it's going to be the first to make its way into some frigid, Nordic hands.
The rooting of Barnes & Noble's delicious IPS-wielding e-reader took place a couple of weeks ago, rendering the device more of a tablet than a single-use reading terminal in one gloriously justifying move. As with most other tablets, however, it lacked one thing: proper Google app support with access to the Android market. Of course, with the main rooting hurdle already surmounted, it was only a matter of time before these problems were dealt with, too. Some folks in the know over at NookDevs.com have put together a meticulous tutorial to turn that 7" slab into all you've ever wanted it to be. Unfortunately, it's not quite at the Reference For The Rest Of Us™ level, nor is there any One-Click involved.
In the world of design mock-ups, where phones are seen with operating systems as-yet unavailable to them, the Nexus One can make video calls. Nope, this isn't an internal hardware hack like we saw on the Vibrant; it's a simple attachment in the form of an array of prisms and mirrors called OneMoreFace. We've already seen a few examples of this idea implemented for the older (pre-iPhone 4) iPhones, but this is probably the slickest design so far.
With a new OS comes a new manual, and this one's pretty hefty. The 374-page manual for Gingerbread is now available for your perusing pleasure, with plenty of screenshots and details about the new OS. This includes information about the new Near Field Communication function found in the Nexus S:
After weeks of anticipation, leaked photos, snooped videos and widespread rumors, the next pure-Google device is official, and it's pretty much just what you expected. Bearing the title of the flagship device for the the freshly-baked Gingerbread (Android 2.3), the Samsung-made Nexus S includes:
Well, this one's a bit special, isn't it? In a marked shift from the traditional blurrycam espionage, what we have here is a nice, calmly filmed tour of the no-longer-mythical Zeus device. While there isn't a great deal of new information presented in the video, we do catch a glimpse of a PlayStation icon in the menus. The software is labeled Gingerbread in the About screen, despite a distinctly Froyo-esque appearance. As for the hardware, the Zeus sports an impressively large display and a curvy (if rather large) waist-line. We also get a glimpse of the camera and flash on the back, as well as several Sony Ericsson logos in various places. The PlayStation logo is notable in its absence on the device itself, but there is a mysterious S in the center of the gamepad which is just dying to be replaced by the iconic intertwining PS.
Taiwanese consumer electronics giant Acer is having a global press conference in New York right now, and they just wrapped up the hardware portion of the event. In its wake are three new Android devices to lust over. Rather than forcing you to go with one size only, Acer has an attractive trio to choose from.
A pair of images circulated around the tech blogosphere this morning, showing what are purported to be the first glimpses of Motorola's now legendary Olympus, aka "Terminator", device. The Tegra 2 handset appears to take plenty of design cues from the newly-reviewed Defy, matching the rugged phone's rounded corners and flush capacitive buttons.
Even though it's only the third largest network in the United States, Sprint has a habit of cranking out some pretty nice Android devices. With the legacy of the EVO and Epic to live up to, the rumored HTC Knight is going to have to be something pretty special to be considered a true flagship. But will it really be the flagship we're all hoping for? Boy Genius Report got a tip today which adds further confusion to the matter. While their source suggests a QWERTY keyboard and 4G, as well as the tantalizing notion of a dual-core processor, Boy Genius himself concludes that the Knight is "not looking like a flagship phone at this point in time".
LG Set To Release 4-Inch Tegra 2 Phone In Early 2011: Dual-Core And 1080P Goodness
LG's latest phone offers 1080p resolution and expects to be dual-core.
Phew, that's quite the headline. Engadget has once again scooped some shots of a forthcoming Android device, this time the oft-rumored LG Optimus dual-core device. While there are still a few specifics we'd like to know (like the screen resolution), there is plenty in this leak to get excited over:
Who says the G2's processor is slow, eh? While its stock 800 MHz clockspeed didn't break any benchmark records, it's showing itself to be nicely capable of overclocking. Unlike the QSD8250 in the original Snapdragon, which gets rather unstable anywhere past the 1.13GHz (+15%) mark, the MSM7230 in the Scorpion of the G2 sails right on past +100% with apparent stability. The kernel was posted on XDA-Developers by member Flippy125, with the usual "NOT MY FAULT IF-" disclaimers, but also noting that the kernel runs stably for him.
If you excuse the name (it started as an iPhone-only device), the iControlPad appears to be a pretty nice solution for "real" gaming on a touchscreen phone. Culled from left-over Open Pandora gaming console parts, the iControlPad includes dual analog sticks along with rear trigger buttons. The device pairs with your phone over Bluetooth, so it should be supported by your favorite emulators. Craig Rothwell of the iCP/OPP team has just posted a video updating folks on the status of the project, finishing by saying that we should see the iControlPad shipping out by the end of the month.
When you use free software, ads are usually part-and-parcel of the experience. However, typically developers are considerate enough to limit the advertising to within the app itself. Sadly, whoever programmed the popular document viewing application QuickOffice lacks such scruples and has decided to start pushing notifications to users, inviting them to upgrade to the paid version of their app. In many cases, QuickOffice is pre-installed with a phone's version of Android - even something carrier agnostic like the Nexus One - and is difficult to remove, leaving non-root users at the mercy of the app's creators.
The first time we heard about Samsung's Orion chipset was back in September. Two months later, we're getting our first tantalizing glimpse at what will soon be packed into your favourite TouchWiz-running gadgets. ARMdevices' inimitable Charbax got a look at Samsung's demo boards at the ARM Techcon conference, and came away with some impressive performance details. While we knew most of these specs already from the original Samsung announcement, it's always nice to see it in the flesh, so to speak.
It seems that the creators of 8pen have been listening intently to user feedback on their radical new input method (see our original post for a video demonstration), because yesterday they released a rather nice update. One of the main issues of contention that Android users had with 8pen was that it was not free, and simply took too long to get used to to trial fairly within the Android Market's 24-hr refund period. It appears that 3qubits have either made enough money from 8pen already, or are planning to pursue a different revenue model, since this update removes the entry fee altogether.
In a Galaxy Tab far, far away ... there is a 7" AMOLED panel. While other manufacturers are fretting over OLED panel shortages, no such difficulties seem to be presenting themselves to Samsung, as the screen display technology was out in full force at their FPD2010 booth today.
Poor old Sony Ericsson fans; as soon as their X10s get updated to Android 2.1, a new phone leaks out to let them know that end-of-life for their tragically neglected handsets is not far off. However, with this shiny new leaked photograph of the "Anzu", X10 owners can at least take some solace in the fact that even Sony Ericsson's test devices are running outdated versions of Android, despite being rumoured to run Gingerbread on release.
Today is obviously the day for popular applications to add QVGA support. As Rovio did only hours ago, Skype have added support for the increasingly-common 320x240 resolution in their application. That's good news for owners of the HTC Wildfire, Motorola Charm, Huawei IDEOS and LG Optimus T/S, who were left out in the cold until now. Skype for Android has had some nice bug fixes and improvements added, too: