2011 - 4/5 - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Feb

[Rumor] Sony Working On 'S2,' A Dual-Screen Android Tablet

Posted by Zak Stinson in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, S2, Sony, Tablets

Last Updated: June 30th, 2011

Hot on the heels of the mock-up leak for the PlayStation certified "S1," Engadget has caught wind of another Android-powered Sony tablet currently in the works. Continuing with the theme of wacky design, the device is rumored to be a clamshell-style, dual-touchscreen device. Each display will measure 5.5 inches, and when closed, the device has a cylindrical form factor reminiscent of the giant crayon-shaped calculator I had when I was 5.

Engadget's sources say that it will be running a custom version of Honeycomb with apps that are optimized for the dual screens. Google Maps is supposed to display a map on one screen while showing turn-by-turn navigation instructions or Streetview on the other.

Feb

HTC Flyer To Cost €669 According to Amazon.de

Posted by Zak Stinson in Flyer, HTC, News

Yesterday at Mobile World Congress, HTC lifted the veil on their first entry into the tablet market: The HTC Flyer. It's a 7 inch tablet, reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy Tab released last fall. The Flyer runs Android 2.4 on a 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor and comes with HSPA+ (4G/3G+) capabilities for high-speed data usage.

HTC reported that we should expect it to be available in Q2 2011 but had nothing to say about pricing. Thanks to Amazon.de we now have an idea of what the cost will be for HTC's first tablet, with the product page showing a price of €669 (roughly $906 US!).

Feb

NVIDIA Reveals Project Kal-El: A Quad-Core CPU For Mobile Devices, Coming To Tablets By August 2011, Phones By Christmas

Posted by Zak Stinson in News, Videos

NVIDIA has been the talk of Barcelona for the past couple of days. Many of the premier devices announced at Mobile World Congress, such as the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the LG Optimus Pad, have been packing the new dual-core Tegra 2 chipset. Hot on the heels of these hardware announcements, NVIDIA just revealed the quad-core successor of the Tegra 2 to the world (which may or may not end up being called Tegra 3).

Dubbed "Project Kal-El", this mean little chipset is said to bring five times the processing power of the Tegra 2. In addition to the 4 CPU cores, Kal-El includes not 1 and not even 4, but 12 (!) GPU cores.

Feb

Android Movie Studio For Honeycomb Unveiled At MWC By Eric Schmidt, Looks Awesome

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

Right now at MWC, Eric Schmidt is showing off a brand-new, Google-developed Android app: Movie Studio. The app, as the name may suggest, is a video editor. It's designed specifically for Honeycomb tablets, and as a video editor, that sort of makes sense. It's pretty rough trying to edit video on a smaller screen, though not impossible (which is to say, I imagine an XDA port for phones will happen as soon as an APK gets leaked).

Movie Studio will contain most of the features you'd expect in a competitive (*cough* iMovie *cough*) video editing app: transitions, audio import, splicing, A/V timeline, and multi-format export and sharing options.

Jan

Samsung Finally Releasing WiFi-Only Galaxy Tab In Q1 2011

Posted by Anuj Ahooja in Galaxy Tab, News, Samsung, Tablets

Remember back when Samsung first introduced us to the Galaxy Tab, the tablet to save us Android fans from the iPad? They promised that a WiFi-only version would eventually come out for those who didn't want to pay for another data plan.

Well today, Samsung finally announced that it will be coming to the US in the first quarter of 2011. No dates have been given for international releases, but since this is a WiFi device, it should be easy to ship it over from the US for international use.

It will hold 16GB of internal storage and will also include a microSD slot for up to 32 more gigabytes of external storage.

Jan

AT&T Seriously Stepping Up The Game With LTE/HSPA+ 4G Expansion, 12 Android Devices In 2011

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in AT&T, News

AT&T has been keeping very quiet about its 4G plans over the past year, letting the other 3 major players freely roll out their respective 4G technologies - HSPA+ for T-Mobile, WiMax for Sprint, and LTE for Verizon. However, after the announcements at this morning's AT&T Developer Summit, it is clear AT&T is seriously stepping up its game.

According to Ralph de La Vega, AT&T's CEO, AT&T has already completed the upgrade of the whole mobile broadband network to HSPA+, or Evolved HSPA, which is the same technology used by T-Mobile that currently offers theoretical speeds of about 21Mbps downstream.

Jan

Android: A Look Back To 2010, And A Look Forward To 2011

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Android OS, Editorials, News

Looking Back: Andy Conquers The World (And Then Some)

What a whirlwind year for Android. Although the T-Mobile G1 - the first Android handset - dropped way back in October of 2008, it arguably took until 2010 for Android to become feasible for the mainstream. In fact, when the Nexus One was released in early January, it was widely hailed as being the first true Android competitor to the iPhone, in no small part due to the advancements made with Éclair.

From there, Android took off: Eric Schmidt announced in May that over 100,000 Android handsets were being activated daily. By June, the number was up to 160,000.

Dec

Andy Rubin Teases Honeycomb-Running, Video Chat-Featuring, Dual-Core Processor-Packing Motorola Tablet

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Google, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, Motorola

While the announcement everyone was expecting Andy Rubin to make at today's D: Dive Into Mobile conference was already made earlier today, the head of Android operations still had a few things hidden up his sleeves, not the least of which was a dual-core Motorola tablet:

If that didn't catch your attention, consider this: the man himself said that it will run Honeycomb, will feature video chat, and will be powered by a "dual-core 3D NVIDIA processor." Additionally, Engadget, whose editor-in-chief was sitting at the event, noticed that the tablet has no buttons at all, for better or for worse.

Nov

NEC, Casio, And Hitachi To Jump Into The Android Game Next Year

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News

NEC, Casio, And Hitachi, known as NEC Casio Mobile Communications since their merger in 2009, have been pretty quiet about their Android plans so far. However, after seeing Panasonic take the plunge yesterday and announce its plans to enter the Android market in 2011, NEC Casio couldn't hold it anymore and spilled the beans today.

According to Keitai Watch, the company plans to begin selling Android devices starting with Japan in 2011, and the rest of the world in 2012. Out of the 12 million projected worldwide device sales, 50% or so would be smartphones, and 40% of them would be outside Japan.

Nov

Samsung Developing Google-Powered TV Of Its Own, Planning On Unveiling The Product At CES 2011

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Google TV, News, Samsung

Given all the heat Google TV's been taking from the networks lately, the platform needs all the good news it can get - and Samsung might be giving it some come January 2011. Samsung Hub has just learned that the world's largest television manufacturer is indeed working on a Google TV-powered set, which Boo-Keun Yoon, Samsung's President of Visual Display Business, plans to unveil next year at CES.

What the blog didn't learn was what the actual TVs would look like; in fact, the only detail they provided was that the company's "open" to using Intel's processors as opposed to its own offerings.