preview

Mar

Samsung Galaxy S II Gets In-Depth Preview: Just As Thin And Powerful As We Hoped

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Galaxy S II, News, Phone Reviews, Reviews, Samsung

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Ever since its unveiling at MWC, the Samsung Galaxy S II has generated plenty of hype. But with no release date in sight, there's no telling how long it will be before we can get our hands on the device. Fortunately, Ukrainian site gagadget managed to get a preliminary version of the phone, and while it isn't clear how much is finalized, it does give us a good idea of what to expect from Samsung's next flagship handset.

The review starts off by listing the all-important specs, though most have been already been made official:

Dual-core 1GHz Exynos processor
4.3" 800x480 Super AMOLED Plus display
Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
TouchWiz 4.0
1GB RAM
116 grams
8 megapixel camera with LED Flash and 1080p video capture
2MP front-facing camera
1650mAH battery

The device's build quality is a huge improvement over the original.

Feb

Tower Raiders 2 Beta, The Sequel To The Best Tower Defense Game On Android, Just Landed In The Market

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Games, News

One of my most favorite Android games and by far the best tower defense game I've tried is Tower Raiders. Once you try Tower Raiders, you simply can't go back to Robo Defense and other clones (I honestly don't understand why Robo Defense is so popular). Last year, I was traveling to France, and Tower Raiders proved to be hours of incredible fun, making 2-hour lines to museums and long metro rides more than bearable.

I haven't heard from the developer of Tower Raiders, Gianormous Games, for many months, and started to get worried that we'd never see an update.

Feb

Get Ready For Augmented Reality Awesomeness - Qualcomm To Reveal Winners Of The $200,000 Challenge At MWC [Sneak Preview Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Dev, News, Videos

Back in June of 2010, Qualcomm issued a developer challenge to geniuses all over the world to create the best next-generation augmented reality applications using their Augmented Reality SDK for Android. With an impressive $200,000 total prize value, it's no surprise that developers have jumped into challenge head-first.

Qualcomm is planning on announcing the winners and showcasing their apps on February 15th at MWC (Mobile World Congress) in Barcelona, but in the meantime provided a sneak peak at some of the submissions, which, I guarantee you, will get you excited. Let's take a look and start anxiously awaiting the 15th:

Source: Qualcomm

Jan

Hands-On Preview Of Android 3.0 'Honeycomb': The Android Tablet Era Begins Now

Posted by Jaroslav Stekl in Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News, Other Reviews, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Honeycomb is one of the biggest updates in Android history, so naturally, I jumped at the chance to try it out via the newly released Android 3.0 "preview SDK." What I found certainly wasn't disappointing - though it's important to remember that this is just a preview, meaning that not everything is in working order (for example, the emulator is so slow it made me want to tear my hair out at times, not to mention the frequent force close messages). Join us below for our first impressions of the new UI elements and other features found in Android 3.0 "Honeycomb."

The emulator's bootscreen is the same as it was for Android 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, etc.

Jan

Android Team Acknowledges Honeycomb Emulator Performance Problems, Hard At Work On Fixes

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Dev, Honeycomb 3.0/3.1/3.2, News

The Honeycomb SDK preview, allowing everyone to take a peek and play around with Honeycomb using the Android emulator, was launched yesterday, but after we got past the initial excitement, we found that the emulator itself was dog slow and pretty much unusable. In fact, it was so frustrating to use it that I wanted to punch walls and rip out my hair after 5 minutes with it. And I'm not even going to talk about orientation problems - how the Android team managed to ship the SDK with orientation broken by default (there is a fix for it in the Settings > Display) is beyond me and beyond the scope of this article.

Jan

Xperia Play Prototype Previewed, So Far Only Plays PSX Games

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Games, News, Xperia Play (Zeus, PlayStation Phone)

Engadget was lucky enough to get its hands on a prototype of Sony's much-anticipated PlayStation Phone (believed to launch as the Xperia Play), and while not everything on the unit they got was finalized (Wi-Fi was completely broken), it does give us a pretty good idea of what to expect when the phone officially launches.

First, we have some of the most important specs:

4.0" 854 x 480 LCD display
Single-core 1 GHz processor (believed to be Qualcomm) with Adreno 205 GPU
512 MB RAM
Android 2.3 with Timescape UI
5 megapixel camera

That single-core processor might seem disappointing with all the excitement surrounding Tegra 2 phones, but the Xperia Play still manages to get high marks in a number of benchmark tests (including a Quadrant score of 1,689).

Jan

Updated: SwiftKey Releases New Beta With Skins, New Prediction Engine, Bug Fixes, And Other Improvements [Hands-On]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, News

After weeks of frantic coding, SwiftKey, my favorite smart aftermarket Android keyboard, just released a private beta to all registered VIP forum members. While the beta itself (v1.98.1.172) is private and we can't provide you with a download link, what we can do is list all of the improvements and tease you with some screenshots.

Update: While we can't promise anything, our friendly contact at SwiftKey who I just spoke to indicated that technically if you did apply for the VIP program (i.e. their forum membership) right now, there is a chance you could get approved. Just remember who hooked you up when your fingers are in heaven.

Jan

The Coolest Android Gadget At CES 2011: Recon's Android-Powered, GPS-Enabled, Camera-Streaming Snow Goggles [Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Devices By Manufacturer, Froyo 2.2, News, Videos

I've been roaming the booths of CES for 3 days now, and I think I've seen almost everything even remotely related to Android that was worth seeing. One company, Recon Instruments, has been on my mind since the beginning, however, and I'm really glad I finally made it to their booth today.

Their current product, called Transcend, is a full snow goggles solution incorporating a little color LCD screen in the bottom right corner. This screen is small but it gets magnified optically to show a whole array of information, such as your current speed, temperature, altitude, time, vertical odometer, and the trail map overlaid on top of Google Maps (among other things).

Jan

CES 2011: Hands-On With Sharp's Galapagos 003SH Glasses-Free 3D Android Phone. Surprisingly, It Works! [Video]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Galapagos 003SH, News, Sharp, Videos

It's officially the 3rd day of CES, and I finally made it over to the giant Sharp ~~booth~~ pavilion, where I was able to get a hands-on demo of the first and only 3D Android handset, which is currently only sold in Japan. Don't worry though - it's coming to the U.S. and possibly other locations this year. Perhaps you've heard of it - meet Sharp Galapagos 003SH, which is capable of not only showing 3D menus, pictures, and videos, but allows you to snap some as well. In addition, it supports 3D-enabled games, one of which I was able to demo.