11
Jan
2011-01-11 21h09_35
Last Updated: February 10th, 2011

If you were disappointed when Facebook shot down rumors that it was working on an official Facebook phone, you may be in luck, thanks to manufacturer INQ Mobile. According to Bluetooth SIG, the INQ Cloud Touch could be exactly what Facebook was rumored to be developing:

INQ Cloud Touch is an Android smartphone built to make messaging faster and smarter. It’s designed around the way people naturally communicate and has Facebook built into its core. The homescreen features multiple entry points to different Facebook functions, while a dynamic widget displays a feed of status updates, albums, videos and photos.

This isn't really surprising, as a quick look at INQ's site reveals their history of making "social" phones.

11
Jan
12942810851

During CES 2011 Sony Ericsson's newest smartphone, the Xperia arc, was sighted running Android version "2.4".

A few weeks ago there were rumours that Honeycomb, Google's next iteration of the Android platform, would actually be Android 2.4 and not Android 3.0. Although it was later confirmed that Honeycomb will indeed be Android 3.0, rumours suggested that an incremental update to Android was being readied. The About section of the Xperia arc, displayed below, appeared to confirm that there was indeed a version 2.4.

12942810851

However, yesterday a post appeared on the Sony Ericsson Product Blog confirming that the version numbers "higher" than 2.3 appearing in the display of the Xperia arc phones was merely a "misconfiguration" and "nothing to get too excited about".

10
Jan
NEXSORIG

If you were one of the early adopters of the Samsung Nexus S, chances are you have been plagued by the highly obnoxious reboot syndrome experienced during daily phone calls. Upon making or receiving a phone call, the phone will suddenly and unexpectedly go black and reboot for no apparent reason. Up until recently, Nexus S owners have felt ignored by Google in regards to this issue. Previously, Google has qualified their negligible stance on the issue with claims that the issue was not with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but instead Samsung's fault because of the hardware itself. All of the concern growing in the community forum seems to have gained their attention now; however, and Google has successfully replicated the issue in order to issue a fix.

10
Jan
xoom

Motorola is expected to launch its XOOM tablet in February 2011 and, according to DigiTimes, they have placed an order for about 700,000 to 800,000 units. If there is greater demand, DigiTimes expects the order to reach up to one million units by the end of the first quarter of 2011.

Interestingly, DigiTimes also claims that Motorola and Samsung are being given special treatment by Google, while competitors, such as LG and HTC, are being left behind. This could explain why Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering at Google, originally demoed Android 3.0 Honeycomb on a (then unofficial) Motorola XOOM.

xoom

At this point, Motorola's sales estimates seem rather modest, considering the Samsung Galaxy Tab sold over 1 million units in its first month and the Apple iPad is expected to sell up to 7 million units in the first quarter of 2011.

10
Jan
Capture

Red tape seems to be getting in the way of Notion Ink's plans to ship initial pre-order customers' Adam tablets today. An email sent to us by one of those pre-order customers this morning indicates that it is the FCC's certification process which has put the brakes on the Adam's release:

Greetings from the Notion Ink Support Team!

This e-mail is to inform you that your shipment is ready, but we are awaiting final FCC and CE numbers which are to be printed on the device before we can ship them to you. The Holiday season in December pushed the administrative work and it will be cleared within this week.

08
Jan
IMG_8328

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).

08
Jan
IMG_8393

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.

08
Jan
IMG_8420
Last Updated: April 16th, 2011

While Toshiba's original attempts at an Android tablet running on the Tegra chip didn't exactly go down a storm, they seem keen to continue with Android devices, and brought a new tablet with them to CES. Artem got a video demo from one of their reps, and as you can see there are some attractive features to note.

Like the Motorola XOOM, the nameless Toshiba tablet (henceforth "Anon") has a 10.1" WXGA (1280x800) screen, which was unsurprisingly nice and crisp. It also sports the convenience of full-size USB and HDMI ports, along with a full SD card slot allowing for storage expansion up to 64 GB.

08
Jan
xoom-wifi-only-rm-eng (2)

Do you love the Motorola XOOM but hate the idea of signing up for yet another contract? Looks like you might just be in luck - according to Maurizio Angelone, Motorola Latin America's General Manager, a WiFi-only version of the XOOM is very real and will, in fact, be launching in April.

Of course, it's always possible that the April timeframe will be exclusive to Argentina, and there's no word on pricing, but we can always hope it'll come to the States along with an iPad-esque $499 asking price. Let's make it happen, Motorola!

Source: Infobae via Engadget

08
Jan
x10minipro2-front

Sure, Sony Ericsson's XPERIA arc is getting all of the attention right now, but the folks at the IT168 forums have posted specs and a pair of images of a supposed XPERIA X10 Mini Pro follow-up.

x10minipro2-front x10minipro2-back

The poster lists this unnamed device as having an Adreno 205 GPU, 384MB RAM, and a "7230 CPU". No clock speed is listed, but it's safe to assume that "7230" refers to the Qualcomm MSM7230 processor which recently made an appearance in HTC's Desire Z/G2 running at 800MHz, though it is also capable of running at up to 1GHz.

These specs fall in line with the leak we saw just a couple of weeks ago from the same forum.