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Welcome to the Android Police Week In Review - your source for the biggest Android stories of the week. Don't forget, you can catch a lot of these stories (and more) on our weekly podcast.
Have you heard?! Apple now says the Galaxy S III is infringing on its patents. Woe is us!
It's time again for the Android Police Podcast. It's also time for the Android Police Podcast every Thursday at 5PM PST - where you can hear us with various screw-ups and profanities included (www.androidpolice.com/podcast). This week, we're talking Apple v. Samsung and IFA 2012.
PocketNow has gotten its hands on what very much look like some leaked press images (and specification details) of the Galaxy Note II, which is expected to be announced in just about an hour. First, to the pictures:
List Of Some Isis Launch Devices Revealed - Includes Most Galaxy S III Variants And More
List Of Some Isis Launch Devices Revealed
MasterCard and T-Mobile revealed some information about which devices we can expect Isis on when it launches at the end of September (according to Bloomberg), though we have no reason to believe this constitutes every supported device. Here's the list of compatible Android phones, as we've compiled it.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Samsung isn't wasting time on keeping the eight smartphones Apple is demanding injunctions against on store shelves. And no, I'm not talking about an appeal.
A rather innocuous OTA update (T989UVLH1) for T-Mobile's Galaxy S II was announced today, with a 2-line changelog that, on the surface, probably won't excite anyone:
According to P3droid, a number of Motorola devices running Android 4.0+ have been imbued with a new feature you might not have noticed: a visual root checker. It's present on the RAZR, RAZR MAXX, DROID 4, and test builds of the Bionic. It operates rather simply. Once a phone is rooted, somewhere in permanent memory, a status change is written that displays in the phone's recovery menu. It works as follows: "1/1" means currently rooted, "0/0" means never rooted, and "0/1" means not presently rooted, but rooted at some point in the past. There is no way to reset this check, at present.
Wireless headphones are a rapidly emerging market, thanks to the continually growing proportion of the population that own Bluetooth-enabled smartphones and tablets. On-ear wireless headphones, in particular, are picking up. We've reviewed several of these style of headphones, and found performance and price to vary wildly. You can spend $30 on a bargain-bin set of wireless headphones, or upwards of $400-500 for some of the name brand audiophile products out there. And at those extremes, it's a little easier to weed out the "real deal" from the junk. But in the middle of the road, around the $80-150 mark, things get a little less clear.
[The Android Police Week In Review] The Biggest Android Stories Of The Week (8/19/12-8/26/12)
The Biggest Android Stories Of The Week
It's time again for another edition of the Android Police Week In Review. This week, there's all sorts of crazy law stuff and Note 10.1 things going on, so be sure to check out the Android At Arms and Product Review sections! You can also hear us talk about most of these topics on our weekly podcast.
Bluetooth connectivity is an increasingly common feature request in our ever-more smartphone and tablet-centric world. It has grown from the simple communication medium of the god-awful earpieces everyone hates you for wearing into a widely-used wireless audio standard. Portable speakers, cars, and headphones are all latching onto it. But what about your 2.1 system? I know I've always wished I could easily push music to my own stereo setup without messy PC software or dongle attachments. I want it to just work. Luckily, such a thing does exist.
If you were following our meta-live coverage, you'll know that the outcome of Apple v. Samsung was basically really, really bad for Samsung. To the tune of slightly over a billion dollars. Yikes. Samsung did escape any successful allegations of infringement through its tablets, but on the smartphone front, they really did get destroyed.
Breaking live from TheVerge, who are in the courtroom, we're hearing that the jury in Apple v. Samsung has rendered a verdict. Now, this is complicated - there were around 700 questions for the jury to answer on the instructions they were provided, so there are a lot of issues to go through here.
The Android Police Podcast: for those times when listening to 5 guys yammer about technology is more appealing than reading. This week, we're talking Galaxy Note 10.1, with special guest Ron Amadeo. I also get really frustrated at the idea of an Android-powered camera.
I am sort of becoming the Bluetooth speaker guy here at Android Police, and the more such products I review, the more I find I'm not impressed with a lot of the current market leaders. Most of all, I'm unimpressed with their price-to-performance ratio. So often, Bluetooth speakers overpromise with buzzwords like "amazing clarity," "deep bass," and "rich sound" (how the hell is sound rich?). I get tired of it, especially since most of these promises are meaningless, recycled advertising drivel that belongs on a late-night infomercial. You have to separate reality from marketing-speak. Luckily, today, I haven't had to.
After disappearing from T-Mobile's own website and appearing as backordered on others, a matter we posted on just a bit earlier today, we've heard from a very reliable industry source that T-Mobile is putting the Galaxy Note on "EOL" (end of life). We have every reason to believe this person (though they spoke on condition of anonymity), and today's events make it pretty obvious that's what's going on. The EOL date is estimated around November 1st, though that remains subject to change based on how quickly T-Mobile's remaining inventory is depleted.
We just received an invite from Amazon to a press conference in Los Angeles 2 weeks from now, and it's sounding like it could finally be time for the company to unveil some new iterations of its Kindle line. No details were provided as to the content of the event, but really, what else would it be?
This morning, Google had a Wallet developer Q&A session on the Google Developers blog, featuring Robin Dua, the product manager for Wallet.
Update: HTC has officially denied the veracity of this rumor, and stated that it has no plans to discontinue use of Beats Audio in its handsets.
According to a Taiwanese newspaper, as reported by Fox Business, HTC was the subject of a recent plea by the head of the country's central bank. He urged the Taiwanese government to offer some sort of financial assistance to HTC, whose stock has dropped over 80% from its peak in Spring of 2011. While HTC is still profitable, the bank's governor points not only to HTC's dramatically waning share figures, but the impact of its slowed growth on Taiwan's net exports, which have fallen 11% year over year.