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Update: The ad has been removed from CNET, but we've retained a couple images, below. Sounds like someone finally figured out the rather embarrassingly bad mistake they just made.
You made your nominations, and we've selected four of the most popular titles named as "Best New Android App of 2011" for you to vote on. You voted. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
When the tech world first heard of the BlackBerry tablet, it was greeted with a fair amount of optimism. It was thought that the very daring (for RIM) device could be just what the company needed to get out of its unabashed slump in popularity, particularly in the United States. In addition, rumblings that the device would be able to run Android Market apps (and actually can now) had Android and RIM fans alike excited for the possibilities of cross-platform development.
[Updated: Here Are The 10 Winners!] Nexus New Year's International Ultimate Giveaway: Win One Of Ten (Yes, Ten) Galaxy Nexuses From AVAST And Android Police
Nexus New Year's International Ultimate Giveaway: Win One Of Ten
We know, we told you our holiday giveaway series would feature some of our largest contests to date. And it did - we gave away over a dozen tablets and nearly as many phones to our readers. But we thought we'd start the new year off with our biggest giveaway yet (an international one, to boot) - 10 Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones, courtesy of our amazingly generous friends at AVAST Software.
2011 was a great year for Android - Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was announced. The Galaxy Nexus was released. A whole truckload of Android tablets came out. The first 4G LTE smartphones appeared. But there were some significant speed bumps as well. Here are, in no particular order, the five things in the world of Android in the last year that really got our hopes up, but ended up being a little disappointing.
Update 2: ASUS has issued an official statement on the matter and determined that the Prime's GPS is functioning as intended, which for many folks means essentially non-functional.
[Updated: Here Are The Winners!] Skin Your Holiday Gift Giveaway Win One Of 50 Amzer Phone Or Tablet Cases For Doing Almost Nothing
Skin Your Holiday Gift Giveaway Win One Of 50 Amzer Phone Or Tablet Cases For Doing Almost Nothing
Now that the holiday season has drawn to a close, a lot of you probably have shiny new Android-powered gifts you're struggling to put down for more than 30 seconds. That also means your brand-new toy might not yet have a case - and we're here to help. Our friends at Amzer have graciously provided 50 of their awesome phone cases to help protect your Android device from the many dangers it will face throughout its life.
After initially deciding it wouldn't update Galaxy S phones to Ice Cream Sandwich last week, Samsung has now (supposedly) given some semi-official lip-service to vocal Galaxy S and OG-Tab owners who have been clamoring for an official update to Ice Cream Sandwich. The English-speaking side of Samsung's media arm hasn't commented on the alleged statement as of yet.
You made your nominations, and we've selected four of the most popular titles named as "Best New Android Game of 2011" for you to vote on. You voted. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
Budget phone. The very sound of those two words, together, makes me slightly ill. In fact, it makes me almost immediately seethe with a sort of "nerd-rage." I hate the way budget phones are peddled onto the tech-illiterate by commission-motivated hucksters at "Big Four" carrier phone stores. I hate seeing people get locked into 2-year contracts because they got a "great deal" on a smartphone. "It was free!" they'll say, and that the nice sales representative (his name was Jimmy) kept them from buying "something they didn't need," because they walked in with a firm spending limit and they weren't going to budge! I hate to then see that "free" phone utterly destroyed and broken just 6 months later, so that they end up making a $100 insurance deductible claim to get the same crappy phone again. But most of all, I hate the way that all of these budget phones completely, totally, suck. It's like watching the same B horror movie, over and over again. Really, buying a budget smartphone on a 2-year agreement is like buying a car (the expensive monthly plan) in order to get a free $100 Chile's gift certificate (the phone) - just plain dumb.
For the first time, Android Police is having its go at a "best of the year" series, and we're going to need your help. Android Police will be featuring a number of posts in the coming weeks leading up to CES 2012 showing off the very best of what Android has brought to people around the world over the last year. Your favorite phones, tablets, apps, and games, will all be facing off for the chance at a (probably not very highly coveted) Android Police Andy Award, recognizing the best - above the rest.
In our biggest giveaway yet, we're handing out a whole boatload of awesome Samsung Android products - including the Verizon Galaxy Nexus, T-Mobile Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the T-Mobile Galaxy S II. Also included are the Captivate Glide and the Exhibit II 4G, all courtesy of our friends at Samsung's Mobile US division. This contest is open to US entrants only (they're US-only devices and Samsung USA is sponsoring, sorry guys).
In our first giveaway of the day (there will be another one a bit later, stay tuned), we're handing out the last of our holiday goodies provided by our pals at NVIDIA. Two lucky winners will be selected, one will get the unique ASUS Eee Pad Slider tablet, and another will receive the new Acer Iconia A100. Both winners will also get a Jambox portable speaker and a $25 AMEX gift card. This is a "lightning giveaway," so you'll have until midnight tomorrow (December 24th) to enter.
[Updated: Here Is The Winner!] GetJar And Android Police Holiday Giveaway: Win A Pair Of Beats By Dre Studio HD Headphones And More
GetJar And Android Police Holiday Giveaway
Our final giveaway today is in partnership with GetJar, the 100% free 3rd party Android app store. All free apps, all the time.
You probably guessed this was coming - our Mega-Holiday Giveaway series just wouldn't be complete without a Galaxy Nexus (check out our just-published review). Today, we're giving away one Verizon Galaxy Nexus, courtesy of our friends at Texas Instruments, along with a pair of Klipsch S4A headphones (read our review here). (For our international readers: this particular contest is open to the US only (it's a US-only phone), but you may want to check back tomorrow.)
Well, we started today off right by offering our US readers a Galaxy Nexus, but we figured it's only fair to bring our international readers into the mix for another awesome giveaway. Today, we're giving away one ASUS Transformer Prime 32GB Wi-Fi tablet to one lucky person, courtesy of Beansoft, the developers of the extremely popular third-party keyboard app Thumb Keyboard, along with a pair of Klipsch S4A headphones provided by Klipsch (read our review here).
I'll be the first to admit, I'm a big fan of Klipsch. I like their style, their sound signature, and their products generally. I started with a ProMedia 2.1 computer speaker setup, and have since graduated to a pair of their reference bookshelf speakers, and I've been pleased the whole way through. I had never, however, tried their headphones. Until recently, Klipsch's in-line control headphones designed for smartphones had only fully worked with iOS devices. With the S4A, that changed - it's the first Klipsch headphone designed specifically for use with Android devices.
I've been on a bit of a headphone kick lately, and have tried out a number of sets from various manufacturers. The only on-ear headphones I've tried during this time, though, have been AKG's K 830 BT's, the company's only high fidelity Bluetooth headphones. Bluetooth headphones remain a relatively young technology, and have been growing steadily as more and more computers and smartphones adopt the A2DP Bluetooth audio transmission standard.
Before seeking out a few companies to find the best Android-friendly headphones around, I had never heard of Etymotic Research. Apparently, they've been around quite a while - since 1983, actually, and were among the first companies to market in-ear headphones to consumers. They actually claim to be the inventors of in-ear headphones (or "canalphones"), though whether or not that's actually true is apparently an object of some controversy.