They’re hardly as exciting as the company’s two new Android 3.1 tablets, but if you’re looking for Android in even more places, look no further. Also being unveiled today is the ‘35 Home Connect’. It’s a self-proclaimed Android web radio that should do wonders by your bedside, or kickin’ it on the beach. You heard right — there’s a built-in battery here, as well as WiFi access to over 50,000 web radio stations.
You’ll also find a touch panel, pre-loaded TuneIn application and an alarm clock function that brings together traffic, weather and whatever’s happening in your neck of the woods. Finally, a video chatting app is tossed in for good measure, but it’s only useful when your front-facing camera isn’t handling baby monitoring duties (yeah, seriously!).
Moving right along, there’s the Archos 35 Smart Home Phone, an Android-based landline phone that brings users contact sharing with their Android smartphone, MP3 ringtones, caller photo display as well as access to your current stable of Android apps. In other words, this is likely the only home phone you’ll find that can also video call, check your email, look up a topic on Wikipedia and satisfy gramps. The above-mentioned 35 Home Connect should ship this September for $149, while the 35 Smart Home Phone does likewise for $10 more.
In the Android realm, Swype has been life-changing for many; of course, reverting back to the messaging ways of old has been a must when jumping ship to WP7. Now, gesture tracing crosses the aisle, and it’s hopping over to Microsoft’s turf courtesy of Invoke IT’s Sliding Keyboard. With the look of the regular ol’ WP7 keyboard, this set of arm floaties records the user tracing out text, just like ex-Android fans are accustomed to. The company goes a bit further by offering a pair of goggles — in the form of Bing search, text messaging and email options along the bottom of the app. Sure, it’s seeing its fair share of first-revision bugs (word recognition seems a bit poor based on early reviews), but at a cool $1.29 (and a free trial preceding that), it’s a good bit bargain, right?
While some people in some parts of the world are so concern about their personal data and location, a surprising chunk of Android users have volunteered to give a group of University of Cambridge researchers a look at exactly how they use their cellphones.
By downloading the Device Analyzer app from the Android market, more than 1,000 participants have allowed the data collection program to harvest statistics in the background while they use their phones. Those statistics — varying from when the power is switched on, to which apps are in use — are then made available to users via the Device Analyzer website.
Of course, this is Cambridge, a rather well respected institution of higher learning, and the researchers involved say the data collected is stripped of personal information “as best as possible,” but we’re not keen on anyone peeping our cell stats.
If you’re an Android exhibitionist, however, you can sign up for the study at the source link below, if you’re not concern of your location and personal info that is.
Gaming on the mobile tablet platform has gained momentum these two years. While we get plenty of childish games like Angry Birds with very simple 2D graphics, there are a few titles out there that are actually quite impressive with their 3D games. Don’t believe? Then check out the video above and below.
Madfinger has demonstrated their Shadowgun game using an Acer Iconia Tab A500 powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 and Android Honeycomb. Look at those graphics, that’s something very awesome and PC-like 3D graphic effects there!
Available on both the Tegra Zone app and Android Market, Shadowgun promises to bring console-quality graphics and performance to mobile platforms — presumably with the extra geometric detail and high-res textures we’ve seen in other Tegra 2-tailored games. Madfinger is also developing a version for devices powered by NVIDIA’s forthcoming quad-core processor, alluringly known as Project Kal-El. iOS version is also said to be on the way, so hold your horses, iFags!
Computex is just around the corner, but there’s still time for some leaked photos and rumours. Asus teased us with a PadFone tablet-with-a-dock, and now the leaked photo which seemed to be a leaked press photo shows the tablet with no shadows.
The tablet seems to have a hinged cover that pop up upon releasing the latch, to have a compartment for a smartphone. You can also just about make out the two ports inside which are likely to be HDMI and micro-USB — one for driving the larger display, and the other for taking care of touch input while possibly sipping juice from an extra battery somewhere.
Indeed this product looks very odd, and what is Asus playing with at here? A tablet with no guts, and can be powered by an Android smartphone?
We already know that Asus will be unveiling a new tablet at Computex, but it seem that tablet won’t be the only thing shown here. Asus has just posted two teaser pictures at their Facebook fanpage, which can be seen above. The left is actually just a reminder of the Eee Pad MeMO’s June launch, though the words “A Tablet That Jumps Out at You” could also imply a device bearing 3D functionality of some sort. Maybe ASUS managed to upgrade said 7-inch Honeycomb tablet just in time? Well, we’ll know very soon.
What’s new here is the next image, which comes with the “Pad or Phone” teaser. Hopefully it’s not a phone that can transform into a tampon, because the next line “How about both?” really suggest so. The image seemed like a docking-system, yet looking like a tablet. Could this mean Asus is toying with the idea of an Atrix-like docking combo, except the lapdock is instead just a tablet?
Microsoft gave their 1-year-old Windows Phone 7 platform a proper update in the form of ‘Mango’ v7.1, and most of the changes are actually ‘under the hood’. What’s unique this time is the Bing search function, as the crew at Engadget managed to have a chat with a Windows Phone representative to talk about the changes made.
Clicking the dedicated search button from the Windows Phone home screen takes you to a familiar Bing page, offering the visual, audio, and voice options, along with a city scape icon. That skyline represents Local Scout, a function that focuses your queries on the neighbourhood you’re in, providing location-specific results that highlight important information about establishments and events in your immediate area.
Clicking through on any link brings up general information as well as reviews gleaned from popular user-generated sites. That’s not all that’s new, however, as Mango also offers some nifty tricks in its visual search. Instead of just snapping a barcode, you can actually use a shot of the product itself to bring up information about pricing, availability, and relevant apps, though how accurate that is, we’re not sure.
Of course, the interface looks more robust and responsive than ever too. Watch a video of the new update in action below.
These days smartphone is all about faster and faster processors. We’ve seen plenty of Nvidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core SOC processors, and also Apple’s A5 dual-core SOC. Qualcomm is also going to debut their dual-core Snapdragon in HTC’s Sensation 4G. But there’s another processor coming from Qualcomm which is blazingly fast.
Sitting in Pantech’s 5-inch Android 2.3.3 smartphone (yes, 5-inch!) is Qualcomm’s dual-core 1.5GHz MSM8660. Apart from the extra 0.7 inches of screen size, what we have here is essentially the same package as the Vega Racer: 800 x 480 LCD, 8 megapixel 1080p camera, front-facing camera, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 16GB of memory, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, and 14.4Mbps HSPA+ connectivity. Yes, a full fledge notebook already, save for a CD-ROM and a full fledge keyboard.
No word on international availability, but expect this slate to hit the shops in Korea later this month.
Fancy a smartphone powered by Intel? Well, Intel did showoff a smartphone powered by their prototype SOC, which is a 32nm Medfield chip, quite some time ago, but it never bear any fruits. Intel blamed the delay onto its partner at that time, which is Nokia.
CEO Paul Otellini mentioned about this Medfield-powered smartphone yet again at their annual investor meeting, saying that “you’ll see the first Intel-based phones in the first part of next year,” and that “phones shipping in the market from major players” at that time. He mentioned that the company is currently shopping around for a co-developer for reference design.
This is what Mr. Otellini had to say about Nokia: “Nokia was the wrong partner to have picked, but the time both companies spent working together won’t be wasted entirely.”
Remember the hype of Apple suing their parts supplier Samsung over their smartphones’ resemblance? Well, we’ve got good news for you (or bad news, however you like it to be). The Korean giant has strike back with loaded ammo with ten patent infringement claims to Apple. These include five patent infringements in South Korea, two in Japan, and three in Germany, mainly involving power reduction during data transmission, 3G technology for reducing errors during data transmission, and wireless data communication technology.
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