Verizon delivered one of its first smartphones of the new year Friday in the Droid 4. The Motorola headliner we tried at CES is up for $200 on a contract, making it one of the more affordable LTE phones. Buyers can also pick it up for $550 contract-free.
Apple late last week quietly filed for a US trademark that shows it possibly getting closer to having its own chip architecture. After having slowly filed trademarks in countries outside the US, such as Trinidad and Tobago, the joint USPTO and Hong Kong application caught by Patently Apple suggests that Apple has been continuing development on a project it could be willing to show soon. Mentions of work had started as early as 2004.
Specs for two upcoming LG smartphones have been spotted online by Italian site HDBlog. The phones are expected to show up at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona at the end of the month, and include the P880, with a 720p display, along with the unusual, 640x480 P700.
Two sources have hinted that the Droid 4 may have an imminent launch and a moderate price point. The Droid-Life contacts had it shipping on February 9 for $199 on a contract, or as much as the pared-back 16GB Droid RAZR. It was originally rumored to come a week earlier but was moved back for unknown reasons.
RIM's BlackBerry London has been refined in looks ahead of what could be an attempt to return to the US in force. New leaks to CrackBerry have the render of the first BlackBerry 10 phone's expected finished look making it considerably more refined than the very angular, Porsche Design-like look of a dummy unit. A presumably mock screenshot also points to a more refined media player than either on BlackBerry 7 or on the PlayBook.
Samsung may be readying an upgraded version of its Galaxy Nexus handset with a faster processor. Tests using the benchmark tool NenaMark reference a mystery device that is powered by PowerVR SGX 544 graphics components, which are tied to TI's latest 1.8GHz OMAP4470 processor.
Notion Ink CEO Rohan Shraven has taken the unusual step of explaining why his Android-based tablet company opted to follow its NVIDIA Tegra 2-powered Adam tablet with a TI OMAP 4 processor for its Adam II . Rather than plumping for the quad-core Tegra 3, Shraven argues that the TI OMAP platform offers Notion Ink certain advantages. As a small vendor, with its limited software and hardware engineering resources, it believed that it could not leverage the NVIDIA Tegra 3 as well as it can the TI OMAP 4, leading to a better implementation for end users.
Following unintentional slips, Verizon on Tuesday confirmed that the Droid RAZR MAXX will be on shelves this Thursday, January 26. The extra-long lived 4G smartphone will be the new high-end version of the RAZR and carry the 32GB that was cut in half to lower the price for the original design. A RAZR MAXX wil cost $300 on a contract like the original 32GB version.
Notion Ink in a update early Saturday Bangalore time uncovered one of the first details of next-generation tablet. Referring to the slate as the Adam II, it plans to use a TI OMAP 4400-series multi-core processor mated with Android 4.0. What clock speed and which exact graphics core weren't mentioned, apart from the video coming through a PowerVR SGX500-series core.
Huawei isn't normally known for high-end phones; usually, it's the company serving the $200 off-contract smartphone to a Chinese resident who might never get a smartphone otherwise. The Ascend P1 S, then, came as something of a surprise at CES this week when it it not only hit a record-breaking 6.7mm (0.26 inches) thickness but became one of the first truly official phones with Android 4.0 beyond the Galaxy Nexus. We gave the P1 S a shakedown at CES; read on for whether it signals a change in Huawei's impact in smartphones.
TI has teased its first practical OMAP5 reference hardware. The dual-core, dual-graphics ARM-Cortex A15 device shown to Engadget by VP Remi El-Ouazzane was capable of playing 1080p content at 64 frames per second and ran Android 4.0. The executive anticipated it being fast enough at 800MHz to rival a Cortex-A9 chip at 1.5GHz, overshadowing Apple's A5.
Earlier this week at CES, LG and Motorola unveiled two new phones destined for Verizon's 4G LTE network. Phone Scoop has learned that the two phones, the Motorola Droid 4 and LG Spectrum, will be able to roam globally using GSM as well as CDMA, Verizon's core wireless technology. This capability should be available sometime during the first half of this year.
Motorola has begun taking pre-orders for a Wi-Fi only version of the Xyboard. Losing the Droid name from Verizon, they remain identical on the inside and cost significantly less. The 8.2-inch 16GB and 32GB models cost $400 and $500 respectively, while climbing to 10.1 inches adds another $100 to the cost.
The last-minute delay of the Motorola Droid 4 was inadvertently confirmed after a pair of sightings. Visting the Best Buy Reward Zone shows a picture of a bonus point giveaway with the unannounced Android slider clearly in view. Separately, a scrape of the DroidDoes.com page by a Droid-Life tipster has produced audio samples that showed Verizon had already prepared at least some of a Droid 4 page.
LG will begin shipping its designer Prada Phone by LG 3.0 Android 2.3 smartphone in South Korea on January 5. LG had officially announced the phone earlier this month. Although not shipping until January, the phone will be available for pre-order on Thursday.
CUPP Computing has shown off a new version of its PunkThis board that could lead to tablets with both Android and Windows without compromising both. Taking residence inside an ASUS Eee Slate, the board tested by Engadget would replace the 2.5-inch SATA drive with a full Android device with a 1GHz TI OMAP3730 processor, 512MB of RAM, its own Wi-Fi, and Android 2.3.4. A mini PCIe slot would provide room for a solid-state drive to give storage to the Windows side.
The Archos 35 Home Connect Internet radio introduced mid-year has now gone on sale. The Android-powered device uses Wi-Fi to access Internet radio stations thanks to the included TuneIn Radio Pro app. There is also a built-in alarm clock, giving users the choice to wake up to nature sounds, an MP3 playlist, or a preselected radio station.
As expected, LG and Prada's upcoming handset has been shown off on Wednesday. The details confirm many of those leaked earlier. Along with its 4.3-inch Nova Plus screen, it gets a Prada-based texture on the back, its own docking station, and a matching Prada bag.
Verizon followed up on the end of its LTE outage by starting sales of the Motorola Droid Xyboard. The 8.2- and 10.1-inch Android tablets are available to buy online as of Friday and should be in physical stores on Monday. Prices start at $430 for the Xyboard 8.2 with 16GB and 4G on a contract, and $530 for the similarly-equipped Xyboard 10.1.
RIM's rumored BlackBerry Milan may have solidifed after details and a conceptual rendering appeared Wednesday. The BlackBerry 10 phone is now thought by CrackBerry sources to be a vertical QWERTY slider much like the Torch 9800 series. As described, it would have some angular elements like the London but would have more of the signature black, with all of the dedicated hardware buttons and trackpad of a current BlackBerry removed in favor of, presumably, bezel gestures.
Motorola has submitted a new LTE-enabled tablet to the FCC for approval. The device supports CDMA/EDVO and the LTE band used by Verizon. This gives rise to speculation that this is the Xoom 2 Media Edition which the carrier will be selling in the US as the 8.2-inch version of the Droid Xyboard.
A shortfall in NVIDIA's chip sales could be a sign of problems for both the Tegra 3 and for Android as a whole. Purported insiders claimed to Digitimes that the chip designer wouldn't make a target of 25 million Tegra 2 processors shipped. Difficulty getting more wins away in smartphones from Qualcomm's Snapdragon were a problem, but the inability of Android tablets to compete with the iPad was also supposedly impacting numbers.
Archos has begun shipping a high performance version of its 10.1-inch Android tablet. The 101 G9 Turbo upgrades the dual-core TI OMAP4 processor from 1GHz to 1.2GHz. Also new is the storage, doubling to 16GB.
The recently introduced Verzo Kinzo Android phone has just received a price cut after getting customer feedback. Kinzo has also now broken up the device into two models, with one basic option and another paired with an offline navigation package. The basic phone gets a price cut to $349, while the Plus GPS model is $384.
Early benchmarks of the Galaxy Nexus have shown it to be the first Android phone that can outperform an iPhone 4S on the web. The AnandTech tests show that Google's late addition of dual-core processor support gave the phone the edge over Apple both in the SunSpider JavaScript test and Rightware's BrowserMark. The only other Android device to get close, the Droid RAZR, slightly won in one test but lost in another.
IHS iSuppli revised its earlier cost breakdown for the Amazon Kindle Fire to a lower figure in a more final estimate that showed Amazon was still taking a loss on each device sold. While it's now expected to cost just $201.70 to make, that still told AllThingsD the $199 Android tablet was losing Amazon money on each sale, even before factoring in shipping and other costs. A look at the final product showed that there were cost savings even beyond what had been expected, including on the inside.
A new teardown of the Amazon Kindle Fire has shown a relatively easy device to fix. Netting an eight out of ten score from iFixit, the Android tablet had an easy-open back and could use just one Philips screwdriver to get to nearly every fastener. Amazon was also shrewd in keeping the amount of glued-together components to a minimum, making it cheaper to replace the LCD, battery, or mainboard without having to swap multiple parts at once.
RIM's first BBX phone may have been spotted in an as-yet unverified leak. The phone seen by The Verge, picking up a previously only hinted at codename, would take its visual cues from the angular, metal-clad Porsche Design P'9981. The design would reportedly be thinner than an iPhone 4S and as thin as the Galaxy S II.
(Update: Bell too) Virgin Mobile jumped the gun Monday to become the first Canadian carrier to officially commit to the Galaxy Nexus. A pre-order page now lets Canadians sign up for the Android 4.0 flagship, which the carrier has narrowed down to a launch in early December. It didn't give pricing, but it expects the phone to get a discount through its SuperTab plans, including a promo plan for $70 per month with just 200 minutes but 6GB of data and unlimited weekends and evenings from 6PM.
Czech and American company Verzo has now officially outed its Kinzo smartphone after teasing it this summer. The luxury handset was designed by Novague, also based in the Czech Republic. As is commonly the case with such devices, the phone gives up technical power compared to most modern smartphones, which often carry smaller price tags, although not by as much as others.
Barnes & Noble is planning to drop its claims of focusing only on reading and attack the tablet market more directly, a slew of leaks confirmed to Android Central late Thursday. Its November 7 event will see it roll out the Nook Tablet, the rumored high-end model. Although it will still have the Nook Color's heavily customized Android interface, it will carry a much faster dual-core, 1.2GHz TI OMAP processor with 1GB of RAM, similar to Motorola's Xoom 2, and 16GB of storage with a microSDHC slot.
Motorola provided a surprise quick reboot of its tablet strategy with fast launches of the 10-inch Xoom 2 and 8.2-inch Xoom 2 Media Edition. Both make amends for the bulky design of the original and are much thinner, in the full Xoom 2's case having exactly the same 8.8mm thickness as the iPad 2. They also tackle the low-quality original Xoom display with brighter, more color-rich LCDs, including a much wider 178-degree viewing angle on the Media Edition.
The Irish branch of Carphone Warehouse has inadvertently spoiled Motorola's plans for a stepped up launch of the Xoom 2 Media Edition. A leak Tuesday through Engadget had the 8.2-inch tablet reaching the island nation before Christmas. At €400 ($547) for a 16GB Wi-Fi model, however, the Android 3.2 slate will be priced relatively close to slightly larger tablets like the €479 iPad 2 ($655).
Motorola's rumored Maserati, better known as the Droid 4, has been spotted live for the first time. The design seen by Droid-Life, which should finally bring LTE-based 4G to Motorola's keyboarded phones, takes clear style cues from the Droid RAZR and may be as thin or thinner than the Droid 3. The phone would go on to bring MOTOACTV syncing, suggesting that it would be ready out of the box to post running results as soon as it's paired up.
Verizon on Wednesday outlined a special strategy for pre-orders of the upcoming Motorola Droid RAZR. Its extra-thin Android option will be available to pre-order on Thursday from an uncharacteristically specific 8AM. All pre-orders should ship by November 10 at the latest.
Sprint put its first real smartphone on its Direct Connect push to talk network Thursday by confirming the Motorola Admiral. A A spiritual heir to the XPRT and Droid Pro, the Android 2.3 phone keeps the 3.1-inch display (at a higher VGA resolution) and BlackBerry-like form but is upgraded to keep in step. The phone now has a faster 1.2GHz single-core TI OMAP processor, and MIL-810G military-grade hardening against dust, water, shock, and temperature.
Google's Romain Guy in an early morning Google+ update inadvertently pre-announced Verizon's edition of the Galaxy Nexus. While showing photos of the setup used to record time-lapse movies for the unveiling, he displayed the Android 4.0 leader clearly showing Verizon's "4G LTE" logo on the back. Samsung and Google had promised some LTE versions, but neither they nor Verizon has made it public.
Google and Samsung at their joint Hong Kong event unveiled the Galaxy Nexus. The new flagship is the first Android 4.0 phone and is a showcase for the platform: it drops physical navigation buttons in favor of all touch and borrows the visual multitasking as well as other elements. Google+ is now built into a Windows Phone-like People Hub, and the NFC inside can now be used to share data between phones through Android Beam.
Less than two hours before it's unveiled, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has been given a video tour (below) by a German poster. The clip shows much of the Android 4.0 interface seen earlier but does give a few new details. Among the slips are a confirmation of the back and that most countries will get it under its i9250 model name.
A last-minute discovery of a poster and detailed specs may have divulged most details of the Galaxy Nexus. The Blog of Mobile sighting of an NTT DoCoMo ad both cemented the name and gave it a November 10 release date, the same as that for Verizon. Samsung is now known to be using a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP4460 processor inside, and Android 4.0 has been identified as Ice Cream Sandwich's final name.
Samsung's Nexus Prime, or Galaxy Nexus, might not be the only device shipping with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in 2011. Well-known and historically reliable leaker black_man_x posted word that HTC and Motorola would be carrying devices with the stock Android 4.0 interface this year. He didn't say what devices would get it or when they might arrive.
Google and Samsung together sent Electronista and others an invitation confirming rumors surrounding a rescheduled Android 4.0 event. The two now plan to unveil the OS, nicknamed Ice Cream Sandwich, along with the Galaxy Nexus (possibly called Nexus Prime), on the morning of October 19 in Hong Kong. The timing coincides with the D Asia conference and would start at 10PM Eastern time.
Motorola's relatively nebulous Spyder has been seen live in earnest for the first time through a leak. The Tuesday sighting at Engadget showed a device with Verizon badging and its 4G LTE logo, making it a very strong candidate for its October 18 event. The Android 2.3 example has a carbon fiber effect back and has its dual-core TI OMAP chip clocked at 1.5GHz, although it's expected to drop down to 1.2GHz in the shipping version.
Motorola and AT&T took a second shot at giving Android a primetime position on the carrier Tuesday by launching the Atrix 2, a sequel to the flagship phone shipped just several months ago. The new version uses faster HSPA+ data, up from 14.4Mbps to 21Mbps, and carries a bigger 4.3-inch 540x940 that switches away from Pentile pixels for a sharper look. The design has also switched out the Tegra 2 in favor of a TI OMAP chip, which still carries two 1GHz cores but is fast enough to record and shoot 1080p video.
Motorola has brought out a new, ruggedized seven-inch tablet targeted squarely at pro users. The ET1 Enterprise Tablet is built for rough handling and includes special features such as Corning Gorilla Glass, which the company claims is 30 percent thicker than conventional home tablet displays. The tablet will run Android 2.3 instead of the latest Android release, Honeycomb (3.0), but has incorporated several enterprise-specific apps and features.
Apple has over 1,000 engineers working on its mobile processors, the late Steve Jobs purportedly mentioned a few weeks ago. An unnamed but "veteran" CEO said shortly after Jobs' resignation that the iconic Apple CEO had told him there were "1,000 engineers working on chips." With 20,000 workers in Apple's non-retail staff, TechCrunch noted in getting the leak, that amounted to five percent of the entire company.
Much of the Galaxy Nexus' mystery was taken away Friday after a Romanian leak and video (below). The Gadget.ro slip shows a design mostly in line with a small peek where the entire front is dominated by its touchscreen. Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) would let it use software-based buttons and, significantly, drop the search button that had once been common to most Android phones.
Google on Thursday inadvertently confirmed that the October 11 Samsung event was the official reveal date for Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0. A YouTube page (embedded below) has an "Android ICS Launch" live event slated to arrive in just under five days as of this writing, or exactly on October 11. Little else is mentioned, including in the "tbd" description.
Lenovo has quietly begun taking sales for its new IdeaPad Tablet A1. The company had announced the entry-level device back in early September with similar lack of fanfare. The seven-inch device, which runs Android 2.3, is priced from $199 to $249, depending on capacity.
Some of the finer details of the Galaxy Nexus may have emerged shortly before its appearance. A new claim Thursday noted that the five-megapixel camera would have an unusual emphasis on speed. The device has an "almost instant shutter," Droid-Life was told, putting it on a par with the fast if higher resolution iPhone 4S.
