Hasta La Gadget!

There are plenty of (terribly named) stars in Samsung’s Galaxy, but despite the overcrowding, its stateside constellation’s showing no signs of slowing. Joining US Cellular’s lineup as early as this Friday, the Metrix 4G packs a mix of yesteryear’s specs for a budget LTE alternative to the GS III. The 4-inch handset, outfitted with the OEM’s preferred Super AMOLED display tech, runs the incredibly stale Android 2.3 Gingerbread atop a single-core 1GHz processor and packs a dual 1.3-megapixel front facing / 5-megapixel rear camera setup into a slide-out QWERTY form factor. If you happen to live within the operator’s 4G footprint, you’ll be able to snag this handset for $130 with a mail-in rebate, otherwise outliers will have to chalk up an additional $50. Skip on past the break to check out the company’s official PR.

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Metrix 4G hits US Cellular this Friday for $180

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Samsung Galaxy Metrix 4G hits US Cellular this Friday for $180 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 15:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Diamond Multimedia’s more commonly known around the web for selling Mac and PC capture cards (among other things), but as of today, the company’s officially entering the set-top box game with its AMP1000. The media player itself is running a not-so-new flavor of Android — Gingerbread, to be exact — which will be used to bring a slew of familiar entertainment tidbits to the bigger screen, such as a media player capable of 1080p playback, an evolved internet browser and an oversized photo viewer, as well as other content like games, ebooks and magazines — all of which can be downloaded from Google’s Play repertoire. Although Diamond Multimedia’s formally pricing the AMP1000 at $120, there’s a Facebook-only offer that knocks the price down to a mere $100. Now, will it be enough to compete with, say, Vizio’s $99 Google TV box? We’ll let you be the judge of that.

Update: Well, in case you weren’t fond of the AMP1000’s Gingerbread innards, Diamond Multimedia’s got something in the works to solve that problem. A company rep has contacted us to let us know Ice Cream Sandwich will be coming to early adopters “later this week,” as well as noting that all future units will come with the creamy OS already onboard.

Continue reading Diamond Multimedia outs AMP1000 Android set-top box: Gingerbread-based, 1080p, sells for $120 (update: ICS coming this week)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Home Entertainment

Diamond Multimedia outs AMP1000 Android set-top box: Gingerbread-based, 1080p, sells for $120 (update: ICS coming this week) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Diamond Multimedia  | Email this | Comments

What a surprise! Onkyo, Japan most loved Audio and Video company announced today the launch of NT-A1, its first Android HDMI STICK!
The NT-A1 will unfortunately only run on Android 2.3, but will be powered by a very capable ARM A9 Cortex Single Core CPU at 1Ghz, comes with 5123MB of RAM and 4GB of memory.
The NT-A1 also feature a microSD slot, 1 USB 2.0 Port, WiFi bgn and is completely compatible with Google Play.
While there is no word yet on a possible upgrade to Android 4.0, the NT-A1 will …

While it hasn’t actually started to roll out yet, one of our readers sent in pics of a Verizon FiOS survey gauging reactions to a new device that “may be available in the future” as the FiOS Companion tablet. As described in the survey, it’s a WiFi-connected Android slate that not only runs the usual apps, but also works as universal remote control and streams “select” TV channels (probably the same ones as the Xbox 360 app) directly to its screen. The sole picture included confirms we’re looking at the Motorola Corvair 6-inch Android 2.3 tablet that surfaced late last year with all of those features, home automation tie-ins and a 4000mAh battery. The survey questions don’t reveal much else about its capabilities or potential pricing other than asking users if they would be interested in customizing their own home screen, and how. We’d hope the software has seen some updates since its original leak, but knowing this market that seems unlikely. All we can do now is help Verizon / Motorola with that customer research they were hoping to perform so let them know — is this something you’d be interested in?

[Thanks, anonymous]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Tablet PCs

Verizon survey reveals FiOS Companion Android tablet, aka the Motorola Corvair originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has been out for nearly a year now but it seems that its predecessor, Gingerbread 2.3, is still the operating system dominating the Android scene, at least according to recent stats from the Google Play store. As you can see in the graph and table above, Gingerbread currently represents a whopping 60.6% of Android devices that have accessed the Google Play store, while Ice Cream Sandwich is currently sitting at 15.9%. Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android, has debuted at 0.8% which according to the folks at Cult of Android, was slightly higher than Ice Cream Sandwich back when it was first launched. Hopefully that’s a sign that Jelly Bean adoption rates will be higher, but at the rate we’re going where devices have yet to see Android 4.0, it certainly does look pretty bleak but hopefully things will pick up in due time.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: HTC EVO 3D receives Android 4.0 update in EMEA, Sprint’s update imminent?, Motorola RAZR Maxx with Android 4.0/ICS Update,