Hasta La Gadget!

Google Play quietly updated its device availability page over the weekend, making the Nexus 7 available to Germany, France and Spain. Patient Europeans can now pick up Mountain View’s seven-inch wonderkind’s 8GB and 16GB models for €199 and €249, respectively. Conversion rates comparatively price the slate at about $248 and $311, meaning the new markets will have to suffer a small premium for the slate. Worse still, is that not all of Google Play’s services are available worldwide, with both Play Music and Magazines retaining US exclusivity. If you can bear with the inconveniences, however, one fine little tablet awaits.

Nexus 7 checks off Spain, Germany and France on availability chart, sells for a premium originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Android users have quite a few choices to pick from when it comes to flashing custom ROMs onto their phones. There’s the ever popular CyanogenMod and there’s also MIUI. If you’re a fan of the latter, you might be interested to learn that the team behind the ROM has updated its code base to Jelly Bean. Unfortunately it seems that the Jelly Bean-based ROM will not be available for all devices just yet and only the Nexus S and the Galaxy Nexus are the lucky ones who will be able to flash the ROM onto their phones. If you own either device, you can head on over to the MIUI forums to check out the changelog and to see what sort of features and changes you can expect, or you can head on to another part of the forum where you will be able to download the ROM for yourself. As usual, you should proceed with caution and remember to back up your device before making any changes!

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Galaxy Nexus reportedly having GPS problems after Jelly Bean update, Google officially announces Jelly Bean OTA update for Nexus S phones,

Teasing your customers about forthcoming software updates isn’t very nice — unless you deliver on the very same day, of course. ASUS hinted, just this morning, that Jelly Bean might be on its way to some of its devices via the company’s Facebook page. Now, we’re getting reports from Transformer Pad TF300 owners that the update has landed. ASUS was even kind enough to beat its own estimate (for the TF300, at least) by a significant measure. Could this mean the TF700 update is on its way? Our advice? Keep mashing that “Check now” just to make sure.

[Thanks, James, Godwill]

Filed under: Tablet PCs

ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 gets Jelly Bean update, TF700 looks at watch impatiently originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 11:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here’s a bit of good news to soak in over the weekend. After the unveiling of the Xiaomi Phone 2 (aka Mi2) in front of some 3,000 people yesterday, a reliable source informed us that the Chinese startup is already looking to bring its highly affordable phones to Europe next year. Alas, we couldn’t get a more specific time frame, but assuming Xiaomi wants to deliver its first quad core device to the Europeans as well, it’d likely be within the first half of next year, well before the next August 16th announcement (the company’s managed to stick to the same date so far).

Of course, it all depends on whether Xiaomi can scale its business model for the unknown territories, and it’ll certainly need some solid partners to do so — much like its collaboration with local retail channels China Unicom, China Telecom and Vancl. Luckily, the MIUI developer will be doing a warm up first in Taiwan. As reported by Business Next last month, chairman Lei Jun made a high profile visit to several Taiwanese carriers in the hopes of breaking into their market by the end of this year. If successful, Lei should be able to meet his ambitious sales target of 6 million Xiaomi Phones accumulated — still some way away from the 3.52 million units sold so far. Judging by the madness at the event this week (see gallery below), it should be no problem.

Filed under: Cellphones

Xiaomi Phones may enter Europe next year, because China ain’t big enough originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At last, no more secrets. Announced in Beijing just now is the Xiaomi Phone 2, and with the exception of the appearance, most of the specs match the many leaks we’ve come across: 4.3-inch 720p IPS display by Sharp, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 quad-core chip, 2GB RAM and 16GB memory. To power this beast, Xiaomi’s throwing in a 2,000mAh cell, but you can also purchase a 3,000mAh version if you don’t mind the extra 2mm thickness on the phone. As for photography, you get a 28mm two-megapixel imager at the front along with a 27mm F2.0 eight-megapixel BSI camera on the back — we saw some stunning untouched shots from the latter at the launch event.

The good news doesn’t stop there. On the software front Xiaomi’s decided to jump straight to Android Jelly Bean for the phone’s MIUI ROM, which itself packs several new features as well. Just to name a few: enhanced security, phone finder, Chinese voice assistant (apparently with 85 percent comprehension accuracy), more interactive themes and 5GB of cloud storage service with online client.

As you can already see, all of this will cost just ¥1,999 (about $310) — the same as the original Xiaomi Phone announced this time last year — when it launches in October, and local carriers China Unicom plus China Telecom will also be offering the DC-HSPA+ handset at subsidized prices. Interestingly, Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun even admitted on the stage that the phone’s raw cost is ¥2,350 ($370) per unit, so hopefully it’ll go down sooner than later for his sake. But if ¥1,999 is still too much, there’s also the ¥1,499 ($235) Xiaomi Phone 1S which, as we’ve already seen, is very much just the original Xiaomi but bumped up from 1.5GHz to 1.7GHz, along with a front-facing camera.

Until we get hold of the phones to play with, here are some photos from the event.

Update: Now we have some photos from our very brief hands-on — each person was only given 90 seconds with the beta units! That said, the Xiaomi Phone 2s already felt pretty solid and the UI animation was slick, so we look forward to the more refined engineering samples next month.

Update 2: Forgot to mention that both devices support WCDMA 850、1900 and 2100MHz. So yes, it’ll work just fine on AT&T!

Filed under: Cellphones

Xiaomi Phone 2 now official: 4.3-inch 720p IPS, quad core and Jelly Bean for just $310 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 05:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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