Hasta La Gadget!

LG could change the way phone manufactures design smartphones forever. LG will debut the first-ever 3D smartphone on Valentine’s Day. LG’s latest phone is called LG Optimus 3D. It will allow people to see 3D without having to wear those pesky glasses.

LG has confirmed that they will show the world the newest and fanciest phone during the Mobile World Congress. The LG Optimus 3D will also have a dual-core processor, multichannel RAM, two cameras (front ended and rear 3D camera), HDMI, and DLNA support. As of this time we do not know which phone carrier will carry the LG Optimus 3D or when it will hit the market. Hopefully LG will release that info during the debut of the phone later on this month.

LG is taking a large risk with this and it could set a new bar for the industry. I have to say that is very exciting news for the smartphone industry as a whole. Best of all, Android might even get a bigger boost because of this upcoming phone.

Via Ars Technica

I guess this means war. App war. Apple is reportedly amping up control of its already fairly closely vetted App Store, blocking a number of companies from its wall-garden–namely those selling content through their offerings. The most high-profile offender? Sony. Apple sent a rejection letter to the consumer electronics giant over an iPhone app that let users but books from the Sony Reader Store.

The news, naturally, came out via Sony. Apple–at least for the moment–isn’t talking. “It’s the opposite of what we wanted to bring to the market,” Sony digital reading president Steve Haber told The New York Times. “We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store.”

According to Haber, Apple’s rejection letter informed Sony that all in-app purchases need to be approved directly by Apple. No word yet on how this will affect companies like Amazon, which already offer such content through the App Store.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, good news, you may be a prime candidate to run a tech company. Tech CEOs have never been ones to pull punches when it comes to discussing how competitors are run. In fact, they seem to thrive on issuing such outspoken critcism–and yes, we certainly thrive on reporting it.

Netgear CEO Patrick Lo had all kinds of less than flattering things to say about the way Apple is run, and how the company will stumble once Steve Jobs takes his exit, “which is probably not far away.”

The iPhone, Lo told The Sydney Morning Herald, will ultimately fail, due to Apple’s restrictions on the device, comparing it to VHS vs. Betamax and, closer to home, Mac vs. PC. “Ultimately a closed system just can’t go that far,” said Lo. “If they continue to close it and let Android continue to creep up then it’s pretty difficult as I see it.”

Lo attributed Jobs’s policy to his “ego,” stating, “Steve Jobs wants to suffocate the distribution so even though he doesn’t own the content he could basically demand a ransom.”

As for Microsoft’s ability to compete in the mobile space? The picture is even less rosy, “”Microsoft is over. Game over, from my point of view.”

Lo sees Android overtaking the iPhone globally–something that, according to mobile analyst group Canalys, already happened in the fourth quarter of last year.

Not even a lack of an official OS release will stop the folks at XDA-Developers from their Android hacking. The big news lately? Forum member deeper-blue has gotten the version of Honeycomb from the recently-released SDK preview running on a Nook Color. A pretty impressive feat, given that the Android Open Source Project has yet to put out the full source of the new OS. According to a video posted on the site, hardware acceleration and touchscreen input is working, but almost nothing else is. There aren’t any downloads of the custom firmware posted (which is probably a good thing given the state of the port), but the developer has posted a short video of it running with graphics acceleration on YouTube.