Hasta La Gadget!

I certainly did a bit of a double take on seeing this bit of news. The prediction comes from IDC. The analyst group snuck it onto the end of a press released titled “IDC Forecasts Worldwide Smartphone Market to Grow by Nearly 50% in 2011,” which was issued yesterday. 

AT&T has clearly known from the start that its plans to gobble up T-Mobile aren’t going to be a walk in the park. In fact, when the company first made its announcement, it peppered in a number of statements aimed at preemptively curbing the inevitable antitrust concerns. 

The U.S. wireless industry is one of the most fiercely competitive markets in the world and will remain so after this deal. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world where a large majority of consumers can choose from five or more wireless providers in their local market.

Apple has apparently responded to the public outcry surrounding Exodus International’s controversial “gay cure” app. The app, which stirred up protest from gay rights groups earlier this month, culminating in a petition signed by nearly 150,000 people, has disappeared from the iPhone App Store.

Apple has long been a friend of the LGBT community, opposing California’s Proposition 8, removing the anti-gay Manhattan Declaration iPhone app, and earning a 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. I am shocked that this same company has given the green light to an app from a notoriously anti-gay organization like Exodus International that uses scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions of LGBT life to recruit clients.

We all remember when the first Xperia Play commercial creeped us out during the Super Bowl, and now Sony Ericsson continues to bring on the creepy with its latest ads for the phone. The new series feature actress Kristen Schaal, telling us a little bit about the phone with her cartoonish little voice, oh, and some kittens, violence, cussing, and demons thrown in, too.

In the one ad, she starts out saying “If you’re like me, you have eyeballs” and then she goes on to explain her fondness of looking at cute kittens on the phone, before morphing into a warrior to declare her love for defeating ogres and demon lords, and then she goes back to the kittens. 

But perhaps the creepiest ad of the bunch shows Schaal’s description of the phone played backwards, where she becomes possessed, like the girl in the Exorcist, with burning, red eyes and a demonic voice as she tells you that the phone gives you power, intense gaming, violence, and adrenaline. Yep, scary and creepy, check.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, you can always watch Schaal thoroughly enjoy stabbing and shooting herself in another ad. If these ads don’t convince you to buy a Xperia Play, I don’t know what would…

Check out a few of the freakiest Xperia Play ads after the jump.

LG’s Optimus 3D is already out Europe, and now the handset is about to hit our shores–albeit under a different name.The US edition is called LG Thrill 4G, but it’s exactly the same as the Optimus. It will be on the AT&T network, with no word on release date or price.

The LG Thrill has Android 2.2, touchscreen, 8GB of memory, SD card support (comes with one installed), and a 5MP 3D camera. It will support 3D without any glasses required, much like the Nintendo 3DS.

Via TG Daily