Hasta La Gadget!

Google just defied expectations again — it mustered a full $12.21 billion in revenue and generated an ample $2.79 billion in profit for its second quarter of 2012. The growth in revenue was a heady 21 percent over what the search leader saw a year ago (about 15 percent sequentially), even with a recently-swallowed Motorola now factoring (however slightly) into its results. About $10.96 billion of revenue comes from advertising and other close-to-the-vest businesses, $7.54 billion of which was from sites directly owned by Google. Unlike this winter, Google doesn’t have any wildcards in store for share splits or other saucy details. Of course, we may learn more when executives hit the phones for a results call — at present, the company is just happy to look forward to a summer of Nexus 7 sales and Jelly Beans.

Update: Drilling down into Motorola’s separate results, Google said its new acquisition generated $1.25 billion by itself, about $843 million of which was after the acquisition was completed. If Motorola had stood on its own, it would have lost $38 million: success with the Droid RAZR MAXX in the US were offset by the continued decline of basic cellphones elsewhere in the world.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Internet

Google hits $12.21 billion in revenue for Q2 2012 (update: Motorola figures) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever get the shakes sending out an angry text message? You’d better be careful if you buy a BlackBerry in the future, as RIM is trying for a patent that would telegraph all that wrath to the recipient on the other end. The technique uses a myriad of sensors, like an accelerometer, front camera or pressure sensor, to gauge just how emotional a smartphone owner might be and convey that through livelier messaging styles. Get flustered and that BlackBerry Messenger font gets big, bold and red; mellow out with a smile, and the conversation text becomes almost cuddly. Whether or not the patent is granted, let alone used, is very much an unknown. We have a hunch that RIM would rather not make BlackBerry users keep a poker face.

Filed under: Cellphones

RIM applies for patent on detecting emotion in messaging, wants you chilled while you BBM originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As much as N-Trig is an old hand at supporting styluses, it’s had to focus on tablets and other larger devices due to technology limits: the HTC Flyer is about as small as the company has gone to date. A new version of N-Trig’s DuoSense chipset family could be the ticket to going to much smaller sizes. The new 4000 series condenses both pen input and multi-touch finger gestures into a combination of one chip and one sensor, letting any entrepreneurial device maker stuff the two control methods into a handheld device with as little as a 5-inch display. Naturally, the chip line scales all the way to 15.6-inch panels for creatives poking at the screens of laptops and larger Ultrabooks. We’re told that both Android and Windows slates will get N-Trig’s tinier touch tricks before the end of the year — whether or not that includes phablets with the same girth as the Galaxy Note or Optimus Vu, however, is left to our wild imaginings.

Continue reading N-Trig pen tech whittled down to single DuoSense chips and sensors, shrinks scribblings to travel size

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

N-Trig pen tech whittled down to single DuoSense chips and sensors, shrinks scribblings to travel size originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cellular promos come and go. Rogers, however, wants to make sure that its 6GB Super Plan is one to remember: the carrier is offering the 6GB of monthly data that has become its summer tradition, only this time as part of a bigger plan that tucks in 200 minutes, unlimited messaging and the usual evening and favorites perks for voice calls. At $60, the combo isn’t just a better deal than usual, it’s impossible to build otherwise — the closest that exists is a $73 monthly plan that tops out at 3GB. The promo’s August 8th cutoff date doesn’t afford much breathing room for would-be adopters, but it should let new Galaxy S III buyers milk that LTE for all it’s worth.

Filed under: Cellphones

Rogers offers 6GB Super Plan, guarantees that Galaxy S III will stay busy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jul 2012 03:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anyone who’s been scanning to see who gets what in iOS 6 has noticed that the iPhone 3GS is the red-headed stepchild of the family — some features that really don’t need a cutting-edge phone have been left on the chopping block. Apple is showing those owners some TLC, after all, by officially flicking on support for Shared Photo Streams and VIP Mail lists through the entire iOS 6-ready device list. With the exception of Safari’s Offline Reading List, the only features now left out for iPhone 3GS owners are the ones you’d expect to be excluded from a 3-year-old phone, such as FaceTime, Siri and those 3D-heavy map flyovers. While the iPhone 4S is still the darling of the lot, 3GS owners can now cling to their aging veteran phones a little more securely for at least another year.

Filed under: Cellphones

Apple gives iPhone 3GS owners some love, lets them taste Shared Photo Streams and VIP Mail in iOS 6 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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