Hasta La Gadget!

Following in the steps of the HTC Evo before it, the Motorola Atrix 4G has been hacked to give root privileges before the phone is even available to buy. In more evidence that Android hackers are frequently out-pacing the creators of the phones themselves, the third post in the xda-developers thread where the root was announced was a half-sarcastic “why did it take so long?” 

Right now, this is more of an academic achievement than a practical one for two reasons. First, the actual steps to obtain root privileges haven’t even been released to the public. Second, there is still a good chance that one of the main draws of rooted phones, custom ROMs, will be difficult to install thanks to an encrypted and locked bootloader. 

While rooting your phone is highly discouraged (as it’s likely to cause an increased security risk, break all kinds of terms of service and make your carrier very unhappy) the speed of this announcement is nothing short of astounding. If the amount of interest that the hacker community has in this phone is paralleled by the general public, it looks like Motorola and AT&T might have a winner on their hands.

[via Engadget, xda-developers]

Now that we’ve seen the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play (the PlayStation Phone) and the Sony NGP (PSP 2, more or less), what’s next in the PlayStation form factor takeover? If you said “tablet,” you may well be right. Heck, everyone is getting in the post-iPad consumer tablet game. Everyone but Sony, that is.

As all of chief competitors announce their stabs at the iPad throne, the consumer electronics giant has been largely silent. Executives at the company have noted the existence of plans, back at CES, but beyond that, not much.

Word is that Sony’s working on something at the moment conamed the S1, a Google Honeycomb tablet, designed by folks on the PlayStation, VAIO, Reader, and Sony Ericsson sides of the business. The tablet will apparently be built around Sony’s Qriocity multimedia store and will come loaded with a number of PlayStation One games. Also including in the package: a Bravia Media Remote and some manner of PlayStation integration.

The tablet is said to sport that weird design above, apparently meant to replicate a folded paperback. Remember those? The screen is said to be 9.4 inches, with a 1,280 x 800 resolution. There’ll be front and rear facing cameras and a USB report. The only physical button on the thing is an on/off switch. The thing is also apparently packing a Tegra 2 processor inside.

According to the leak, the S1 will ship in September for $599 for the Wi-Fi version.

Today at Mobile World Congress, HTC unveiled two new Facebook based phones and a tablet, an odd change since the company’s statement last month that it wouldn’t be releasing a phone based on the popular social network. The phones are called Salsa and Chacha. HTC believes that the phones will give it an advantage in the battle against Apple and RIM. The Salsa has a full QWERTY keyboard, 3.4 inch screen, and runs on Google Android OS. The Chacha also runs on the Android OS, and, has a 2.6 inch touchscreen. 

The HTC tablet is called Flyer. It has a Sense UI, digital pen , 7 inch screen, and a Qualcomm 5 gigahertz processor. The Flyer also runs Android. 

For the last year, we have heard rumors about a Facebook phone-which Mark Zuckerberg always denied. These two phones appear to be the closest to an actual Facebook phone as you’ll be able to get.