Hasta La Gadget!

As usual, Apple thought Friday night on a holiday weekend was the perfect time to push some more paper through in its ongoing patent lawsuit against Samsung. According to Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents, after Samsung asked to add the latest iPads, iPhones and iPod touches to its list of claims and the court approved the addition of the iPhone 5, Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 10.1, Apple is trying to put six more devices on the list. Listed in the motion are the Galaxy S III running Android Jelly Bean (but not Jelly Bean itself), Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Tab 8.9 WiFi, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Rugby Pro and Galaxy S III mini. As usual, the case will proceed, we’ll wait to hear if these requests are approved by the court and in the meantime, iThings and Galaxys alike will continue to fly off the shelves. Given the season, for now it’s time to be thankful we’re not one of the lawyers spending their day working on this. That leaves us plenty of time for more interesting activities, like hand-to-hand combat against fellow shoppers for the right to purchase slightly discounted items.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Apple, Samsung

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Source: FOSS Patents, Reuters

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it’s easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don’t escape without notice, we’ve gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of November 12th, 2012

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Refresh Roundup: week of November 12th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Nov 2012 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lest you think HTC has a complete lock on Sharp’s supply of extra-dense 5-inch, 1080p screens for the Droid DNA and J Butterfly, Sharp itself is building a phone around the giant LCD. The Aquos Phone SH930W slightly rethinks the internals of HTC’s new Android 4.1 flagship to make it more affordable, doubling the non-expandable storage to 32GB but scaling back to a dual-core, 1.5GHz Snapdragon S3 and dropping the currently unsupported LTE. That cost-cutting will be vital, as the SH930W is headed to a more price-sensitive Russia first, in late November — one of the few (if not only) times that Sharp has tailored a smartphone to a country other than its native Japan. The 22,000-ruble ($694) off-contract price in Russia could undercut mere 720p rivals that often cost 25,000 rubles ($789) or more.

It’s an odd phone by any account, and Mobile-review was curious enough to snag a pre-release SH930W for an early inspection. While the device under the microscope was running vanilla Android rather than the planned Feel UX and may easily have a fair share of buggy code, initial benchmarks seem to validate fears of a mismatch between the display and an underpowered chip: the S3 is fast enough for common tasks at that resolution, but chokes with playing 1080p video and certain 3D games. Anyone buying the extra-large Aquos Phone will mostly be choosing it for the good battery life, the camera and that killer price, the site says. We’ll admit to being slightly disappointed at such a pedestrian fate for Sharp’s screen so soon into its lifespan, although we suspect performance-minded Muscovites could get a chance at a much faster HTC Deluxe in the near future.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Sharp Aquos SH930W reviewed early in Russia, mates Sharp’s 1080p screen with a mid-tier phone originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Voice callers who lean heavily on the Android app got an unwelcome side dish of predictable app crashes if they upgraded to Android 4.2 very quickly. Thankfully, the developers in Mountain View have been quick to get us back to the main course: a newly available update patches the relevant bug and lets us get back to messaging as usual. Anyone who held off on a firmware upgrade (or a Nexus purchase) for fear that they’d miss an important call has just been given the all-clear signal.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Google

Google Voice update cures Android 4.2 compatibility woes originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As mobile phones have become more powerful, prices for many flagship models have managed to linger were they always were — at the top end. The Xiaomi has always been one exception, though. Last year, this Beijing startup launched its very first namesake phone at just CN¥1,999 ($320), which was rather impressive given that this was the first Chinese device to feature the 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon MSM8260 chip (not to be mistaken with the Krait-based MSM8260A). This stimulated two fronts of the smartphone war: the price-per-performance ratio kind, and the cheap-as-hell kind. With regards to performance, we’re looking at competitors like Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and good old Meizu; while the price battle involves taking on MediaTek-powered devices under various new brands — many of which have done so well that they’ve now set up stores in Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei area.

Needless to say, Xiaomi is now facing a greater challenge — one that barely existed a year ago. But on the brighter side of things, the company now has three Android devices spanning two price tiers: two editions of the Xiaomi Phone 1S for ¥1,299 ($210) or ¥1,499 ($240), and the quad-core Xiaomi Phone 2 — the star of this review — for ¥1,999, which is well below its ¥2,350 ($380) raw cost, according to CEO Lei Jun. There’s no doubt that Xiaomi could recoup some of the costs from its vast range of accessories, and with the imminent launch of the Xiaomi TV set-top box next month, it’s clear that the company’s hoping to profit from content. Still, as mama said, it’s the first impression that counts (especially for consumers outside China, anyway), so read on to see how we coped with Xiaomi’s second-gen flagship phone.

Continue reading Xiaomi Phone 2 review: high-end specs in a surprisingly affordable package

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Xiaomi Phone 2 review: high-end specs in a surprisingly affordable package originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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