Hasta La Gadget!

Alcatel’s pen-toting One Touch Scribe HD now has a larger counterpart: meet the One Touch Hero. The new Android 4.2 smartphone upgrades to a 6-inch 1080p LCD, and gets a raft of optional cover accessories that augment the giant display. An E Ink cover lets owners read books without using the power-hungry main screen; there’s also a wireless charging cover and a MagicFlip cover with LED notifications. Even without those extras, the Hero is overall more powerful than its Scribe HD ancestor. It carries a faster 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM, a sharper 13-megapixel rear camera, an improved 2-megapixel front shooter and either 8GB or 16GB of expandable storage. Should you be intrigued, the One Touch Hero will be available in October for a “high-end” price. Alcatel will also sell a Bluetooth phone accessory (much like the HTC Mini+), a TV Link video adapter and a pico projector that doubles as a stand. %Gallery-slideshow77141%

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Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Alcatel

We always enjoy Google’s new statues for each version of Android, however the one posted just now for KitKat / 4.4 may have a bonus treat. The Googler in the green shirt is holding a device that reads Nexus on the back, however compared to the woman conveniently holding a Nexus 4 just inches away, it’s clearly not the same. The word Nexus is spelled out in a different direction, the camera seems different, and it looks bigger than the Nexus 4, but it appears to have an LG logo on the bottom. The video is embedded after the break, you can catch a glimpse of the mystery unit about 38 seconds in. It’s certainly curious timing for a new device to pop up, right after the old one dropped in price and is out of stock for at least one version.

Update: Well, you could have seen it in the video but Google has suddenly yanked it from YouTube, adding even more intrigue to the situation. We’ve contacted the company for a statement and will let you know if we hear anything.

Update 2: One of our commenters linked another video of the unveiling that also shows the device. It’s taken from behind the people shown above, and while we can’t get a clear look at the screen you can get a better idea of the phone’s dimensions. Whoops! It looks like that one’s gone now too.

[Thanks, Mike and everyone else who sent this in]

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google, LG

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Source: YouTube

After “a whirlwind trip to Asia” visiting Android partners, Google’s SVP Sundar Pichai has just confirmed — by way of the above photo — that the next version of his mobile OS is called KitKat aka Android 4.4. The exec shared this geeky nugget on both Google+ and Twitter, while his company has updated the Android developer site with a page chronicling Android’s milestones so far. Details are light at the moment, and Google teases its upcoming release with just the following line:

“It’s our goal with Android KitKat to make an amazing Android experience available for everybody.”

Pichai also announced that there are now over one billion Android device activations, surpassing the 900 million mark back in May this year. This is well ahead of the end-of-year target that Chairman Eric Schmidt predicted back in April. Just to recap, here are all the previous dessert-based names that contributed to these figures: Cupcake (1.5), Donut (1.6), Eclair (2.0), Froyo (2.2), Gingerbread (2.3), Honeycomb (3.0), Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0), and Jelly Bean (4.1-4.3). Naturally, it’s “K” after “J” now. More after the break (pun intended).

Update: We’ve added Nestle’s wacky promo video as well.

Update 2: Go ahead and grab the kids, because you’ll now find a short clip of the KitKat statue’s unveiling. So… is anyone gonna break off a piece of that, or what?

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google+, @SundarPichai (Twitter), Google, BBC

The next iPhone will be (presumably) unveiled on September 10th, as hinted at on the Apple-delivered invite that you see above. When the curtains pull back, it’ll be nearly a year to the day since the iPhone 5 was ushered into reality, and it’ll no doubt be a monumentally important day for the company. Particularly compared to the barrage of products Apple introduced in 2012 — iPad mini, iPhone 5, the MacBook Pro with Retina display, enhanced MacBook Air / iMac / Mac mini lines, a redesigned iPod nano, a revised iPad / iPod touch / Apple TV, ad OS X Mountain Lion — 2013 has been eerily quiet. Outside of a tweaked iPhone 5 for T-Mobile’s network, a Haswell-infused MacBook Air and a tease of the next-generation Mac Pro, we’ve been left with little more than hopes for newly-inspired versions of iOS and OS X.

That changes on the 10th of September, as at the very least, we’re expecting a next-gen iPhone to hit the stage. We’ll also be holding out hope for an oh-so-colorful lower-end iPhone 5C for emerging markets — markets where Android and even Windows Phone are the platforms of choice for communities making the move into the smartphone era. We wouldn’t put it past Apple to also revise its iPad line while it’s at it, and naturally, iOS 7 should be just about primed for release to the masses. As you’d expect, we’ll be on hand in Cupertino in order to liveblog every second of the action, and we’d invite you to cast your best guesses on what’s to come in comments below.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Apple

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Acer is known for its influence in the PC and tablet markets, but it actually have a pretty solid Android smartphone lineup too — and the company is starting to focus more intensely on it. Take the Acer Liquid S2, for instance: it’s a 6-inch Android smartphone with 4K recording capability, a Snapdragon 800 processor and a 13MP camera, and we had the opportunity to check it out here in Berlin ahead of IFA 2013.

The unit, which is hitting Europe in October for 549 euros, will come in both black and red hues. Reps indicated to that the units they had on hand are still pre-production, so both firmware and hardware are subject to change between now and the phone’s launch. With that said, we didn’t notice any bugs or issues with general performance, but let’s face it: even when it’s not fully optimized, a device packing Snapdragon 800 still feels incredibly fast. Head past the break for our first impressions.%Gallery-slideshow77217%

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Acer

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