Hasta La Gadget!

The Atrix 4G is today an eminently more intriguing smartphone than it was yesterday. Leaked code from Motorola’s upcoming Gingerbread update for the handset has made its way into the hands of the always-eager coders at xda-developers, which has resulted in two things: one, the discovery that Motorola intends to unlock the Atrix’s bootloader when it upgrades it to Android 2.3, and two, downloadable files to let you do exactly that today, even if you’re still stuck on Froyo. Moto users have been pleading for this change for a long time and Motorola did pledge to make it happen across its portfolio of devices, but it comes as a mild (and happy) surprise to see this change being effected retroactively. Check the links below to see how you can unchain your phone’s bootloader if you can’t wait for the official software to drop.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Atrix 4G bootloader unlocked: you can hack it up today or wait for official Gingerbread update originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 02:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you use Google Sites to publish to the web? The search giant just added automatic mobile rendering to make your website more mobile-friendly when viewed on an iOS 3.0 or Android 2.2+ device. A new setting to “Automatically adjust site for mobile phones” can be activated in the site management page, at which point pages designed for desktop viewing will be displayed in a much simpler web format, so readers won’t need to pinch-to-zoom just to see a page’s content. Google also added mobile versions of the site list, sites search, and browse sites categories, for easy access from your smartphone. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but if you happen to run a Google Site or have a friend that does, it wouldn’t hurt to flip the switch on mobile viewing — your visitors will appreciate it.

Google Sites simplifies iOS and Android viewing with automatic mobile rendering originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From the front it looks like yet another plain smartphone — dark, nondescript, and maybe a little like an iPhone 4 that’s had its right-most extent sliced off. Pick it up, though, and you realize this little thing isn’t so nondescript. In fact, it feels oddly substantial, with a strange bevel cutting around the edge and a curious amount of heft. And then you flip it open. Suddenly it’s a little tablet, two screens forming one 6-inch slate bisected by a few millimeters of bezel.

Shades of the Echo? Sure, but this is actually a very different device to hold, and a very different device to use. The software customizations built over Android 2.3, the bezel gestures, the proper multitasking, all make this into a unique device that feels incredibly familiar yet altogether different. It’s a prototype device from Imerj and Frog (formerly known as Frog Design) something that’s months away from production and hasn’t even been blessed with a model designation more specific than “2-in-1 smartpad.” So, is this poncho-clad Phone with No Name a legitimate threat to the established families of devices that own our little wireless San Miguel? Or, will it ride straight off into a sunset of obscurity when it launches? Read on to find out.

Continue reading Prototype dual-screened 2-in-1 Android smartpad from Imerj preview

Prototype dual-screened 2-in-1 Android smartpad from Imerj preview originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Make sure your parents don’t mistake this for an iPad at Christmas

You know how the only non-iPod MP3 players that people buy are those $10 pieces of junk in dime stores, or by the checkout in cheap supermarkets? I have a feeling that the tablet market is going the same way.

With all the major players struggling to match the iPad’s aggressively low price, it may be left to junk like the $100 Arnova 7, a seven-inch tablet packed with all the latest tech — if we were living in 2005.

The tablet runs Android 2.2 Froyo, has a whopping 4GB storage, a mystery-meat processor, and an 800×480 pixel screen. The screen is — laughably — resistive, just like the ones we used to enjoy on our tablet PCs back in the day. Data can be gotten onto the machine via USB or microSD card, and you can sit back and relax as you watch movies at up to 720p (not bad, if it works without skipping).

And that’s it. What did you expect for $100? You want to know the battery life? Well, it seems that Arnova is too embarrassed about this to tell us. The product specs give both music and video playback time as “up to hours.”

It would be easy to laugh this off as a toy that nobody will ever buy, but the truth is infinitely sadder. Imagine poor little Johnny waking up excited on Christmas morning, tearing the wrapping paper off what he thinks is an iPad, and finding that his clueless parents have bought him this piece of tat instead.

Arnova 7 [Arnovatech via CrunchGear]

See Also:

• New Archos Tablet Is a Kid's Toy, Not Suitable for Adults …
• Kobo Comes to Next3 Android Craplet, Will Probably Sell a Ton …

Some might argue that ASUS already has an ARM-powered Android laptop in its inventory thanks to the Eee Pad Transformer, however the company’s now been identified as planning a more spacious 13-inch notebook device, whose power and pricing could well be even more attractive than the Transformer’s. We should naturally be wary of the source here, DigiTimes having a record that’s as patchy as the grass at Wimbledon after the first week’s play, but the Taiwanese rumormonger says ASUS has already made launch plans for this 13-incher and will be using “NVIDIA’s processor” inside. What’s intriguing here is that in the paragraph immediately preceding that revelation, DigiTimes mentions quad-core ARM SOCs — of which the one nearest to release is NVIDIA’s Kal-El. Given the non-specificity of which NVIDIA processor we can expect, Kal-El’s projected August release date, and the fact that the chip has already figured in an ultraslim Windows 8 prototype laptop, we’d say there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to stimulate dreams of quad-core Android laptop action. Additionally, DigiTimes points out that multiple vendors are gunning to offer ARM-powered notebooks with sub-$299 price points, aiming to gobble up market share with rock bottom pricing. Bring ’em on, we say.

ASUS rumored to have 13-inch Android laptop on its mind, NVIDIA expected to provide ARM CPU originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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