Hasta La Gadget!

You know how Motorola’s Atrix is unique in having all these docking stations and a Webtop app that collectively turn it into a far more versatile computer than your average superpowered smartphone? Well, Sanjay Jha has just told investors at a Morgan Stanley shindig that the Atrix won’t be unique for long — the Webtop app will be making an appearance on all of Moto’s “high performance” smartphones in the second half of this year, and we’re told that the only reason the Droid Bionic won’t be shipping with it was the simple constraint of time. What that implies, but something Jha didn’t say, is that the Bionic and Moto’s other forthcoming devices are likely to have laptop docks of their own — hopefully with a connector that makes the docking accessory interchangeable between models.

Motorola: all our high-end smartphones will have Webtop from June onwards originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though we played with ASUS’ Android-powered Eee Pad MeMO back at CES, the company spilled a couple new secrets here at CeBIT today: first, it’ll be running Honeycomb by the time it launches in June — current prototypes are running Gingerbread — and second, certain MeMO bundles will include the MeMic, a separate Bluetooth handset that lets you take calls without holding a giant tablet to your face (it’s pronounced “me-mike,” by the way). Interestingly, the MeMic features a translucent LCD that we’re told will make it to the production units; unfortunately, the units on display were running very early alpha software that had “given out” by the time we arrived at the booth, so we couldn’t get a sense of viewability. In addition to making calls, the MeMic will let you stream music, control media, and perform a few other basic tasks that make sense for a tablet remote.

On the Honeycomb side, ASUS tells us the delay is simple — as it stands, a commercial-grade Honeycomb port doesn’t exist for Qualcomm hardware, which is what the Eee Pad MeMO is running (the Xoom — the only released Honeycomb tablet so far — is running Tegra 2). The company’s confident that it’ll be ready by the time the MeMO’s slated for release in June, however. Follow the break for video!

Continue reading ASUS Eee Pad MeMO and MeMic hands-on (video)

ASUS Eee Pad MeMO and MeMic hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As far-fetched as it may seem, rumors that RIM is working on some sort of Android app support for its QNX-based PlayBook tablet have persisted in various forms for months now — and they’ve turned up once again in a video posted by development community MobileMonday’s Rio chapter taken at MWC earlier this month, where a RIM rep seemingly says “we will also support Android apps” after talking about Java-based offerings. Of course, this could’ve been staged by some rabble rousers or a rep could’ve simply been echoing back the rumors he’s seen on the interwebs — but regardless, it adds fuel to the fire. Follow the break to see the video of that.

But it gets weirder. ShopSavvy — which makes versions of its app for iOS and Android — has started turning up a couple of older BlackBerry devices in its Android build’s usage statistics on Flurry: the Curve 8300 and 8520, to be specific, along with an 8600 model that doesn’t exist (at least, not yet). The 8300, in particular, is pretty ancient at this point and we’re having a hard time wrapping our brain around RIM’s game plan in porting Dalvik (or a Dalvik-like) VM and associated libraries over to it; if anything, Flurry could be confused. Then again, a next-generation full-touch BlackBerry that just happens to run a full suite of Android apps in a sandbox could be a pretty compelling product, indeed.

[Thanks to everyone who sent these in]

Continue reading PlayBook Android app support mentioned during demo at MWC, old BlackBerrys show up in ShopSavvy’s Android logs

PlayBook Android app support mentioned during demo at MWC, old BlackBerrys show up in ShopSavvy’s Android logs originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 17:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been hearing reports about Nexus S’ Android 2.3.3 update adding a yellow tint to the screen and even washing out its colors, but according to Google’s Ry Guy, said patch is indeed intended to tweak the display’s color temperature. Here’s the full quote from Google’s support forum:

“With your new OTA complete, you may notice a slight difference in the way colors are displayed on your Nexus S. For Nexus S, we have adjusted the color temperature settings to more accurately reflect darker colors at all brightness levels. The Gingerbread UI being darker, we found that the colors were not as accurate when the device was being used at lower brightness levels. For example, some users reported that the initial color temperature was too high leading to some darker greys having a reddish tone; with the new color temperature this is no longer the case.”

So while this display tweak is well-intentioned, it looks like many commenters on both the forum and XDA-Developers aren’t too happy with this. Being curious geeks that we are, we went ahead and manually updated our own Nexus S (and by the way, be sure to match your build number with the appropriate patch). As you can see in our comparison photos (shot with the same manual camera settings and medium screen brightness), the new overall color temperature is no doubt subtly warmer, although the dimmer brightness settings no longer suffer from the aforementioned red tone. Interestingly, we actually approve this change, and the Super AMOLED display certainly doesn’t look washed out to us, nor do we see any noisy dithering that some have reported. Surely we can’t be alone. Well, there’s only one way to help solve this mystery: if you happen to be a fellow Nexus S owner who’s applied this update, why not chime in below?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Nexus S 2.3.3 update adjusts screen’s color temperature, we go eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 27 Feb 2011 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like Apple isn’t the only one wanting to make sure that app payments are being run through appropriate channels. The Visual VoiceMail app, which has been downloaded about a million times (literally), has just been pulled from the Android Market. When developers at PhoneFusion asked the reasonable question, “why,” they were simply directed to section 3.3 of the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement:

If you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market… All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market’s Payment Processor.

The service allows users to purchase premium features through the company’s website, something that many other apps do and that is certainly not new to Visual VoiceMail. What’s next remains to be seen, but sadly Google is saying PhoneFusion must re-submit the app with a new name — losing all the positive reviews it’s racked up. Hardly an ideal solution.

Visual VoiceMail pulled from Android Market, Google accused of ‘pulling an Apple’ originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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