Hasta La Gadget!

What if you could run Android apps on other platforms? That’s exactly the question Benoit Shillings and his team at Myriad asked themselves before setting out to create Alien Dalvik. The resulting software provides a host environment for the (mostly Java-based) Android apps to run pretty much anywhere. Alien Dalvik behaves a lot like Wine on Linux, which allows Windows programs to run inside Linux without installing Windows or using a virtual machine. We stopped by the Myriad booth at MWC this week where Benoit was kind enough to give us a demo of Alien Dalvik running on a Nokia N900. Despite being in the early stages of development and still un-optimized, the software worked as expected. Benoit showed us Google Maps, a chess game, and the IMDb app all running as separate processes inside Maemo. This version of Alien Dalvik was written using Qt and should also be able to run on Symbian devices. You can’t buy the product as an end user, but Myriad wants to make the technology available to carriers and device manufacturers to help streamline the deployment of apps across platforms. Watch our video after the break.

Continue reading Myriad Alien Dalvik hands-on (video)

Myriad Alien Dalvik hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 15:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week’s episode of Gadget Lab covers highlights coming from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which was packed with tablets and smartphones.

The Motorola Xoom, one of the first tablets to run Android Honeycomb, finally got an official price tag: $800. It has a dual-core processor, a high-resolution screen and 4G compatibility, but would you pay that price? We doubt it, and so do many of our readers, apparently.

Another headliner at the show was Samsung’s awkwardly named Galaxy Tab 10.1. Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel had some hands-on time with it and said the display was gorgeous, but the case felt like a cheap plastic toy.

One of the lamest tablets at the show was LG’s Optimus Pad. Most of the features are cool — a dual-core processor, front- and rear-facing cameras, and a high-resolution display — but the “3-D” spec made us roll our eyes. The 3-D mode makes images display as red and blue anaglyphs (which any computer screen could technically do), to create the cheap 3-D that’s been around for decades.

Moving on to phones, the most interesting smartphone coming from the show was the Xperia Play, which probably should’ve been called the PlayStation Phone. It plays PlayStation Portable games and includes a slide-out D-pad for controls. Pretty neat.

We take another look at the Verizon iPhone compared with the AT&T iPhone. Thousands of customers have been running bandwidth tests with the Speedtest.net iPhone app, and it looks like AT&T comes out ahead in terms of data transfer speeds — although from my previous tests, Verizon’s iPhone has been the more reliable phone.

Dylan wraps up the podcast with his favorite iPhone app of the week, Infinity Blade [iTunes], a fun slice-to-destroy 3-D game.

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Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Or listen to the audio here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #104

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0104.mp3

Without elaborating, Twitter has just posted a help document titled “I’m Having Problems Logging In to UberTwitter or twidroyd” that gives little hope for an immediate fix: turns out the company has outright suspended both apps — among the most popular Twitter apps for the BlackBerry / iPhone and Android platforms, respectively — for “violating [its] policies.” They go on to say that they suspend “hundreds” of apps on a daily basis for policy violations, but decided to call out these two in particular because of the high number of users potentially affected. Considering the popularity factor, we imagine this’ll be solved one way or another before too long — but in the meantime, you might want to fall back to the official apps for all three platforms.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Twitter suspends UberTwitter and Twidroyd for ‘violating’ its policies originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 14:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sending a webpage from an HP Pre 3 to a Touchpad is as easy as tapping them together, a technique we’ve not previously seen — but something that’s now possible in the latest flavor of Gingerbread: Android 2.3.3. This adds some expanded functionality for working with the NFC chip found in the Nexus S (and, presumably, others soon) enabling, among other things, NFC to work with Bluetooth. As demonstrated a few weeks ago, the NFC chip can be used to send networking and establish a connection when the two phones touch, so no more manual pairing required, just sweet tapping and sharing.

Latest Android Gingerbread release brings NFC and Bluetooth together for tappable sharing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll confess, we did see Sony Ericsson execs flashing white Xperia Play handsets during the company’s MWC 2011 press event, but curiously enough none of those made their way to the demo areas. Now we’ve finally got ourselves some fully fleshed out press shots, along with the news that O2 will be the sole carrier for this alabaster gaming smartphone in the UK. Other markets have yet to announce availability of the white Xperia Play, but you’ll know more just as soon as we do. Skip past the break to see how the front end looks.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Sony Ericsson breaks out white Xperia Play, makes it an O2 exclusive in the UK

Sony Ericsson breaks out white Xperia Play, makes it an O2 exclusive in the UK originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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