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Continue reading Sphero toy ball rolls itself, you control it with your smartphone

Sphero toy ball rolls itself, you control it with your smartphone originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll warn you that we have nothing but the word of an alleged Sprint employee that this is the real deal, but we don’t know what else it could be — if it walks like a duck and quacks like an EVO with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, we’re inclined to believe it’s the HTC EVO Shift 4G. Factor in the noticeable lack of front-facing camera, silver trackpad and those throwback flat keys, and we’re even willing to forgive those hastily penciled watermarks on the keyboard and on top of the clearly ‘shopped screen. Even if this shot is legit, we haven’t seen the full device yet — it sure looks like this Knight is wearing a suit of plastic armor around the edges.

In possibly related news, Android Central nabbed an alleged screenshot of a Sprint database showing an “HTC A7373” handset coming to Sprint on January 9th, and while one Russian e-tailer seems to think that codename refers to the GSM-friendly Desire Z, we have to imagine a Knight / Speedy / EVO Shift release is far more likely than a T-Mobile G2 redux on Sprint’s CDMA frequencies.

Update: Just to be clear, there are a few things about this image that irk us, not least of which that pasted-on screen. We’re inclined to think this might be a dummy unit that was touched up to look like a real phone.

HTC EVO Shift 4G (Knight / Speedy) gets leaked picture, January 9th release date? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Dec 2010 18:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Updates have been coming fast and furious to Google’s Android Market for a couple weeks now, but this is the biggest shift yet — that rusty tab-based interface is out, replaced with a rotating carousel of downloadable content, and a single scrolling pane of info for each and every app. What’s more, it seems that Mountain View has heard the cries of game companies in particular, as it’s got a couple of very special changes largely targeted at them — the size cap on individual apps has been upped to 50MB, and Android Market’s famous 24-hour return policy is no more. You’ll still have 15 minutes to decide whether you want a piece of software or prefer a refund, perhaps long enough to give it a basic test, but there’s no longer enough time to finish a game in one sitting before slyly giving it a pass. There’s also a number of behind-the-scenes changes that should help make sure you only see apps your device can actually run, based on screen size, pixel density and OpenGL support. Google’s pushing the update to every Android 1.6-and-above device over the next couple of weeks, so you can expect your app purchasing world to turn upside-down in time for Christmas cheer.

Update: There are also two new categories being added: widgets and live wallpapers.

Update 2: Of course, no self-respecting hacker waits for an OTA to get what they can sideload right now, and so XDA-developers is now distributing the new Android Market APK — we’d suggest you give it a try too, but we’re hearing that some folks are having difficulty downloading apps at all after the update. Still, the folks at Android Police seem to have it working, and have taken a host of screenshots of the interface. Go give them a peek at our more coverage link.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Android Market update streamlines content, nukes tabs, dismantles 24-hour return policy to appease devs originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Dec 2010 11:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It can be difficult to review a phone like Google’s Nexus S in a world already populated by so many outstanding Android devices. Not only does the manufacturer of this phone make a series of handsets that are all essentially the same (the Galaxy S line), but countless other OEMs are cranking away on hardware for the platform. Of course, the Nexus S is a decidedly different phone altogether. Picking up where the company’s Nexus One left off, the S continues Google’s legacy of creating standalone, “pure Android” phone experiences, seemingly aimed less at the mainstream and more towards developers. Unlike the failed experiment of the Nexus One, Google appears to be taking a more realistic approach to the S; the phone will be sold through Best Buy (and Carphone Warehouse across the pond), which suggests that the company has bigger plans for this device.

And what a device it is — the Nexus S boasts a 1GHz Hummingbird CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 4-inch, 800 x 480 curved Super AMOLED display (dubbed the Contour Display), 16GB of storage, a 5 megapixel rear and VGA front-facing camera, and near field communication capabilities. But hardware is only half the story here — the big news is that the Nexus S showcases the next major evolution of the Android OS, namely, Gingerbread (or version 2.3). The update comes with a slew of new features alongside some UI improvements that show Google isn’t slowing down when it comes to pushing its mobile operating system forward. So is the Nexus S a real standout in the Android world, or is it more of the “me too” tech we’ve seen lately? Read on after the break for the full Engadget review to find out!

Continue reading Nexus S review

Nexus S review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Turns out Andy Rubin might not be the only fella who’s been showing off the elusive Motorola Android tablet. Earlier this week, some lucky guy from Taiwan claims to have stumbled upon the same Honeycomb device, and was kind enough to share the above homescreen spy shot as well as some thoughts on his one-hour hands-on. We’re told that there’ll be a 7-inch version as well as a 10-inch version (the latter appears to be what Rubin had), and the one we’re looking at here has a 1280 x 800 display of unknown size, NVIDIA Tegra 2 T20 dual-core chip, gyroscope, a 5 megapixel main camera, and a 2 megapixel front camera. Memory-wise it has a 32GB embedded MMC and a microSD slot.

The poster reckons the hardware — which is “pretty light” — is all ready for launch, but Honeycomb still needs some final fine-tuning. Sadly, he hasn’t got a date, but said device will apparently be priced like the current Motorola high-end phones, and will be available in three flavors: UMTS, CDMA, and LTE (which we heard about a little while back). Well, only time will tell whether this guy really does have a good friend at Motorola, or that he’s been talking to some unicorns.

[Thanks, Samson]

Update: And just like that, the poster’s removed the offending screenshot and trimmed down his first post.

Motorola Android tablet specs and Honeycomb home screen leaked in Taiwan? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Dec 2010 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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