The closest we have ever come to a ski race is the worn out VHS copy of Better Off Dead we still have in the back of our closets somewhere, but if you’re an Android-lovin’ ski bunny jealous of all the attention Ripxx has been giving the iPhone, you’re in luck. That’s right, your fave open source smartphone OS has its very own version of the Ripxx Ski and Snowboard app. Version 1.1 features over 200 mapped out resorts, GPS tracking, stats recording (including speed, distance, and vertical drop) and more. Not bad for $5, eh?
The US and UK may be the only officially official markets for the Samsung-built Nexus S from Google, however Sammy’s Russian team has already dished out a few extra details on overseas availability. Penciling in a February 2011 launch for the Gingerbread flagship, the Russki guys point out that their version of the Nexus S will come with a 4-inch Super Clear LCD instead of the Super AMOLED panel adorning the English-speaking variants. This is most likely motivated by the still limited supply of S-AMOLED displays, though we wouldn’t fret too much — the Super Clear stuff has shown that it’s no slouch either. If anything, it’ll be the February release that has us grumbling our way through winter.
Can’t have enough Androids in your life? Well, here’s another one! Alternately known as the Knight or the Speedy, HTC’s upcoming Android device has made a couple of premature photo appearances in an effort to help sell some cases for its future self. The guys at HTCPedia report they have all the cases in their imagery in stock and confidently identify the Speedy Knight as a 3.7-inch QWERTY slider, while the phone’s UI and rear inscription leave no doubt about it running HTC’s Sense skin for Android. The likeliest scenario for this phone’s retail future is that it’ll be dubbed the EVO Shift 4G and exploit Sprint’s WiMAX airwaves, leaving the only unresolved issue as a one-word query: when?
So here’s the story: dude asks LG’s US mobile team on Facebook when the Optimus One — the basis for the various Optimus devices that have launched recently on American carriers — will be getting Android 2.3. LG responds saying that “the minimum requirements for Gingerbread require 1 GHz processor,” hence, no update’s in the cards. Well, Android lead Dan Morrill took to Twitter to drop some knowledge, saying “there’s no hard minimum processor requirement for Gingerbread… trust me, if there were I’d know.” In other words, whoever’s manning the ship on LG’s Facebook account is either sorely underinformed or showed some awful judgment in choosing a lie to justify keeping the Optimus off the upgrade path. Sure, we can understand why LG wouldn’t want to temper excitement for a still-new smartphone line by telling buyers their phones won’t be receiving the next version of the platform, but the least they could’ve done is formulated a reasonable excuse, no?
Ah, LG’s LU3000, the sprightly young thing that made the iPhone 4 and Galaxy S look a wee bit aged in some YouTube tests has now become official over in South Korea. It boasts a 1GHz TI OMAP3630 chip, allowing it to jot down 1080p video playback on its spec sheet, which in turn goes very nicely with the built-in HDMI port and DLNA wireless capabilities. A 3.8-inch screen offers an 800 x 480 resolution, there’s a 5 megapixel camera around the back, and a mildly skinned Android 2.2 performs the OS duties. Curiously enough, the LU3000’s home screen looks identical to the one on the leaked LG Star, suggesting that the stuff they’re running will represent LG’s default Android treatment for the near future. 800,000KRW ($705) buys you the 3000 when it ships in its native land a week from now, though there are apparently no plans to spread the wealth to other nations. Why so selfish, LG?
No iPhone? No problem. If you’ll recall, we heard back in May that Visa was in cahoots with DeviceFidelity, with the two trumpeting a not-exactly-svelte In2Pay case that would add contactless payment support to Apple’s darling. Today, the rest of the world is finally being taken into consideration. The aforementioned firms have just cleared a new In2Pay microSD solution for use in the real world, with the BlackBerry Bold 9650 and the Samsung Vibrant in particular named as compatible. In theory, it seems that nearly any smartphone with a microSD slot could be ushered into the arena, and Visa itself expects to add additional phone models for use with this technology, “including phones based on the Symbian and Windows operating systems.” This unveiling is happening after a solid 18 months of testing around the globe, but there’s no definitive word on which banks will be offering this to customers. Between this and the sudden interest in NFC, America seems more poised than ever before to slip ever further into an endless pool of debt, and with way less friction than before! We kid, we kid… kind of.
Google’s Android boss Andy Rubin showed of a prototype Motorola tablet running the forthcoming tablet-friendly version of the Android OS, version 3.0 Honeycomb at the All Things Digital “D: Dive Into Mobile” event.
The tablet runs on an NVIDIA dual-core 3D processor (unspecified by Rubin) and looks to be around seven-inches in size, or maybe a little bigger. Rubin starts off showing a new super-fast vector-based version of Google Maps which not only allows a quick two-finger swipe to enter a 3D building-view, but also loads way faster thanks to those vectors. Currently, Google Maps uses image tiles, which is why you do so much waiting on a slow connection. Vectors are way smaller in file-size and are infinitely zoomable, staying crisp all the way.
Google has warned tablet-makers off the current version of Android because it’s not designed for their larger screens, leading to tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which comes on like a giant cellphone. Android 3.0 Honeycomb will be the first tablet-ready Android OS, and it sounds like Google is taking the same approach as Apple, making “universal” apps that run on both phone sand tablets.
These apps will pack two different views. On a phone, you’ll see one screen at a time, much like you do now. On a tablet, these views will be shown together. From the video, it looks like the tablet view will be somewhere between the iPad’s one-screen view and a desktop like approach, with several windows (from the same app) on-screen together. The actual layout will be up to the app’s designer.
This looks like it will be Google’s reference design. Rubin says that his team partners with a hardware maker and a chip maker to build the reference device, whether it’s a Nexus phone or a tablet. He gave away no details about availability, but when pushed by D’s Kara Swisher on the subject of price, told her that the tablet in his hand had cost around $10,000. Snap!
Google’s mobile platform VP Andy Rubin hit the stage yesterday at the The Wall Street Journal’s D: Get Into Mobile Conference in San Francisco with a shiny new 10-inch Motorola tablet in tow. It wasn’t the hardware that was the focal point of the device, however–it was the debut of a brand new version of the Android open mobile OS.
Rubin didn’t really field much in the way of questions about the device, joking that it would run $10,000 (and you thought the Samsung Galaxy Tab was overpriced). He shed a little bit of light on innards, stating that the device was packing a NVidia dual core CPU.
The real star of the show was Honeycomb, the new tablet-centric version of Android. PCMag’s Lance Ulanoff, who was present at the event, described Honeycomb as “very clean” and “almost iPad-like.”
Honeycomb is set to release at some point next year. According Google, most of the major OEMs are looking to get on board with the OS.
Oh, the shame! Here’s a picture that handily illustrates the biggest problem Android faces: fragmentation. Not only are the phone makers modding the interfaces willy-nilly, and carriers adding in unremovable crapware, but even the hardware buttons can’t seem to stay in the same order. Here’s a photo-illustration by Flickr user Andrew Wood showing the embarrassment of variations:
(Eagle-eyed readers will note that the Droid 2 image is wrong, and should actually match the Droid Pro, not the original Droid).
Even Google can’t seem to make up its mind. You’d think that the canonical Google designs would show some consistency, but as you can see, the Nexuses 1 and S swap around the home and search buttons.
Now, you might point out that most people don’t care. Most people are used to big changes from handset to handset, and most people don’t even know that they have an Android phone – they just have a Droid phone or a Galaxy phone. And you’d be right: people are used to putting up with a lot of crap when it comes to cellphones. What this really tells us is that the designers don’t care, and that Android is thought of by the phone-makers as little more than a free way to make their hardware boxes actually do something. It may be a great OS, but that doesn’t mean the phone makers don’t hate you.
I’ll leave you with this fantastic comment from Geoff Douglas, on the Flickr page for this photograph: “Mobile phones should frustrate people. They always have. Google are ensuring this fine tradition remains alive and well.”
So what if the Libretto exited the common consciousness almost as quickly as it entered it while the Folio 100 was bad enough to get its major UK retailer to discontinue it? Toshiba promised it’d have a family of tablets for us by the end of 2011’s first quarter and the plan apparently hasn’t changed. DigiTimes is reporting today that three new Toshiba slates are set for their debut at CES in a month’s time, two of them equipped with 10.1-inch screens and a third sized at 11.6 inches. Microsoft’s Windows 7 and Google’s Chrome OS and Android will each be responsible for providing the operating environment on one of these new tablets, indicating that Toshiba — much like the rest of the world — has yet to make up its mind about what the best tablet OS out there is. We should know more in just a few short weeks.
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