Hasta La Gadget!

Up in Canada, Mobilicity’s CEO made an odd comment recently that Bell, Telus, and Rogers will all be getting the Nexus S around the same time that his carrier does in March. Why is that odd? Well, as it stands, no variant of the Nexus S supports the 850 / 1900MHz WCDMA that would be necessary to run (at high speed, anyway) on those three networks. Circle back around to the Bluetooth SIG, where PocketNow has discovered an entry for a GT-i9020A; you might recall that the European version of the device is the i9020, while T-Mobile’s AWS-compatible build is the i9020T, with “T” ostensibly standing for “T-Mobile.” By extension, it’s definitely conceivable that the “A” here is for “AT&T” — which, again, would line up with the Mobilicity exec’s verbiage. If this is true, it’s theoretically possible that we could see AT&T and its similarly-equipped Canadian cousins get their own Nexus S as soon as five-odd weeks from now. Like the Nexus One before it, we’ve got a hard time picturing AT&T officially subsidizing this thing — but hey, an unlocked full-price version is a solid start, we’d say.

Nexus S coming in a new AT&T flavor? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Starting yesterday, Google began a subtle censorship of “piracy related” terms from its instant and autocomplete services. The following “pirate” terms are now blocked from autocompete: bitTorrent, megaupload, uTorrent, rapidshareIf, and any combination of terms ending with the word “torrent.”

If you try to enter “utorrent” into the search box, it stops supplying suggestions after you type “uto.” However, you can still type out the complete word, and it will supply suggestions, including “utorrent download” and “utorrent search” and you type out the entire term, Google will complete the search. So, you can still access these sites through a search, you just have to type out the entire term. But, “uTorrent”, a popular piece of software, and “BitTorrent”, a file transfer protocol and name of BitTorrent Inc., are both completely legal, but they are nonetheless being censored. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems wrong.

Remember when Google fought against censorship in China? Google was all for freedom to information. But, apparently, Google thinks censoring against piracy is okay though. Supplying information and access to legal sites it not encouraging piracy. Our friends at PCMag, recently had a bit of a scuffle with the RIAA over a simple news article, which they requested PCMag retract (they didn’t).

Although this is new censorship is slight, the entertainment industries shadow is being cast farther. And it raises some questions: How far will it this censorship stretch? And will other industries be able to succeed in censoring certain terms and info on Google?

Via TorrentFreak

Tried searching for “BitTorrent,” “RapidShare,” “uTorrent,” “MegaUpload” or even “Ubuntu torrent” lately? Good luck finding a Google domain that’ll autocomplete those results for you. Presumably caving to pleading from the MPAA and / or RIAA, El Goog has quietly begun to censor the results it shows when typing the above terms. Needless to say, the aforesaid companies aren’t too keen on the new procedures, and strangely enough, a number of other sites that would typically be grouped into this same category — MediaFire, 4shared and HotFile — remain on the cleared list. Hit the source link if you’re looking for loads of responses from companies angered with Google’s move, and feel free to reset your homepage to Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine who has yet to bend. You know, if you’re feeling rebellious.

Google begins censoring autocomplete results for BitTorrent, RapidShare and other Big Media profanity originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Newly-unveiled features of the system include a completely different interface, enhanced 2-D and 3-D graphics support, and the ability to make better use of the dual-core processors found in an increasing number of high-end smartphones.

As you can see from above, Honeycomb’s user interface is entirely different from previous versions of Android (Froyo, Gingerbread, etc.), optimized for larger-screened devices like tablets.

The new ’system bar’ across the bottom of the screen is always present, eliminating the need for buttons on the device itself (a la Motorola’s Xoom tablet). The also ever-present ‘action bar’ rests in the top right corner for choosing contextual page options.

The keyboard has undergone a redesign as well, with individual keys reshaped and repositioned for tablet usage. Oh, and Google promises we won’t hate the text selection ability anymore with its new improvements.

“Overall forward-compatibility is excellent, as it’s always been with new versions of Android,” according to Hugh Johnson, an Android developer at Catch.com. “Of course, there are some major layout and interaction improvements that can be made to the apps to better support the tablet form factor.”

Also noteworthy is Honeycomb’s support for both single and dual-core processor systems, an oft-speculated feature leading up to the operating system’s debut. Most of the Honeycomb tablets we’ve seen previews of thus far have dual-core processors installed, like Motorola’s Xoom or Toshiba’s unnamed tablet offering.

Graphics-wise, we’ll definitely notice a boost. A new property-based animation framework allows developers to animate properties of the user interface itself, while the new hardware-accelerated Open GL renderer kicks up the 2-D graphics more than just a notch.

Don’t have one of those fancy 3-D TV’s yet? Honeycomb’s new Renderscript 3-D graphics engine lets developers create nifty 3-D scenes and effects on your phone. More live wallpapers abound! Huzzah!

For those of you who aren’t 3-D buffs, there are plenty more multimedia perks to be found. HTTP live streaming support means you won’t have to miss the next gripping live-streamed Larry Page keynote.

Connectivity features include USB support for media transfer between devices and host computers, as well as a cool new type of Bluetooth support that lets the tablet query connected devices — like, say, a headset or speakers — and relays the information back to your screen. So next time the batteries in your Jawbone are about to die, Honeycomb can tell you to charge that sucker, pronto.

These features aren’t carved in stone, as Google is just providing developers with a taste of Honeycomb’s environment in order to test out their apps. But from what we’re seeing, there’s definitely cause for excitement.

Photo: Honeycomb UI/Google

See Also:

• What We Know About Honeycomb, the Android for Tablets
• Video: Android 'Honeycomb' Tablet OS Revealed
• Upcoming Asus Tablets Will Run Android Honeycomb
• Video: Motorola Tablet Running Android 3.0 Honeycomb
• Motorola Teases Android Honeycomb Tablet for CES 2011

So we’ve just installed Google’s first public-access preview of its tablet-focused Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, an early build of the platform’s SDK that features “non-final” code and APIs; it’s intended primarily for developers who want to get a head start on making their tablet app dreams come true, but naturally, we needed to install it and take it for a test drive ourselves. Here are our quick observations:

• Like Android SDK emulators before it, Honeycomb’s is extremely slow — nearly to the point of uselessness in this case. We’ll give them a mulligan since this is a preview build, but seriously, we wouldn’t recommend installing this unless you enjoy pulling your hair out.
• There appears to be some sort of orientation bug that prevents us from going landscape, which is what we really wanted. Sorry about that! We’ve shot the video sideways and rotated all of our images; if we’re able to figure it out or a newer build is released with orientation properly working, we’ll update.
• The browser looks great — specifically the UI, which is going to make desktop browser users feel right at home perhaps more than any other tablet browsing experience to date. As with the rest of the emulator, it was too slow to really use — and it kept crashing on us — but we’re digging the look.
• The system for adding and managing widgets is a joy to use — it makes your entire desktop accessible from a single screen, and we like the amount of detail you can preview for each widget before deciding whether to use it and where to place it.
• In general, the window animations and screen transitions seem cool, but none were smooth or fast enough in the emulator to know for sure. Jury’s still out until this gets faster or we’re using Honeycomb on actual tablets.
• We’re not in love with the dim, squashed segmented display that Google is using for the time in the lower right; we’re hoping there are plenty of alternative fonts available.

Since the emulator doesn’t provide a “Google experience” build with access to the Android Market, Gmail, or other “branded” Google apps, we weren’t able to deep-dive on how real-world applications are going to look on the platform — but with any luck, Motorola’s Xoom should be shipping within a few weeks. In the meantime, check out a video after the break!

Update: We’ve figured out the orientation trick — you need to uncheck automatic orientation in Settings, then flip the emulator from landscape to portrait (counterintuitive, we know). We’ll be updating the media as soon as we can!

Update 2: Second video (in the correct orientation this time!) added after the break.

Continue reading Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview emulator hands-on

Android 3.0 Honeycomb preview emulator hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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