Hasta La Gadget!

The Motorola Xoom might be starting to look a bit pricey compared to some of its new competitors, but it seems that the company may have a solution in the offing. According to a leaked, supposedly authentic Verizon screenshot obtained by Droid Life, Motorola is apparently planning to launch an LTE-upgradable Xoom with just 16GB of storage instead of the current 32GB, which would presumably also open the door for a cheaper 16GB WiFi-only model. Of course, that’s still a long way from being official, but cutting the storage in half is certainly one sure way to make a (seemingly necessary) price drop a bit more bearable.

[Thanks, Josh S]

Purported Verizon screenshot points to LTE-upgradable 16GB Motorola Xoom originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google's Andy Rubin speaks at an Android Honeycomb event in February. Photo: Mike Isaac/Wired.com

Android chief Andy Rubin took to the blogs Wednesday evening to combat recent reports of Google clamping down on Android’s openness.

“We continue to be an open source platform and will continue releasing source code when it is ready,” wrote Rubin on the Android Developer Blog. “As I write this the Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones. As soon as this work is completed, we’ll publish the code. This temporary delay does not represent a change in strategy.”

Google has championed its platform as the open alternative to Apple’s closed iOS system. That openness has been called into question recently, as Google has yet to release the Honeycomb source code to all developers and manufacturers.

Honeycomb is Android’s first tablet-optimized software release. Rubin cites the difference in form factor between tablets and phones as the reason Google hasn’t released Honeycomb’s source code to device manufacturers and developers.

Motorola is the exception: The company’s Honeycomb-fueled Xoom tablet has been on the market for more than a month, which makes Google’s decision to hold the code from wide release a bit mystifying.

Members of the Android industry showed faith in Google, however.

“They say they’re going to release it, I’m not gonna call them liars,” Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin told Wired.com in an interview. The Android OS is based on a version of the Linux OS, which has been an open source, collaborative platform since its release decades ago.

Rubin’s post also addressed questions raised in a recent Bloomberg story about Android’s level of control over its partners. Bloomberg wrote:

Over the past few months, according to several people familiar with the matter, Google has been demanding that Android licensees abide by “non-fragmentation clauses” that give Google the final say on how they can tweak the Android code — to make new interfaces and add services — and in some cases whom they can partner with.

Rubin combats this claim directly, stating Google’s so-called “anti-fragmentation program has been in place since Android 1.0,” citing a list of compatibility requirements manufacturers must adhere to in order to market a device as “Android-compatible.”

He’s referring to Android’s compatibility test suite, or CTS, an automated litmus test to measure whether or not a piece of hardware can claim to run Android.

“Our approach remains unchanged: There are no lock-downs or restrictions against customizing UIs,” wrote Rubin.

Motorola vouches for Rubin’s statement.

“In the time since we’ve started working with Google, our relationship has matured, but it isn’t any more limiting than it ever has been,” Christy Wyatt, Motorola’s VP of mobile software development, told Wired.com. “I don’t believe that anything has changed in the CTS since the beginning.”

Finally, Rubin emphatically denied other rumors of ARM-chipset standardization in the platform, much of which arose in the wake of an anonymously sourced DigiTimes story.

“There are not, and never have been, any efforts to standardize the platform on any single chipset architecture,” Rubin wrote. With the Nexus One, Google’s first flagship phone, the company worked with Qualcomm to install its 1-GHz Snapdragon ARM processors in the HTC-manufactured handsets. The subsequent Nexus S came equipped with Samsung’s 1-GHz Hummingbird processor, which is also based on ARM architecture.

It’s out of character for Rubin and Android to post such a defensive update. Rumors circulating in the media are usually given a brusque “no comment” by Google’s communications team.

But the title of Rubin’s post — “I think I’m having a Gene Amdahl moment” — explains it all. Amdahl coined the acronym FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in 1975. After leaving IBM to form his own IT company, Amdahl claimed he suffered attacks by IBM sales staff attempting to undermine his new venture.

All of this negative attention isn’t good for Android’s “open” image, and maybe that’s what overcame Rubin’s reluctance to speak: too much FUD about Android’s future.

Whether or not this FUD is warranted, however, remains to be seen.

See Also:

• Android Trojan Highlights Risks of Open Markets
• Amazon Launches Its Own Android App Store
• Google Removes Flash App From Android Market
• Google Launches Android Market Web Store, Improves Payment System

The thing about framing your product as an iPad killer is that, well, people are going to compare your product to the iPad–every passing mention of a failure or success will be uttered in the same sentence as the competition. So when research firm releases a report stating that your company has only sold 100,000 since launching more than a month ago, people will naturally point out the fact that the competition sold three times that in its first day.

Seven months ago, Motorola unveiled a dual-sided, QWERTY-laden TV remote control: the NYXboard. It was never heard from again. Today, we’ve learned why — the open-source community will be selling a version specially redesigned to control your XBMC rig. The folks at Pulse-Eight — a startup with roots in the XBMC community dedicated to designing hardware — tell us they actually talked Motorola out of bundling the remote with set-top-boxes in favor of a nefarious plan. Simply put, they want you to be able to purchase an IR and RF remote that natively supports XBMC for a penny under $60 this June.

While we don’t have any real pictures of the unit quite yet — just the renders you see above and below — developers say it will work with installations on Mac, Windows, Linux and the original Apple TV on day one, and will actually turn off the side of the remote that’s face down to avoid accidental inputs. You’ll find the NYXboard up for pre-order now at our source link, with the first shipments slated for around June 27th. Then again, you might want to wait, as we’re told there are more surprises in store: a second version that can control the Apple TV 2, and a secret method which would allow the remotes to control your home entertainment center without pesky line-of-sight infrared. The best laid plans and all that… but it sounds like Logitech’s Harmony may finally get some competition.

Update: The situation’s a bit tricky, but the XBMC Foundation (a non-profit entity) wants you to know that hardware vendor Pulse-Eight (a for-profit venture) isn’t actually part of their group — Pulse-Eight was founded by an XBMC team member and produces hardware targeted at the XBMC community, but apparently isn’t funded by (nor directs funding towards) the XBMC foundation itself.

Motorola NYXboard surfaces from the dead, XBMC reclaims it (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Motorola Atrix is one of two phones with disabled HSUPA.

After Texas resident Keith Geissler noticed his new Motorola Atrix wasn’t offering the fast “4G” download and upload speeds that AT&T promised, he filed a complaint to the Better Business Bureau, asking the wireless company to “uncap” his data connection.

AT&T’s response was surprising. While the company assured Geissler it “has not capped the upload speeds on the Atrix,” it did admit that the phone’s HSUPA capability — a key feature in increasing upload speeds on the Atrix as well as the new HTC Inspire 4G smartphone — will not be enabled until a later date.

That means all upload speeds on the Atrix and the Inspire will max out at around 300 Kbps, far below that of the 5.5+ Mbps speeds that HSUPA is capable of uploading. (Geissler wasn’t happy to hear any of this, and posted the exchange to an online message board focused on smartphones.)

In other words, it’s not a hardware issue. It’s AT&T itself, which isn’t ready to flip the switch to turn on “4G” networks, even though it’s already selling 4G phones. Is anyone surprised?

“The concept of 4G is a joke now,” Gartner Research VP Phil Redman told Wired.com. “At the highest level, it’s supposed to be a technology standard, but it’s nothing but marketing now. If and when 4G-standardized technology is actually decided upon and released, we’ve been inundated with this jargon for so long we may not even recognize it.”

The term “4G speed” seems open to interpretation. Since the International Telecommunications Union — the global authority on telecommunications- and broadband-industry standardization – revised its ruling on what defines 4G network speeds in December 2010, carriers have jumped on the opportunity to market many new smartphones as 4G-enabled. Their definitions have been liberal, to say the least.

For AT&T, part of “4G” compatibility involves having HSUPA speeds. AT&T has been mostly evasive as to why HSUPA has been disabled in the Atrix and HTC Inspire 4G smartphones. The company claims it is performing “the testing and preparations necessary” for users to enjoy the HSUPA capabilities when the function is turned on by phone update.

To add insult to injury to Android users expecting 4G speeds, many iOS counterpart devices using AT&T’s 3G network are indeed HSUPA-enabled.

“Not to twist the dagger that’s already in our backs on this one,” said one forum user at XDA Developers, “as many know, the iPad 2 came out today and guess what … HSUPA enabled.”

Also HSUPA ready: the iPhone 4, a device using AT&T’s 3G network.

So when can we actually expect 4G upload speeds from these “4G” phones? AT&T gave Wired.com a rough street date of next month.

“We will be turning HSUPA upload speeds on via a software update to the Motorola ATRIX 4G and HTC Inspire 4G planned for April,” a spokesman said. He also added that “the Samsung Infuse 4G will launch with HSUPA.”

AT&T isn’t the first to fudge facts on its data practices. In the weeks before the iPhone’s release on the Verizon network in February, the carrier published a document that said the top 5 percent of data users on the network may have their data speeds reduced “to ensure high-quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand.”

As Wired.com’s Brian X. Chen reported, “One of Verizon’s selling points for its version of the iPhone is that it would come with an unlimited data plan — a marked contrast to AT&T, which eliminated its unlimited data plans last year.” But when a company’s shifty data-throttling practices are “disclosed” in unpublicized PDF files, Chen’s assertion that “you just can’t trust wireless carriers” proves accurate.

AT&T obviously hasn’t claimed the lack of HSUPA-enabling in the two phones to be a data-throttling technique. But until we hear reasons beyond “network testing and preparation,” we won’t be so quick to believe them.

See Also:

• Ahead of iPhone Release, Verizon Throttles Network Speeds
• FCC Delays Net Neutrality Over Mobile, ‘Managed’ Services
• Verizon iPhone Shows You Can’t Win: Carriers Hold the Cards
• T-Mobile to Throttle Data Speeds After 5 GB Use
• AT&T Says Grandfathered Unlimited Data Plans Will Work on iPad 2
• AT&T’s Data Limits Rein In Cloud-Based Media Services
• What AT&T’s Limited Data Plans Mean for You
• AT&T’s Limited Data: Should You Care? Vote in Our Poll
• AT&T Adds iPhone Tethering, Kills Unlimited Data for iPad, Smartphones
• AT&T Exposes Data on 100000 iPad 3G Owners
• AT&T Puts Broadband Users on Monthly Allowance