Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a phone. It’s a laptop. It’s a desktop.

Motorola wants you to think its upcoming “superphone” is all of these. Soon, we’ll be able to find out.

The Atrix 4G, Motorola’s highly anticipated hybrid smartphone offering, will be available for pre-order beginning February 13. The phone will cost $200 with a two-year AT&T contract, and is expected for wide availability on March 6 or earlier, says AT&T.

Aside from the very sweet dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor pumping out 1GHz of power on both cores, the list of attributes found on the Atrix is fairly similar to other recent smartphone offerings. It’s got a 5-megapixel back facing camera, front facing camera for video chat, and is running Android version 2.2 (Froyo). The full gig of RAM is a nice eyebrow-raising amount, however. And the can expand its storage up to 48GB via SD card.

What is most intriguing about this phone is the Atrix’s ability to go multi-platform. Still want to play Angry Birds on your smartphone during your daily commute? Use the Atrix as you would any other smartphone. Need a laptop for taking notes? Plug the Atrix into the separately-sold laptop dock and bang away on them keys.

Have a big-ass monitor at home and miss the desktop computing experience? Hook that bad boy up to the Atrix’s HD multimedia docking station and use the phone like you would a PC.

Here’s the kicker: nothing in life comes cheap. If you want to buy the laptop dock on its own, it’s a cool 500 bucks. Or alternatively, if you want to grab the Atrix and laptop dock together, AT&T is offering a bundled package price — $600 with two-year contract, or $500 with two-year contract after a mail-in rebate and subscription to the Data Pro plus tethering add-on plan.

The HD multimedia dock isn’t a whole lot cheaper at $190, but with the dock you get a nice little Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, along with a remote control.

Will the high prices turn away crowds, or will the Atrix’s supermutant-like morphing capabilities be able to open the hearts and wallets of customers everywhere?

We’ll see come the next few weeks.

Photos: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• Hands-On With Motorola’s @$#%ing Atrix Superphone
• Big, Beautiful and Badass: The 9 Coolest Android Smartphones at …
• Hands-On With LG’s Optimus 2X Superphone
• Motorola, LG Flex Dual-Core Smartphones

Diving through the Motorola Xoom’s sweet, sweet blend of Android 3.0, we found an interesting perk — there’s an “Encrypt Tablet” option buried in the settings page, intended to secure all your personal data with a password or PIN. While a handy Google rep couldn’t tell us which cryptographic standards the OS uses, he did tell us the feature is part of Honeycomb as a whole, not a Motorola exclusive, so we’re sure to see the option in other business-minded Android slates to come. Oh, and Google asks that all you sysadmins stay tuned, as the company’s whipped up an API that lets you enforce policy restrictions upon your peons as far as encryption is concerned. Just make sure they remember to keep the tablet charged. See a close-up after the break.

Continue reading Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ can encrypt all your data, needs a full hour’s charge

Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ can encrypt all your data, needs a full hour’s charge originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We got a taste of what TouchType was doing to tweak its SwiftKey keyboard app for tablets back at CES, and the company has just now gotten official with the final result: its SwiftKey Tablet app. It’s apparently been designed “in partnership” with Google and Motorola to coincide with the launch of the Xoom and, as you can see above, it’s clearly been tailored specifically for Honeycomb — the company describes the skin as “holographic” and “thumb-optimized.” As with previous SwiftKey keyboard apps, it makes use of the company’s so-called Fluency Prediction Engine, which promises to predict “around a third of words” before you enter a single character, and can now even analyze your Gmail, Facebook and Twitter accounts to learn how you write (though that can apparently be turned off if you prefer). Head on past the break for a quick video, and stay tuned for some hands-on impressions.

Update: Impressions after the break!

Continue reading TouchType debuts SwiftKey Tablet app for Android tablets, we go hands-on (video)

TouchType debuts SwiftKey Tablet app for Android tablets, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We can’t say we make a habit of checking out Fommy.com or Mobile City Online’s digital shelves when searching for our mobile gear, but these obscure retailers look to be the first to come out with pricing for the Atrix 4G’s HD Multimedia Dock. Fommy lists it as a straight up $59.95 charge, whereas its direct competitor is already discounting the cradle down to $49.99. Both are offering pre-orders only at this point, with no known dates of arrival, but at least we’ve got a ballpark figure to play with.

Motorola’s Atrix 4G HD Multimedia Dock spotted online next to a $60 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like another big milestone for Google’s signature smartphone operating system. Android-based smartphone shipments reached 33.3 million worldwide  in the fourth quarter of 2010, now making Android the world’s leading smartphone platform.

In hitting the number one spot, Android has knocked out Nokia’s Symbian platform, which for years has been the leader in global smartphone shipments. Symbian now clocks in at second place with 31 million units shipped worldwide in 2010, according to the report released by research firm Canalys. Android’s sales rocketed up from just 4.7 million units shipped over the same period in 2009.

In the United States alone, Android OS-based phones now account for over half of consumer smartphone purchases, according to a report released by NPD Group.

‘The US landscape will shift dramatically this coming year, as a result of the Verizon-Apple agreement,’ Canalys Analyst Tim Shepherd said in a statement. “Verizon will move its focus away from the Droid range, but the overall market impact will mean less carrier-exclusive deals, while increasing the AT&T opportunity for Android vendors, such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung.”

2010 was a big year for smartphones. The global market exploded with smartphone shipments totaling 101.2 million units over 2010, almost double that of 2009. Android’s growth has been fast and furious, having launched only in late 2008 and already besting the long-established Nokia and RIM platforms. Samsung recently boasted of 10 million Galaxy S handset sales since its June debut.

With 2011 promising new smartphone technologies such as dual-core processors and Near-Field Communications, and with many of those technologies showing up on Android phones, this could be a very good year for Google. However, the coming of the iPhone 4 to Verizon might take some wind out of Android’s sails, as Verizon’s Droid and Droid Pro have been perennial bestsellers for the platform.

Rounding out the top five sales performers for 2010 were Apple’s iOS-running iPhone, which came in third with 16.2 million, and RIM’s BlackBerry OS at fourth place with 14.6 million. With its October 11 launch coming too late in the quarter to get a jump on the holiday sales rush, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 shipped 3.1 million units.

“Windows Phone 7 entered the epicenter of competition between iOS and Android at AT&T,” NPD Group’s Ross Rubin said in a statement.

See Canalys’ table below for info on 2010 smartphone sales.

Photo by Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com

See Also:

• Google Removes Flash App From Android Market
• Independent App Stores Take On Google’s Android Market
• Your Froyo Tablet Probably Won’t Support Android Market
• Android Market Terms of Service Confirm Googlephone Kill Switch
• Gameloft Sidesteps Android Market for Mobile Assassin’s Creed, HAWX