-
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 7:53 PMVerizon started-off the week by confirming the upcoming arrival of updates for the Droid 4, RAZR, RAZR Maxx, and Rezound that would allow those phones to roam internationally on GSM/UMTS networks, despite their CDMA pedigree. We'll be seeing those updates come out sometime this summer (with a good chance that global roaming and Ice Cream Sandwich will arrive simultaneously for at least some of the models), but if just the news of this forthcoming feature has you thinking about picking up one of the models early, Amazon Wireless has some pretty nice deals ready for you. Subscribers signing o...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 7:24 PMAlong with the Galaxy Nexus, Sprint offered subscribers their first chances to grab an LTE-capable phone (in anticipation of the carrier starting service) with the LG Viper 4G LTE. We saw the Android launch back in April, sporting a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon, a four-inch WVGA screen, and a gigabyte of RAM. If all that sounded good to you, but you look for phones that are on Team QWERTY, you might want to check out the LS860 Cayenne, tipped for future arrival at Sprint. The Cayenne is, based on what leaked specs are available, a duplicate of the Viper, with the addition of a sliding QWERTY...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 7:02 PMLG's latest Android, the Optimus LTE2 with its hefty 2GB of RAM, launched in South Korea earlier this month. We're sure that many of you have been wondering what that sort of extra memory would mean for your own Android experience, and those of us in the West may soon be getting just such an opportunity to check-out the phone firsthand. Some new documentation reveals LG's works on its model VS930, which very well may be the LTE2 for Verizon. The VS930 appears in a new GCF listing, which would suggest plans for service in Europe, so where do we get Verizon from? Well, the "VS" in the model n...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 5:15 PMNVIDIA had some interesting things to say about Android tablets back at the beginning of April, looking towards a future where it saw quad-core devices falling to the $200 mark. That sounded more than a little optimistic, especially if overall build quality was to remain high, but CEO Jen-Hsun Huang seemed quite enthusiastic about it becoming a possible reality. Now we're starting to see just what the company was talking about, upon revealing its Kai reference design. According to NVIDIA, Kai leverages the abilities of the Tegra 3 to allow manufacturers to put together tablet designs that h...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 4:41 PMOn November 5, 2007, Google and the other new members of the Open Handset Alliance announced Android. Nearly five years later, we've seen the platform become one of the major players in the smartphone world, and dozens upon dozens of Android-running devices come to market. As that five-year anniversary draws upon us, could Google be planning some special to commemorate the event? A new rumor paints just such a picture, and connects back to some other claims we've heard about Google's plans for the fall. That number five popped-up in a recent rumor about how the next Nexus phone might arrive...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 3:34 PMThe consequences of legal actions within the smartphone world have been getting extra attention lately, with the very visible effect of HTC missing launch dates due to seeing hardware held-up in US Customs. If you've been following such things closely, you'll be aware that a case with even greater ramifications has been taking place elsewhere, with Oracle accusing Google of violating its patents concerning the use of Java in Android. After a lengthy trial, the jury has now returned a verdict in Google's favor, clearing the company of these accusations of patent misuse. While this patent vic...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 1:30 PMNokia is now soundly invested in Windows Phone, but even with this new direction, we've seen some pretty substantial support for its erstwhile Symbian OS. Symbian Anna, and then Belle, arrived with new software features, and rumors looked to future Carla and Donna updates. Recently, Nokia started bringing Belle's Feature Pack 1 to certain models, which went so far as to raise phones' CPU clock speeds. All told, for a "dying" OS, Symbian seemed to be doing pretty darned well for itself. The tide may be about to turn, however, with reports that Nokia is about to put a stop to future updates like...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 12:10 PMThree months ago we heard a story claiming that Microsoft was working on a version of its Office suite for Apple's iPad. A picture accompanying the rumor (above) sure looked how we might imagine the app would appear on a tablet, piquing our interest and suggesting there might be something to this news. While a company like Apple might have been content to let the rumors play their course, Microsoft decided to address the claims, first outright denying the picture's legitimacy, but later retreating to a softer position where it claimed the news was based on "bad info". Well, Microsoft might wan...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 23, 2012 11:13 AMCarriers in the US don't have the best track record when it comes to offering a full selection of smartphones for their prepaid plans. Besides just cutting down on the sheer number of phones available, that can mean severely reduced options when we're dealing with anything but a plain slate form factor. If you're still not enamored with the idea of on-screen keyboards, AT&T and its GoPhone prepaid program are getting a new option that may be right up your alley, adding a new QWERTY slider Android to the lineup. Samsung's Galaxy Appeal is a relatively low-end Gingerbread-running Android,...
Read Story -
by Anton D. Nagy | May 23, 2012 4:23 AMWhen the S Voice application, which launched together with the Samsung Galaxy S III, leaked and was made available for the masses -- at least those running ICS-powered Android devices -- many have jumped to download, install and take the application for a spin just to later find out that there were some network errors which led everyone to believe Samsung was blocking the service. While there was a fairly easy workaround, Samsung itself admitted that they are indeed blocking the offering. According to the manufacturer, they are indeed blocking S Voice and it is because "Samsung Electronics ...
Read Story -
by Anton D. Nagy | May 23, 2012 2:39 AMWhen we were in Barcelona to check out the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, the follow-up to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- or the Galaxy Note phablet -- packed, at that moment, a 1.4GHz dual-core processor and a stylus which was separated by the tablet with no way of incorporating it. Then came all the rumors of hardware modifications Samsung might do before the tablet reaches the market and today we get the chance to see and read about some of those changes. The images were snapped at a recent Samsung event and, as far as the internals are concerned, the revamped Galaxy Tab 10.1 will feature a quad-core...
Read Story -
by Anton D. Nagy | May 23, 2012 2:09 AMYou really shouldn't be surprised! It's not that there were no warning signs along the way. Microsoft made it very clear that you will not be able to use the Windows Phone Marketplace once the changes are in place and your phone is still running a version of Windows Phone below 7.5. So, as of recently, if you can't download, buy, update, or review apps in Marketplace -- both on the phone and on the web-- it's because you didn't update to Windows Phone 7.5. Of course, you might be running an earlier build of the platform and still be able to access the Marketplace; this will soon change as t...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 22, 2012 5:16 PMYesterday, we saw Verizon clear up a few things about upcoming updates for some of its Android lineup that would bring these CDMA phones the ability to roam globally on GSM-based networks. All told, the carrier committed to getting this feature out to the Droid 4, RAZR, RAZR Maxx, and Rezound sometime over the summer. Today we get a hint of just how this roaming might arrive, thanks to a recently-leaked ICS ROM for the Droid RAZR. While it's not clear exactly what software build we're looking at here, the takeaway seems to be that the update that will enable global roaming will likely be th...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 22, 2012 4:18 PMWe all knew that lowering the bar on Windows Phone memory requirements would mean incompatibility with some apps, but so far the consequences haven't been overly jarring. Earlier this year, Skype finally came to Windows Phone, but did so along with caveat that the app wasn't compatible with 256MB handsets. Nokia didn't like the sound of how that would affect users of its Lumia 610, and announced that it would see what it could do about that, eventually making the app available for download. About a month later, and with the 610 now launched in China, Nokia's changing its tune, and deciding tha...
Read Story -
by Stephen Schenck | May 22, 2012 3:28 PMHTC's been talking about which of its Androids would be seeing updates to Ice Cream Sandwich for some time now, so we've generally had a good idea for what to expect. We've already seen the company start delivering those updates to some of its lineup, leaving the question of just when it would get around to hitting the rest of them. To help with answers, the manufacturer has put together a convenient table, detailing just when it expects to make ICS available for those remaining devices. It looks like the majority of phones that haven't yet started getting ICS will do so next month. That in...
Read Story
Posts tagged with: News