Rumors about Samsung Galaxy SIII circulate as specs are leaked

While the world is still regaining from the trance that the Samsung Galaxy SII has put it in, rumors about the next phone from the mobile phone giant in the same Galaxy series have surfaced. Unsurprisingly, the phone is to be called Galaxy SIII and is to be more than just a significant improvement over the current, popular SII. There is no working model of the device anywhere in the world except perhaps in the Samsung labs but some information and pictures and a few details have definitely been leaked.
The details of the phone have allegedly been sourced from Samsung representatives but irrespective of the source, they are impressive. That would be an understatement, they are mind-blowing. The Galaxy SIII will feature a quad core processor clocked at 2.0GHz, which if considered in the present, is more powerful than several computer CPUs.
In addition, it will have 1.5GB of RAM and a whopping 32GB of in-built hard disk space. The most impressive feature of the phone, hardware wise will be the screen. Users will be treated to 4.65” of Super AMOLED III display that is to be built exclusively for the SIII.
Rumor has it that the resolution will be an amazing 1280×1024, which is huge but quite weird as the aspect ratio will become 4:3. The size and the resolution of the screen mean that the pixel density will be 352ppi, the highest any smartphone has seen so far. The camera is going to be a huge 10 megapixel snapper that can record full HD video at 1080p resolution at a high quality 60fps.
On the outside, the phone will be cased in metal and measure no more than 9mm. All of this will be powered by a 2,250mAh battery, which should do the job for the average user. The newest feature of the phone is the in-built Near Field Communication capability so that means several services can be handled without taking the phone out of the pocket and the like.
Software wise, it will feature the Ice Cream Sandwich distribution of the Android OS with the TouchWiz 5 overlay for easy application access. Currently, the phone is under development and Samsung plans to announce it at the MWC 2012 event and probably release it sometime in 2012. While the specifications are very impressive, some of them are hard to believe and it is inconceivable to think of a 4:3 aspect ratio. For now, the best that enthusiasts can do is wait with crossed fingers!

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The Motorola Droid Bionic 4G Android Smartphone Launches, Lives up to the Hype

Unless you have been living under a rock, that is a rock with no television, print media or radio access, you have seen the advertisements by Verizon and Motorola heralding the arrival of the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G Android smartphone as the most powerful smartphone yet designed. It seems that every month or two a new phone is released and is claimed by its manufacturer to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, the new iPhone killer, and heir to the throne of the title Greatest Smartphone Ever.

The Motorola Droid Bionic is simply the next phone to be pitched in such a manner. Let’s take an objective look at the specs and features of the Droid Bionic 4G on Verizon’s 4G LTE network and see if it really is all that.

The Droid Bionic is right in the mid-range physically among all 4G smartphones at 5.02 x 2.63 x 0.43 inches, and is slightly heavier at 5.60 ounces as opposed to the average 4.4 ounce. The physical form is a typical black rectangular slab, with the familiar four Android control buttons below the touchscreen display when held in portrait mode.

Again not steering far from the norm, the Droid Bionic 4G offers a 4.30 inch capacitive touch screen with 540 x 960 pixel resolution, which is slightly higher than the 480 x 800 pixel resolution of the average smartphone. 16 million colors are supported, as well as multitouch gestures. A scratch resistant layer of Corning Gorilla Glass protects the display, which also contains proximity and light sensors.

As with all of the better performing and more expensive 4G smartphones on the market, the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G handset uses a dual core processor, this one a 1.0 GHz model with an above average 1.0 GB of PC quality RAM memory and a 3-D graphics hardware accelerator. Android’s most recent upgrade of Gingerbread operating system software, 2.3.4, is the OS which runs this phone. You can buy the Droid Bionic starting at only $179.

The rear facing camera of the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G
offers 8 megapixels of resolution, an LED flash, face detection, panorama ability, touch to focus and autofocus features. The resolution this rear facing camcorder offers when recording video matches the best that 4G phones have to offer, at 1920 x 1080 (1080p HD) and 30 frames per second. The front facing camera provides video chat and video call capabilities.

The Motorola Droid Bionic 4G definitely performs as one of the more capable Android smartphones on the market, and as usual, you have to pay for excellence. Currently offered at $179 at some retailers with a new two-year activation on the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network, the Motorola Droid Bionic 4G Android handset is priced in the upper half of the 4G smartphone price range.

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Sony Tablet S officially now on sale

OK, we'll admit we're a day late on delivering the news, but the fact remains that Sony's long-awaited Tablet S is now on sale.
Price-wise the Wi-Fi only slate comes in at £399 for the 16GB and £479 for the 32GB variant, which in case you were wondering is exactly the same price as that other iPad 2 tablet thingy from that other company called Apple.

Fortunately Apple doesn't have a legal monopoly on what gadgets should cost, though these days we wouldn't be surprised to see Apple's lawyers trying to sue someone for selling something at the same price as an iPad or iPhone.
Sure, that's maybe being a bit harsh, but the reference to the recent spate of legal battles against particularly Samsung is fair game here simply because the Tablet S is definitive proof that it IS possible to bring real variation to the tablet form factor.
Of course that doesn't mean that everyone should have to, or that the Tablet S will actually be popular, but anyway. It's certainly different, and pretty much delivers on that “folded book” analogy we were given when details of the Sony slate first leaked way back in February.
As for the boring spec stuff, well it's Android 3.1 Honeycomb on board, a 9.4in screen with 1280 x 800 resolution, a 5-megapixel camera with forward-facing video cam, and all the usual connectivity bits like DLNA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the like.

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HTC Thunderbolt 4G LTE Official Specs

The HTC Thunderbolt was released early in this 2011 with a huge marketing plan that seemed to see every other commercial on television touting the arrival of this new HTC handset amidst thunder and lightning and much dramatics. And to be honest, that is exactly how the Thunderbolt arrived. Albeit the only phone running on Verizon’s 4G LTE wireless network at that time, I’m sure you know by now that the Thunderbolt posted the fastest up and download speeds ever recorded on a 3G or 4G network.

Just recently, the out-of-the-box Froyo operating system received a leaked unofficial upgrade to the Android Gingerbread operating system 2.3.3 with an official release supposedly coming sometime in September, which will be released to more efficiently employe the features and specifications of the Thunderbolt. Let’s take a look at the Thunderbolt official tech specs below.

The HTC Thunderbolt 4G arrived in the typical candy bar or slab fashion or form factor. A black rectangular slab with the four familiar Android control buttons below the touch screen display when held in portrait mode make a very common statement, and in this regard it appears pretty much like other 4G big-screen smartphones. Physically, the Thunderbolt is 4.75 x 2.44 x 0.56 inches (121 x 62 x 14 mm) and 6.23 ounces, average in size and a little heavier than the average 4G smartphone.

Resolution is delivered at 800 x 480 pixels on the 4.3 inch capacitive touch screen, and multitouch gestures are supported, while the display is protected by a scratch resistant layer of Corning Gorilla Glass. A proximity and light sensor are built into the display, and the screen employees TFT technology.  Buy the HTC Thunderbolt 4G starting at only one penny!

The processor that helped the HTC Thunderbolt set those speed records is a single core 1.0 GHz Snapdragon chip set with 768 MB of RAM memory supporting it. As mentioned earlier, Froyo is pre-programmed out-of-the-box, but the new over the air upgrade to Gingerbread is already in effect. A rear facing eight megapixel camera and front facing 1.3 megapixel chat cam and video call camera are also on board, and the HTC Thunderbolt can record video in 720P resolution high definition.

Retail price for the HTC Thunderbolt is one penny with a two-year activation on Verizon’s LTE 4G network. This first-generation 4G handset supports Adobe Flash media player and HTML web browsing. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connectivity are offered, and a microSD slot allows for storage expansion up to 32 GB, while a microUSB 2.0 port charges the phone and accesses other digital devices.

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CyanogenMod team continues to make progress on Android for the HP Touchpad — Wi-Fi, accelerometer now working

The project to port Android over to the $99 HP Touchpad is making great progress, thanks to the CyanogenMod team. Since the last video updated that we posted, the team has made significant progress on getting Android properly working on the HP Touchpad.
In their latest video update, we see that many new features have been added to the CyanogenMod port of Android on the HP Touchpad. Major updates include working Wi-Fi and accelerometer.
In the last video update, the Wi-Fi wasn’t working and the team used a USB connection to get internet connectivity. Now with the accelerometer working, you can automatically rotate screen orientation by holding the tablet in portrait or landscape mode. As a matter of fact, the accelerometer is working so well that a labyrinth game can be played on the Touchpad.

Angry Birds on the HP Touchpad

There are still some issues that need to be worked on with Android on the Touchpad. For one, the Touchpad is only using one of its dual-cores, and to make matters worse, there is a mediaserver program that is using up 50% of the core, something that should not be happening.
There are still problems with the sound, as you probably heard. In addition, there are some programs that simply don’t work at the moment. The Youtube program is one of them. While watching videos directly from the Youtube app isn’t an option at the moment, the videos do still load when accesses via the web browser.
In case you’re wondering why the CyanogenMod team isn’t porting Honeycomb to the Touchpad, it’s because the source code isn’t available yet. Another reason is because they would like to focus on building from the Gingerbread source (which CyanogenMod 7 is based on) to pave the way for when Google releases the source code for Ice Cream Sandwich, the next version of Android that is supposed to work on both phones and tablets.

Accelerometer on Android running on the HP Touchpad now works

Check out the video below to watch Android running on the HP Touchpad. As always, a big thank you goes out to everyone who is working hard to make this a reality for many people. Keep up the good work, and as always, we appreciate everything.

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Seven states oppose AT&T-T-Mobile merger

Bad news for AT&T and those in favor of the carrier’s attempted acquisition of T-Mobile. It looks like the Department of Justice has garnered more troops in support of opposing the merger. It has been reported that seven states will be backing the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against AT&T. The seven states against the merger are: New York, Washington, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania. With over a third of the American population, living in these states combined, it looks like AT&T doesn’t really have a lot of support from the public. There’s still no telling if the deal will go through or not, but for now, the chances are definitely looking slim.

Here is a statement from Craig Aaron, president of Free Press:

“We applaud the attorneys general who joined the Justice Department’s suit today to block AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile. They deserve praise for standing up to AT&T and standing with their citizens. They understand that families can’t afford to shoulder the burden of higher bills that would result from the merger, and that states struggling with unemployment can’t afford to stand aside while corporations kill competition and put people out of work. This lawsuit is yet another blow to AT&T and a victory for the public.
“AT&T’s propaganda and political posturing aren’t working in the face of such overwhelming opposition and evidence against this deal. Both the attorneys general and the Justice Department examined the facts of the case, and the facts are clear: This merger will raise prices, kill competition and put thousands of Americans out of work at a time of skyrocketing unemployment.”

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Samsung Wave 3 to be released in October

Samsung’s next generation bada phone, the Samsung Wave 3, wasn’t given a release date when it was announced together with the Wave M and Wave Y phones last month. But today at the bada developer day in India, a Samsung executive confirmed a release date for the Wave 3. The Samsung Wave 3 will be released in Europe sometime next month. No word on a US release date, but seeing how the previous Wave phones never made it to our shores, it’s highly unlikely we’ll see the Wave 3 – but there’s always a first for everything.
The Samsung Wave 3 packs some decent specs – no dual-core processor, but it will have a 1.4GHz Samsung Exynos SoC, a 4″ Super AMOLED display, a 5-megapixel camera (capable of 720p HD video recording), WiFi, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth, GPS, 3GB of built in memory, a microSD card slot (supports up to 32GB) and a 1500mAh battery. And of course, the phone will be running the latest version of bada – bada 2.0. Anyone planning to pick up this phone when it goes on sale?

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ITC to review Apple win in patent battle with HTC

The United States International Trade Commission will re-investigate claims that HTC is infringing on Apple’s patents. In July, a judge ruled HTC was guilty of infringing on two of Apple’s patents that covered “a system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data,” and “a real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.” HTC quickly said it would appeal the decision, noting it has a strong case against Apple. HTC fired back and sued the iPhone maker for patent infringement in August when it accused Apple of infringing on three of its patents. HTC said it was disappointed in “Apple’s constant attempts at litigation instead of competing fairly in the market,” and even said it was willing to bury the hatchet in the ongoing patent battles. Apple and HTC must send in written submissions and “proposed remedial orders” related to the case by October 6th. The U.S. ITC will complete its investigation by December 6th, Bloomberg said.
[Via Bloomberg]

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Amazon offers $50 gift card with all Verizon phones

Amazon’s wireless division announced on Friday that it will provide a $50 gift card with the purchase of any Verizon Wireless device between Friday and Monday, September 26th. The card can be used anywhere on Amazon.com or can be used for wireless accessories on the AmazonWireless website. The HTC ThunderBolt 4G is currently priced at just $0.01, which means you’re basically getting paid $49.99 to pick one up. AmazonWireless is also selling new devices such as the Motorola DROID BIONIC, one of Verizon Wireless’ newest LTE phones, and other 4G devices such as the Samsung SCH-LC11 4G Mobile Hotspot and Novatel MiFi 2200 Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot.
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