Samsung Galaxy Nexus and HTC Rezound spotted in Verizon system

Not that you needed reminding, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is coming soon, and now Verizon’s internal device management software is offering a last bit of confirmation. The Galaxy Nexus (AKA the Nexus Prime) has been spotted in Verizon’s database, alongside the HTC Rezound (AKA the Vigor). No dates are available for either phone, but both have been confirmed as having Verizon 4G LTE radios.

The most interesting part about the Verizon database entry might be the name. We’ve been hearing rumors for months about Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich developer phone, and while “Nexus Prime” and “Galaxy Nexus” have both been bandied about, neither one seems to have completely overruled the other. With a probable announcement just days away in Hong Kong, Verizon may have inadvertently settled the argument: a Samsung UK executive said that the phone would be releasing “sooner than you think,” pointing to a launch within a few weeks after the announcement. Of course, that executive called the phone the Nexus Prime. Either way, we’re probably looking at a code name/retail name dichotomy here.
The HTC Rezound has been leaking out for a few months as well, and while it doesn’t have Ice Cream Sandwich, the hardware is still suitably drool-worthy. According to some candid shots, the Rezound/Vigor will feature a 720p display (though it’s almost certainly LCD, not Super AMOLED) and a screaming 1.5GHz dual-core processor. An 8-megapexel rear camera, 2 megapixel front camera and LTE radio round out the device.
With the Motorola DROID RAZR expected at almost the same time as the Galaxy Nexus, Verizon may have top-of-the-line phones releasing from Samsung, HTC and Motorola within weeks of each other. Fall 2011 is shaping up to be a banner season in the Android world.

Read more »

ChatON lands on Android Market

Back in late August, I mentioned that Samsung had a new cross platform chat service that would be coming to Android and a bunch of other platforms called ChatON. Several Android fans were excited about the prospect of a chat service that would link all major smartphone platforms in one free chat circle. If you were excited about that app, you can download it right now.

ChatON is now on the Android Market. For now, the service only supports Android, bada, and Samsung feature phones. However, Samsung still swears that support for all other platforms is in the work. The app has a web-based client that will let you chat using your PC as well. In addition to shared chats, the app supports private chatting and the sharing of media.
On feature phones from Samsung the app allows for texting, image sharing calendar appointment sharing, and contact sharing. Other users will have a few extra options. There is also an animation message feature where you can draw something and seen it to someone you know. The Android version supports Android 2.2 and 2.3.
[via TechCrunch]

Read more »

Motorola shareholders will vote on Google acquisition on November 17th

Google made waves in the tech world when it announced its intention to buy Motorola Mobility outright back in August. The $12.5 billion deal would stabilize the cell phone icon, which has been struggling even after a successful revival based on Android smartphones. More importantly, it would give Google an in-house manufacturer for Android, creating a top-down supply chain a la the iPhone. Motorola announced via press release that its shareholders will vote to approve or deny the acquisition on November 17th.

The acquisition has been a quiet point of contention among Motorola’s Android rivals. Many analysts see Google’s purchase as a patent firewall as much as anything else, and Motorola remains the only one of the “big three” that hasn’t signed a licensing deal with Microsoft. Both Samsung and HTC pay royalties to Redmond to avoid patent litigation, and Samsung said specifically that they “can’t rely on Google” for legal protection. Google has stated on several occasions that they intend to run Motorola as if it were a separate company, and don’t intend to “play favorites” with in-house hardware.
At this time two years ago, Motorola seemed to be the darling of the Android world after releasing the original DROID. Android has been a major force in reviving the company, whose featurephone sales were threatened by Samsung. In January of 2010 the company became profitable for the first time in three years, based largely on strong sales of Verizon phones like the DROID 2 and DROID X. It’s not unreasonable to say that Android (and by extension Google) have kept Motorola from sliding into a Nokia or Palm-style downward spiral.
While it’s impossible to predict the whims of Motorola Mobility’s shareholders with any real precision, a “yea” vote seems more than likely.

Read more »

Rumored DROID RAZR specs: “faster than the iPhone 4S”

The Nexus Prime isn’t the only superphone making headlines at the moment. Motorola has its own announcement coming just a day before Google’s, and it’s expected to reveal the DROID RAZR (AKA the DROID HD or DROID Spyder) along with Verizon in New York City on the 18th. Boy Genius Report has yet another tipster with the inside line on the new hardware, and it’s certainly worth a look.

According to the anonymous tipster, the DROID RAZR will feature a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and a full gigabyte of RAM, making it “faster than the iPhone 4S”. That’s a hard claim to quantify considering the OS difference, but it certainly holds true from a hardware perspective (not that that’s anything new with high-end Android phones). The screen will be a standard 4.3 inches, much like the qHD screens already seen on the DROID X2 and DROID BIONIC. The device will be the “thinnest LTE phone to date”, a claim that certainly appears possible, considering some of the leaked photos we’ve seen.
The shot at the iPhone 4S might be specious, but in any case, the DROID RAZR looks like it’ll be a tough competitor on Verizon, meeting or beating the best of the current smartphone lineup. It’s hard to say how long that will last with Samsung’s Nexus Prime so close at hand, but as always in the Android world, choice is a good thing. Check out the promo video for the upcoming Motorola/Verizon event for some suitably speedy imagery:

Read more »

Total Honeycomb tablet sales estimate: 3.4 million units

Google was quick to highlight the continuing rise of Android on the smartphone platform at their third quarter earnings call, citing 190 million total Android activations globally. Google didn’t mention how many of those activations came from tablets running Honeycomb, but according to a developer estimate, it isn’t much. With the Android team’s latest statistics, the total number of active Honeycomb tablets in the wild comes out to a depressing 3.4 million.

Developer Al Sutton reached the conclusion after combining the 190 million figure with the device percentage breakdown released last week, wherein only 1.8% of global Android activations came from Honeycomb tablets. Divide 1.7% into 190 million, and you get a total of 3.42 million. Comparing Honeycomb tablets with Android smartphones isn’t exactly apples to apples, but by contrast, Froyo has 86 million activations and Gingerbread is right behind at 73.5 million.
It’s no secret that Apple still dominates the tablet world, with the iPad retaining an 80% marketshare more than six months after Honeycomb debuted. Analysts are putting 2011 iPad sales in the 20 million range, which just about evens out with the marketshare estimates. The 3.4 million figure doesn’t include low-cost or pre-Honeycomb tablets, most of which are running Android 2.3 Gingerbread by now. Popular devices like the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Nook Color don’t factor into these results, and neither will the Amazon Kindle Fire, which runs a heavily-modified version of Gingerbread.
Considering how much the iPad dominates, reaching almost 20% of its sales in less than a year isn’t bad, even if it isn’t ideal. Part of the reason that cheaper tablets use Gingerbread is that Google hasn’t released the source code for Honeycomb, and doesn’t intend to. Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich announcement is coming next week in Hong Kong, and if the company offers the source code to the combined smartphone/tablet OS (as promised), expect cheap ICS tablets to hit the market a few months later.
[via SlashGear]

Read more »

Epesitec launches new Android tablets starting at $189

There are hoards of Android tablets on the market today and it seems that everyone wants to get in on the action. I think that what the market needs isn’t more Android tablets that have high-end features to sell in the same price range as the iPad. What we really need are some companies to step in and flesh out the cheap entry-level range of the Android tablet realm.

Amazon recently did this with the unveiling of the Kindle Fire tablet. Another company is stepping into the low-end tablet realm with a pair of offerings that aren’t the most powerful, but they are solid for the price. Both of the tablets come from Epesitec and have 7-inch capacitive touch screens. They also run Android 2.3 and have 512MB of RAM onboard. Storage is to 4GB of NAND flash and they have expansion up to 32GB.
The processor is a Freescale 1.2GHz unit with PowerVR Series 5 graphics. The resolution of the front camera isn’t specified, but the rear camera has a 3MP resolution. The devices support Bluetooth, WiFi, and have a USB port along with analog TV output. The only difference between the two offerings is that the E516 with 3G onboard sells for $249 and the E515 with WiFi only sells for $189.

Read more »

Google: 190m Android phones in circulation today

Google announced its overall financial figures last night, giving us a few snippets of news about how well Android has been contributing to the business. Claiming that there are now 190 million Android devices out there around the world today, Larry Page, Google’s CEO, also said that Android contributed a staggering $2.25bn to Google’s bottom line in ad revenues.
That’s a lot of people accidentally clicking on banner ads, eh? The last time Google spoke on device numbers was back in July, when it said 130m Android devices were out there. Here’s more of Larry:

The growth of Android is mind-boggling too. Over 190m devices have now been activated globally. I’m super-excited about the soon-to-be released new version of Android called Ice Cream Sandwich, that’s right, Ice Cream Sandwich. You won’t believe what we manage to get done in this release

Looking forward to it, Larry!

And that’s the Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 update Larry has no doubt been testing himself for several months, which is now scheduled to be launched, or at least demonstrated by Samsung and Google, on October 19th.
Link via the Guardian.

Read more »

Sony Ericsson to go all smartphone in 2012

The numbers for Sony Ericsson (SE) for Q3 2011 are in and they show that SE is starting to turn things around a bit from the horrible quarter it had in Q2 2011. In Q3 2100 SE shipped 9.5 million units compared to the 7.6 million units shipped in Q2 2011. The Q3 11 number is still down from the 10.4 million SE moved in Q3 2010. The average selling price was up in Q3 2011 to 166 euros compared to 156 euro last quarter.



Total sales for Q3 11 added up to 1,586 million euro compared to 1,193 million euro in Q2 2011 and 1,603 million euro in Q3 2010. SE has also stated that 80% of the sales it makes are smartphones and it has shipped 22 million Xperia smartphones so far. The gross margin for the quarter was 27% down 3% year-on-year.
The biggest thing that came out of the earnings event was the factoid that SE pans to move its entire portfolio to smartphones in 2012. That means a bunch more Android devices on the market since SE is using Android on its smartphones. It also means if you have your eye on some sort of SE feature phone you better buy it soon.
[via SlashGear]

Read more »

U.S. District judge says Samsung tablets violate Apple’s patents

Samsung is having a hard day. (They never got the hang of Thursdays.) After Australia upheld Apple’s injunction against the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with possible monopolistic implications, the judge in the United States case covering some of the same issues has confirmed that the Korean electronics giant is violating Apple’s patents here. This could pave the way for sales bans like those already in place down under and in Germany.

The comments come from the honorable U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, who’s overseeing the ongoing patent case Apple brought forth against Samsung’s Galaxy line of phones and tablets. The news isn’t all bad: the judge said that she wouldn’t grant the requested sales block based on a “utility” patent, covering “graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics”. That’s excellent news for all tablet makers (except for Apple), as without that particular bit of IP it would be almost impossible to make tablet software in the style of Android Honeycomb. There are three more patents in question that could make a compelling case for an injunction, but all three are “Design” patents, covering the look and feel of iOS that Apple is claiming Samsung infringed. Judge Koh did not mention these patents, but she said she would issue a formal order “fairly promptly.”
There’s been a lot of action in the Samsung case lately. Google, T-Mobile and Verizon have files amicus briefs in support of Samsung, claiming that Apple is using the courts to create a monopoly and that a sales ban would irreparable damage their businesses. It’s yet to be seen whether or not American courts will follow in the footsteps of others worldwide, but it looks like Samsung may be able to engineer their way around Apple’s design patents as they’ve done in the Netherlands already.

Read more »