Barnes & Noble event set for November 7th – Nook Color 2 likely

We’ve been hearing rumblings of a sequel to Barnes & Nobles Nook Color reader/tablet for months, and it looks like predictions for a November 7th launch were right on the money. Invitations for a “very special announcement” bearing the distinctive Nook logo are arriving in the inboxes of major media now. The Nook Color 2, or whatever it will be named, seems almost certain at this point.

Barnes & Noble is playing catch-up, at least in the publicity race: Amazon’s similar full-color, 7-inch tablet the Kindle Fire also runs a modified version of Android, and wil lbegin shipping out to customers on November the 15th. Most impressively, it’s just $199, putting it into impulse buy territory when compared to $400-$500 full-sized tablets. Various estimations put pre-order sales at around a quarter million already, and Amazon might be able to make as many as 5 million by year’s end. Retail employees are already reporting displays and marketing material being prepared in bookstores ahead of Barnes & Noble’s event.
The original Nook Color is still competent for its intended purpose, reading ebooks with some light browsing, emailing and video. The $250 tablet gained notoriety among Android enthusiasts for its easy hackability via a boot table that defaulted to the MicroSD card. CyanogenMod 7 is a popular ROM, and the Nook Color was technically one of the very first devices to run Android Honeycomb via an SDK port. Who knows if Barnes & Noble will keep the easy-modified software structure of the original Nook Color, but they’ll almost certainly try to compete with Amazon’s rock-bottom pricing.

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QuickClick apps make finding nightlife in a new town easier

A company called MarketImpact has announced the pending launch of some new apps that are designed to help people in an unfamiliar city discover things to do. The apps fall into the QuickClick Locale Series and there are bunches of different apps in the series that are designed specifically for one sort of task. For instance, there will be different apps for eating and for night clubs.

The apps will have versions that focus on Nightlife, Restaurants, fast food, casinos, coffee, desserts, gas stations, parking, and ATMs. The reason for apps with specific uses is to allow the user to get all the details they need on only one screen rather than having to click to different screens.
Any extra detail needed like food type or bank name will be able to be typed directly on the one screen. It’s not clear, if the apps will be offered for specific major cities or if the app will cover any city. The apps are up on the Android Market right now.
[via SFGate]

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Microsoft’s lawyer says “Android stands on our shoulders”

Microsoft has a keen interested in Android despite selling its own mobile operating system – an interest that’s vetted to the tune of more than $400 million a year in kickbacks from 53% of Android devices sold. Now Microsoft’s deputy patent troll intellectual property counsel says that Google has built its OS on the back of technology developed (and owned) by the Redmond software giant. Microsoft is only one of many companies gunning for Android manufacturers, but tellingly, not targeting Google itself.

Horacio Gutiérrez, deputy general counsel for Microsoft’s intellectual property group, told the San Francisco Chronicle the following in an interview:

These devices have moved from having a rudimentary phone system to being a full-fledged computer, with a sophisticated, modern operating system. In doing that, they have really stood on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft who made all these billions of dollars in investments.

He went on to talk about Microsoft innovations that are “really critical features that make smart phones what they are today.” Without going into detail, Gutiérrez mentioned synchronizing data with servers and back-end hardware and software innovations that he believes belong to Microsoft. According to Gutiérrez, these patents aren’t contingent upon the final outcome of a software process – say, making a web browser close when the desired action is completed – but on the way in which the outcome is achieved. Different methods of doing the same thing are covered by different patents.

A surprising number of Android manufacturers would seem to agree, or at least, they don’t want to fight out the finer details in court. Samsung, HTC, ODM company Compal and many others pay royalties to Microsoft for every Android device sold. In fact, the number of Android devices that contribute directly to Microsoft’s pockets far exceeds the number of Windows Phone 7 devices sold, even if the latter is more directly beneficial to the company. Google asserts that Microsoft is manipulating the IP and court system to extort its hardware partners.

[via The Register]

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AT&T Announces the 4G LTE Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Nov. 6 for $249.99

Many were wondering if the Samsung Galaxy S II LTE would make it to the states, and we now have the answer in the form of an early Monday press release from AT&T. The handset with a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display and 1.5GHz dual-core processor will come to the carrier as the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. Other specs include an 8MP camera with 1080p video captures and 16GB of on-board storage.
The Skyrocket will go on sale November 6th and will be one of AT&T’s pricier models, $249.99 on a two-year contract. It’s no Samsung Galaxy Nexus in terms of software, but it does best that device in some areas. Screen technology is an upgrade (though lower resolution) and the clock speed of the processor is increased. See the announcement below for more info.

Samsung Galaxy S™ II Skyrocket™
Lightning fast reflexes powered by a 1.5 GHz dual core processor and AT&T 4G LTE speeds make the Galaxy S II Skyrocket faster for Web browsing and all your favorite apps. A Super AMOLED Plus display spanning 4.5-inches is the brightest, most colorful screen on the market.

• 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display(800×480 pixels)
• Android Gingerbread (2.3.5)
• 1.5 GHz dual-core processor
• 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash, with 2-megapixel front-facing camera
• 1080p HD video recording
• 16 GB of on-board memory, microSD expandable to an additional 32 GB

The Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket will arrive in AT&T company-owned retail stores and online Nov. 6 for $249.99 with a two-year commitment.

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HTC Vivid Official for AT&T, Nov. 6th for $199.99

AT&T has announced its first 4G LTE smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S II and the HTC Vivid. The Vivid is the phone we have up until now known as the HTC Raider (and is still known under that name in some regions). The Vivid features a 4.5-inch qHD display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and 8MP camera capable of 1080p video capture.
AT&T is pushing its 4G LTE network to new regions and launching the handset (along with the Skyrocket) on November 6th. The Vivid will be the lower-priced option at $199.99 on a new two-year agreement.

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Apkudo helps devs test apps to be sure they work on multiple devices

One of the biggest challenges for app developers on platforms like Android where there are multiple smartphones and all those smartphones tend to have different hardware is fragmentation. Just because the app the develop runs on one Android smartphone doesn’t mean it will run on all of them. Some devs have found that out the hard way, as have Android users when they try and use the app. Apkudo is a new testing platform that devs might find interesting.

Apkudo is set to launch a new free testing service that will help devs to see how the application will run on nearly 300 different Android devices. The product will be launched at AnDevCom in San Francisco on November 6. Apkudo has 289 devices specifically including tablets and smartphones that account for just about every Android device sold so far.
The apps a dev creates are uploaded to Apkudo and then the lab runs the apps on the APK using each device. The full test takes less than a minute and then bugs and issues are reported back. There are cameras in the lab that record the video of the app running on the app devices and the devs can slow the video down to catch specific errors. This sounds interesting, I wonder if it will change to a paid service later.

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HTC Desire S Gets Android 2.3.5, Sense 3.0

Heads up, citizens of the UK. The HTC Desire S is receiving its update to Android 2.3.5. The biggest change with the update involves HTC’s custom user interface, where it has been updated to Sense 3.0. This brings about new lockscreen elements, a refreshed notifications pull-down, and other goodies. The update has been arriving for owners of the unbranded Desire S as well as those with the phone on-contract through Vodafone, Orange, and O2.
[via EuroDroid]

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Samsung Galaxy S Glide and Motorola RAZR Headed to Rogers this Week

While Motorola’s new take on the RAZR franchise will be exclusive to Verizon in the US, those in other parts of the world should have no problem getting ahold of the new device. A new leak out of Rogers indicates the handset will be available beginning November 4th. The same leak shows that the Motorola RAZR will be preceded by the Samsung Galaxy S Glide with its combination of high-end specs and slide-out keyboard on November 3rd. Both devices will be available for $149.99 on three-year contracts.
[via mobilesyrup]

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Add the Samsung Galaxy S to the List of Devices with an Unofficial Ice Cream Sandwich Port

The Samsung Galaxy S is joining a growing group of current devices receiving pre-release builds of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. As was the case with previous instances on the Nexus S and HTC Thunderbolt the alpha build is worth mentioning but hardly useful as daily driver ROM. Android 4.0 has not seen an “official” release, so developers have been using the SDK (rather than the source code) to patch together makeshift builds of the new OS version. This results in software that isn’t fully baked. The Samsung Galaxy S version of this tasty treat is not even available to the general public yet, though work is progressing thanks in large part to the same team that brought us MIUI.
[via XDA]

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