Motorola DROID XYBOARD (Xoom 2) 8.2″ Tab spotted with Verizon 4G LTE branding

We’ve seen plenty of the Motorola Xoom 2 and its smaller 8.2″ brother being called the media edition but today we have a clear image of the 8.2″ model imprinted clearly with Verizon Wireless 4G LTE. This isn’t really anything new as we figured it would obviously land on Verizon just like the original Xoom, but now we have an official picture not to mention we are hearing that absurd name is official too.

If you were like me and thought the name “Xoom” was terrible then wait to you hear the new name. They’ll officially be calling the Xoom 2′s the DROID XYBOARD — Most likely meant to evoke the term “cyborg.” Either way the name sounds a bit ridiculous if you ask me and I think a 12 year old could come up with something better. As you can see from the design if you didn’t notice from all the previous leaks, Motorola’s taken a huge direction change most likely to avoid any lawsuits and to be different from the pack. I also understand a name change given the low sales of the Xoom, but XYBOARD — really?
These new slates from Motorola have been roaming around the FCC lately and according to many sources we still expect to see some sort of launch late November or very early December. With this official press image being leaked we have a feeling the official US announcement from Motorola and Verizon will be any day now — stay tuned in an XYBOARD interests you.

Read more »

Orange San Francisco II Smartphone unveiled on video

You all may remember the ZTE Blade, better know as the Orange San Francisco budget phone that was launched late last year. It ended up being more successful than many probably thought and now they have the big brother set to debut. This is the Orange San Francisco II and it should be available late this month.

It should be available on Orange’s pay monthly plans by the end of the month but no specific date was actually given. Along with the details we also have a hands-on video below. The SGII is also known as the ZTE Crescent features a 3.5″ display, Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, 5 megapixel camera with VGA front all powered by a single-core 800 MHz processor and 512 MB of RAM. Here is the video for your viewing pleasure:

San Francisco II


The Orange San Francisco II may not be a powerhouse or sport a dual-core processor, but the price is just as low as those quite decent specs. Coming in at £99 ($155) on an Orange PAYG plan or free with their pay monthly offerings. Either way this is a pretty decent phone for the price but most likely it’ll only be available on Orange UK. So anyone over in San Fran most likely wont be buying this phone any time soon.

Read more »

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1N Apple-dodging slate gets caught on video

If you haven’t been following along, over in Germany the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been banned thanks to Apple’s team of lawyers claiming it is a direct copy of the iPad and after plenty of litigation it was banned across Europe. Earlier this week we saw details of a Tab 10.1N with a very slight change of design to avoid those lawsuits so Samsung could sell their tablets in Germany. Today we have that new tablet on video in case you’d like to take a look.

Now that the new slate is on sale German site NewGadgets quickly picked one up and fondled it on camera with a nice English speaking review so we can all check it out, and know what is going on. The main differences on the slate are the bezel and metal around the device. Apple claimed the edge to edge glass was what made the iPad special and Samsung completely stole the look. You can see all the differences in the video and the demonstrator neatly walks us through them. Samsung has added a little to the bezel, shows more aluminum instead of all glass on top and even pointed the speakers more forward then sideways. I actually think I might like that as audio will be better. Here’s the video:

The final results of this new tab make it arguably better — and like I said above it probably has better audio quality now the speakers are aimed forward. Samsung took this opportunity to also put their logo front and center on the bottom of the device, and have also included Bluetooth 3.0 capabilities. The differences are subtle but should be enough to dodge any further lawsuits or issues with the fruit company. Apple has not yet commented on the new design but I have a feeling we may hear something soon. Go Samsung!
[via SlashGear]

Read more »

Google Music expands to Google TV

You get no points for seeing this one coming. The new music purchasing and streaming options unveiled in the Google Music presentation are already available to all Android users in the US, and now they’re rolling out to Google TV as well. Both the Android Market and Google’s official Music app have been updated, allowing purchasing, streaming and sharing of individual tracks and albums through Google TV. The additional functionality should help Google TV to further compete with Apple TV, even if both are somewhat lacking in the product name department.

According to the official screenshot, the interface for Google Music has an extra coat of polish, allowing it to easily be used from couch-standard distance. All the features of the smartphone and web player are present, including the nifty new “pin” option, which automatically keeps selected songs, albums or playlists synced across all your Android devices. Between the Google Music update and an upgrade to Honeycomb, not to mention the long-awaited addition of Android Market access, Google TV is starting to become the all-in-one media hub it set out to be last year.
Google is promising constant updates both to the Google TV platform and the Google Music app and service. The former could definitely use it: with Logitech bowing out of Google TV altogether, the future of the system relies on Sony, and perhaps next year, LG as well. With Google integrating so many different media sources, here’s hoping it becomes a much more viable option going forward.

Read more »

Google Gets Patent For Pattern Unlock Screen, Other Yet-to-be-Implemented Lockscreen Features

Google has been awarded a couple of patents you may like. First is the pattern-based unlock screen where users can draw a custom pattern to get to their homescreen. This light security feature has been in Android for a long time and it’s good to see that Google is protecting it.

More interesting than that are patents for the same idea but with extended functionality. Imagine drawing a custom gesture on the lockscreen that would bring up a certain lockscreen widget if successful. The use case Google uses in their original patent filing suggest a schedule of your calendar events, though many other things could be possible too.
That feature isn’t in Ice Cream Sandwich and we’re not sure if it every will be, but it’s nice to see that Google has both the idea and the patent. And honestly, we can’t imagine this sort of feature won’t come at some point down the line. Take a look at the description of the patents Google won below. [via 9to5 Google, thanks Dean!]

General lockscreen unlocking

A lock screen view is displayed on the mobile device to prevent unauthorized and inadvertent access to the mobile device’s data. While the mobile device is locked, a touch gesture having a pre-defined shape is detected on a touch screen of the mobile device independently of the initial position of the touch gesture on the touch screen.

New lockscreen gesture actions

In response to detection of the touch gesture, a particular action is executed on the mobile device while the mobile device stays locked. The particular action determined according to the pre-defined shape. In this way, detection of the touch gesture causes the particular action to execute while keeping the mobile device locked.

Read more »

Samsung Galaxy S gets Android 2.3.5 update in Europe

If you are a Samsung Galaxy S user that has felt left out when it comes to Gingerbread, your update is coming. At least that update is coming in Europe. That update should be available now or very shortly for users of the Galaxy S in Europe via KIES. It’s been a whole since we talked about that Galaxy S smartphone, we reviewed it way back in March of this year.

Along with the update come a change log of what the smartphone gets feature wise. The update adds an animation shadow at the end of scroll lists. The messages app gets faster start up for opening SMS or sending them. The battery life and power consumption is improved as well.
Overall performance of the phone is improved and there were bugs fixed in the system app. A hang issue with the OEM screen was patch and the picker app was improved. It also gets enhancements to the camera. If you apply this update, be sure and let us know how it works out.
[via YouMobile]

Read more »

Android.com Gets New Design, Easter Egg Discovered

If you haven’t already noticed by now, Android.com has gotten an overhaul. It makes the site more inviting and user friendly, giving users a rundown of Android and its market ecosystem. Platform features are highlighted in an aesthetically pleasing way but there isn’t much here we don’t already know… except for one thing. At the bottom right of the site is a little Android robot and hovering your mouse over it makes it do interesting things. It can wave, it can do the moonwalk, it can juggle and more. The most interesting are the series of semaphore flag signals it shows. It spells out “Adroid” (no typo) but were not sure where the”n” is. I’ll leave you to find out what else it can do over at Android.com. [via 4android.ru]

Read more »

Range of DROID RAZR Cases Released by Otterbox

If for some reason the Gorilla Glass-toting, kevlar-coated Motorola Droid RAZR still doesn’t give you confidence in its durability, Otterbox has released their range of rugged cases for the device. Otterbox cases are designed with the goal of providing ultimate protection while retaining a bit of style.
Both the Commuter and Defender series are available, the former being a more lightweight and lax protection offering with the latter adding a bit more bulk but best defends huge drops and the elements. Be sure to hop over to Otterbox’s site if you’re interested.

Read more »

SwiftKey X 2.2 Arrives With More Languages, Multi-Touch Support and New Keyboard Layouts

The beta for the new update to SwiftKey X has been in the hands of VIP for a little while not but it’s finally landed in the Android market as Android 2.2. This is a pretty significant upgrade so you’ll want to grab the new version right away. We’re getting improved accuracy through their new multi-touch framework, new languages to bring their total to 35, including the oft-desired Arabic and Hebrew. There are also new keyboard layouts for Colemak and Dvorak users. Swiftkey X is quickly evolving into the keyboard for everyone with all of these updates and we can’t wait to see what they’ll be cooking up next. Find the upgrade in the Android market.

With the launch of its version 2.2 of SwiftKey X and SwiftKey Tablet X, the company is as close as its ever been to delivering the utopian touchscreen typing experience. A faster, artificially intelligent language engine; the best multi-touch keyboard implementation ever experienced; lashing of UI polish… and that’s without mentioning the incredible boost in language coverage.
This new version of SwiftKey continues to set the standard for phone and tablet communication. It has the most powerful language technology that’s ever been engineered for typing on a touchscreen, coupled with a smooth and polished user interface and an ever-growing suite of great features. Those who haven’t tried SwiftKey yet should be asking why; millions of downloads and one of the world’s highest app rankings are just two reasons the company knows that this technology is here to stay.
SWIFTKEY X and SWIFTKEY TABLET X (v. 2.2 UPDATE)
TOP FEATURES:
Full language localization for major European languages
Typing support extended to 35 languages, including Arabic and Hebrew
New multi-touch framework for faster typing
Prediction/correction boosted by faster, more efficient Fluency engine
Full support for Android 4.0 operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich)
UX enhancements, including better settings menu, alternative character selection and sharing features
LANGUAGES, LANGUAGES, LANGUAGES!
With this release of SwiftKey X and SwiftKey Tablet X v2.2, the company has taken a major leap forward with its language support. For the first time, users who primarily communicate in Spanish, French, Italian and German (and perhaps Portuguese – tbc) will have an end-to-end SwiftKey experience in their native tongue (in addition to English, of course).
SwiftKey also now offers typing support for a grand total of 35 languages, giving speakers of everything from Afrikaans to Ukrainian an unrivaled prediction and correction experience as they type. SwiftKey’s latest supported languages are Arabic and Hebrew, and SwiftKey users are of course able to enable up to three languages at once, for a seamless multilingual communication experience.
Full list of supported languages:
Afrikaans
Arabic
Basque
Bulgarian
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English (UK)
English (US)
Finnish
French (CA)
French (FR)
Galician
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Kazakh
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese (BR)
Portuguese (PT)
Romanian
Russian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish (ES)
Spanish (US)
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
MULTI-TOUCH FOR SPEED FREAKS: SwiftKey redesigned its multi-touch framework to enable the fastest speed typing and accuracy from a touchscreen keyboard yet. Using all the power of our Fluency language inference engine, users can now type at lighting-fast speeds without accuracy and SwiftKey is able to make sense of their multiple, successive key-presses, offering the world’s best personal touchscreen correction experience. We’ve also added the Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts for typists who prefer these more efficient options.
A FASTER, MORE EFFICIENT ENGINE: The team of SwiftKey engineers have been hard at work making Fluency, the clever language tech that powers SwiftKey’s corrections and predictions, even faster and more efficient. For the end user, this means SwiftKey will operate faster and use less memory, especially on slower handsets. It’s as if we’ve just doubled the MPG of the SwiftKey engine.
UX POLISH TO MAKE YOU SMILE: SwiftKey version 2.2 is the release that’ll make UX fans smile. The company’s made a range of UX tweaks that improve the overall look and feel of SwiftKey X. This includes the ability to adjust the keyboard key height in both portrait and landscape, an improved implementation of our alternative character selection for users who long-press, and a clear settings menu layout. Other UX improvement highlights include full support for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), an improved menu for sharing SwiftKey with your friends, and a better implementation of the typing heatmap graphic, which shows you how Fluency models your typing accuracy with each key to improve predictions.

Read more »