Hasbro sues Asus over Transformer Prime name

There’s no question that Asus knew about the association with a certain mega-popular toy line when they christened their follow up to the original Transformer as the “Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime”. Anyone born before 1990 will remember the Transformers action figures and cartoons, and anyone born after 1990 will recognize the Michael Bay films. Hasbro, the original creator of the transforming toys, didn’t take kindly to Asus’ free bit of nostalgic nomenclature. According to MocoNews, the toy manufacturer is suing the electronics manufacturer over the name, claiming that it could be confused with the series protagonist Optimus Prime.

The idea that a 40-foot fictional robot/truck/BAMF could be confused with a 10-inch Honeycomb tablet is pretty ridiculous. But saying that Asus didn’t know about the geek value of a name like “Transformer Prime” is also pretty ridiculous, and Hasbro might just have a legitimate concern that fans might think it’s somehow sponsoring or associating with the product. Verizon’s DROID line falls into the same camp, but they’ve licensed the name from Star Wars production company Lucasfilm, and even created a Star Wars themed version of the Motorola DROID 2. LG’s in hot water as well if they ever decide to release a phone named the “Optimus Megatron”.

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Samsung designers reveal the inspiration behind the Galaxy Nexus

There’s at least one thing that hardware manufacturers are inspired by: making so much money that they have to sell more phones to make room in the warehouse for a fleet of Bentleys. But the Galaxy Nexus enjoys a design that’s fairly unique, between its curved construction and its deliberately spartan layout. So what was the inspiration behind the shape? If you said “taking a Galaxy S II and bending it like a Pringles chip,” you’d only be half right: according to the company design blog, the curved shape is meant to recall the outline of a floating magnolia flower petal.

Designers TaeJoong Kim and GiYoung Lee extrapolated on the process that went into the hardware design of the Galaxy Nexus. “All the design projects I’m working on take cues from nature,” says Kim. Previous projects in the Galaxy line were designed to look like sports cars, but the subtle curves and flowing lines of the Nexus is meant to imply a more organic origin. The emphasized curve is meant for comfort both when speaking on the phone and “putting the phone in the back pocket of skintight jeans.”

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Sony Ericsson LT28at 4G LTE 4.55″ 720p phone leaked with 13 megapixel camera

It appears that SONY really is going all in with Android because the details of this latest leaked phone sound extremely nice. This 4.55″ 1280 x 720p reality display packing smartphone is headed for AT&T with an awesome display and an equally impressive camera to snap some high quality beautiful photos. Leaked as the LT28at this phone could very well be their next flagship device and seen at CES 2012 coming up shortly. More details and photo samples below.

The image above is a render of the recently leaked more than a few times known as the Nozomi. Its codename is LT26i so seeing LT28at for this latest leak leaves us to believe this new leak will in fact be their next big flagship device while the Nozomi will be the Arc HD. We don’t have a lot of details other than a few highly impressive specs on screen and camera, as well as a few sample photos snapped with that impressive 13 megapixel camera.

We’ll have a 4.55″ 1280 x 720p HD display, AT&T 4G LTE and a whopping 13 megapixel on the back and a 720p HD camera up front. No other details are really available at this time but we’ll take what we can get. Hopefully some pictures of the actual device will be leaked soon but for now at least we get a few image quality samples. I sure hope whoever is pictured doesn’t work for Sony Ericsson because he might just be in trouble now. Below are the photos snapped using the 13 mexapixel camera and for now this is all we get but we’ll be sure to update once we see or hear more.

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HTC Sensation Android 4.0 ROM Leaks, teases Sense UI on ICS

While developers have been going crazy porting and working on ROM’s for all devices to get a taste of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich today we have something even better. This appears to be a full Android 4.0 ROM for the Sensation XE that was leaked to the public. Developers have already ported this to the regular HTC Sensation and it seems to be working great. This also gives us our first glace at what to expect with HTC’s Sense UI on Ice Cream Sandwich — more of the same sadly.

This ROM comes to us courtesy of XDA Developers and has already become hugely popular in just a few short hours since being released earlier today. Based from the leaked Android 4.0.1 build for the Sensation XE it currently has HTC Sense UI 3.5 but we may see 4.0 from HTC at release. The changes being seen could very well change once final but for now it’s a good start — for those that like Sense of course. I personally love my Vanilla whether it’s Gingerbread, Honeycomb, or Ice Cream Sandwich but that’s just me.
Being an early leak there are a few bugs and users cant set wallpaper from settings, battery life is quite terrible (although tips are available on the first post) and that is all currently being listed but I’m sure there are a few more bugs somewhere. At first glance nothing really looks different. I personally love the visual changes with ICS so I’m a little sad to see them staying so similar here. You’ll notice this does feature Face Unlock, the new ICS font, menu, and more but either way Sense is still Sense.
If getting some semi-official ICS on your Sensation is of any interest make sure you follow all the directions provided by the developers at XDA and proceed with caution. This being an extremely early leak, and for the XE makes the possibility for issues bigger than usual. Many comments are saying it works great so give it a run and let us know what you think.

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Swype Beta Update Brings Dragon Dictation and 50 Languages

The folks at Swype have released a new beta for users to try out. The latest update brings Dragon Dictation support giving them a nice TTS input option over the default Android TTS option (which isn’t bad, but we like options).

It currently supports English, French, Italian, German and Spanish and more will be added over the coarse of 2012 Users can also download 50 different languages from within the settings menu of the app. They’re also adding another new feature called Advanced Language Modeling, but I’ll let them explain it for you:

Advanced Language Modeling
Swype now features an improved language modeling algorithm, designed to increase the accuracy of the suggestions we offer (such as knowing that you mean “mosh pit” instead of “mosh pot”). By analyzing the text you’ve already entered, Swype will offer more accurate predictions that make sense in the context of the sentence

• Up to a 40% increase in prediction accuracy when a language profile is present
• Learns over time as you use it, building up a personal language profile for you.
• Enabled only for English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. Other languages coming soon!

Users can go to the Swype Connect section of the settings menu in Swype and check for the update by hitting the refresh button. If nothing comes up, their server probably bounced you due to too many people trying to download it. If that’s the case, just download it later. The team advises users to wait 72 hours before reporting issues with grabbing the beta update. [Swype via Android Central]

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Android Team Wishes All a Happy Holiday

The Googlers of Building 44 took some time away from churning out Android improvements to spread some holiday cheer. As can be expected from Google, no expense was spared. They even trucked in some snow to make Santa Claus feel a bit more at home. We’re sending our warmest of holiday wishes right back at you, Android Team. Keep up the great work!

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Canadians Beginning to Receive Transformer Prime Units

It looks like the first group of North American citizens are beginning to receive their ASUS Transformer Prime units in the mail. Canadian reader Mark has reported receiving his through UPS. Check your tracking number from your respective retailer to see if yours is inbound.

United States customers have also reported that device shipments have headed out from various retailers, including a new tip received by us today that GameStop was shipping orders from today and customers should begin receiving them tomorrow (overnight shipping). Hopefully everyone can enjoy some sweet ice cream before Christmas.
All of this lines up with word from our ASUS rep that the ASUS Transformer Prime will, in fact, be available in North American markets starting this week so we’re sure more than a few of you should see it on your doorsteps or in store shelves in no time. Be sure to let us know if you’ve gotten confirmation that your order has shipped! [Thanks Mark and everyone who sent this in!]

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Verizon’s 4G Outage Issues Resolved

And the short saga comes to a close. Verizon’s just informed everyone that the 4G network outage that occurred earlier this morning has been resolved. They did not give a detailed explanation as to what caused the outage, as usual, but they did acknowledge which consumer may have been affected. I and many others have been back on 4G uninterrupted for a couple of hours now and everyone should be good to go. Take a look at Verizon’s short statement sent to us below.

"Verizon Wireless 4G LTE service is returning to normal this morning after company engineers worked to resolve an issue with the 4G network during the early morning hours today. Throughout this time, 4G LTE customers were able to make voice calls and send and receive text messages. The 3G data network operated normally."

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Android 4.0.3 radios for the Galaxy Nexus leaked

While it appears in the official capacity, the Android 4.0.3 update for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S have been delayed, the good news for Galaxy Nexus owners is that leaked 4.0.3 radios for your device has been leaked, and based on reports from users across various forums, the leaked radios for the CDMA and 4G LTE Galaxy Nexus have improved signal reception.
Users have reported that the phone now locks onto a data signal faster and tends to keep it longer, along with smoother handoffs between 4G and 3G connections. Of course this leaked radio will require an unlocked phone with custom recovery, so proceed at your own risk as it seems that according to Michael Crider of Android Community, the leaked radio has “broken” his wireless tethering functionality.
We can’t be sure if this has happened to anyone else yet, but if you can’t wait for the official update, you can find the download link and instructions along with various user feedback on the XDA forums.

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