Samsung and its Galaxy Tab triumph over Apple’s temporary ban

What a great feat for Samsung today! As you may have heard, Samsung has been in quite the legal battle with Apple Inc. in recent months over whether their Galaxy Tab 10.1 could rest on Australian shelves. Court rulings had prohibited sale of the device with a temporary ban until now.

Australians rejoice, for you’ll be able to buy as many Samsung products as you want – and just in time for the holidays too. Hopefully, Samsung lawyers can cook up some more magic in the case against blocked tablet sales in Germany. Either way, hard-core Android followers will surely get there hands on one – even if they’re required to hop a train towards nearby France to pick it up.
It’s hard to even think of the iPad and Galaxy Tab lines as similar. With so many divergent characteristics in the actual OS, you would have thought to even consider banning one would require never turning on the device. The iPad has a completely icon-dependant homescreen where the Galaxy Tab 10.1 layout is showered with many different widgets. Both sport completely different lockscreens – the differences are practically endless. It seems Apple wants to make sure its competitors refrain from designing anything that comes close to their tablet’s dimensions – well that’s just not going to happen. I’ve got a nice block of wood about the size of an iPad, maybe they’ll come for me too.
[via Phandroid]

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• Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N Apple-dodging slate gets caught on video (goandroid.co.in)
• Apple beats Australian retailers into submission over Galaxy Tab sales (goandroid.co.in)
• Samsung to appeal Australian ban on Galaxy Tab 10.1 (tech-gadget.co.in)

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Google claims volume fix will be pushed within the week

In case you haven’t heard, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has had a few volume bugs; very unfortunate for such an anticipated device. On the bright side, updates for the Galaxy Nexus come straight from the team at Google. They’ve always been punctual at releasing proper fixes soon after an obvious issue arises. It turns out that Google themselves now claim that “We’re currently rolling out a fix for the volume issue which will reach everyone in the coming week”.

We’ve know for about a week now that a fix was indeed coming, but now that a general timeframe has been set we can rest assured that it will be early December by the time it reaches everyone. It will be pushed via an OTA (Over-The-Air) update, so be patient and wait for it to show up in your notifications. And if you fairly new to the Android game, then you can always force your system to perform an update check by tapping Menu > Settings > About Phone > System Updates.
Overall, I’m quite impressed on how Google handles bug fixes and updates to their Nexus line. 

Related articles

• Galaxy Nexus volume bug fixed, shipping again in the UK (goandroid.co.in)
• Galaxy Nexus owners reporting volume issues (goandroid.co.in)

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Lenovo LePhone S760 unveiled for China

China’s getting a lot of Android attention these days, and among its home-grown manufacturers no one’s treating them better than Lenovo. Engadget spotted the latest entry in latest entry in le smartphone line, the LePhone S760, a mid-range Gingerbread device with at least one distinguishing feature. The 3.7-inch screen uses an AMOLED panel, still relatively novel in the Chinese market.

As far as hardware goes, the phone has a 1Ghz processor and 512MB of RAM, making it roughly the equal of the original Nexus One or DROID Incredible. That’s still plenty of power to handle Android 2.3.5, and should keep the off-contract price nice and low. You can spot front and rear cameras in the trade show photos. Since it’s running a pretty heavily modified version of Android and Lenovo’s shown no hesitance to stray from the safe and happy pastures of Google in the past, we’re pretty sure this one won’t have the Android Market or its associate Google apps.
Like all of Lenovo’s smartphone offerings thus far, don’t expect this one to show up in the US, though Chinese buyers can get one before the end of the year. The company’s 5, 7 and 10-inch LePad tablets from earlier today have a much better chance of crossing the Pacific, and the Tegra 3-powered 1080p monster the IdeaPad K2 tablet is almost certain to show up in the US eventually. So why not smartphone love for Americans, Lenovo? We’re good enough for your laptops, after all.

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Dragon Shout Android app is Google Maps for Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a big, big game. You can spend days just wandering around its mountains and tundra, finding villages and dungeons. But crafty gamers soon won’t have to: the Dragon Shout app is an interactive game world map for Android and iOS. It will let players navigate and take notes while they explore Bethesda’s magnum opus.

I’m an admitted Skyrim addict, and since the game’s made an impressive $450 million in worldwide sales across PC and console platforms, odds are pretty good that a few of you are as well. The upcoming app will allow multi-touch navigation a la Google Maps across the parchment-style game world. You can make notews at particular locations – very handy for remembering where you left your pack mule traveling companion. The developer is promising social sharing of maps and entries with other players in a future update.

The app is slated to release in 2-3 weeks, but considering that the developer’s website is basically a Cupertino take on Skyrim, it might be a while before they get around to porting it to Android. Whether you’re sneaking around Riften for the thieves’ guild, fighting valiantly for the Stormcloaks or just killing as many of those flying jerks as you possibly can, an accurate and annotated map will be a welcome companion. Here’s hoping it comes soon. According to the website, it will be free.
[via Game Rant]

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Time Warner Cable tablet app now available for Android, doesn’t stream live TV

We saw a few leaks regarding this application early this year and have been patiently awaiting its arrival. Today the Time Warner Cable app for Android Tablets is finally available over in the Android Market. Before all you TWC TV users get too excited — no it doesn’t stream live TV (like the iPad can), and it only works for a select few tablets. It’s a start though right?

Being called TWC TV in the market and for paying TWC customers this free app will give you all sorts of options and features to enjoy. It’s a TV guide, a full on remote control and you can even set your DVR right from the device, even when your not home. Sadly since we don’t have live TV streaming like that other platform this is basically just a massive remote control for now. I was hoping for a bit more to be honest.
According to the official market listing it’s currently only supported on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Motorola Xoom but I’m finding a few others are supported but not all. Most likely it will scale to a few different sizes was my initial thought but all my 7″ devices aren’t compatible. I’m seeing it work with the Transformer, Tab 10.1 and 8.9 but not the Galaxy Tab 7. All the Lenovo tablets also appear to have full access at the moment. They claim 1280 x 800 resolution Honeycomb tablets will all work but the T-Mobile Springboard I have right here isn’t supported either. Most likely it will work with all 10″ Android Honeycomb tablets so give it a try and let us know how you like it via the comment section below.
We are hearing live TV streaming may be coming once Ice Cream Sandwich lands on more devices, but that is not confirmed.
TWC TV for Tablets App
[via Engadget]

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Galaxy Nexus his NTT DoCoMo in Japan on December 2nd

Yes, America, everyone gets the Galaxy Nexus before you. The latest is the Japanese market, where Samsung will release the phone into the open arms of carrier NTT DoCoMo. The Galaxy Nexus lands in the land of the rising sun gets it on December 2nd, this Friday. DoCoMo gets the GSM version that’s currently on sale in Europe, but there’s no mention of a price just yet.

Those of you not-so-patiently waiting for the U.S. release will note that Verizon’s rumored pre-order has resolutely failed to appear, after reports that it would begin today supposedly came from a customer support representative. You may send your complaints to Computer World, care of Richi Jennings, who claimed a second-hand conversation with customer support as a “confirmation”. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
So when will the Galaxy Nexus actually release in the United States? Your guess is as good as ours at this point. The latest rumored date is December the 8th, next Thursday, but since every previous date has come and gone, I wouldn’t necessarily give that one any more credence than the others.

"What is this, Verizon? A phone for everyone but us?"

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Nielsen: Android extends its lead in the US

No points for guessing who’s on top in the smartphone race. For the time period of July, August and September, Android’s U.S. market share grew from 39% to 42.8%, extending its lead once again. The Nielsen numbers match up pretty well with other statistical reports. The market is growing enough that Apple also increased its share, up to 28.3%. 44% of US mobile users now own a smartphone of one kind or another.

Breaking down the share of Android sales, HTC remains top dog in America with a 15% market share overall, with 35% of Android sales. Next is Motorola with 24.3%, followed closely by Samsung at 23.6%. That’s an interesting metric, considering that Samsung is far and away the top manufacturer of total phones worldwide. Other Android manufacturers made up nearly 17% of Android’s total, with just over 7% of total market share.
BlackBerry, Windows Phone/Mobile and Symbian continue their downward slide, despite the best efforts of their parent companies. So does WebOS, but calling HP’s bumbling any sort of “best effort” would be a disservice to little league baseball teams everywhere. Between the two of them, Android and iOS control 71% of the US smartphone market, and an eye-popping 83% of all mobile app downloads. Keep in mind that Q4 results are likely to skew a bit with the launch of the iPhone 5 iPhone 4S – that tends to happen when you only have one release every year.
[via SlashGear]

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Futuremark 3DMark App coming soon to Android, brings benchmarks to a new level

Oh man, this is awesome news for enthusiast and gamers alike in the world of Android. We have many benchmark applications such as Quadrant or CF Bench and what not for Android that tests overall performance but today I’ve now learned the best of the best in the benchmark business, FutureMark, will be coming soon to Android phones and tablets early 2012. I’ve used FutureMark 3DMark 06, Vantage and even 11 on my PC for years to test gaming and overall performance and I’m happy to announce this is coming soon for Android.

The Finnish company FutureMark has been making some of the best and most trusted and highly rated benchmark suites for PC enthusiasts since early 1998 and are now moving to add Android to the list. They’ve begun development on what they are calling 3DMark for Android (working title) and aim to have it ready for mass usage come early 2012. With the wide array of smartphones available, and Android tablets taking off while getting powerful quad-core processors the need for a reliable and scalable benchmark service will be needed. They plan to deliver just that.
3DMark for Android features may include:
- Measures gaming performance using rendering, CPU and physics tests.
- Stunning real-time graphics push the OpenGL ES API to the limit.
- Complementary online service to compare results between devices.
- Results will be comparable with 3DMark for Windows 8.
- Currently in development, expected to be released in 2012.
Jukka Mäkinen, CEO of Futuremark had this to say,

In 2012 we will bring 3DMark to the Android platform with a professional grade benchmark that can be trusted by manufacturers, suppliers and vendors to provide the definitive measure of gaming performance on Android while showcasing the very best in real-time graphics and effects.”

Results will be comparable across devices and platforms like Windows 8 and will be viewable right from your smartphone or tablet as well as saved online for viewing later and comparing with others. Just like their current line of benchmarks for PC’s. Another important note here is this will be a private application unlike Vellamo that was designed by Qualcomm that some claim is favorable to their processors.
Not only will FutureMark and 3DMark most likely become the absolute standard for benchmarking in Android, but it will probably make us all forget about Quadrant and the others very quickly if done right. I remember the days of overclocking my NVIDIA eVGA GTX 260 SLI graphics cards as far as humanly possible and running 3DMark to compare with my friends. I can’t wait to do the same on my quad-core Android devices soon. Futuremark will push the graphic limits of our smartphones just as they do on PC. Check out this 3DMark 11 Direct X 11 sample video for an example on their work. I can’t wait to try this level of benchmarking on Android.




[via Benchmark Reviews]

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N still under attack by Apple

Uh oh folks, it looks like Apple isn’t ready to stop just yet and apparently the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N that Samsung released in Germany specifically to avoid Apple’s lawsuits didn’t manage to escape. Samsung has been under some heavy attack in Germany, Australia and other parts of the world for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 because Apple claims it infringes on their patents and design. Today Apple seeks another injunction on the new Tab 10.1N and a court date has been set.

 Clearly Samsung made a few changes in hopes to avoid the fruit company by tweaking the design and making the bezel actually wrap around front of the device rather than lay flat. The video linked to above goes through the changes for those interested.
Today FOSSPatents has updated with new details claiming Apple has again asked the German courts to ban the Galaxy Tab in Germany and they are now claiming the design changes were not big enough, that it still infringes on their patents and design. We’ve been told the 10.1N was designed by Samsung with close help by their team of German lawyers so this would not happen. For now we don’t have any additional details and the Galaxy Tab 10.1N is currently still for sale in Germany. They have set an official court date for December 22nd where I’m sure Apple will request another ban and temporary injunction on the Samsung slate.
I’ve been trying to avoid these irritating lawsuit and patent cases but this one was worth a mention specifically because the device was designed to avoid this exact situation. We’ll be sure to update with any additional information as it becomes available.
[via FOSS Patents] — Thanks Dy4me

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