Thursday, February 17, 2011

HTC Revolver heading to AT&T in Q3 2011 – running Honeycomb

htc revolver2
At CES this year, Google’s Matias Duarte had an interview with Engadget where he stated that Honeycomb will make its way to smartphones. Now we are finally ‘possibly’ seeing that come to light as we have leaked images and specs for the HTC Revolver which apparently is supposed to be running Honeycomb.
This device will be the new HTC flagship smartphone, featuring a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen, 16GB onbaord storage, 1GB RAM, and an 8 megapixel camera on the back, with a 3 megapixel front facing camera. We don’t have pricing or an exact date for release, but this should be headed to AT&T in Q3 2011.
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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

HTC Flyer Vs Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Vs LG Optimus Pad

All the prominent Android manufacturers have announced their tablet devices, which will be arriving in the market starting March. While, every device look good in its own right, it will be interesting to check who wins when we put them against each other.
You can find the specifications-wise comparison of HTC Flyer, LG Optimus Pad and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 below. As companies have not announced some details, so you will find them missing from the table.














                
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Android 3.0 Honeycomb Lacking HTC Flyer Preview Video

HTC has finally stepped into the Android tablet arena with the HTC Flyer, but for some reason for once HTC hasn’t actually kept up with the game as the HTC Flyer will come out to play without Google’s tablet operating system, Android 3.0 Honeycomb aboard.
If fact the HTC Flyer will come out to play sporting Android 2.3 Gingerbread so seems to be falling behind in the tablet stakes when you consider the likes of the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and LG Optimus Pad all run Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
Anyway we have a preview video of the HTC Flyer for your viewing pleasure below courtesy of the guys over at Phandroid, which delivers a close up look at the HTC Flyer and what the device offers the user.
Spec wise the HTC Flyer packs a 7 inch touch screen, 5 megapixel rear camera, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera so you can get your chat on, a 1.5GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 3.5mm jack, is half an inch thick and weights in at 14.8 ounces.
The HTC Flyer does come with a capacitive pen though so you can draw and write on the tablet, which looks to me to be rather cool. So all you need do now is jump on down and mash the play button and feel free to let us know what you think of the HTC Flyer…enjoy.

A Homescreen Designed For Quick Info Access – Flipplr at MWC

We agree to the fact that there is no shortage of homescreen replacements for Android, when we had our first glimpse of Fipplr. The concept was demoed at MCW 2011; it looks appealing, and doesn’t fall short in terms of functionality, either.
Fipplr includes widgets for multiple apps, including Flickr, Twitter, and Google Latitude. These widgets display quick information, and a quick swipe to the right will bring up an expanded view of the widget. On the right side of the homescreen are the launcher icons, which are similar to Windows Phone 7, and still look great.
Fipplr is currently unavailable to the public, but being demoed at MWC, we hope that it would be released soon and does not go hiding in the attic, unlike few fantastic apps that have gone missing.

ZTE taking the high road with new Android devices

One of the more interesting announcements at this year’s MWC has come from ZTE, a Chinese telcom which has held a solid portion of the Chinese market by offering a number of low-end Android phones. Last year, ZTE shipped 2 million Android phones, and this year is looking to increase that number to 10 million, but also aim a little higher with these. ZTE has announced a number of devices ranging from 1 GHz smartphones to 1.2 GHz dual-core devices. The standouts from ZTE’s announcement were the ZTE Skate, the Light 2, the Light 10, and a mysterious “Internet box”.
The Skate is, just as you might guess, a smartphone with a design inspired by a skateboard. The Skate will feature a 4.3-inch display, 800MHz CPU, Adreno 200 GPU, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, and Android 2.3.
Next up is the ZTE Light 2, which, as you can tell from the picture, is running Android 2.2. The good news is that it’s a 7″ Pixel Qi transflective screen, meaning it can switch between LCD mode and eInk mode. It also features a 1 GHz processor and 4GB of internal storage.
The Light 10 is a bigger version of the same tablet, but it’ll be running Honeycomb and it’ll be bumped up to 1.2 GHz, though no word if that’s a single or dual-core CPU.
Last up is the unnamed “Internet box” which is an Android-powered TV set-top box that will allow you to run Android apps on your TV. No word on how you might interact with said apps, since I’d be willing to be your TV isn’t touchscreen. No word on how the box would work in general really, because the concept raises a lot of questions.

NVIDIA somehow decides it’s a good business idea to show you how soon the unreleased tablets

The massive influx of Tegra 2 devices hasn’t even hit the market yet, but NVIDIA thought they should show off why you shouldn’t buy those, because the Tegra 3 is coming soon enough. In fact, if you’re really patient, in 2.5 years NVIDIA plans to release a Tegra chip that’s 75x more powerful than the Tegra 2. How’s that for speedy obsolescence?

NVIDIA showed off their comic book themed roadmap with the Tegra 3, code-named Kal-el (aka Superman) which will be 5x more powerful than the Tegra 2, and will begin production in August. The Tegra 3 will be a quad-core chip and feature a 12 core GPU. They even showed it running on stage pushing out 1440p video on a 2560×1600 screen.
If that’s not ridiculous enough, the Tegra 4, code-named Wayne (aka Batman), is scheduled for 2012 and be 10x more powerful than the Tegra 2. The Tegra 5, code-named Logan (aka Wolverine), is scheduled for 2013 and will be about 50x more powerful than the Tegra 2. And, finally the Tegra 6, code-named Stark (aka Ironman), is scheduled for 2014 and will be 75x more powerful than the Tegra 2.
So, regardless of if you need the power, how will it factor into your tablet purchasing knowing that something 5x more powerful will be dropping in August?

Eric Schmidt: Over 300K Androids Activated Each Day, 150K Apps in Market

Eric Schmidt got on stage to talk tech and his company, and confirmed what we already knew – every day over 300,000 devices are being activated on Android’s OS.
That being said, these figures equate to 110 million Android devices activated per year, which sure is a very little growth to report. It will be interesting to watch what happens over the next few months when Honeycomb tablets from every major Android OEM flood the market. Should we expect the sales figure to rise considerably?
Honestly, we doubt it. Honeycomb tablets will be facing an intense competition, as the market interest for tablets is far lower than smartphones. Even though tablets are rising the popularity charts, yet it will take a considerable amount of time before market saturation reaches the same level as that of smartphones. Not to forget the head-to-head collision with iPads, HP’s TouchPad, Blackberry Playbook, and the Microsoft Windows Phone OS (which potentially is some sort of tablet).
And the prices are not even discussed. Consider the initial exaggerated price of Motorola Xoom, it’s hard to believe, especially when many other companies are launching their tablets with similar configuration at lesser price. Perhaps, Google should make the price more competitive, and watch Honeycomb tablet sale boom.
Schmidt also commented, currently 170 compatible Android devices, 27 OEMs, 169 carriers in 69 countries, and over 150,000 apps in the Android Market. He also mentioned that the number of apps has tripled in just nine months.
Our question is if Honeycomb release will enhance the sale, or continue to display the same level of non growth? Well, only time will tell. 

Google Building a Movie Editor from the Ground Up for Tablets [MWC]

If you haven’t already seen it during Eric Schmidt’s keynote yesterday, Google has unveiled a project they’ve been working on for Honeycomb tablets called Movie Studio. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a movie editor. And it looked awesome.
They touted features such as sharing via the cloud, but we were impressed by everything they showed. All the works were there: special effects, audio and video timeline editing, HD transcoding, and more – this looked even better than Windows Movie Maker. (Which, honestly, isn’t really too big of a feat.)
We couldn’t grab video of it as cameras were prohibited throughout the keynote, but we did manage to grab some screen captures from their live stream. Google didn’t say whether or not this would be on the first batch of Honeycomb tablets to launch, and they didn’t say much of anything else, either.  We’ll be keeping our eyes on this one, though.

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HTC Revolver headed to AT&T as a Honeycomb Smartphone?

Honeycomb won’t make its way to smartphones — that has been the official line from Google so far — but a newly leaked handset from HTC is making a claim for the opposite. The HTC Revolver recently appeared with a spec sheet boasting a 4.3-inch display, 16GB of flash memory, 1GB RAM, and a dual-core processor, but the real standout point is the mention of Android Honeycomb as the operating system.
The unusual “CONFIDENTIAL” stamped all over and the claim going completely opposite of what we have heard previously makes me skeptical, but I suppose even if Google doesn’t think Android 3.0 is prime for phones, they can’t really stop HTC from doing it anyway. Samsung did it with Android 2.2 and the Galaxy Tab, right? If this handset emerges as real it will be a pretty unique design among an HTC lineup that has recently conformed to a pretty standard unibody design as of late.
The possible Honeycomb smartphone is said to be on its way to AT&T at some point. Perhaps Honeycomb is just a placeholder and the phone is intended to launch with Ice Cream? It would be a lot more rewarding than the rather pedestrian lineup HTC unveiled this week at Mobile World Congress.
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