Samsung to announce GALAXY Tab 7.7, Wave 3, GALAXY Note on September 1st

Samsung has already hinted at several major announcements that will be made during the IFA Tradeshow in Berlin, which kicks off on September 1st, and one savvy Android user already discovered what’s in store. According to This is my next, an Android developer noticed three logos inside Samsung’s Mobile Unpacked APK file. The logos clearly name the GALAXY Tab 7.7, the Wave 3 and the GALAXY Note. We have heard rumors that Samsung will launch a new 7-inch tablet, possibly with a new Super AMOLED HD display and Honeycomb in tow, and we’re definitely excited to hear more about the GALAXY Tab 7.7. The Wave 3 will no doubt be a Samsung bada-powered device but it is still unclear exactly what the GALAXY Note is. The South Korea-based company just announced its new GALAXY family of Android smartphones on Wednesday, so it is possible the GALAXY Note is another tablet. The good news is we have just one week to wait before we find out.
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Motorola XOOM 4G LTE upgrade begins next week

Motorola has started to email XOOM customers to alert them that it will begin to upgrade the XOOM with support for 4G LTE next week. According to Droid-Life, Motorola will start with business and government customers during a “pilot program” first and then will begin updating XOOMs owned by the general public. Customers will need to file an upgrade request before Motorola mails a package containing a pre-paid FedEx box and instructional material. Motorola suggests backing up the data on your XOOM before sending it in and said the process should take approximately three business days. Read on for an image confirming the details.

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HD Widgets App: Made for Honeycomb and look amazing

I don’t know about you guys but I’m constantly changing my widgets and live wallpapers on my Android devices. When we have all these different options to choose from why not right? Today we have a set of amazingly awesome and beautiful new widgets designed specifically for Android tablets. HD Widgets brings crisp, clear, and truly HD quality widgets to your homescreen and is available right now in the Android Market.

I went ahead and bought the app to give them a try and so far I love all the options and sizes available. Don’t mind the 110° weather I have here in Vegas today, it was like 114° earlier. Oh and in case your wondering what my awesome live wallpaper above is, you can get that here. Back to the widgets, here we have a few screenshots of HD Widgets by cloud.tv and if you’ve been looking for a nice new set of widgets for your Honeycomb tablet then look no further.

The photo above is a little extreme but that is just a small example of the hundreds of possible choices you have with HD Widgets. They offer so many sizes, color options, background choices, clock styles and colors and more that you will almost certainly find something you like. More will be added soon but with this initial release you get 13 widgets, including 3 over-sized large “tablet only” widgets which look great and span almost the entire length of a 10″ display. The rest are slightly smaller so you don’t have to use all that real estate if you don’t want to, but still want your widgets looking amazing and HD.
I’m sure you’re all excited to give these new widgets a try so be sure and head over to the market to download them by clicking here. For now they are only $0.99 cents as an introductory price so hurry and snag em while they’re hot. Click the photos below to see them in their full size glory.
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HTC Thunderbolt only $0.01 cent at Amazon [Deal]

Just like the old days when I went down to the penny store and bought candy today the Thunderbolt can be yours for the low low price of 1 penny. Although you do have to sign away your contractual rights for 2 years but that is to be expected. Basically sign a new 2-year contract over a Amazon.com and you can have the amazingly fast Thunderbolt with Verizon 4G LTE for only $0.01 cent.

So what are you waiting for, the Bionic? That will be like $299 and we still don’t even have an official release date. Head over to Amazon and snag up this deal while they still have the 4G Thunderbolt in stock. While the Thunderbolt is no HTC Sensation with a dual-core CPU it does have an awesome 4.3″ display, a kickstand (that rocks) and the all important 4G LTE speeds on board.
The Thunderbolt still doesn’t have an official update for Gingerbread, but a 2.3 build has been leaked a few times already. You all should know plenty of the Thunderbolt by now but if not here is our hands-on and unbox video, and a follow up review after 3 months of use. Head on down to the source link at the via below to buy your very own HTC Thunderbolt.

Device Specifications and Information

Device Info

Device Name : ThunderBolt

Manufactuer : HTC

Carrier : Verizon

Announced Date : January 06, 2011

Release Date : March 17, 2011

Also Known As :

Display

• Screen Size : 4.30 Inch


• Resolution : 480x800


• Screen Type : TFT

Dimension & Weight

• Height : 4.75 Inch


• Width : 2.44 Inch


• Depth : 0.56 Inch


• Weight : 177 Grams

Battery & Power

• Battery Type:


• Lithium Ion

• Battery Capacity : 1400 mAh


• Talk Time : NA


• Stand By Time : 330 hours

Software

• Android OS:


• 2.3.x

• Audio Playback:


• AAC


• AMR


• MID


• MP3


• WAV


• WMA

• Video Playback:


• 3GP


• MPEG-4 (MP4)


• WMV

• Messaging:


• SMS


• MMS

Hardware

CPU : Snapdragon

CPU Clock Speed : 1000 Mhz

Core : 1

Ram : 768 MB

Internal Storage : 8.192 GB

Front Facing Camera :

Camera Resolution :8 MP

• External Storage:


• MicroSD


• MicroSDHC

• Camera Features:


• Auto focus


• Flash


• 720p Video Recording

• Sensors:


• Accelerometer


• Proximity

QWERTY :

Cellular Network

• Network Technology:


• CDMA

• CDMA Band:


• 800


• 1900

Device Connectivity

• Wi-Fi:


• 802.11b


• 802.11g


• 802.11n

• Bluetooth:


• Bluetooth 2.0

• Location Features:


• Compass


• GPS


• Cellular location


• Wi-Fi location

FM Radio :

[via Amazon Wireless]

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Motorola DROID Bionic Battery Life Photos Leak, Looks Decent

Since we still have not seen the actual size of the battery that will come in the Droid Bionic, or how long it will actually last this will do. Someone has been nice enough to leak more than a few photos showing the Bionic on both 4G LTE and 3G at different levels of battery life. While these first pictures look good, they are a little deceiving to say the least.

Seeing 14 hours of usage and still showing 60% battery life, over 25 hours and having 15% (below) looks amazing and like the battery life we all wish our Android phones had, this just isn’t the case. These are no way realistic results but they are new images and figured you’d like to see them. Go ahead and right now go to “battery use” on your own Android phone and the “display usage” is probably the first or second one on the list, and has used the most battery. These screenshots show the phone was on idle (as in not being used) for most of the time and the display usage is only at 4%. So while the results look impressive, they aren’t accurate for real life day to day usage.

There is one good thing we can take away from these photos, and that is the battery life will still be decent and probably better than most phones available. We all know and have heard the horror stories of the Thunderbolt only lasting a few hours on 4G LTE even without being used much. So things look to be much improved here with the Bionic. Standby battery life as well as 4G LTE use does seem to be improved here, but I’ll still take these with a grain of salt until I get the device in my own hands.
Remember while looking at the usage chart we see no phone calls, no text or SMS app, no games, no browser usage. Calling this “moderate” use is a bit over the top but either way it’s better than nothing right?
[via Droid-Life]

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HP TouchPad Android 2.2.1 System Dump Files Now Available

The HP TouchPad has been getting a lot of attention as of late from the entire developer and Android communities. Once the TouchPad price dropped to $99 everyone started running wild with the hopes and dreams of one day soon running Android on said device. Just a day or two later we learned that Android ports were already under way and a few days later one was spotted running Android 2.2.1 out of the box, right from Best Buy.

In case anyone isn’t following the TouchPad Android progress there is also a video clearly showing the HP TouchPad running on Android 2.2.1 FroYo and I’ll post that below. It appears to be a QuIC (Qualcomm Innovation Center) developer unit that somehow managed to get boxed up and sold at Best Buy. Lucky for the entire android world the user was nice enough to get a full system dump of all the files to help out.



Now exclusively over at RootzWiki the files are available for download and the port of Android 2.2, 2.3, and hopefully 3.2 Honeycomb can all get a little head start. We mentioned more on this here once before but the port will be called TouchDroid and the amount of support and developers keeps growing by the day. I have a feeling we will be seeing Android on the HP TouchPad sooner rather than later.
[via Android Police]

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Google+ Android App Updated: Improves Notifications, Reshare, Adds 38 languages

Google has just pushed out yet another update for the popular Google+ Android application with some much needed improvements. The list is quite large and a good start indeed but the last update aimed to fix notifications but those are still a bit buggy for me. One of the biggest improvements I see right away is the +mentions now autofill from your Circles. Something that worked great online but was not as easy on the mobile application.

They claimed to have added stability and improvements to the notification system so hopefully that works better than before, support for over 38 new languages for the Android app have also been integrated. The biggest improvement in my opinion is that we now can do +mentions that populate from your circles. On the mobile app they had to be in your Google contacts until now, that one one of my biggest concerns.
Here is the full changelog:
-Improved notifications reliability
-”_add to circle” notifications shown in bulk
-Share stream posts to individual people
-Clicking a +mention takes you to the person’s profile
-+mentions now autofill from your Circles
-Stream no longer resets to top when screen is rotated
-Nearby accuracy
-Start a 1:1 huddle from a person’s profile or a group huddle from a circle profile
-Hide 1:1 huddles
-Clickable links in huddles
-Improved autocomplete when adding a person to a huddle
The Google+ Android App update should be live on handsets right now, and is also available in the market by clicking here. Get that update and start sharing and +1′n with all your friends and circles.

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Samsung Galaxy S II will not be offered by Verizon Wireless?

This is a bit depressing, in some sad news new details are coming out regarding the upcoming launch of the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. With the official US launch on the 29th new details are claiming that the biggest carrier here in the US, Verizon Wireless, will in fact NOT be carrying the Galaxy S II phone at all. This is according to the Wall Street Journal and then confirmed by Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney.

At first we thought the leaked Samsung Stratosphere could be the SGSII, we’ve now heard it will be a mid-range Samsung slider and not the Galaxy S II we were hoping for. With plenty of great phones already in the Verizon Wireless line-up and even better phones like the upcoming Samsung Nexus Prime they have no reason to carry the SGSII.

“We have an extensive portfolio that offers customers a great variety of devices, including the Samsung Droid Charge,” said Brenda Raney, a Verizon Wireless spokeswoman. She declined to elaborate.

Some may see this as bad news, but if Verizon is in fact getting the rumored Samsung Nexus Prime then I don’t see this as that bad, although users will then have to wait even longer for their next purchase, or just get that Droid Bionic we keep hearing about. We have heard and even seen confirmed pictures of the other three main carriers all getting the SGSII here in the U.S so take this as you will. What do you guys think of this move by Verizon?
[via WSJ]

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Verizon Outs Android-Compatible Intuit GoPayment Credit Card Reader

You know how when you go to those future stores where clerks have credit card scanners on their phones, you don’t have to go to a sales desk because there IS NO SALES DESK? Imagine if you had the same sort of situation going on in your store – or better yet, imagine if you had your own mobile business going on and all you had to do to get some cash from someone was to swipe their card along the side of your Android device? That time has come, the hardware is here, and Verizon’s got your back. What Verizon has revealed today is no less than the Intuit GoPayment App and Credit Card Reader, a hardware/software combination that’ll allow your small business to go mobile instantly.

What you’ve got here is a little piece of hardware that plus in to your Android device (basically any Android device, mind you,) and works with an app that you’ve got on your smartphone or tablet to make grabbing payments as easy as swiping a credit card and tapping a few buttons. And what does this little thing plug in to, you might ask? The audio jack. Weird! Of course, if you want to know, this system also works on BlackBerry and iOS as well, so everyone can jump onboard should they not want to make the cool choice and jump to a brand new Motorola Droid 3 or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE.
Small business owners will delight in their ability to work with the app to quickly create a list of frequently sold items, making the whole process of adding sales tax, tips, and customized receipts as simple as possible. Sensitive credit card data is never stored on the device, and all data is encrypted twice, one via the card reader itself and another via the GoPayment app. Transactions can be synced once they’ve been made with recent versions of QuickBooks on PC, Mac, and soon online, all of this through GoPayments’ extended ecosystem.
The actual hardware is completely free after you activate your GoPayment account and sent a mail-in rebate of $29.97 – aka you’ve gotta lay down that price at the register, but you get it all back once you mail for it. The way Verizon and GoPayment makes money on this whole situation is through a percentage of your transactions. They do mention that “basic service has no monthly, transaction or cancellation fees, and offers a competitive 2.7 percent discount rate for swiped transactions,” while “a paid version of GoPayment is also available for $12.95 a month and provides a low discount rate of 1.7 percent for swiped transactions.” Check out the full details on pricing in the gallery below.
At the moment it does not appear that you need to have a Verizon-carried device to work with GoPayment, and all of these services and the one bit of hardware are available starting today.

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