Huawei unveils Ascend D quad, Ascend D quad XL and Ascend D1 Android phones.
Asus announces Padfone tablet/smartphone hybrid
Asus on Monday unveiled the Padfone from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The hybrid device was first announced in May last year, however a bit has changed since the Padfone's initial announcement at Computex 2011. .
Samsung announces Galaxy Note 10.1 with Android 4.0
Samsung on Monday took the wraps off another new addition to its Android tablet lineup, the Galaxy Note 10.1. Like the supersized "phablet" it joins in the Galaxy Note family, the Note 10.1 includes Samsung's S Pen stylus for drawing, note-taking, highlighting and much more..
Samsung Galaxy S III full specs
We reported some exclusive details surrounding Samsung's upcoming flagship Galaxy S III smartphone this past weekend, and now we have received some more information that helps us paint a more complete picture. And as that picture becomes more clear, this sure looks like the baddest Android smartphone the world hasn't yet seen. We reported that the new Samsung flagship would launch in a simultaneous fashion across the globe, but we now have some more detailed specifications to report. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the Samsung Galaxy S III.
Sure, Intel might not be planning for Moorestown-based smartphones to hit the market for at least another six months, and the LG GW990 might have died a quiet death, but that's not stopping Aava from getting right in the game with its Virta Android, an Atom Z600-based reference smartphone designed for developer testing. Slated to ship in Q3, the Virta features a Moorestown processor, a 3.8-inch 864 x 480 capacitive touchscreen, quad-band EDGE radios with AT&T 3G support, WiFi, Bluetooth, a five megapixel video camera, and a microSD slot. We're assuming the shipping version will look a lot like the prototype Aava device we've been seeing for a while now, but Aava has some fancier renders up on its site, so we'll see what happens and how much this costs when this thing arrives. Source
Considering the almost complete absence of love in the commercial marketplace for Moorestown and Moblin -- and the fact that there's no sign of MeeGo building serious momentum just yet -- we're sure that Intel would've just loved for the drop-dead-sexy GW990 to serve as the platform's crown jewel for 2010. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, because we've just been able to confirm that the 4.8-inch beast (and potential Dell Mini 5 foil) has been wiped off the product roadmap. Though we don't know exactly what happened, the fact that Moblin is effectively dead and MeeGo isn't ready for prime time might be part of LG's justification for killing it off; if you might recall, the GW990 was introduced before MeeGo was official, and the original plan was to have it on the market in the second half of this year. Then again, this might be just as well -- we weren't impressed by the fact that LG was positioning the phone as a closed device back at CES, and there are still plenty of open questions as to how Intel and Nokia plan to offer apps on MeeGo -- so let's just hope this form factor reemerges from LG's labs soon enough, yeah?
Intel and Nokia certainly surprised a few of us yesterday when they decided to merge Moblin and Maemo into the new, more terribly-named MeeGo OS, but it looks like LG is ready to roll with it -- the Moorestown-powered LG GW990 we saw at CES will be one of the first MeeGo phones when it launches later this year. Of course, that doesn't mean much of anything beyond branding, since the GW990 uses a custom UI on top of the x86-based Moblin core and we doubt there's any of Maemo's ARM-based code involved there, but it's a definite sign of things to come. So, Nokia -- are we going to see a Moorestown N900, or what?
OpenPeak is a company so open it just can't resist throwing the word into damn-near every product it makes, and the new OpenTablet 7 is no exception. The number refers to the size of the thing: a seven-inch TFT LCD tablet with LED backlighting, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity. It's all powered by an Intel Moorestown processor, and is designed to serve as a "fully functioning telephone and multimedia platform," the latter bit helped by a microSD slot and not one but two cameras. It will quite naturally run the OpenPeak platform, which is powered by Flash, meaning no concerns about back and forth name calling here. No concerns about pre-ordering yet, either, as the company hasn't seen fit to tell us when this will be shipping, or how much it will cost when it does.
We've been hearing of OpenPeak devices for years, but the company is a little camera shy -- particularly because most of their products, like the Verizon Hub and O2 Joggler, are re-branded by carriers. However, the company seems to be getting behind its recently announced OpenTablet 7 in a big way, recently announcing a partnership with AT&T for data plans in the US. Neither party will confirm exact plan pricing, but we're getting the vibe that it will be "familiar" to folks who've seen iPad data pricing. The device itself is surprisingly well built -- not at all one of these dime-a-tablet jobs -- and the software is rather mature as well. OpenPeak claims to have "thousands of apps" for its platform that stretches across devices including phones, frames, and now a tablet, with a Linux-based platform with a Flash layer on top.
Refreshingly for the tablet space, the UI isn't a bit laggy, and seems pretty far along, though we're promised even more polish as this thing nears market. We didn't check out a browser, and some elements like the touchscreen keyboard are pretty dismal, but for home automation or video conferencing (the device packs a 1080p front-facing camera and a 5 megapixel shooter around back), it seems like OpenPeak can carve a niche for itself on the market. Most of all, we're impressed with the 1.9GHz Moorestown chip under the hood, which offers huge power savings over Atom; plenty of juice for some media rich apps, UI elements, and video; and even runs cool to the touch. An included docking station offers charging and port replication, but there's also an HDMI plug built right into the bottom of the tablet, along with removable microSD up top. No word on when exactly this will hit the market this year, how much it'll cost, or if it'll be rebranded by AT&T. Check out a video hands-on after the break, and a quick note on the press shots below: apps are subject to change based on the rebadger's own partnerships.
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