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- US Cellular offers buy one get five deal on Android
- Honeycomb gets ported to the HTC Desire
- Xeta concept phone boosts specs for Honeycomb
- Hanvon HPad A112 tablet/ereader revealed
- Android 2.3 vs 2.4: Two Bites at Gingerbread
- Motorola XOOM won’t get Flash support until Spring 2011
- NEC MEDIAS E-04C 7.7mm-thick Android smartphone headed to Japan
- Android 3.0 Honeycomb hits Nexus One in unofficial port
- Motorola ATRIX 4G HD Dock Review
- Motorola ATRIX 4G Laptop Dock Review
- Motorola ATRIX 4G Review
| US Cellular offers buy one get five deal on Android Posted: 21 Feb 2011 11:00 AM PST U.S. Cellular has announced a family sized buy one, get up to five free, deal on Android handsets and messaging phones. Customers who sign up for a two year US Cellular agreement and purchase a Samsung Mesermize (aka Galaxy S) for $99.99 can get up to five LG Optimus U smartphones free or one Samsung Messager Touch for $29.99 and get up to five Samsung Profiles for free. To sweeten the deal (as if it wasn’t sweet enough), US Cellular is also offering a $100 Smartphone activation credit for every new line. There’s even more benefit if customers add either their Primary Plus Plan or Belief Plan which offers phone upgrades after 18 months.
Samsung Mesmerize has a 1GHz processor running Android 2.2 (Froyo). It also enjoys a 4.0" Super AMOLED Touch Screen Display with TouchWiz 3.0 and all the usual specs including a 5MP rear facing camera. The LG Optimus U, also runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), but from a less powerful 660 mhz processor and has a smaller, lower resolution 3.2″ screen. The Samsung Messager Touch, has a pull out qwerty keyboard, and a paltry 2.0 megapixel camera is is aimed at those who just want a message portal to stay in touch. US Cellular has enjoyed some success of late, having been chosen as the best carrier in the country by Consumer Reports most recent customer satisfaction survey. And recently, dropped the price of it’s entire line of Android handsets to under $100, including the HTC Desire for $69.99. The offer goes through March 10 and includes 5GB of data per line, phone replacement and GPS navigation support. Adding the Primary Plus Plan gives unlimited text, picture and video messaging, and more.    )
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| Honeycomb gets ported to the HTC Desire Posted: 21 Feb 2011 10:20 AM PST As we all know, the beauty of the Android system is that it’s open source. That not only breeds a myriad of handsets powered by it, but since there’s no big bad developer looking to sue for playing with the source code, it also means some pretty slick home-brew solutions to breathe new life in handsets that are starting to show their age. Witness this cool porting of Android 3 (Honeycomb) to the HTC Desire. No, it’s not an amalgam of Ice Cream and Honeycomb, it’s an early full on Honeycomb build. And it actually works … sort of.
XDA developers “CoolExe” has been playing around with a very early Honeycomb SDK port and he installed it on his HTC Desire. So far, CoolExe has gotten the phone to boot and got some response from the multi-touch screen. He’s even gotten it to flip between landscape and portrait orientation. That’s as far as he’s gotten so far, but it looks pretty promising. Next up, WiFi, Network, audio and the onboard camera functions. But if he can pull all that off, that’ll make for some serious street cred. Imagine what he could do with a polished current Honeycomb SDK?
If you want to follow CoolExe’s “exploits,” head on over to XDA Developers. [via GeekWord] )
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| Xeta concept phone boosts specs for Honeycomb Posted: 21 Feb 2011 09:45 AM PST It’s called the Xeta, and it’s a simple, yet elegant concept phone created by designer Frank Tobias for Sony Ericsson. On it’s face, it may look like just another Android phone. But looks are deceiving. Check out what may be under the hood. Designed to run the very tablet centric Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the Xeta is to be powered by a 2Ghz dual core CPU running the Sony Mobile Bravia Engine. Which is plenty of power to support a massive 4.2 inch multitouch display that nearly covers the entire phone. Layout wise, the Xeta looks to sport three buttons including a center square that suspiciously looks like a “cut and paste” of an Apple mobile device power button.
Other specs include HDMI and miniUSB ports and full HD video recording from it’s rear facing 8.1 megapixel camera. The forward facing video camera looks to get a spec boost as well, a 3.2 megapixel camera for video chatting. Here’s hoping front cameras continue to get more powerful as mobile video chat increases in popularity and handsets continue to get more powerful to accommodate it. And speaking of power, it’ll be interesting to see if it comes to reality and if it’ll get an even further boost from upcoming Quad-core chips by both Qualcomm and NVidia. [via ConceptPhones] )
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| Hanvon HPad A112 tablet/ereader revealed Posted: 21 Feb 2011 07:12 AM PST A new Android-based ereader has been promised for CeBIT 2011 next month, the Hanvon HPad A112. Expected to launch in the second half of the year, priced at around €399 ($545), the A112 has a 7-inch 800 x 600 touchscreen and runs Android 2.2 Froyo. It appears to be a new version of the HPad A116 shown at CES 2011 last month.
Inside there’s a 720MHz ARM11 processor paired with 2GB of internal storage and a microSD slot. Although it’s being billed as an ereader, it’s most definitely a tablet cross-over: there’s WiFi and Bluetooth, options for GPS and 3G, and a rear-facing 3-megapixel camera (along with a front-facing camera for video calls) USB and HDMI round out the main specs, with the 3,300mAh battery tipped for around eight hours of reading (though we’re guessing significantly less browsing and media playback. The whole thing is 10.8mm thick with a magnesium alloy frame and a brushed stainless steel shell, and Hanvon has even thrown in their own custom handwriting recognition. [via The Digital Reader] )
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| Android 2.3 vs 2.4: Two Bites at Gingerbread Posted: 21 Feb 2011 05:20 AM PST Google’s naming convention was supposed to make differentiating Android releases easier, but Gingerbread seems to have come out half-baked. Launching alongside the Nexus S, still the only phone to officially run Android 2.3, it’s now confirmed that Android 2.4 will not only be arriving imminently, but also bear the name Gingerbread.
As rumored earlier in the year, that has meant a delay in non-Google Gingerbread handsets. At the time, it was suggested that Google was trying to keep the field clear for the Nexus S, maintaining the Samsung’s flagship status for as long as possible until dual-core phones arrived, but it now seems that the delay has been to give Android engineers time to bring 2.4 up to speed. Android Community spoke with HTC in a pre-MWC 2011 briefing, and the company confirmed that its new range would arrive with Android 2.4 rather than 2.3. The exact differences weren’t specified – HTC described them as having “no impact on the user” and being mainly bugfixes – but we’ve also heard that 2.4 addresses the compatibility of apps that have been written for dual-core devices (such as Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets on chipsets like Tegra 2) running on single-core handsets like the Nexus S. Where that leaves devices like the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc – which the company insisted would launch with 2.3, but which has been spotted running what was listed as 2.4 – is unclear. Android 2.4-based handsets have proved rare when it comes to in-the-wild sightings, with HTC’s prototypes in Barcelona last week actually running 2.3.2. The company has said the first of its Gingerbread phones will arrive in early Q2, aka April 2011, at which point we’d expect the Nexus S – and perhaps the Nexus One – to get an Android 2.4 update as well. )
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| Motorola XOOM won’t get Flash support until Spring 2011 Posted: 21 Feb 2011 04:11 AM PST The Motorola XOOM may be shaping up to be the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet to reach the market, but it won’t be bringing all of its features from the start. According to a tiny disclaimer at the bottom of Verizon’s listing for the slate, the XOOM won’t have Adobe Flash support until Spring 2011.
Adobe had already said that it was working on Flash Player 10.2 for Honeycomb, so it seems that Android 3.0 won’t launch with Flash Player 10.1 as is available for current Android smartphones. Considering Flash support is an oft-cited advantage of Android over iOS on the iPad, that decision could well come back to haunt Adobe, Google and OEMs. [via Engadget] )
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| NEC MEDIAS E-04C 7.7mm-thick Android smartphone headed to Japan Posted: 21 Feb 2011 02:27 AM PST So far, NEC’s Android devices have looked pretty clunky: you can hardly accuse the Touchnote or Smartia of being alluring in their design. However, all that looks set to change with the NEC MEDIAS N-04C, a 7.7mm thick Android 2.2 Froyo smartphone expected, according to Draft Life with Blog, to hit Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo on February 24.
The super-slim smartphone hasn’t been fully detailed, but it will have a 4-inch display, NFC and 1-Seg digital TV tuner, and be available in black and white. At 7.7mm it’s thinner than the Sony Ericsson XPERIA Arc (which is 8.49mm thick) and the Arc doesn’t even have NFC. No word on international launch plans, but NEC would be crazy not to take the MEDIAS E-04C abroad. [via Akihabara] )
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| Android 3.0 Honeycomb hits Nexus One in unofficial port Posted: 21 Feb 2011 12:55 AM PST It’ll be Thursday before the first official taste of Honeycomb hits the market – in the shape of the Android 3.0 powered Motorola XOOM – but the quest to put the tablet SDK on all manner of other devices continues with the Nexus One. Google’s first Nexus phone has been married up with Honeycomb by the skilled tinkerers at xda-developers, rooted and given a quick tweak to make sure the display works in landscape and that the app drawer is functional.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot more broken than working right now, so you probably don’t want this as your everyday OS. Phone, WiFi, the accelerometer, sound, the camera, Bluetooth and 3D acceleration aren’t functional, but if you’ve been wondering how a tablet-centric OS will look on a 3.7-inch display, now’s your chance.    [via Geekword] )
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| Motorola ATRIX 4G HD Dock Review Posted: 20 Feb 2011 04:29 PM PST This is a dock that’ll allow you and your Motorola ATRIX 4G to work with any number of larger screens, connections to three USB ports as well as a 3.5mm stereo audio output as well as HDMI and of course, power. This dock can connect to a wired keyboard and mouse via the USB ports, but there is a wireless mouse and keyboard that works as well. When your phone is connected to the dock, your phone is transformed into the Motorola Webtop user interface, allowing you to work it as an HDTV (seeing this then on the tiny screen as well as the gigantic screen you’re connecting to more than likely.)
There’s an Entertainment Center user interface that you can work with the included infrared remote control. This remote control works as a physical version of the on-screen controller you’ll see when you use a direct HDMI connection. The Bluetooth mouse and keyboard work as well as you’d expect, connection never shorting out so long as you’re powered up.
The keyboard is slick especially as it’s got several Android app shortcut buttons as well as a full keyboard experience. The chiclet keys here are much easier to use than the keyboard on the much more expensive laptop dock. And you know what? You can connect this to a much bigger screen, one you’ve more than likely already got handy if you’re the sort of person that’s looking into grabbing an ATRIX 4G.
For the rest of the ATRIX 4G review, head on back to the post Motorola ATRIX 4G Review and devour the phone that’s got all sorts of eyeballs being sought.        )
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| Motorola ATRIX 4G Laptop Dock Review Posted: 20 Feb 2011 04:20 PM PST This is the big mother. This is the reason the ATRIX 4G has been seeing so much press, so much pazazz from amongst the lovers of new items and the lookers for next steps in the evolution of phones and computers. This is a notebook-style dock for the phone, one that makes the phone essentially turn into what we can most closely relate to a MacBook Air. Without the phone, the dock does nothing, with the phone, it’s the closest to a full-functioning desktop computer we’ve ever experienced from Android.
This laptop is an 11.6-inch ultraportable with full keyboard, trackpad, and integrated battery. Once you’ve got the phone plugged in, you’re working with Motorola’s Webtop system which is a slightly different experience than what you’re working with on the phone alone. Of course when you’re working on a desktop like this, you’re able to do what we’re tempted to call multitasking, but let’s give it some time before we jump to any fabulous or harsh headed conclusions. The actual unit is solid, made of both solid hard plastic and metal, all of it black, with lovingly constructed keys and a big fat trackpad. We’re not talking about a perfect experience of course, or rather, not an experience that we can really call a replacement for an ultraportable as the clicker below the trackpad is stiff, the trackpad does not have multitouch support, and the entire unit isn’t quite as pretty as the above average industrial design of a MacBook. Not that we’re totally addicted to MacOSX, however, this situation providing a nice change – a Motorola Webtop system with a custom Linux build with Firefox, a few more apps built in (that we’re sure will be switched up, chopped, and screwed in great ways by smooth developers soon.)
The greatest bit of this laptop system is the Entertainment Center, the same thing you’re going to be able to do with the HD Dock, this lovely situation hosting up all the media you’ve got nicely. On the other hand, the browser isn’t quite maximized in the way we’d like, instead just magnified, revealing pixels instead of clear smooth non-lines. Slight sluggishness in places whilst browsing and searching through HD content, but the ability to play videos on YouTube and Hulu and so forth is definitely a welcome feature.
The laptop dock is able to run 6 hours of video playback or 9 hours of web browsing (of course this is relative,) meanwhile recharging your handset unit as you do so. That’s awesome. Is it worth the cash, the several hundred dollars for a glorified bigger screen and power station? At the moment, we say not quite. But it is on the border, and there’s sure to be upgrades before you know it, so don’t count it out quite yet. For the rest of the review of the ATRIX 4G, head back over to the post Motorola ATRIX 4G Review.             )
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| Posted: 20 Feb 2011 04:14 PM PST Welcome to the hat trick. This is the phone that won Best Device CES 2011 and is the only one in the world to have three docks out of the gate, one that’s two, for a television and to allow it to connect to the keyboard and a mouse and remote, and another that’s a full fledged laptop. This is a big stepping stone in making smartphones the screens we carry around with us everywhere that also act as our computers we’re going to be able to use for everyday work. Inside there’s a fat NVIDIA dual-core Tegra 2 processor running it’s lovely 4-inch qHD display. Reviewing this phone has been difficult due to the versatility, but we bit the bullet and managed to bring you a solid flat look. NOTE: Don’t worry about the headless Andy, he’s fine, just being modded.
Hardware A perfectly sized not-too-large and big enough to enjoy sweet HD quality content display is covered with a pane of mega-strong Gorilla Glass. Behind this is a singular strong patterned piece of hard plastic with breaks only for the fingerprint sensor, speaker, and camera. In the center of this back panel is the AT&T logo with the Motorola M logo near the bottom, while on the front is the type-centric Motorola logo with your big four touch-sensitive buttons along the bottom: menu, home, back, and search.
The phone as a whole is 63.5 x 117.75 x 10.95 mm and 135g heavy, with several plugs along the edges. These plugs include a microUSB and HDMI connectors on the bottom left, volume dongle along the right, 3.5mm headphone port and power button along the top. This power button is also the fingerprint scanner that will allow you to lock your phone based upon your unique finger signature. We’ll tell you right now that this scanner is surprisingly accurate, and if you’re unable to make it function because you got your fingers burned off or if you want to give access to someone else, you’ve also cot the option of entering via passcode.
The display is a step up from most of your everyday Android smartphones of the day, at a lovely 4-inch qHD capacitive and 960 x 540 pixel resolution. Calculated down to the pixels per inch, it’s still not quite as sharp as an iPhone 4, but still blasts past the majority of its competitors. On the front above the display is a VGA-resolution webcam, brightness, and proximity sensors, each with the sensitivity and resolution you’ve come to expect from a modern smartphone – not perfect, but definitely much more excellent than any comparable device int he past.
On the back is a not-quite-the-most-powerful 5-megapixel rated camera, but as you’ll see below, it definitely functions well (with its dual-LED flash almost as a bonus.) This camera shoots 720p HD video, so you’re going to want some space – thusly, there is space. Inside you’ll find the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor with a pair of 1GHz cores and a fat 1GB of DDR2 RAM with 16GB of integrated storage. That’s fat, it’s amazing, it’s more than you’re ever going to need on a normal daily basis. But you can have MORE if you want with the microSD slot that’ll give you an extra 32GB. This phone connects via AT&T’s HSPA+ “4G” network, quadband GSM/EDGE, Wifi along b/g/n with support for both 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands, plus it’s got Bluetooth 2.1EDR and of course microUSB and HDMI ports. Oh and you want more? How about GPS, accelerometer, and digital compass? Those are in there too.
NOTE: Laptop Dock and HD Dock are covered near the end of this review as they should be considered both integral to this phone but also separate should you choose to use it without them. Software We begin to get sick to our stomaches when we hear that this phone will be running Android 2.2 Froyo and Motoblur, but quickly become well again and even full of vitality when we find that these things are hardly a stopper on the lovely workings of this otherwise very up-to-date handset. Motoblur, or MOTOBLUR if you prefer, looks ever so slightly nicer than its predecessors – take a look at the post Motoblur Gets an Update if you’d like to see the press release on this brand new version. On the other hand, since we are still hackers and developers at heart, we cry once more when we find that AT&T has continue their limitations on this Android handset, that being the complete stopping of sideloading apps, aka all those apps that you have sitting around that aren’t coming directly from the Android Marketplace. As for apps that come with the handset, there’s an array of AT&T bits including Navigator, YP Mobile, Code Scanner, and My AT&T as well as a few Motorola deployed offerings which include Quick Office 3.0, Vlingo Voice, Need for Speed, and MobiTV, as well as an app for a company we were sure already went out of business: Blockbuster. Odd.
Then there’s a few Google apps, the list getting long now for how many apps we really need included out of the box, but Google giving some we’d have gotten anyway, take for instance Gmail. As is average with most Android phones released in what would otherwise a very open environment, most of these apps are not allowed to be deleted. You know the way around these locks though, right, developers and hackers? Of course you do. No problem.
Camera Leaving something to be desired when you consider the power that could be unleashed with the Tegra 2, this handset takes reasonable photos that could definitely be better had a slightly nicer camera been installed. Photos are alright, considering the fact that everyone will know that you used a mid-range smartphone camera to take them, while the video at 720p is fairly nice, with a 1080p unlock coming down the road we’re told. Again, the Tegra 2 is capable of bringing us much more than we’re given here, though if you’re not in it for the capturing and sharing of images and video, no worries.
Multimedia Not quite getting into the dock situation yet, we’ve got to say that display of media, even the not-quite-perfect media captured with the device, is amongst the nicest we’ve seen. This handset supports AAC, H.264, MP3, MPEG-4, WMA9, eAAC+, AMR NB and AAC+ formats with video playback at up to 30fps, a collection of formats you’ll come to appreciate when you’re running through sets of videos passed on to you from wild sources from across the internet – that is, if you’re that sort of person.
Phone Noise reduction is the key in this situation, as it’s getting quite difficult to increase the power of voice-to-voice calling at this point in our smartphone history. Solid calls to and fron the ATRIX 4G have been made by us, and speakerphone is really loud and nice. Data Not so fast! Very similar to the other AT&T phone we’ve got on hand here, the HTC Inspire 4G, we’ve had some ever so slightly slow downloads and especially uploads. We’ve heard from the source that the HTC Inspire 4G has no HSUPA, (aka 3G upload speed,) and thus is working not on 4G, not on 3G, but at even slower speeds for uploads. Take a peek at the speeds on the Inspire and tell us if you think the same thing is going on here with the ATRIX 4G, which is grabbing right around 1.4 Mbps download and .15 Mbps upload.
Battery This handset contains a 1,930 mAh battery direct through Motorola, model number BH6H, giving us right around 13 hours of runtime, that’s with use of several apps, internet browsing, music, and video recording and playback. You will certainly be charging this phone every night when you go to bed, possibly when you’re sitting around working as well, depending on how much you sleep and are awake in a day, of course. Planning on using this phone mostly for Twitter? You’ll probably just need an overnight charge daily. Laptop Dock Take a look at our ATRIX 4G Laptop Dock [Review] post to see how it fares against itself and the competition. HD Dock Head over to our ATRIX 4G HD Dock [Review] post to see all you’re going to need to know and hear about it.
Cost The Motorola ATRIX 4G costs $199.99 brand new attached to a 2 year AT&T agreement. If you plan on doing it this way, you’ll have to scoop up both data and call plans, plus if you plan on tethering (like a normal person) you’re going to have to get the most expensive data plan at $45 a month. That with the cheapest voice plan makes this an $84.99 a month handset without any docks or anything. The HD dock costs $129.99, the Bluetooth keyboard costs $69.99. If you want the mouse, you’ll have to buy the “Entertainment Center / Webtop Access Kit” which includes both the HD dock and the keyboard as well as the mouse all for $189.99. The laptop dock is $299.99 after rebates which total $200 (mail-in and instant.) If you want to buy the laptop dock by itself, that is, if you decide to buy it after you’ve already got the phone, you’ll be paying $499.99 alone. Is it worth it to have this futuristic carry-about phone to computer option? Ah… not sure yet. We’re hoping this all-data carryable around with you option continues with other devices, but this one might be too soon.
Wrap-Up This is the bigtime innovation phone in many places, but it’s really expensive to offer all of this new options to you as soon as it has. The option to plug your phone into a laptop sort of device is an idea that’s been a longtime coming, and this wont be the last time it’s been implemented. The phone appears to definitely be worth itself on its own with the amount it costs at the moment, but the docks, at least the laptop dock, may have been released too quick. On the other hand, we give props to Motorola for releasing such a dock first. That’s always something worth a high-five over. Buy the phone, wait on the laptop dock, buy the HD dock. Go for it. Also feel free to see the review our sister-site SlashGear has done for this same set of devices and docks [right here]                                                       )
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