Android and Me |
- Memorial Day weekend Android deals
- Droid Bionic to have an OMAP processor instead of a Tegra 2?
- Patent troll Lodsys is now lumbering towards Android developers
- Is this the Google Nexus 3? (Picture)
| Memorial Day weekend Android deals Posted: 28 May 2011 03:54 PM PDT  In the interests of saving you time that would be better spent with friends or family during this holiday weekend here is a collection of Android phone and app deals that we gathered from around the web. If you have any other particularly enticing offers you’ve come across please let us know in comments and we’ll add them to the list. Amazon Wireless All phones are 4G or “4G” depending on the carrier. I should note there is a rumor that all of these phones might be going for the low, low price of free on Monday, but I can’t find any hard evidence to substantiate that claim.
Lets Talk It’s all Verizon deals here with free overnight shipping on everything and a 20% off coupon for Android phones with coupon code “7c7f3319″. Deals are available on everything if you want an older device, but I’ll stick to the newer options.
Wirefly You’ll need to enter the coupon code “MemorialDay25″ to get most of the prices referenced here. The Xperia Play and the Droid Incredible 2 are the notable deals here. Just use this link to see all the deals. T-Mobile
Verizon
Sprint
EA Mobile These prices aren’t available in the Android Market, but you can get them by using your phones browser and going to http://us.eamobileclub.com/m/android/home.aspx. I haven’t ever tried to make a direct purchase through EA Mobile’s site so no promises on how great an experience it is.
Gameloft Now I suspect this one is going to set some people off, but Gameloft is offering all of their Android HD+ titles at a pretty substantial discount. Why would that set you off you might ask? Well that would be because it seems to only be for the U.K. All HD+ titles are available for just 1 GBP. So congrats to any of our readers that can take advantage of this one and if any industrious readers can figure out a way to get around the location issue please let us know. Hopefully that will help some of you save some time and coin during your holiday and again if you have stumbled upon any Android deals that we missed here that are just too good to pass up go ahead and drop us a tip in comments.
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| Droid Bionic to have an OMAP processor instead of a Tegra 2? Posted: 28 May 2011 03:02 PM PDT  The Motorola Droid Bionic has been hiding since we last received word that it would be delayed and improved. This device will be the first dual-core, 4G LTE device on Verizon’s network, and many of you are very excited to see it coming. Though we know improvements are being added to this device, details about these upgrades have been well hidden. Today, the Droid Bionic has peeked its head out of its cave again – Benchmarks of the Bionic have shown up at NenaMark, revealing some interesting specs.
If this report stands true until the release of the Droid Bionic, it would mean that Motorola is not making minor changes to this device. Though the Bionic was expected to ship with a Tegra 2 processor, this report shows that it will carry a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, which only comes with the new Texas Instruments OMAP 4 processors. It seems almost impossible that Motorola would go as far as changing something as important as the processor. Past reports show that the Droid 3 will also have an OMAP 4 processor, so Motorola may be turning to Texas Instruments from now on. We will simply have to wait and see. As the NenaMark reports, the dual-core processor would be clocked at 1 GHz. Other details include the fact that the device now has Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, which is good, since it was supposed to ship with Android 2.2 Froyo. Considering the fact that the device was delayed until the summer, it only seems fair that Motorola would ship the Bionic with Gingerbread. The NenaMark results also show that the device has a qHD display (960×540), which we were actually expecting, so it seems like there will be no changes to the display. Compared to the Motorola Droid 3 NenaMark benchmarks, the Bionic doesn’t seem to be performing very well. Both devices have the same processor, and overall similar specs, but the Droid 3′s score is of 45.70, almost twice the score of the Droid Bionic (at 24.00). Let’s just hope that it was a test error, and the Bionic delivers the performance we are all expecting. For now, let’s just wait more (even though Motorola said this device would be the "end of waiting") and keep our eyes open for more details. What do you guys say? Are you still hoping to make this your next smartphone? Do you guys like the idea of it having a Texas Instruments OMAP 4 processor, or would you rather it be a Tegra 2?
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| Patent troll Lodsys is now lumbering towards Android developers Posted: 28 May 2011 09:33 AM PDT  The patent In case you haven’t been following the story the brief version is that Lodsys holds a number of patents which relate to the implementation of in-app purchasing and they have been sending letters to iOS and now Android developers demanding 0.575% on every US sale until the patent expires in 2023. One recipient of Lodsys’ attentions is Clapfoot, Inc., the developers of Tank Hero (which is a good game by the way) and one of the early adopters of the in-app payment system which has only been available to Android developers since the end March. As a very small development team with over 4 million downloads of their app, they made an excellent target for Lodsys. As they don’t exactly have a legal team on retainer, they took to Google Groups to look for help from Google and/or their fellow developers.
That discussion thread continues to grow and some are offering advice, but at the time that this post is going up there hasn’t been a response from another developer that has received the letter or from a Google employee. While it’s sometimes fun to play armchair lawyer, I’m not going to pretend that I know the answer to this one. I can tell you that Lodsys indicated on their blog that Google (along with Apple and Microsoft) is a licensee. With that in mind we can probably expect to see them take a similar stance to that of Apple, which was quite simply that they hold a license on these patents and that the developers utilizing it within the confines of the App Store (or in this case the Android Market) are protected by that same license. That seems like a reasonable position, but reason and the law often seem to be at odds with one another. We have reached out to Google regarding the status of their license on the Lodsys patents and whether they believe that their license is sufficient to cover Android developers using in-app payments and will update this post when we have a response.
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| Is this the Google Nexus 3? (Picture) Posted: 28 May 2011 04:59 AM PDT  Whoa, where did that come from? The guys over at Tech Hog just got a photo of a supposed Nexus 3. Apparently, Michael Blake from Tech Hog, has a buddy that works in the Android team at Google, and this friend sent him this picture of what could become the next Google phone. As you might recognize right away, the phone is made by HTC. Tech Hog says that Google is currently testing both an HTC and LG device, but they haven’t decided which one to go with yet. A lot of people inside the Android team seem to be pushing for the HTC device, mainly because of the great build quality that HTC devices have. Looking at the picture below, you’ll immediately notice that there are no hardware or capacitive buttons on this device. Further proving that Google will get rid of physical buttons in Ice Cream Sandwich, just like they did with Honeycomb. According to Tech Hog, the HTC device has a front-facing camera, “freaking amazing specs”, and HSPA+ and Sprint CDMA support. Seeing how Sprint and Google are very cozy with each other right now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Nexus 3 launch in Sprint first. The exterior of the device will change before release, says Tech Hog, so don’t be shocked if the Nexus 3 turns out to be a completely different device. What do you guys think? Is this photo real or some Photoshop magic? Would you rather have the Nexus 3 made by HTC, instead of LG? Let us know in the comments. UPDATE: Somebody has apparently asked Tech Hog to remove the picture and all the information regarding this device from its website. The plot thickens. Gallery
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