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February, 2011 Articles

HTC Flyer Announcement Video:

by Rob Jackson on February 17th, 2011

If you missed the HTC event at Mobile World Congress, you missed their announcement of 5 new phones and the HTC Tablet – the company’s first Android Tablet. It’s a landmark announcement for HTC and you can watch it below: I was personally disappointed in the HTC Flyer and felt the company should have waited [...]

Leaked Dell Roadmap Shows Honeycomb Tablets, Ice Cream Smartphones

by Kevin Krause on February 17th, 2011

Dell has a pretty busy year ahead of them, according to a leaked roadmap that shows their time split pretty evenly between Android and Windows products as they ramp up their mobile game. Two new Android smartphones will be coming towards the latter half of the year while there will be a total of four [...]

XOOM Wi-Fi To Be Sold At Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse, Dixons in Europe

by Rob Jackson on February 17th, 2011

If you’re in the UK and eager to get your hands on the Motorola XOOM, it’s just been announced that you’ll be able to grab the Wi-Fi only XOOM from Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse, and Dixon’s retail. No mention of price was made, but Q2 was the timeframe provided, meaning it’ll be available by the [...]

DROID X “Old Version” Means New Version on the Way?

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 17th, 2011

One Verizon customer signed into their account online that was tied to a Motorola Droid X, and noticed that its title had changed: they’ve appended the words “old version” to the end of it. This may suggest a new version is on the way, but what? A new version could just be a change in [...]

HTC Wins Device Manufacturer of the Year at Annual Global Mobile Awards

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 16th, 2011

HTC’s won big this year at Mobile World Congress where the GSMA hosted their Global Mobile Awards, an industry awards ceremony highlighting the finest companies in what they do. HTC was chosen for Device Manufacurer of the Year, unsurprisingly. Peter Chou of HTC was on-hand to accept the award. I think it’s well-deserved for HTC, [...]

Rugged Tablet With Robot Speaker Grill From Marvell [VIDEO]

by Rob Jackson on February 16th, 2011

A lot of Android tablets look the exact same. Or maybe some would say a lot of Android tablets look like the iPad. Here is one that doesn’t… a made by Marvell prototype that just might come into production courtesy of a well known GPS company: My two favorite features by far: The ruggedized rubber [...]

Build Your Dreams Show Their Androids at MWC

by Rob Jackson on February 16th, 2011

A company I’ve never heard of – BYD (Build Your Dreams) – was at Mobile World Congress showing off their wares and I thought I’d pass along the memo. Interestingly enough the company started in the battery industry, got into cell phones, then jumped into Automobiles – they sold 500,000 autos in Asia last year [...]

Mapquest Android App Lands For Free On The Market

by Rob Jackson on February 16th, 2011

Buy an Android Phone, use Google Nav, never buy another Garmin- that’s the thought process I think a lot of people have when looking at Android’s positives. Yes, I know there will be plenty of people saying that nothing can replace a dedicated GPS unit for many different reasons – reliability, size, map data, battery [...]

Haier Android Lineup Makes Me Feel Nostalgic

by Rob Jackson on February 16th, 2011

Remember the good old days of Android, when only one phone existed and digging up news and rumors on any others was like Sherlock Holmes detective work? I do… and it was during those days that we told you about the Haier H7 Android phone that ran Android 1.5 with a 2.8-inch LCD screen and [...]

Seeing in the Dark: Sony Ericsson Showcases their Exmor R Camera Sensor for Mobile

by Kevin Krause on February 16th, 2011

At Sony Ericsson’s booth at Mobile World Congress, aside from great new Android handsets like the Xperia Play and Xperia Arc and great accessories like the LiveView, they also have a neat little demo set up showing off their Exmor R camera sensor technology. It is designed to be a superior camera for low-light situations, [...]

Rumor: Sony Honeycomb Tablet in the Works

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 16th, 2011

I can’t say I’m totally surprised considering everyone and their mothers are jumping on the tablet bandwagon now that Honeycomb is nearing, but here goes the rumor anyway: Sony – without the Ericsson, apparently – wants in on the fun. Engadget reports that a 9.4 inch 1280×800 tablet by the entertainment company is in the [...]

Sanjay Jha Confirms Motorola XOOM Will Be $799 at Verizon, Wi-Fi Only around $600

by Kevin Krause on February 16th, 2011

According to a report originating at Reuters, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has confirmed what Best Buy leaks previously suggested: the Motorola XOOM will be priced at $799 when it lands on Verizon Wireless. We can only hope that carrier subsidies can put some sort of dent in that high figure, but after spending enough time [...]

HTC Flyer Price is 670 Euros, Says Amazon Germany

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 16th, 2011

We’ve finally got ourselves some preliminary pricing information for the HTC Flyer tablet introduced yesterday at Mobile World Congress. Amazon Germany has revealed a 670 Euro price point – that’s just over USD $900. Many were hoping to see it a bit cheaper than several of the Honeycomb tablets coming out as they see this [...]

Samsung Galaxy Mini, Fit, Gio, Ace: Hands-On at MWC

by Rob Jackson on February 16th, 2011

Samsung unveiled four entry-level Android handsets last month – the Mini, Fit, Gio and Ace – and we got our grubby hands on them for the first time (as expected) at Mobile World Congress. None of these devices will blow you away but they’re the type of offering I’d suggest to a first time smartphone [...]

Nuance Brings FlexT9 to Europe

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 16th, 2011

Nuance has today announced availability of FlexT9 – their multimodial software typing solution – to Europe. Already available in the United States, the app gives you the ability to use Nuance’s Dragon Dictation for voice, T9 trace for Swype-like input, T9 write to input words as if you’re writing on paper, and good ol’ reliable [...]

Cooliris LiveShare Is a Cloud Service for Photos, See All Your Images in One Place

by Kevin Krause on February 16th, 2011

In the spirit of last night’s MWC keynote by Google big wig Eric Schmidt, here is a little photo sharing application and online service that organizes your photos into cloud-based streams to be shared with as many or as few people as you’d like. Cooliris LiveShare 1.2 was released earlier this week, providing users of [...]

Alcatel OneTouch Series Hands-on [MWC] [Video]

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 16th, 2011

Alcatel’s looking to bring affordable Android devices to Europe with their OneTouch series. We stopped by their humble abode here at Mobile World Congress just to see what type of value they provide for their customers. There were three phones on hand starting with the OneTouch 990. Alcatel calls this their flagship Android handset. It [...]

Samsung Mobile Awarded Top Brand in Customer Loyalty For Tenth Consecutive Year

by Quentyn Kennemer on February 16th, 2011

Samsung Mobile has just announced that they have been awarded the #1 spot in customer loyalty for their 10th consecutive year – they’re only the 8th company to do that, and the first mobile division or company to achieve the feat. "Samsung is honored once again to retain the Brand Keys customer loyalty distinction for [...]

ASUS Eee Pad Slide, MeMO, Transformer Hands-On

by Rob Jackson on February 16th, 2011

ASUSĀ first announced their Eee Pad Slide, Transformer, and MeMO at CES but we got the opportunity to test them out for the first time at MWC. Video footage was not allowed since the units aren’t finalized, so all I managed to snag were still pics, but I’m pretty interested in what ASUS brings to the [...]

Honeycomb SDK Port Progressing along for the HTC EVO 4G

by Kevin Krause on February 16th, 2011

Judging by the HTC Flyer and its lack of Android 3.0 at launch, we can’t say for sure when the new OS will officially make its way to an HTC device. But why does that matter when it’s already on the HTC EVO 4G? So what if it doesn’t really function as a usable OS, [...]