Sunday, August 5, 2012

Google Android News Android Forums

Google Android News Android Forums

HTC ‘Proto’ Launching This Fall With Specs Slightly Better than the One V

Posted: 04 Aug 2012 11:21 AM PDT

Word is trickling in about a new HTC model that is expected to debut later this year: codenamed ‘Proto.’ The device appears to be a refreshed One V, but we’re not sure how HTC will position it. It very well could be a new device in the One series. The Proto is only 9.62mm thick and has a 4-inch WVGA SLCD display. Compared to the HTC One V, this is a slight bump in specs but nothing to impressive. The One V has a 3.7-inch display, a 5MP camera, 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, and 7.2Mbps HSPA. In terms of processor speed, the HTC One V has only a single-core processor, and the Proto will have a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8225 (lower-end Snapdragon S4) rated for 1Ghz, a welcomed upgrade for you One V users out there. The Proto is supposed to have Beats Audio in tow, but we’re unsure if the recent realignment between Beats and HTC, will have an adverse affect.

So tell me, are you excited for the HTC ‘Proto’? Sounds like a great mid ranged device to me!

source: The Verge

Gameloft releases “cute” Monster Life game for Android

Posted: 04 Aug 2012 06:20 AM PDT

The description for a new game from Gameloft, Monster Life, starts out, "Join the cutest (and fiercest) monsters ever, in a thrilling adventure! Discover a magical world of cute monsters and exciting battles!" Monster Life is a "papercraft" game where users collect and raise monsters for eventual battle against bad guys. While not your typical hardcore gamer title, it still shows promise and puts an interesting spin on a familiar storyline. The app only requires Android 2.2 and the price is free. So it may be worth a spin, especially if you have a gaming fan looking for something "cute." Hit the download link to access the Google Play store to grab Monster Life.

QR Code generator

Google Play Download Link

Google pulls plug on Google Listen app

Posted: 04 Aug 2012 06:03 AM PDT

Yesterday on the Google Official Blog, Max Ibel, Director of Engineering, announced several changes to Google products. Included was the news that Google is officially pulling the plug on the Google Listen app. Launched in August 2009, Google Listen was a way to access podcasts. According to Google, there are many other apps for finding and listening to podcasts available through Google Play, so Google Listen is no longer needed. The app will continue to work for listening to podcasts for users that have it installed. However, after November 1st, podcast search will no longer function. Users can still use Google Reader to locate their subscriptions and use the download function.

source: Google Official Blog

RENOVATE Gaming Boost app improves gaming performance on HTC One X

Posted: 04 Aug 2012 05:45 AM PDT

Owners of the HTC One X, one of the top smartphones on the market, have discovered that game apps may not perform up to their expectations. The hackers at XDA pinpointed several issues that affect the performance and figured out how to get around the problems. However, doing so involved several manual steps to several different settings. To change that, some XDA members combined forces to put together the RENOVATE Gaming Boost app.

The RENOVATE Gaming Boost app automates several steps needed to tweak the HTC One X for maximum gaming performance. Using the app, "sets all the cores to ondemand, tweaks the sampling rate, up threshold and sampling down factor, enables gpu frequency scaling, switches to the deadline scheduler and tweaks the mnfrees" according to wilkyyyy, XDA Senior Member, who ported code originally written by XDA Senior Member henk2484 to the HTC One X. Another XDA member, Recognized Contributor hamdir,  had written a tutorial describing many of the methods that were ultimately included in the app and has since updated his own work to reflect usage of this app.

If you are an HTC One X owner and you are interested in trying the app out, just hit the source link for the needed files and instructions. Other users are reporting great success with the app. Just keep in mind several of the tweaks embodied in the app will cause high battery consumption, so battery life will be impacted, possibly to the point where the battery may struggle to last even an hour if the gaming action is hot and heavy.

source: XDA Developers' Forum

T-Mobile’s upcoming HTC One X+ confirmed to carry quad-core Tegra 3+ chip, HD display and Android 4.1.1

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 10:17 PM PDT

 

The rumor mill on this device has certainly gone a full circle. Initial rumors of this supposed T-Mobile device first surfaced earlier this year and now with the recent NenaMark2 scores that have been leaked, the HTC One X+ is truly starting to come into fruition.

As you can see, we can expect the new NVIDIA quad-core 1.7GHz Tegra 3+ processor along with a 1280×720 HD display. If you recall on our previous post covering the One X+, there was a debate whether HTC would include the Tegra 3+ or the upcoming quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 processor. I’m also glad to see that this test phone already includes Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, considering the current One X (international and AT&T version) are still on 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

While this device has always been expected to hit T-Mobile, there’s also a rumor that this device is also known as the HTC Evitaire and will be making its way to AT&T. Whether that’s true or not, I’m sure we’ll know more in the near future.

Seems like all we need now are some blurry cam images, don’t you think? It’s glad to see an HTC powerhouse landing on T-Mobile this fall. With the specs this great paired with such a powerful mobile CPU, I hope HTC decides to beef up the battery as well.

As soon as we learn more about this impending device, we’ll be sure to fill you in!

source: Android And Me

HTC Q2 financial results reported; Q3 revenue estimates lowered

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:23 PM PDT

HTC announced today their third consecutive quarter of declining profits in conjunction with the release of their second quarter audited earnings report. HTC brought in approximately $3.0 billion in revenues to go with a gross margin of 27% and an operating margin of 9%. This yielded after tax net income of $247 million, down 58% compared to the first quarter of 2012.

HTC holds about 14% of US smartphone market share, which is not bad in the face of stiff competition from Apple and Samsung. The situation is not as positive elsewhere, with market share in South Korea reportedly falling below 1%, prompting HTC's withdrawal from South Korea. That was preceded by HTC’s withdrawal from Brazil. HTC's market share was not helped by Beats Audio, which HTC acquired and then sold back half its stake in less than a year's time.

For the immediate future, HTC expects revenues to be in the $2.5+/- billion range for the third quarter with a 25% gross margin and 7% operating margin. For comparison, in the third quarter of 2011 HTC pulled in $4.5 billion in revenues.

source: Android Central

Samsung unveils new TV over 4G technology

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 07:18 PM PDT

Seems as if Samsung has been testing LTE Broadcast technology for TV over 4G using a standard known as eMBMS (evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service). While mobile TV has been popular over in Japan, it hasn’t quite made the leap to any other market or country. The large amount of bandwidth that LTE offers could help persuade other carriers to consider this technology and could very well be a hit to consumers in this on-the-go society that we currently live in. While it’s certainly still unclear what Samsung’s goal ultimately is with this technology, I’m sure it has a good chance to be successful considering Samsung is one of the worlds most successful smartphone manufacturers.

You can head over to the official press release after the break.

Samsung Demonstrates Broadcast Services Over LTE Using Anritsu's Rapid Test Designer (RTD) and MD8430A

RICHARDSON, Texas, Aug. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies, has successfully demonstrated clear reception capabilities of LTE Broadcast services using evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) technology using Anritsu's (www.anritsu.com) Rapid Test Designer (RTD) and MD8430A to simulate the LTE network environment.

eMBMS technology allows the LTE network infrastructure to be used for the delivery of broadcast services, such as TV. It enables carriers to adjust coverage and capacity as needed, allowing for more efficient use of network resources. Samsung Electronics and Anritsu (two long-time leaders in new mobile technologies) have collaborated to bring this new technology to market.

Anritsu's RTD delivers a rich set of test features using its fast and flexible flowcharting user interface. The Samsung engineers were able to create the eMBMS demonstration using RTD's graphical script design to drive the execution of the test simulation on an Anritsu MD8430A LTE signaling tester.

"Anritsu is delighted that Samsung, the world's largest cell phone maker, has selected the technology-leading capabilities of the RTD and MD8430A to verify the implementation of eMBMS capability in its devices," stated Kenji Tanaka, Executive Vice President at Anritsu. "Samsung's demonstration shows how Anritsu's RTD helps LTE device makers prove their leading-edge technology in an intensely competitive market where reducing the product launch cycle time is critical to success."

"We have used Anritsu test equipment from the very beginning of our LTE development programs," said Inyup Kang, Executive Vice President at Samsung Electronics. "Anritsu's RTD and MD8430A have made a significant contribution to our leading position in the LTE device market."

 

RIM CEO Reveals A Switch to Android Was Seriously Considered

Posted: 03 Aug 2012 06:58 PM PDT

Thorsten Heins, the CEO of RIM, made some controversial and stunning headlines during an interview conducted on Thursday. According to Telegraph, Heins openly admitted that RIM will not be able to keep up with Apple and Samsung with out outside help. While it’s always surprising to hear CEO’s admit something like that, you almost can’t blame him considering the market shares that both Apple and Samsung currently dominate. It’s no secret that RIM has been substantially slipping these past couple of years, and I can’t see the company rising back up with out some sort of help regardless of how the success of Blackberry 10 plays out.

If that wasn’t shocking enough for you, Heins also admitted that the company was seriously considering switching to the Android platform. While they took it into consideration, they ultimately decided against it. According to Heins:

“We took the conscious decision not to go Android. If you look at other suppliers' ability to differentiate, there's very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously — but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base it's all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can't do it on a me-too approach.”

Heins also referred to Blackberry Messenger as the companies trump card and factored it in their decision to stick with Blackberry and not switch over to Android:

"[BBM is] what attracts people to BlackBerry," he said. "This is our BlackBerry experience we can deliver — there's no other system out there where you can read, write, check if you've read my message. We want to make it as differentiated as possible. Going cross platform and opening up would be losing that advantage. I think there's a huge difference between somebody who just provides the phone and the hardware and someone who provides services."

Don’t get me wrong, BBM is great, but in no way is it a savior for RIM as a whole. Android and iOS have a great ecosystem and both offer such a wide variety of features that RIM and the Blackberry platform just cannot contest with. In my opinion, while it’s always hard to swallow your pride and admit defeat, hopping over to the Android platform would give RIM a better chance of surviving. Considering Android’s versatility, a Blackberry style overlay on Android (much like Sense and TouchWiz) could be an idea that the company should consider in the future. You’ll have Android’s wonderful and rich ecosystem of apps and everything that Google Play has to offer and yet still retain the essence of the Blackberry platform with features such as BBM and others.

Let’s not forget that RIM did have beta builds of BBM for Android before the project was ultimately canned, thus it wouldn’t be a far-fetched idea if RIM ever did switch over to Google’s Android platform. Let us know what you guys think of Heins’ comments and if a switch to Android is RIM’s only hope of survival. Or maybe you have a different solution? Sound off in the comments!

source: Telegraph
Posted by at 5:47 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)