Android Phone Fans |
- Samsung Chromebook Goes On Sale In The Play Store, Quickly Sells Out
- T-Mobile G1 Celebrates Its 4th Birthday (That’s 80 In Smartphone Years)
- Kindle Fire HD now Amazon’s newest best-seller, OTA update brings Free-Time
- Confirmed: T-Mobile Stores Now Receiving Galaxy Note 2 Shipments for Oct 24th Launch
- Verizon Galaxy Nexus Being Offered For $230 Off-Contract [Deals]
- LG exec confirms Nexus handset for next week
- T-Mobile confirms LG Optimus L9 coming this Halloween for $50-80
- Unlocked Black Samsung Galaxy S3 coming October 24th, says Expansys
- HTC Incredible DLX (Deluxe) could be Verizon’s J Butterfly, except with a 13MP camera [RUMOR]
- Isis Mobile Wallet launches in Salt Lake City and Austin for Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile
- Google to unveil 10-inch Nexus tablet, 3G Nexus 7, and Android 4.2 on Oct. 29 [RUMOR]
| Samsung Chromebook Goes On Sale In The Play Store, Quickly Sells Out Posted: 22 Oct 2012 06:52 PM PDT
The WiFi-only Samsung Chromebook briefly went on sale today in the Google Play Store, and was apparently met with great demand. After only a few short hours, the $250 netbook is now officially sold out, with a “notify me” option taking the place of the “add to cart” button. You also might have noticed, the Samsung Chromebook has actually taken the Nexus Q’s spot in “devices” currently being offered direct from Google, right beside the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 7. What does this mean for the Nexus Q? Well, that’s a question for another time, and one only Google knows for certain. While the Samsung Chromebook doesn’t actually run Android, I’m curious to know how many of our readers were in line to purchase one? Hitting the same price point as the Nexus 7, would a Chromebook fit into your tech life in addition to a tablet, or in replacement of? If you’re still looking to pick one up, perhaps you’ll have better luck pre-ordering one on Amazon, where the 3G version is also being offered. [Play Store | Amazon]
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| T-Mobile G1 Celebrates Its 4th Birthday (That’s 80 In Smartphone Years) Posted: 22 Oct 2012 05:22 PM PDT
The T-Mobile G1 may not have been the beginning of your Android journey, but for those that that were some of the first people to experience the pure wonderment of the first device running the open Android operating system, it will always hold a special place in your heart. Which, I’ll admit — is a weird thing to say about an inanimate object like a smartphone. The G1 may only be 4 years old, but it seems like a lifetime ago we were getting our chonies in a bunch over all new features like the software keyboard introduced in the first firmware update, Android 1.5 Cupcake. Of course, the device’s claim to fame was its full 5-row QWERTY keyboard that was enough to make even a Sidekick blush. A far cry from the superphones you and I take for granted today, the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1 also featured a meager 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 3.2-inch display, 192MB of RAM, 256MB of internal memory and a 1,150 mAh battery. Battery life was lacking, multitasking was a chore, and I can’t say I ever remember the phone ever being “fast.” I, myself, didn’t happen upon the “Google Phone” until little more than a year after it was released (I wanted to wait for the Android Market to build up a strong catalog of apps), but once I did, it was all downhill from there. Didn’t take long for me to get caught up in the rooting/modding scene, where I attempted to shoehorn “Hero” ROMs (Sense) onto the device. It was fun, but hard life of dealing with swap partitions, and random bootloops — but it was so worth it. About a year and a half after owning the device (the longest smartphone relationship I’ve ever had), I finally laid her to rest, finding a new life with the HTC EVO 4G on Sprint. I’m sure most of you have your own stories to share about the G1, the 1st Anyone out there still have a G1 in their possession that’s currently in operation today? How’s she holding up. Tell her… I miss her.
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| Kindle Fire HD now Amazon’s newest best-seller, OTA update brings Free-Time Posted: 22 Oct 2012 02:34 PM PDT The Amazon Kindle Fire HD promised to make waves in the tablet game when it was introduced starting at $200, and Amazon is celebrating another new milestone. The Amazon Kindle Fire HD has supposedly become the retailer’s best-selling device since it’s launched. It seems Amazon’s devices never give up that top spot so we weren’t surprised to learn that the new hotness (no pun intended) claimed it. To go along with that nice nugget of information Amazon also reminded us that the Kindle Fire HD will be receiving a new OTA upgrade that’ll be adding “FreeTime.”
The feature will allow parents to take parental control a step further by setting up a restricted list of apps for their children to use, setting how long they can use those apps, and requiring a password to exit FreeTime. We’re sure this’ll be a much-appreciated feature for families sharing devices and parents just wanting to limit their kids’ play-time alike. Amazon has reason to believe that its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD will do just as great as the 7-inch version did. If you don’t remember, the 8.9-inch version — housing roughly the same features and specs except with a larger display — will be headed to store shelves November 20th for $300. When you consider Google’s rumored to be introducing a 32GB Nexus 7 for $250 it doesn’t seem too wise to take Amazon up on its offering instead, but the Kindle Fire does still offer exclusive access to Instant Video and Cloud Storage. We’re not sure if Amazon is purposely withholding these features in order to sweeten the deal for those who decide to go with Amazon’s drastically-different Android experience, but it would make a lot of sense. Either way, it seems there’s a large demand for the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and you can only imagine how crazy things will get once the holiday season starts to roll around. Read on for full press details.
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| Confirmed: T-Mobile Stores Now Receiving Galaxy Note 2 Shipments for Oct 24th Launch Posted: 22 Oct 2012 02:17 PM PDT
Can’t say I’ve lusted this hard after a non-Nexus device in quite sometime (read: ever), but we now have confirmation that the T-Mobile has scheduled the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 for this Wednesday, October 24th. This news comes after a tipster sent us these images from HQ officially announcing the release date, along with shipments of the Note 2 already arriving in store.
Can’t help but feel a bit blindsided by the release of what will no doubt be a hot selling item for the #4 largest carrier in the US. As far as pricing goes, expect to shell out $300 for the gargantuan smartphone in addition to tax (on the full price of the phone). Yes, that’s a lot of money upfront, but with some of the lowest priced plans in the country, hopefully you can make up some of that in savings after a few months. Anyone suddenly feeling under the weather? Might have to call in sick on Wednesday myself. ;)
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| Verizon Galaxy Nexus Being Offered For $230 Off-Contract [Deals] Posted: 22 Oct 2012 12:33 PM PDT
Well, isn’t this one helluva deal. If you, or someone you know, is on Verizon and currently in the market for a new smartphone, you could do a whole lot worse than the Galaxy Nexus. Right now “old reliable” is being offered up on Verizon Wireless for $230 OFF-contract. That’s right, but there is one catch. The units being sold at this heavily discounted price are “certified pre-owned/refurbished” units. But no worries, these devices come with the peace of mind knowing they’ve passed through 100+ quality checkpoints and are backed with a full 1 year warranty. Something goes wrong during the first year — Verizon will replace it with a “comparable unit.” Just don’t got complaining about battery life or a wonky LTE connection, apparently those are just features found in the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus. We all have that one friend with a device that looks like it should be on life support. Now nobody should have an excuse to upgrade, and experience the wonderful world of Jelly Bean.
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| LG exec confirms Nexus handset for next week Posted: 22 Oct 2012 10:52 AM PDT
An LG executive speaking at a product launch event for the Optimus Vu confirmed LG’s involvement in the debut of Google’s upcoming Nexus phone next week. Amit Gujral, head of Mobile Product Planning for LG in India, told IBNLive that we can expect to see the LG Nexus unveiled at the event in New York City. He also revealed that the phone would be available in India by the end of November. Gujral’s confirmed many of the handset’s rumored specs, including a 4.7-inch display, 1.5GHz quad-core processor, and Android 4.2. He did not provide any clues as to the final name for the device, leaving that facet of the new Nexus launch a mystery for now. The October 29th event looks to be a big day for the Nexus line, with new rumors emerging claiming we could also see a new 10-inch Nexus tablet that day as well as a 3G-enabled Nexus 7 featuring 32GB of storage. Other speculation has pointed towards multiple new Nexus smartphones, though LG’s handset has been the only to produce any tangible evidence of existence so far.
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| T-Mobile confirms LG Optimus L9 coming this Halloween for $50-80 Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:59 AM PDT The LG Optimus L9 won’t be a popular device for us phone buffs with the LG Optimus G looming, but T-Mobile still seems to believe there’s a market for it (and there very well may be). Coming in at $80 ($50 with T-Mobile’s value plans) starting October 31st, the LG Optimus L9 will offer a low-cost smartphone experience that doesn’t look quite like a budget phone on paper. Buyers will be getting a 4.5 inch qHD smartphone that sports a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera with 1080p HD video recording, a front-facing camera, a 2,150 mAh battery, and more. LG hasn’t been particularly favored by Magenta customers after the Optimus 2X debacle of 2010, but the general feeling around the land is that they have improved.
Most of the praise has been due to the reemergence of the OEM’s Optimus line in the Optimus G, but there’s no reason to believe that won’t translate to a solid experience in the median range of the spectrum. The real issue will come down to after-market support — those burned by LG in the past will need to believe that the OEM has shored its process up when it comes to bug fixes, upgrades to the latest versions of Android, and more. And the timing of the updates is only half of the issue. There have been issues where bug fixing updates have actually made things worse, so the quality of updates also has to be addressed. But as we’ve seen with many other OEMs it’s never wise to continue to judge a company based solely on the past. Many will give LG another chance, and it will be interesting to see if LG can finally take this opportunity to turn its public image around and restore the assurance that is needed to make a consumer want to pull the trigger on one of its smartphones. We’ll see how things fare for them starting at the very end of this month.
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| Unlocked Black Samsung Galaxy S3 coming October 24th, says Expansys Posted: 22 Oct 2012 09:04 AM PDT The Samsung Galaxy S3 launched with some nice colors, but many people were missing the traditional “black” that seems to look so nice on any smartphone. Titanium Grey seemed to be Samsung’s way to fill that void, but it still wasn’t quite as dark as most would like. It’s been a couple of months since Samsung officially confirmed they’d be bringing the alternate color to market for anyone who wants it, but things have been rather quiet since then. The wait seems to be over, though, as Expansys has told us it expects shipments of the black Samsung Galaxy S3 to arrive starting October 24th — that’s just two days from now. As you’d imagine this version of the device is completely identical to the models launched in Europe so far outside of its chassis. But what about those of us who don’t live in Europe and are not in a position to import? Well, you may recall Verizon was carries the black (and brown) versions of the device right now (available here in case you were wondering).
There’s more to consider when it comes to big red, too. Since the Galaxy S3 came to the United States before the LTE-capable Exynos chip was ready all carriers were limited to going with the S4 processor for their versions. While the S4 is nothing to sneeze at we’re sure many would have greatly appreciated the quad-core Exynos instead. Well, Samsung is likely going to come to market with a 64GB version of the Samsung Galaxy S3, and this gives them another reason to refresh the line with Exynos. We haven’t heard anything of the sort from any sources of our own, but Verizon could be gearing up to offer this enhanced version of the device with the new options said to be headed its way. And that’s not to say other carriers won’t be in line for these options, either, it’s just that we haven’t heard anything yet. Of course, those on AT&T and T-Mobile can get the device unlocked if LTE (at least for AT&T as we’re not sure how far we’re off from seeing T-Mobile LTE) is not important to them. As for Expansys, the retailer will be offering the unlocked device (16GB) starting this Wednesday for just £409.99, though we’re still trying to figure out whether or not this price includes VAT. The US site isn’t offering it unlocked just yet, but if you are fine with importing it then head over there now to get started. [Expansys]
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| HTC Incredible DLX (Deluxe) could be Verizon’s J Butterfly, except with a 13MP camera [RUMOR] Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:55 AM PDT Verizon has been rumored to introduce a new DROID Incredible by the name of “DIX” or “DLX” (typeface confusion) for quite a bit of time now. We thought it might be a variant of the HTC One X with the DROID branding slapped on, but after HTC’s official unveiling of the HTC J Butterfly it appears we’re about to get a lot more than that. Evleaks has apparently found evidence that “DLX” would actually be the abbreviated name of this device, and that it would stand for “Deluxe.” This name actually matches up to murmurs we’ve heard from our own sources. We’d be remiss not to mention what our source told us to expect from this supposed quad-core beast from big red.
The device is said to line up quite similarly to the J Butterfly with either a 4.7 inch or 5 inch display (it’s hard to tell without anything to reference), a 13 megapixel camera recording at 1080p compared to the J Butterfly’s 8MP camera, a 1.5GHz quad-core processor (it would seem to be the S4 Pro that’s in the J Butterfly, but our source wasn’t able to confirm), and looks to be a tad thinner than the HTC One X. Conflicting reports say the Incredible Deluxe will have the same 8 megapixel sensor from the J Butterfly so keep that in mind before jumping for joy. We also learned Verizon might have a 6 month period of exclusivity on this. We imagine this means no other carriers in the US will be able to offer direct disciples of the J Butterfly, but there’s a possibility that HTC could work around this to bring comparable devices to other carriers. If it’s hard to believe HTC would agree to a period of exclusivity, remember that Samsung and Google held the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon for over four months before it went to Sprint.
It was never confirmed that this was due to exclusivity (and we imagine it never will be confirmed), but you can imagine that was the case considering Sprint tends to be one of the faster carriers in terms of getting devices on store shelves. Other than that, we’ve learned that Verizon will definitely be offering the black with red accents color configuration that we’ve seen in the very first leak and that you see in the leak above, though no other color options can be confirmed at this time. For what it’s worth, the J Butterfly will have black, red, and white configurations, though this doesn’t mean Verizon will offer all three themselves. Regardless, the black with red option does look very nice and fits in quite well with the DROID Incredible line. In any case, with what’s been going on in the Android blogosphere over the past couple of weeks it’s always imperative for us to remind you that rumors are rumors — none of it is fact until it’s official, so don’t take this as gospel. Still, we’d be very surprised to see the next DROID Incredible device come to market with a drastically different loadout than what the J Butterfly will endow us with in other parts of the world. [via Android Central, Engadget]
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| Isis Mobile Wallet launches in Salt Lake City and Austin for Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:46 AM PDT
Isis, the mobile payment service spearheaded by AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, has launched today, bringing NFC-based payments to Salt Lake City and Austin as part of a limited rollout. The service pairs a secure SIM with the Isis Mobile Wallet app (available from Google Play) to provide one-touch payment at a plethora of retailers located in the two flagship markets. The secure SIM is a big reason why Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T avoided Google Wallet in favor of Isis, although it does make things a little more difficult for consumers. Currently, only nine handsets are certified as ISis-ready, but the number looks to grow to 20 by the end of the year. With the ISIS Mobile Wallet app, consumers can add the credentials for any eligible American Express, Capital One, or Chase credit card directly, or by load funds onto the included Isis Cash card. The arrival of Isis should give subscribers to its partner networks less reason to look jealously at Sprint’s customers, who have been using Google Wallet for some time now. Isis still appears to have some catching up to do with Google’s service, but the dual-city launch is a start.
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| Google to unveil 10-inch Nexus tablet, 3G Nexus 7, and Android 4.2 on Oct. 29 [RUMOR] Posted: 22 Oct 2012 06:47 AM PDT
Google’s October 29th event is expected to introduce us to the new Nexus smartphone from LG, but it could also serve as the launch of a 3G-enabled Nexus 7 with 32GB of internal storage as well as a new 10-inch Nexus tablet from Samsung. We’ve been speculating for weeks that we might see the updated Nexus 7 make its official debut at the event, but the Samsung tab, codenamed Manta, is a new twist. According to The Next Web, Samsung’s Manta tablet (possibly launching as the Nexus 10) will feature a hi-res 2560×1600 resolution display, an iPad-besting DPI of 300 pixels per inch. But perhaps more intriguing is the prospect that the slate will launch with Android 4.2. While a few leaks of the new Android build have surfaced, it wasn’t quite clear if we would see it launch alongside the latest round of Nexus devices. This now seems likely. As for what to expect from Android 4.2, multiple Nexus tablets brings a new feature called ”Tablet Sharing,” which appears to be the name for setting up multiple Google accounts on a single device. We should also see a new Play Store widget as well as an updated panoramic camera that can stitch together images both vertically and horizontally. It still is not clear if the new OS version will launch under the Jelly Bean moniker or if this will be our first taste of Key Lime Pie.
The same report reconfirms details about the Nexus 4 from LG, which will also run Android 4.2. Apparently everything we have heard up to this point has been accurate and we can expect a quad-core Snapdragon S4 CPU at 1.5GHz, 4.7-inch 720p display, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, and an 8MP camera. Take it all as rumor for now. Nothing will be confirmed until the 29th, and we’ll be there covering the event live. A few key questions remain, including how much we might expect to pay for a 10-inch Nexus tablet with high-end specs.
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