Android Community |
- Android Community Weekly: August 13 , 2011
- HTC Ruby Specs Leak, 4.3″ Display and Boosted Dual-Core CPU
- Amazon Free App of the Day: Flick Kick Football
- RadioShack Having a Closeout Sale on T-Mobile Phones [Deal]
- Pantech Apache Clears the FCC with Verizon 4G LTE
- AT&T Claims they only need $3.8 Billion to rollout 4G LTE, Not T-Mobile
- Samsung SGH-i927 Slips through FCC. Just in Time for August 29th Announcement?
- Android Community App of the Week – Biofrenzy: Frag The Zombies! [Video]
- Acer Iconia Tab A100 Hands-On and Unboxing by SlashGear
- HTC Bliss Crosses FCC on its Way to Verizon
- Acer Iconia A100 7″ Honeycomb Tab on sale today, we already have Benchmarks
- Acer Iconia A500 Honeycomb just $299 at Target, Better Hurry [Deal]
| Android Community Weekly: August 13 , 2011 Posted: 13 Aug 2011 11:07 AM PDT It’s been a crazy week of tech news, and we’ll try to cover the most important bits in this issue of Android Community Weekly! The Motorola DROID Bionic cleared the FCC this Sunday and later on we even saw some more spy shots. What really came as a surprise was when the device showed up at a Verizon Wireless retail store! We should definitely see some more on this long awaited superphone soon, so just stay tuned.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 was caught on camera Sunday for some quality hands-on treatment. It seems this sleek tablet will be shipping with the Touch Wiz UX pre-installed. Later on we discovered some leaked pictures of T-Mobiles Samsung Galaxy S II! From the looks of the pictures provided, the phone looks very similar to the Nexus S. It has a similar mound on it’s rear, and even seems to sport the same shaped contour display. For those that already own an international version of the Galaxy S II, you will be pleased to know that the BLN (Backlight Notification) mod has been successfully ported to the GT-I9100 model. It is compatible with every ROM currently available except those using the CyanogenMod kernel. Another smartphone soon to see CyanogenMod is the Motorola ATRIX 4G; and if you’re one of the brave, the pre-Beta is already available for download. The pre-Beta has limited functionality, so this may not be a good “daily driver” quite yet. The Nexus S 4G now has ROM nighties available from Peter Alfonso. Until now, Alfonso has been developing solely for Motorola Droid; I’m sure the Nexus S 4G community will welcome his future work there. Monday, HTC launched HTCdev; a website devoted towards assisting the many developers out there in their present and future development. Features of HTCdev include complete accesss to HTC SDK’s, kernel sourcecodes, and an official way to unlock the bootloaders of HTC devices! Developers, rejoice. Facebook has released it’s second application in the Android Market, Facebook Messenger. Just as it sounds, this app will be based solely around Facebook Chat. Be sure to check out our Hands-On! There has also been speculation of future Video Chat support. After Skype was integrated into the non-mobile Facebook Chat, integration into the mobile-OS is not surprising. The key to successfully implementing this feature will be supporting a wide variety of devices no later than launch. Another recently popular application, Google Videos, was currently hacked to allow root users full functionality. This hack will work on devices running Android 2.2 and up, so give it a try. Photos of Android Ice Cream Sandwich seem to have finally leaked, and we really don’t know what to think! All we know at this point is, that the UI will have some heavy modification. Finally, don’t forget to enter for a chance to win a Motorola PHOTON 4G straight from Motorola! This contest will be live all month, with plenty of chances to win. )
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| HTC Ruby Specs Leak, 4.3″ Display and Boosted Dual-Core CPU Posted: 13 Aug 2011 10:06 AM PDT Remember the HTC Ruby we saw leaked a few times? It was first seen here in the reflection of a 7″ tablet and a few were able to make out the T-Mobile logo and over the past few weeks more pictures and details have leaked. The last photo revealed the most as we could see the entire device and got a better idea of its size and shape. New details are revealing some juicy info about the mystery device.
What we are now hearing is this device will be a nice blend between the HTC Sensation 4G and the myTouch 4G, yet faster then both. It wont be branded as a myTouch device but has a similarly designed speaker grill on the front. Details are sighting this device to be packing a upgraded 1.5 Ghz Snapdragon processor. The Sensation is only 1.2 Ghz so either this is the next version or a boosted up model to compete with other manufacturers future releases.
The above photo is the latest leaked shot and clearly we can see the bottom looks similar to the Sensation 4G while the top looks like a myTouch device, a nice blend if you ask me. We mentioned this when that photo leaked but the new details confirm it. It will be sporting a dual core 1.5 Ghz CPU, 4.3″ high-res qHD display, 1GB RAM, a rear facing 8 MP camera and 2 MP shooter on the front for video chat. It should also be powered with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the new Sense UI 3.5 but we are still awaiting more details on the latter. [via TmoNews] )
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| Amazon Free App of the Day: Flick Kick Football Posted: 13 Aug 2011 09:34 AM PDT Today Amazon is offering their usual and awesome “Free App of the Day” deal that has made them so popular as of late, although not with some developers. Today the free app is a fun and addicting game called Flick Kick Football (soccer in America). Flick Kick is a popular series from the developers Prodigy Design and they have like 4 great games available so check those all out.
The idea is simple and nothing new, it’s like playing Paper Toss or any of those other finger flicking games. I’ll just say Football since they are calling it Football but the popular term is Soccer around these parts. You can kick, curve, and fling the football from all over the field with the flick of your finger. My personal favorite is actually the Field Goal version of this game as I’m an NFL fan myself.
I’m sure you’ve seen or played these games in the past so I wont go on about explaining how they work as its pretty self explanatory and the picture above should help clear anything up. Now it may sound easy but trust me it gets harder as you go along. They add defenders you must shoot through and the distance gets farther and farther out and really gives players a challenge. Try not to miss when you get on fire and enjoy some multi-player because it has full multi-player support. Free for today ONLY in the Amazon App Store so head over and download this fun and time wasting game. [via Amazon] )
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| RadioShack Having a Closeout Sale on T-Mobile Phones [Deal] Posted: 13 Aug 2011 09:14 AM PDT We’ve just learned that RadioShack is having a huge blowout on all their T-Mobile devices and things will even be leaving the shelves for FREE so you’d better hurry if you’ve been planning a move to T-Mobile. Starting September 14th RadioShack will no longer be carrying T-Mobile devices and are now going to be partnered with Verizon. According to their Facebook page they are going to start clearing the shelves of T-Mobile and as a result we all benefit.
So, starting today RadioShack is not just having close out deals but they are giving away their T-Mobile phones for free, yup for free. I know the deal is tempting and they will probably be going quick so you better call around for a few different local RadioShack locations and see what is available. This deal is in-store only and not available online. Don’t rush down too quick because the deal is not available for upgrades but we were expecting that. This is only valid for new contracts or if you add a line to an existing contract. We don’t have any details as to when this huge deal will end but the T-Mobile offerings will be ending mid September at the Shack so this could carry on until then, that is if supplies last of course. Can’t be the good ol price of free.99 so go find what you want and enjoy it, they have plenty of Android phones available. [via TmoNews] )
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| Pantech Apache Clears the FCC with Verizon 4G LTE Posted: 13 Aug 2011 09:01 AM PDT Looks like our friends at Big Red will be getting some more 4G LTE love coming in the near future because we just spotted the Pantech Apache hitting the FCC rocking those 4G LTE speeds. Pantech isn’t known for higher end smartphones and are relatively new to the Android scene but a LTE device would be a great way to get going here.
We don’t know much but looking at the pictures from the FCC the Apache has a similar looking rear to recent Pantech devices such as the Pantech Crossover we recently reviewed with that camera and speaker grill shown above. If you remember they also are the company behind those 1.5 Ghz dual-core phones in Korea we reported on back in May as well as the 5″ Android phones we also spotted. This filing sure didn’t reveal much as we still don’t know screen size, processor type or speed or any of those important specifications but I’m sure we will be hearing more very shortly with it clearing the FCC and all. Pantech hasn’t released anything too stellar here in the states but hopefully that will be changing with a 4G LTE device like the Apache. I’m just hoping it has some good specs to go with those speeds. The Bionic needs some competition anyways right? [via Engadget] )
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| AT&T Claims they only need $3.8 Billion to rollout 4G LTE, Not T-Mobile Posted: 12 Aug 2011 03:24 PM PDT This entire story is just a bit odd but after reading over a few details I just had to write it up. Basically AT&T isn’t helping their case one bit regarding the AT&T T-Mobile merger. Apparently a statement was spotted in the FCC filing that had a portion redacted by AT&T and now we look over things it just doesn’t make any sense.
It seems AT&T stated they only need $3.8 billion to bring 4G LTE to 97% of their subscribers based the current state and progress of things. Now I know $3.8 Billion is a pretty big hunk of change but not for them, especially when you consider what they offered T-Mobile for the buyout — does anyone remember? $39 Billion, yea a huge difference. AT&T is stating in their case for the T-Mobile buyout that they absolutely need the merger to go through. Basically saying they need the available spectrum’s and infrastructure in place via T-Mobile to help them rollout and continue to build their 4G LTE network. So if you step back and look at that, the FCC filing states they only need $3.8 billion in funding to complete the rollout and fully build up their LTE network. All the while they are also saying it is crucial that they buy T-Mobile for the whopping $39 billion that was agreed upon. Wouldn’t it be much easier to just spend the $3.8 billion — just a thought. So in a round about way everything they have been saying regarding the need for T-Mobile was completely undercut with the leaked documents from the FCC filing and the $3.8 billion statement. Unless there is much more details that we don’t know, it appears they think everyone doesn’t know basic math. While I only briefly read into AT&T’s official statement things just seem a bit off and don’t really make any sense. For more details hit the source link and check out AT&T’s complete response. [via SlashGear] )
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| Samsung SGH-i927 Slips through FCC. Just in Time for August 29th Announcement? Posted: 12 Aug 2011 02:56 PM PDT Today must have been a productive day for the FCC. Samsung’s SGH-i927 just got approval today with AT&T HSPA+ radios on board. The first time we saw the SGH-i927, we thought it might be a keyboard bearing version of the Samsung Galaxy S II. Since the Galaxy S II Attain has already been cleared by the FCC so AT&T might end up with two Galaxy S II’s after all.
The Galaxy S II is FINALLY almost in America so the stragglers gotta get through the FCC. We’re still not sure that this phone will officially be a Galaxy S II, but Verizon did have the Fascinate and Continuum. We’ll see in a few weeks when Samsung finally shows off what its bringing to the U.S. The FCC doesn’t reveal much about the phone. What we do know from the photos we’ve seen is that it has an 8 MP rear camera, a front facing camera and a slide out four-row keyboard. The phone is also running TouchWiz on top of Gingerbread. It won’t be as slim as the original Galaxy S II, but could give some tough competition to the Droid 3 for keyboard lovers if it gets announced with the other GSII variants in two weeks. [via FCC] )
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| Android Community App of the Week – Biofrenzy: Frag The Zombies! [Video] Posted: 12 Aug 2011 02:47 PM PDT Today I have decided to show you guys this awesome game called Biofrenzy: Frag The Zombies! This is one sweet game for Android tablets, it runs and looks great on the larger 10″ screen and the graphics are just stunning and extremely fluid thanks to the NVIDIA dual-core processor in Honeycomb tablets these days. I’ve made a quick video and hands-on for you all to enjoy and watch before you dive in because it does cost around $2.00 so I figured you’d like a preview first.
Biofrenzy is a shoot-em up fast-paced side scrolling action game optimized for Android. While they may have a few spelling errors in the description on the Android Market they game is pretty stellar. I must warm you that this game is pretty violent and should probably be rated like PG-13 or so for all the blood and killing. The video clearly will show you what I mean with Zombies exploding and flying to pieces and don’t even get me started on the chainsaw. BioFrenzy Hands-on Gameplay
The description in the market explains things pretty well. It has extremely great graphics and they even call them razor sharp HD graphics. The game gets quite difficult and the intensity picks up really fast and doesn’t slow down, you’ll have to learn to use your weapons wisely and save the shotguns or fully automatics for when you really need it. One of the things I like the most is the sound effects, it gives the game a very unique and immersive feeling. The gun animations and sounds are top notch all sounding a bit different and when you get a powerful gun you sure can tell from the sound it makes, and the zombies exploding all around you. If you get enough power-ups you can get the ultimate weapon — a combat robot.
Features include: - 20 unique weapons The shoot and run crazy action is extremely exciting and addicting, I’ve been playing this game for a few nights now and I can’t seem to put it down even though the sound effects might irritate those around me — I love them. Like mentioned above the game is actually $2.05 in the market so feel free to check out my video above before you give it a try. My only complain as stated in the video is slightly long load times but that should be improved with further updates. Click or scan the QR code below for instant access to download the game in the Android Market. Enjoy!
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| Acer Iconia Tab A100 Hands-On and Unboxing by SlashGear Posted: 12 Aug 2011 02:38 PM PDT Today SlashGear got their first formal look at the Acer Iconia Tab A500, the very first 7-inch tablet running Android 3.2 Honeycomb on the market – and indeed the first 7-inch tablet running any version of Honeycomb on the market, when you think about it. The box for this A100 tablet looks essentially the same as the A500 bigger brother, from the way the top opens to how the the device sits in the cardboard. Holding this device in your hands feels very similar to holding a very tiny version of the A500 version while certainly more refined than the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 7-inch – rounded corners and everything.
Inside the package is a lovely Acer-branded case for the tablet: A tiny preview- it’s pretty basic, protects the device from scratches and leaves room for the buttons to be pressed all around as well as the jacks to be accessed, while the device itself is able to be stood up very similar to how the iFrogz iPad 2 Summit Case gets the job done. From there you’ll be able to toss this device in your backpack or briefcase safely and stand it up without a hitch when it comes time to get to work. This device will run you right around $329.99, that being right around $60 cheaper than you’ll find the 10-inch A500. Why on earth would you want to have a smaller tablet for a discount of such small proportions? Because this device, all 7.76 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches of it, is meant to be a powerful vision all its own. This book-sized device might not give you all you asked for in an e-reader, on the other hand, as viewing angles up and down when you’re holding the device in portrait mode.
Everything seems pretty quick right off the bat, photos and video looking fairly decent on the front and from the back, and the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor is chugging along like a pro. The only real glaring drawback here seems to be the company’s 5 hour runtime – probably realistic given the 1530 mAh battery – the same as the original Nexus One, mind you. That’s small man, small. You’ll want to take a look at our Acer Iconia A100 benchmark tests post to see how this device is working directly out of the box, then stay tuned here at Android Community once we get ours – soon! Or of course you could Go to SlashGear and see theirs even quicker. Once you’ve read that one, come back to AC and check out the technical look.                 Device Info
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| HTC Bliss Crosses FCC on its Way to Verizon Posted: 12 Aug 2011 01:50 PM PDT HTC’s rumored “gender specific” phone, the HTC Bliss just got FCC approval. The smartphone for women is on its way to Verizon (according to its radio bands). The Bliss was recently mentioned in a leaked Verizon roadmap, and with FCC approval it can’t be too far off.
The HTC Bliss is going to be a Gingerbread and Sense UI sporting global phone for Big Red. The phone has been rumored to be designed for and aimed at women. We’re not entirely sure what exactly that entails, but we may soon be finding out. The Bliss just got FCC approval with Verizon’s 850/1900 CDMA bands, WiFi, BLuetooth, and a GSM radio for kicks and giggles. Unfortunately that’s all the specs we have to go on for now. For a phone aimed specifically at women, what we’ve seen so far indicates that this phone focuses more on design than specs.
What’s your thoughts on the idea of making a phone “for women?” It seems a bit strange to me and a little awkward. Ladies would you be interested in a phone aimed specifically at you over guys, or does it sound as ridiculous to you as it does me? I can’t wait to see what Verizon’s marketing campaign will be… [via Engadget] )
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| Acer Iconia A100 7″ Honeycomb Tab on sale today, we already have Benchmarks Posted: 12 Aug 2011 12:38 PM PDT Today is the launch date for the Acer Iconia A100 tablet. For those unfamiliar this is the first Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet to the market in the 7″ form factor. Want to see benchmarks? We told you originally it was coming in August and it has finally arrived. It was officially announced this morning and you can get all the details here. Lucky for you we already have one and decided to run a few performance benchmarks to help our readers make up their minds.
A quick summary this is a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core Android 3.2 Honeycomb Tablet with a 7″ 1024×600 resolution, rocking 1GB of Ram and comes in a 8GB or 16GB flavor. It is small, lightweight, and portable and after running a few benchmarks we can clearly see it performs pretty nice too. I’m going to say the good benchmarks are from not only running the latest and greatest Android 3.2 Honeycomb that has been optimized plenty by Google, especially for a 7″ device but it also has a slightly lower resolution. First off here is the quadrant benchmark photo shown above and while it didn’t score amazingly high it was decent at almost 2100. For a comparison a similar spec tablet like the Xoom and Galaxy Tab with the same Tegra 2 score around 2500.
Next up we ran the increasingly popular Vellamo Web Browser Performance test. For full details on the new Vellamo Test read here. It tests overall performance from scrolling, web page rendering, network performance, V8, JavaScript and more. It is very thorough and it appears to love the Acer A100 — yup that is the little guy at the very top of the chart scoring well over 1000. Only my Xoom got that high once I overclocked it to like 1.4 Ghz.
Vellamo is supposed to be a pretty accurate test that rates overall device performance instead of particular areas. So far I’ve tested tons of dual-core devices like the Sensation 4G to the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and even the Xoom but nothing has scored as high as the Acer A100 when stock. Maybe its the lower resolution but that should take much effect as you see lower res phones like the myTouch 4G score plenty high. I’m going to go ahead and say Android 3.2 Honeycomb is highly optimized and performs quite great. The A100 beat the Tab by a pretty large margin.
For fun we also ran the slowly becoming less popular Linpack test for good measure but the score was pretty lack-luster at just 14 MFLOPS so we will move on quickly.
While some may just want to see the device others really love benchmarks so I’ll keep posting a few more and you can expect to see some hands-on pictures and video shortly. I’ve also ran a quick Sunspider but Vellamo actually includes that in testing but I’ll throw that picture up for good measure. It scored around 2300 in sunspider which is about even with recent devices.
From initial testing I’m seeing pretty great overall performance from this sleek 7″ Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet. It is smooth, fast, and appears to be running extremely stable. I’ve only used Android 3.2 briefly but so far it feels much more stable than 3.0 and the optimizations can be felt during regular usage. Everything is really fluid and nice. Again this was just a few pictures to get those interested in the Acr A100 7″ tablet excited as well as show some performance numbers. We’ll be sure to post some device hands-on and pictures very shortly. For now check out all the photos below in full size via the gallery. Device Info
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| Acer Iconia A500 Honeycomb just $299 at Target, Better Hurry [Deal] Posted: 12 Aug 2011 11:48 AM PDT Whoa, this is a pretty surprising deal to say the least. Today we are seeing an ad from a Target thanks to fatwallet and Target is offering the Acer Iconia A500 Android Honeycomb tablet for just $399 and it comes with a free $100 gift card. So while it’s not technically $299 you save $100 because you then get to go on a little Target shopping spree with that gift card. I’d be heading to the graphic T-shirt isle right away myself.
This is one of the better deals I’ve seen for a fully featured Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablet. The A500 has all those specs you all are expecting too. Like the NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core 1 Ghz processor, 10.1″ display, 1GB RAM, this deal is for the 16GB version oh and don’t forget the 5 MP rear camera and 2MP front shooter. This is a great tablet and an even better price. If you want to see the Acer Iconia A500 check out our full review. While the Acer might not be as thin or beautiful as the Galaxy Tab 10.1 it does have a nice uniqueness to it as well as plenty of ports for all your needs. Again it is $399 at Taget (while supplies last) and it comes with a free Target $100 dollar gift card making this a stellar deal at $299. I’d be running down to a Target if I was you. Update: Deal apparently starts on 8/14 so that would be this Sunday, so you have a few days to convince the wife/husband everyone! Device Info
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[via Android Police] )
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