Monday, 29 August 2011

Android Community

Android Community

Samsung Galaxy S II 2000mAh Extended Battery Revealed

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 11:27 AM PDT

As you may already know, the battery on the Samsung Galaxy S II, through some excellence in the hardware in the phone, awesomeness in the way the battery is connected to the device, or magic, is a totally awesome performer. The Samsung Galaxy S II lasts two full days according to Chris Davies original review. What you’re going to get here is a 2000 mAh battery and new battery cover so that you can replace your current 1650 mAh battery and get even MORE time out of your best-selling Android device. Mister xeq544 over at XDA has the first one we’ve seen, straight outta Euro.

Of course there’s also the 1650 mAh replacement battery and case as revealed a few weeks ago. But what the heck, everyone loves a big fat battery for their thinnest smartphone in the world to make it no longer the thinnest smartphone in the world – and what’s best? It’ll only cost you 23 Euro! That translates to something like $35 USD at the moment, not sure what the price is going to be once its released here in the states.

This package coming straight from Samsung means that this battery is completely factory approved, and it’s literally a bit thicker than the original battery, so you’ll need the extended battery cover – also, again, included in the package. Since this is an official Samsung package, the battery cover has the same texture as the original as well. This reminds me of the extended battery of the HTC ThunderBolt – fatness forever!

herthreehrs herhseehr varegaergrea

[via XDA]

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Fujitsu Arrow Android 3.2 Tablet with LTE and Dual-core spotted, Water resistant too

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 11:08 AM PDT

Fujitsu is prepping to launch a new Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet that sources are calling the Fujitsu Arrow LTE Tab. If you’ve ever wondered why we have waterproof phones like the Motorola Defy and things of that sort, but no waterproof tablet then wonder no more. This will be a fully waterproof Android tablet that can handle any situation, whether it’s water, or gaming, and it has some decent hardware specs to back that up.

You can wonder in the rain or even take this tab to the lake, but I’d still be careful if I were you. The rumored device has a codename of Arrows Tab F-01D LTE tablet and should launch on the Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo with 4G LTE. Specs are pretty decent and include a 10.1″ 1280×800 resolution display, a TI OMAP 4430 dual-core CPU at 1.0 Ghz rather than a NVIDIA Tegra 2. Comes with 1GB of ram and 16GB of internal storage and should also offer a 32GB variant.

We are also hearing it will sport front and rear cameras but specs have not yet been confirmed. The Fujitsu Arrow should also pack in with micro USB and micro SD slots (both with waterproof covers we’re assuming) as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. Basically an all around standard Android Honeycomb tablet, yet should be completely waterproof.

Not much else has been revealed. We are still looking for pricing, possible release date, and if we can actually submerge this in water or just survive a random splash or spill. Rumors are suggesting a September launch.

[via Engadget]

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Android Community at IFA 2011: What to Expect

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 10:07 AM PDT

This week in Berlin, Android Community will be covering IFA 2011, one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany and host to a slew of important events hosted by Samsung, HTC, and many others. First and foremost I should mention that we’ll be liveblogging the Samsung Unpacked event on Thursday, September 1st at 11AM CET – that’s 4AM Central Standard Time, so more than likely past your bedtime. The rest of the time we’ll be having an awesome time speaking with a whole mess of other manufacturers and developers across the board.

Before we get any further, I must tell you why this event is called IFA instead of CEU Consumer Electronics Unlimited as their logo suggests. IFA stands for Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin (International radio exhibition Berlin, aka ‘Berlin Radio Show’) and started in 1924 when straight up radios were what you used to listen to the Green Hornet. Now it’s one of the world’s largest international consumer electronics and home appliances shows. IFA takes place September 2nd-7th and unofficially starts off with the Samsung Unpacked event the night of the 1st.

From Samsung we’ve got a whole slew of possibilities lined up, starting with Samsung’s new naming scheme revealing several new devices. That’s low on the scale of awesome. Next there’s the slightly more exciting Samsung Galaxy Q, a big ol’ phone/tablet hybrid whispered about twice now, once with a folding display. Then there’s the Samsung Galaxy S II upgrade — it’s either that or SOMETHING NEW as teased in two brand new Samsung Unpacked trailers, as seen here:

Here’s the second video first:

Then the first video next:

Next there’s some already confirmed bits, first of all the Galaxy S II LTE with a larger display and a fatter processor as well as the Galaxy Tab 8.9 LTE, another tablet we’ve been looking forward to since CTIA 2011. After that, there’s been a leak inside the Unpacked App which showed three devices, at least two of which we can MAYBE expect to be Android devices: Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, Samsung Wave 3 (with Bada OS), and Samsung Galaxy Note.

For Sony we’ve got the Sony tablets, both of them having already been seen a few times, but perhaps a greater look is in order. For Toshiba there’s been a note about a ultra-thin tablet to replace the JUST RELEASED Toshiba Thrive. Finally there’s a tip about LG’s intent to release the world’s first 3D game conversion engine.

Join us all this next week!

And don’t forget to join us tomorrow for the official reveal of the USA Samsung Galaxy S II family over in New York City. A full collection coming up this week!

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Verizon DROID Bionic launching September 8 [Update: Not so fast]

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 07:33 AM PDT

Motorola has confirmed that the DROID Bionic will arrive on September 8, finally announcing when buyers will be able to pick up the much-anticipated smartphone. Powered by a dual-core processor and offering 4G LTE on Verizon’s network, the Bionic also has an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video recording support.

Update: Looks like there’s nothing confirming that the Twitter account is, in fact, Motorola’s official one. DROID Bionic goes back on the rumor shelf for the moment.

Expectations of an imminent launch had been raised after the official DROID Bionic product page arrived in Motorola’s online store over the weekend. However, there was no option to buy the handset, and the listing was subsequently removed.

According to the official Twitter account for the smartphone, the Bionic will go up for pre-order soon. Verizon itself is only confirming the September release window, with no option to order as yet.

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Tetris Free hits Android Market today

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 05:46 AM PDT

One of the games that I really liked back in the day was Tetris. The puzzle game has different shapes that tumble from the top of the screen and fill up the area. The goal is to align the different pieces to fill up a row and make the row disappear. If you don’t align enough when the parts touch the top of the screen, you lose.

Tetris Free is now on the Android Market for you to download. The app was updated August 24 and is being offered at no cost exclusively on Android devices. The game is a new and improved version of the original Tetris with the music we all know and it includes the Marathon Mode as well.

The game uses the touchscreen for control and the pieces can be slid and rotated using the fingers. The free version also allows for stat tracking so they can work to beat their high score. I bet a bunch of people grab this game today.

"Tetris is one of the most distinctive, well-known and popular video game franchises in the world and it gives EA the opportunity to grow its already-expanding customer base on the Android platform," said Bernard Kim, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for EA Interactive. "Tetris has a strong legacy in the mobile gaming world and we're excited to bring a free version of Tetris to yet another great platform."

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LG unveils world’s first 3D game conversion engine for smartphones

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 04:43 AM PDT

LG has a cool new game conversion engine to unveil at IFA 2011 in Berlin next week. The new game engine claims to be the world’s first 3D game conversion engine for smartphones. The conversion engine is OpenGL-based 2D to 3D conversion. The conversion engine is part of the effort by LG to expand the amount of 3D offerings to push the adoption of 3D devices like the Optimus 3D.

The new 3D converter will be released in the first Maintenance Release (MR) for the Optimus 3D that will land starting in October. The exact date that the MR is offered to users of the smartphone will depend on the carrier. The converter will benefit the user and the game developer according to LG. Smaller game devs will be able to convert 2D games to 3D without needing to make an investment in people and tech.

The smartphone user will get to play existing 2D games in 3D at no charge. The games will be able to be switched back to 2D simply by turning off the converter. The converter will automatically scan the 2D games that are launched to see if they are on the list of 2D titles optimized for 3D conversion. If it is on the optimized list it will be converted. The conversion engine will be shown off at IFA 2011.

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Details surface on a new ultra-thin Toshiba tablet possibly debuting at IFA

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 03:07 AM PDT

IFA kicks off next week and there may be a cool new tablet from Toshiba to check out there. The tablet is said to be a follow up to the Toshiba Thrive tablet we are already familiar with. The new tablet has surfaced in a spy shot and shows a tablet that is far slimmer than the Thrive. From the leaked photos it looks a lot like the iPad with a metal and glass design that looks very nice.

The tablet has a microUSB port that we can see along with a headphone/mic port, HDMI output, and a headphone jack. Other specs for the tablet are said to include a front camera, I would bet there is a rear camera too. The internal specs are pure speculation at those point with no confirmation of exactly what is inside the sleek tablet.

My money is on the Tegra 2 that is being used in a lot of the better tablets today. We could also assume that WiFi is inside and the tablet likely has a mobile broadband option in 3G or 4G flavors. What we do know is that our own Chris Davies will be on hand at IFA this week and will report all the gory details.

toshiba-slim-1 toshiba-slim-2 toshiba-slim-3

[via SlashGear]

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Samsung ChatON messaging service works across all major platforms including Android

Posted: 29 Aug 2011 02:40 AM PDT

One of the reasons that services like Facebook are so popular is that you can communicate with your friends and loved ones no matter what device you are own. Samsung has a new cross-platform service called ChatON that will be coming soon and it supports all platforms including tablets, feature phones, PCs, and Bada as well as Android.

The service has lots of features that let users interact and share details. The communication and sharing features allow for the sharing of your schedule, animated messages, movies, location information, and a lot more. The animation message is apparently short video clips you can share. ChatON supports group chats amongst a number of people.

You can also chat directly with Buddies Say and ChatON has an interaction rank, to rank people for the interaction with you. There is also a Trunk that allows you to store files and other content online to share with users. ChatON supports 120 countries and 62 different languages. Do you think there is room for a new chat service?

[via SlashGear]

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HP TouchPad CyanogenMod 7 Build Initiated

Posted: 28 Aug 2011 09:42 PM PDT

If there’s one name synonymous with Android hacking in this crazy, crazy mobile world of ours, it’s Cyanogen – and today the worlds most notorious fire-sale-ridden tablet, the HP TouchPad, appears to be booting the best. But wait a second, doesn’t the HP TouchPad run webOS? Why, yes it does, but as the $99 sale of said tablet made the entirety of its stock go down to zero after HP announced they were canning their webOS hardware department, Android was a certain next step – and these days, one step after Android equals Cyanogen.

A lovely RootzWiki letter has been sent out by the CyanogenMod team today announcing that they’ve been hard at work creating a build of CyanogenMod 7 for the public for about a week now. That said, the team has released a video of the popular ROM running on a TouchPad without any touch capabilities at the moment. The reason the team is releasing a video of a boot sequence here is because they need several extra actual TouchPad units and are currently unable to locate any at the store, on the black market, on the streets, etcetera.

If you happen to have a TouchPad and would like to toss it on over to the CyanogenMod team, I’m sure they’d be more than willing to work with you on a deal. The team also wants to let the public know that they’re not working on a set schedule for this project AND that they’re not working for any sort of bounty (there was a $1500 USD bounty about a week ago for anyone who could get Android running on the TouchPad, fyi). They say they’d like to do it right, not fast.

Also note: this TouchPad is running Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread at the moment. The team at CyanogenMod have also made this project a special one in which they’ll be aiming for a multi-boot function which will allow booting into CyanogenMod7, webOS, and a variety of different operating systems concurrently. Cool beans!

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