Android Community |
- Samsung Galaxy Premier clears the NCC, shows its hardware
- Crazy Machines Golden Gears THD is like Apparatus in HD
- FCC listing confirms of existence of 3G Nexus 7
- Samsung Nexus 10 manual leaks ahead of announcement
- New study shows that Nexus 7 usage up 135% from July, Samsung still tablet king
- Sony Xperia TL coming to AT&T November 2
- Verizon and AT&T launch preorders for Galaxy Note 2
- Multi-view likely coming to Galaxy S III before the end of the year
- SwiftKey Flow announced – brings the keyboard battle to Swype
- LG Nexus 4 with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean gets premature pre-order
- Rumor mill outs DROID RAZR X, Motorola Nexus, and Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie
- Need for Speed: Most Wanted hits Android October 30th – same day as consoles
- Verizon brands the Galaxy Note II home button with logo
- DROID Bionic Android 4.0 ICS update rolling out now
- Samsung Galaxy Note vs Galaxy Note II
| Samsung Galaxy Premier clears the NCC, shows its hardware Posted: 25 Oct 2012 11:32 AM PDT The new Samsung Galaxy Premier (GT-i9260) has been spotted a few times as of late, but only in a few leaked benchmarks, and official press photos. Today however, Samsung’s new mid-range device has cleared the Taiwan NCC, their FCC equivalent, and along with it we’re getting multiple pictures of the actual hardware. Check out this 4.65-inch Galaxy smartphone below.
For those that aren’t familiar, the Galaxy Premier appears to be a perfect blend between the high end Samsung Galaxy S III, and the recently announced (and underwhelming) Galaxy S III Mini. The Galaxy Premier offers a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED 1280x720p HD display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is included, and is apparently running on a 1.5 GHz Texas Intruments dual-core processor with 1GB of RAM. It has impressive specs, but isn’t quite top tier with today’s standards. We’ve heard reports that the display could indeed be WVGA, but these latest reports seemingly confirm an HD display. The Premier will also rock an 8 megapixel camera, and 1.3 front shooter as well. So far we’ve only seen a few leaks of the new device, but today it has cleared the FCC in Taiwan called the NCC — confirming it is indeed coming soon. Seeing the device clear the NCC confirms that is is coming soon, but from what we’re seeing and hearing this might only launch internationally and across Europe. The Samsung Galaxy Premier sounds like a perfectly blended device for the mid-range and budget friendly crowd. Hopefully we hear more from Samsung soon.     [via Techorz]
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| Crazy Machines Golden Gears THD is like Apparatus in HD Posted: 25 Oct 2012 11:04 AM PDT If you’re a fan of fun and exciting puzzle based and contraption games you’ll surely want to check out the brand new Crazy Machines Golden Gears. It’s available starting today for Android in the Google Play Store. If you’ve ever played fun puzzlers like Apparatus this is certainly a game worth enjoying. Read on for more details on this physics and puzzle filled THD game.
The award winning Crazy Machines is now available on Android, exclusively for NVIDIA Tegra-powered devices. This being a THD game you can expect some awesome graphics, stunning visuals and lifelike physics from the new game. If you’ve ever played Crazy Machines before, you’ll love their mobile version of the puzzler. The extremely popular game Apparatus took the mobile world by storm, but this is an entirely new level of contraption and puzzle based gameplay. With Crazy Machines Golden Gears THD everything is essentially on steroids. The graphics are awesome and the physics engine offers fire, wind, gravity and particle effects like never seen before. There’s explosions, and the true-to-life physics behavior will make your contraptions and experiments truly come to life. Or come crashing down based on the nature of gravity. Crazy Machines Golden Gears will offer over 60 different parts and tools to master puzzles and complete levels to earn stars. It will be a free-to-play game, with ads, and in-app purchases will add additional parts to help players complete the game. We’re told the basic $2.99 purchase will be enough to complete the entire game and have a blast doing so at the same time. Oh and that $2.99 purchase will remove those pesky ads too. Get Crazy Machines Golden Gears THD today at the Google Play Store, as well as NVIDIA’s TegraZone. Expect a non-Tegra version for all Android devices coming soon. Enjoy!   
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| FCC listing confirms of existence of 3G Nexus 7 Posted: 25 Oct 2012 08:44 AM PDT As if today wasn’t busy enough in terms of leaks about what Google is going to announce at the big event on the 29th, another piece of information has come out. This time, it comes from the FCC. A new listing on the FCC website clears a new 3G version of the Nexus 7 tablet. We are assuming that this is in preparation for Google to officially show off the 3G version of its popular tablet at its upcoming event.
Could this be the 32GB version of the tablet? Might Google release other memory amounts for the 3G version? This of course remains to be seen. We have heard reports before claiming that the 3G version of the tablet will be available with 32GB of memory, so that certainly seems likely. All will be revealed very soon, and we could not be more excited. All the rumors will come to an end on Monday, and we will find out exactly what the 3G version of the Nexus 7 will bring. We will also put an end to the rumors regarding the leaked 10-inch version of the Nexus tablet. We will keep you posted on the latest from Google’s Nexus line of tablets as it happens. [via The Next Web]
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| Samsung Nexus 10 manual leaks ahead of announcement Posted: 25 Oct 2012 08:08 AM PDT We are only days away from Google’s big media event on Monday, and rumors are circling around exactly what Google is going to announce. Well, Korean site Seeko has acquired a Samsung Nexus 10 manual, which seems to confirm the larger version of the Nexus tablet’s existence. Sadly, the page posted from the manual does not tell us much else about the new tablet, other than the mere fact that it probably exists.
Everything else about the sketch on the photographed page of the manual look pretty standard for a 10-inch tablet. It has a rear facing camera with a flash. It also features a front-facing camera and a light sensing port. A Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI port are also present. Heck, it even has speakers. As I said previously, pretty standard stuff as far as tablets go. Of course, because the manual tells us so little, it’s impossible to prove the validity of it. Thankfully, Google’s big event is right around the corner, so we do not have long to wait to find out just how true this report actually is. One thing we certainly hope is true is the reported 2560 x 1600 resolution for the device. That would certainly rival the iPad in terms of pixel density. We will keep you posted with all things Nexus 10 as it happens.
[via The Verge]
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| New study shows that Nexus 7 usage up 135% from July, Samsung still tablet king Posted: 25 Oct 2012 07:13 AM PDT A new study has come out detailing tablet usage of different models. The study from Chitika Insights analysed a sample of tens of millions of tablet impressions from the Chitika Ad network. It compared all Android tablets in relation to iPad impressions. As expected, the iPad is still dominate in terms of tablet usage, but some Android tablets, including the Nexus 7, are gaining traction at an impressive rate.
The king of Android tablets is the Galaxy Tablet 10.1. It accounts for 1.35 impressions per 100 on the iPad. Coming in second is the Barnes & Noble Nook, at an even one impression. The Galaxy Tablet 7 comes in third, with .95 impressions. Combined, the Samsung tablets are clearly the most used Android line by a sizable margin. Surprisingly, the Kindle Fire is pretty low on the list, coming in at number nine with .59 impressions. Chitika predicts that iPad will stay on top for time being, but they think Android will slowly chip away. Only time will tell if Android will manage to take over the market from the iPad. With the abundance of affordable Android tablets, that seems like a logical progression, but we shall have to see how the launch of Apple’s Mini iPad changes the market.
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| Sony Xperia TL coming to AT&T November 2 Posted: 25 Oct 2012 06:52 AM PDT Starting November 2, AT&T is rolling out the Sony Xperia TL. Sony is selling the phone for only $99.99 with a new 2-year agreement. They made no mention of preorders for the device, so it looks like interested buyers will have to run out on the 2nd to grab a phone for themselves. Of course, you can also grab one from AT&T’s website. The phone was first announced at the beginning for the month, and now it’s finally ready to hit store shelves.
The phone comes with a 4.6-inch screen capable of a 1280 x 720 resolution. It can connect to a TV using HDMI or wirelessly through DLNA. These features make it easy to display your phone on the big screen quickly and easily. It comes with Ice Cream Sandwich installed, but is upgradable to Jelly Bean. Sony nor AT&T has given official plans for upgrading. The device also features NFC for seamlessly connecting to other devices. You can simply tap your phone against another NFC device to share your content quickly and easily. Hey, if the phone is good enough for James Bond, it’s definitely good enough for us.
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| Verizon and AT&T launch preorders for Galaxy Note 2 Posted: 25 Oct 2012 06:22 AM PDT The gigantic Samsung Galaxy Note II is available for preorder from Verizon and AT&T starting today. The ship date for the phone is listed as November 27th for Verizon, and much sooner for AT&T. That means that in just over a month you can have your hands on your very own Note II, as long as you are a Verizon or AT&T customer.
The Samsung Galaxy Note II is one of the few phablets available on the market. It features a 5.5-inch touchscreen that blurs the line between smartphone and tablet. While the phone is a little on the expensive side, when you consider how much bigger it is than its competition, it’s not so bad. To go along with that, the phone is packed with high-end features that make it worth the higher price tag. What are those high-end features? Well the Note II has quad-core 1.6GHz with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and support for expandable memory. It comes with an 8MP camera on the rear of the phone and a 1.9MP camera on the front. It comes with Jelly Bean 4.1 installed out of the box. If you’ve been waiting for this extra large phone to hit the market, now is the time get your preorder in and guarantee that you’ll have one come launch day. Verizon’s Note II will apparently “ship by” November 27th according to their website, while AT&T pre-orders should start arriving for buyers on November 9th.      Device Info
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 [via SlashGear]
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| Multi-view likely coming to Galaxy S III before the end of the year Posted: 25 Oct 2012 06:03 AM PDT It looks like Samsung is going to launch another update for the Galaxy S III sometime during December. Only recently, Samsung rolled out version 4.1.1 for the device, and they are already prepping version 4.1.2, according to SamMobile. This new version will add a feature that’s already included on the Galaxy Note II called multi-view.
In addition to multi-view, this update for the Galaxy S III will also add some more stability to the device. SamMobile did not cite any specific bugs that the update will address, but making the device run smoother is always a good thing. We shall see exactly when is fixed when the update is closer. SamMobile usually has a good track record when it comes to predicting stuff like this from Samsung, so we’re pretty confident that this update is coming. As it gets closer, we will let you know exactly how multi-view works at the Galaxy S III and what other changes this update brings to the device. [via SamMobile]
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| SwiftKey Flow announced – brings the keyboard battle to Swype Posted: 25 Oct 2012 06:02 AM PDT We have some excellent news for all those SwiftKey fans out there. As you all know, we’re big fans of SwiftKey here. Being the number one 3rd party keyboard for Android with well over 10 million downloads, we don’t need to explain why. What’s even better than SwiftKey 3? SwiftKey Flow! Empowering users to enjoy the best of both worlds. With the new Flow you’ll be typing and swyping, or “gliding” as SwiftKey puts it. More details below.
Oh boy, the folks from Swype sure have some serious competition now. Combining the unparalleled and awesome predictive and next-word prediction of SwiftKey 3 along with all their awesome themes, 44 languages support and more, to also have the same swipe or flow features as competing keyboards all in one. Sign me up! SwiftKey Flow will be bringing the best of both worlds to the Android keyboard. Being able to type with ease and use their awesome prediction engine, then flow when using your device one-handed will really be exciting. SwiftKey 3 keyboard has tons of fans and this will only get them more. Here’s a quick preview of what to expect from SwiftKey Flow: Here’s what SwiftKey CEO Jon Reynolds had to say about their all new and improved keyboard:
The folks from SwiftKey have confirmed their new keyboard is still in the testing phase, and as usual they’ll be offering it up for a private beta to their VIP members. Although it looks like this will be a new VIP program altogether. You can sign up to try SwiftKey Flow yourself in the coming weeks from SwiftKey.net/flow   
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| LG Nexus 4 with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean gets premature pre-order Posted: 25 Oct 2012 04:06 AM PDT Google’s big smartphone surprise, the LG Nexus 4, has been spoiled by a prematurely posted preorder page at UK retailer Carphone Warehouse. The phone has been thrown up for sale – from free on new, two-year agreements of £31 ($50) per month or above – with deliveries from October 30, the store says, with the listing confirming much of what has been rumored or leaked about the Nexus 4 already.
According to the page, the LG-made Nexus will have a 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 display, quadcore 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, and 2GB of RAM. There’s an 8-megapixel main camera on the back and a front-facing camera, along with NFC and the usual WiFi/Bluetooth/A-GPS. Inside there’s Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, what’s shaping up to be a minor update of Jelly Bean as we know it today. However, it does sound like there’s a Swype rival included in the on-screen keyboard:
No SIM-free pricing, and it’s unclear if the retailer has simply gathered up all the latest rumors and leaks to create a “near enough” listing so that it can get preorders started as soon as possible. We’ll be headed over to Google’s event next week for all the official details.     [via SlashGear]
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| Rumor mill outs DROID RAZR X, Motorola Nexus, and Android 4.2 Key Lime Pie Posted: 24 Oct 2012 04:55 PM PDT With Google’s official Android event just a few short days away who’s ready for some exciting new juicy rumors? Today we have what appears to be “official data from Motorola” that outs their update timeline schedule to Android 4.2.2 Key Lime Pie, as well as multiple unannounced devices like a RAZR X, and yes — even a Motorola Nexus device.
So what we have here is obviously just a rumor for now. A rumor which needs to be consumed with a massive grain of salt, possibly even an entire bottle. Either way this information looks pretty legit, especially coming from Droid Forums and it certainly has piqued our interest. Let’s take a look at what has apparently leaked.
For starters this is supposed to be actual Motorola information that was leaked. Right off the bat the entire leak is plastered with Android 4.2.2 Key Lime Pie, not Android 4.2. Why the additional .2 is included makes me wonder, and is a bit suspicious. We’ve heard Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean will launch on the LG Nexus 4 come Monday at Google’s event, but 4.2 is still a possibility. We aren’t expecting a name change to Key Lime Pie yet but you never know. The idea of Verizon and Motorola going back to the X branding of old makes sense, so we certainly can see a Motorola DROID RAZR X in the future, then it calmly mentions a Motorola Nexus, but doesn’t reveal anything else on the matter. Then the leak ventures into suggested launch dates for updates to Key Lime Pie. It looks like even Motorola isn’t planning on updating to the next version of Android until late Q3 2013. That figure alone makes me not fully trust anything mentioned above. Hopefully the Google acquisition will speed things up though. For now this isn’t even a document or a screenshot, just some reportedly official information that was sent out so all we have is the words on the screen. We’ll be extremely cautious here and just chalk this up as a rumor for now — but think of the possibilities. What do you guys think? – Thanks for the tip Johnny!
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| Need for Speed: Most Wanted hits Android October 30th – same day as consoles Posted: 24 Oct 2012 04:11 PM PDT EA Games Need for Speed franchise is extremely popular both on consoles, as well as mobile devices. PS3 and Xbox users around the globe are excited to get their hands on Need for Speed: Most Wanted come October 30th, and it also appears the game will launch the same day for Android. Heading to EA.com confirms the date.
What’s even better is this awesome looking new game (see trailer below) will actually be absolutely free for T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note II users. The Galaxy Note II from T-Mobile was just launched today, and it’ll be a free install. After launching the app on our own Galaxy Note II, we quickly noticed it was just an icon that sends us to the EA download page — which tells us to wait until October 30th. We knew this awesome game was coming to Android but until now EA never gave an actual release date for the mobile version. October 30th was the date for consoles, but now we know that mobile gamers can enjoy the latest in the Need for Speed franchise too. Check out the teaser trailer below. Watching the preview trailer Need for Speed certainly looks to be a pretty awesome racing game for Android users. Playing it on the massive 5.5-inch HD display on the Galaxy Note II sure will be a treat. For everyone else we expect NFS to hit the Google Play Store on the 30th for $4.99 — the same price of their past two titles. Stay tuned race fans!   
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| Verizon brands the Galaxy Note II home button with logo Posted: 24 Oct 2012 02:21 PM PDT We have some excellent yet terrible news this afternoon regarding the Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II. For one, it’s indeed coming soon, possibly with pre-orders starting tonight according to rumors. Then the bad news. The Verizon Galaxy Note II will be plastered with Verizon and 4G LTE logos. Verizon’s logo will be on back as usual, then front and center right on the dedicated home button.
Remember the Galaxy Note II Verizon pictures that leaked back in September with carrier branding on the home button? Well apparently that wasn’t fake or just a prototype because today Samsung themselves have posted a full Verizon device gallery clearly showing that logo smack-dab front and center right on the home button. Eww! Just like putting brand logos and sponsorships on NBA jerseys, I’m totally against this entire idea. It’s bad enough that carriers like to brand devices in some way or another, but to plaster massive Verizon and 4G LTE logo’s on back is one thing. Putting a Verizon logo right on the front and ONLY button is another. I’m certainly not a fan if you haven’t noticed. It just isn’t necessary, and other carriers didn’t think so either. Don’t be too alarmed though, this is still an amazingly awesome smartphone and you’ll want to check out our T-Mobile Galaxy Note II Review. We’ve had the pleasure of using it lately and certainly give the device high praises. T-Mobile’s version is available starting today, AT&T’s goes up for pre-order tomorrow for an early November deliver, and we’ve yet to hear anything from Verizon. Hopefully they’ll decide against putting their logo on the only physical button on the front of the device. We don’t need to be reminded who our carrier is every 30 seconds. Thoughts?         [via Droid-Life]
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| DROID Bionic Android 4.0 ICS update rolling out now Posted: 24 Oct 2012 01:59 PM PDT Late last week we reported the Motorola DROID Bionic was finally set to receive Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich after a long long wait. Over the past few days the update has slowly begun rolling out to DROID Bionic users and today it appears to be full steam. Sadly the wait for Jelly Bean will probably be a long one.
Motorola and Verizon were slow to update their once king of the hill Bionic to the latest and greatest, but now it’s finally available. If you’ve not received the update yet, the notification should be appearing any time now. We heard small reports the update was rolling out on Monday, but today it’s rolling out to the masses according to multiple reports. As usual you can just wait for the update to arrive, or manually head to settings > about phone > check for updates and pull Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich yourself. The update brings a seriously improved user interface, a neat new clock widget, and tons of improvements to the aging smartphone. The image below is the full change log right from Verizon on what to expect from ICS on the DROID Bionic. As a reminder, the Android 4.0 ICS update is a rather large one so it could take a solid 10-15 minutes to install. Make sure to have plenty of battery life before accepting the over-the-air update as well, just to be safe. We’re hearing good reports this afternoon that the update is running smooth and stable. Drop us a comment should you have any issues.    Device Info
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[via GottabeMobile]
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| Samsung Galaxy Note vs Galaxy Note II Posted: 24 Oct 2012 01:18 PM PDT If you’ve been eying the new Galaxy Note II, or the original, we have a great comparison video showing both. Today T-Mobile announced Samsung’s new Galaxy Note II tablet smartphone hybrid is available right now in stores and to give you an idea on what to expect over the original you’ll want to head below for pictures, details, and of course some hands-on video.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note was quite the device when it first launched. Starting the “phablet” trend as many like to call it. Having a massive 5.3-inch HD display and stylus S-Pen for taking notes, drawing, cropping images and more. To start take a peek at our original Galaxy Note Review, then enjoy our brand new T-Mobile Galaxy Note II Review for a full idea of what you’re in for.
The video below will go over the hardware, software, and design differences in detail so for now we’ll just run down the hardware differences. The original Note comes with a 5.3-inch 1280×800 HD Super AMOLED display, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and is powered by a 1.5 Ghz (1.4 internationally) dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8 megapixel camera and a 2,500 mAh battery. It is available in the US on AT&T and T-Mobile. The Galaxy Note II, available on 5 major carriers soon features a 5.5-inch 1280x720p HD Super AMOLED display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and is powered by a Samsung 1.6 GHz quad-core processor, doubled to 2GB of RAM, 8 megapixel camera, and a larger 3,100 mAh battery. Without doing much more explaining enjoy the video below. As you can see the Note II has been improved in basically all areas of the phablet. The screen is bigger without making the device larger, the processor is much improved, they’ve doubled the RAM, improved battery life and size and more. Overall we’re loving the new Galaxy Note II, and can’t wait to enjoy that 5.5-inch HD display with some 4G LTE power under the hood. Until Jelly Bean arrives for the older Note, the new Note II features an improved TouchWiz user interface, and of course Android 4.1 Jelly Bean for enhanced performance. Samsung has made huge strides in not only the hardware, but also the software of the new Note II. With a better stylus, enhanced S-Pen and S-Note apps, airview for a PC cursor like experience, airview previews and tons of other improvements they’ve made both elements better this time around — which they should with version 2. The video above, as well as the pictures below should provide everything you need to know about these two devices, and if the higher price is worth it for the Note II. If you can get over the sheer size, the Samsung Galaxy Note II is absolutely excellent and certainly worthy of an upgrade. Thoughts on the Note II?            Device Info
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