Technology Android

[Flipmo]

Google to release a tablet in the next six months: Schmidt

By Daniel Bader on December 19, 2011 at 11:37am in Mobile News

Google’s ever-vocal Chairman, Eric Schmidt, has told an Italian newspaper that the company plans to bring a Nexus tablet to market in the next six months. While the Motorola Xoom is ostensibly the first “Nexus” tablet, since it runs a Google-moderated stock version of Honeycomb and will be the first with Ice Cream Sandwich, it is still very much a Motorola product.
According to Schmidt, “In the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality,” though he didn’t give any specifics as to who would manufacture the device. Considering Google is closing out a $12 billion deal to purchase Motorola Mobility it would make sense for the Xoom maker to be the one, but as they’ve shown with their latest Nexus phones, Samsung has proven a worthy OEM partner.
Schmidt also commented that Google is bringing a Siri competitor to the market, which confirms the rumours of Project Majel we brought you last week.
All in all, we feel that the time is ripe for a true Nexus tablet, especially considering the bad rap many Android tablets have had since Honeycomb’s release. With the unification of phone and tablet OSes in Ice Cream Sandwich, there is a renewed urgency for developers to make big screen-friendly apps, and for Google to monetize the growing tablet market.
Source: Notebook Italia
Via: Slashgear

 

[THEV1LL4N]

google maps is being weird. navigation, to be specific. The cursor doesn't go the way I'm going anymore. So if I'm going south, the cursor is going downstream as opposed to upstream (it always goes upstream), making it slightly confusing for me. I don't know why this changed.

does rotating the map around (using multitouch with two fingers) work?

 

[S O F I]

I'll have to try that.

 

[masta247]

Do you mean when the map turns around in the direction you're heading? Most probably you can change that in settings. Every navigation I know has that option. It's really weird that they changed the default setting. Most people would prefer it the way it was before.

Well, I just checked and I can't find that option. I also think that they really f***ed up with the update. I used to really like the navigation app. Now it sucks.

 

[S O F I]

The problem is that the map doesn't turn around in the direction I'm heading.

 

[masta247]

Yeah that's what I meant. Again, I'm looking around and I can't find the option to change that. As a matter of fact there's basically no options menu. The update sucks actually. I don't know why but everything appears darker now too. My neighborhood has become kind of dark-grey-ish. It'd be hard to read outdoors on an LCD screen.
Whenever I set a new location it feels like I don't want to go there anymore because it looks like shit on this navigation app.

 

[S O F I]

Is it possible you're using a different layer? Like terrain or satellite?

 

[masta247]

I just checked and no, it looks far better with the satellite layer actually but it's not as good as it used to be.

It looks okay until I zoom in - that's when most blocks become dark grey. Even parks are washed-out dark green.

Actually it looks like this:

Plus the fixed map location issue.

No layers seem to bring back the nice, bright layout.
It used to look cool, like this:

 

[S O F I]

But yeah, I too feel that Google Maps has been sucking as of late. Not sucking but I just remember it working better a few years back. To take a page out of Jobs' book, it used to "just work". Now it lags more on the turns, takes more time rerouting, etc. Also, the robot lady speaking sounds like she just got done being raped.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

i agree that the voice needs to be clearer. i havent used navigation for some time now but im not liking what im hearing and that screenshot of maps looks disgusting.

 

[Rukas]

The problem is that the map doesn't turn around in the direction I'm heading.

Tap the blue triangle on the bottom left of the screen or wherever it is.

 

[S O F I]

Well, of course, that's what "refreshes" the navigation but the arrow doesn't turn around in the direction I'm heading.

 

[ARon]

http://gizmodo.com/5869995/this-is-the-first-intel+powered-smartphone

Intel’s First Android Smartphone Plays Blu-ray Quality Video Without Breaking a Sweat


Intel is late to the smartphone game, sure, but its Medfield system-on-chip has been touted as the firm's make-or-break venture into the market. Now the first working Intel Android phone is in the wild—and it seems mighty promising.
The guys over at Technology Review were lucky enough to get a sneak-preview of Intel's reference designs—devices which have been sent out to inspire manufacturers interested in building products around Intel's latest technology. Intel hopes that its first all-in-one mobile processor design can strip away some of the luster from UK-based ARM, which currently dominates the Android market.
The Technology Review team actually got their hands on a pair of Medfield prototypes running Android: a phone similar in size to the iPhone, running Gingerbread, and a tablet close to the iPad 2 in thickness, running Ice Cream Sandwich. So, are they any good?
From what they say, the phone seems promising. They report that it could play Blu-Ray-quality video and stream it to TV, and that web browsing was smooth and fast. Apparently the Medfield chip is designed specifically to speed up Android apps and Web browsing, so that probably has something to do with it.
Elsewhere, the camera seems impressive. With a burst mode which captures 10 full-size, eight-megapixel images in 0.66 seconds — equivalent to a rate of 15 frames per second — it seems real effort has been put into the image-processing capabilities of the devices.
The Intel tablet, which uses the same Medfield chip as the phone, runs Ice Cream Sandwich. With a slightly larger screen than the iPad 2, it was about the same in thickness and weight, and their short trial suggests that it was much nicer to use than many current Android tablets. Which isn't that hard, but it sounds promising.
Of course, there's the ever-looming question of battery life that has dogged Intel's mobile efforts in the past. All that power could mean a whole lot of drain. Still, Intel's wanted a piece of this market so badly for so long, one hopes that they wouldn't be diving in unless they'd really cracked it.
Intel VP Stephen Smith told Technology Review that Intel "expect products based on these [chips] to be announced in the first half of 2012." But with these references designs already with the big manufacturers, might we see some early announcements at CES in January? Let's wait and see.

Sounds promising

 

[Flipmo]

Sony Ericsson LT28at Xperia “super phone” specs leak out, promises LTE, 4.55-inch 720p display, 13MP camera​

By Ian Hardy on December 22, 2011 at 8:22am in Mobile News​

Looks like Sony Ericsson will be making a big push into the “superphone” arena next year. A device called the Sony Ericsson LT28at, most likely heading towards AT&T, and probably will make its way into Canada also. This Android device has shown up on the Bluetooth SIG listing and although there are no pics, specs are impressive with “tablet capacity touch phone” that has a 4.55-inch display with 720 x 1280 resolution, sports a 13 megapixel camera with an LED flash, and a 720p front facing camera. In addition, and why we might possibly see this arrive in Canada in 2012, is that it offers LTE support – something most Canadian carrier have launched, or will be launching in 2012. This Xperia superphone will probably be announced at CES in January.​

Source: XperiaBlog
Via: Engadget​

 

[masta247]

I'm really looking forward to new Xperias. I probably won't be getting myself a Nozomi but perhaps something else..
They could come up with a very good Arc successor - I'm really looking forward to it.

Their cameras are really amazing but with Arc they screwed up with camera drivers. They introduced faar too much image compression for example. The Iphone 4S has exactly the same camera module from Sony and it takes superior pictures.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

I also hate the fact that some app updates in the Android Market won't show or cannot be downloaded if you change the LCD density (Resolution) of your screen. I have it set to 210 on boot. The factory default is 240, so occasionally i have to reboot in 240 and reboot back to 210 - which is kinda annoying.

 

[dilla]

We should post our (meaningless) Quadrant scores on here to see who has the bigger e-penis.

 

[Flipmo]

1890 - Captivate, no overclock, running CyanogenMod 7.1

 

[dilla]

Oh, you know we're gonna need a screencap of that.

 

[ARon]

What quadrant app do you use. I've never done one so which app is the best