ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet gets a hands-on foreplay video review

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  • November 23, 2011 at 6:04 pm

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ASUS Transformer Prime with keyboard dock

By now you should be well briefed on the quad-core Tegra 3 powered 10.1-inch Android tablet by ASUS, also known as the Transformer Prime. We first looked at the keyboard dock-able tablet early this month and we know that it will hit retail channels in the coming weeks. You can actually pre-order it from Amazon.de for EUR 599.

One lucky fellow managed to get his hands on a sample Transformer Prime and has shot a nice overview video of the tablet. The unofficial review starts the tablet on the keyboard dock and ends with an obligatory thickness comparison to the original ASUS Transformer and of course, the iPad 2. The Transformer Prime ships with Android Honeycomb on-board, but judging by the video already released by Nvidia, it won’t take long for it to be upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Video is after the break.
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Galaxy Nexus volume bug could be hardware related, UK retailed holds off shipments (video)

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  • November 22, 2011 at 6:35 pm

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Galaxy Nexus 'volume bug' on 2G GSM 900 network

We’ve seen it time and time again. New devices generally have teething issues, though many of these can be patched with a software update, others have more serious hardware problems. The iPhone 4 had the infamous ‘antennagate’ issue, the HTC Sensation its own Wi-Fi deathgrip and it seems the Galaxy Nexus is now joining the ranks of not so smooth product launches.

The smartphone went on sale in the UK last week, and a number of users are reporting that the phone’s volume controls behave erratically when it’s transmitting on a 2G network at GSM 900 (900Mhz). This ‘volume bug’ could be a result of radio interference on the 900Mhz band and it has been replicated by placing another phone on 2G GSM 900 next to the Galaxy Nexus. The bug is quite serious because it can mute your phone’s ringer and notifications.

Most of Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australia and most of Asia use the GSM 900 band, so the number of users that could be affected is huge. Affected Galaxy Nexus devices behave normally when connected to 3G networks, so a temporary fix would be to force the phone to only connect on 3G, but that means you will be left without a signal where 3G connectivity is not available.
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Android Ice Cream Sandwich demoed on ASUS Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet (video)

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  • November 22, 2011 at 4:26 pm

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ASUS Transformer Prime running Android Ice Cream Sandwich

If you’ve been wondering how Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) looks like on a tablet, then wonder no more. Once Google made the source code of ICS available, Nvidia and ASUS rushed to the challenge and got the new operating system working on the ASUS Transformer Prime tablet. As a reminder the Transformer Prime is the first device to run on Nvidia’s brand new quad-core Tegra 3 chip. We’ve covered the Tegra 3 here, and it’s an impressive piece of silicon, which promises not only awesome processing and graphics power, but also longer battery life through aggressive throttling and a frugal 500MHz companion fifth-core.

We would easily guess that pairing such a chip with the latest and greatest version of Android would result in some smooth performance and now we’ve got the evidence to prove it. Nvidia has published a video of Android Ice Cream Sandwich running super smoothly on the Transformer Prime. If you would enjoy watching cool transitions, smooth 1080p playback and a demo of a quad-core optimized game called Riptide GP, head on after the break.
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How to: sign-up and access Google Music for PC and Android from outside the US, easily

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  • November 20, 2011 at 9:19 am

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Google Music

I’m sure you’ve read about Google’s online music service, appropriately titled Google Music. If you haven’t, it’s Google’s online music store and it’s also a free service which allows you to upload up to 20,000 of your own music files to Google’s cloud. Then, it allows you to listen to both purchased and uploaded songs from any browser (Windows or Mac PC) or through the Google Music app on Android devices. It’s Google’s answer to Apple’s iCloud and Amazon’s Cloud Player.

Unfortunately the service is currently only available within the US, and although Google will successively begin offering the service to other countries, if you reside outside the United States you will be out of luck for a while. Nevertheless there is a very easy way to sign-up and use the service from anywhere in the world, if you are willing to jump a couple of hoops. Note you still won’t be able to buy any music through the service, but you will have access to the free storage and streaming service for you own songs.
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Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus arrive in the UK, first handset is a dud

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  • November 17, 2011 at 9:36 am

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus in box on UK launch

It’s the 17th of November and that means the official release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first device to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. As expected, the phone has launched in the UK first, unfortunately the release is not as far-reaching as we would have hoped, as Phones4U managed to get a few days of exclusivity. The Galaxy Nexus has been on sale from the UK retailer since 8am this morning, and you can grab one with a new contract or unlocked for £530. Phones4U has been celebrating the launch by offering, what else, ice cream sandwiches.

The Galaxy Nexus will be arriving directly from three UK mobile carriers, O2, Three and Vodafone, in the coming days. Those who would rather get their phone sim-free from an online retailer, should also be treated to some frozen dessert next week as well.

Just a reminder for anyone that hasn’t been paying attention, that the Galaxy Nexus has a 4.65-inch 720p Super AMOLED (PenTile) display, dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 5-megapixel rear and 1.3-megapixel front-facing cameras.
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HTC Rezound 2,750mAh extended battery, worth it if you can live with the thickness

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  • November 16, 2011 at 3:57 am

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HTC Rezound extended battery and back cover

We’ve covered all these before, you get a brand new shiny smartphone with a large gorgeous display, like the HTC Rezound’s 4.3-inch 1280×720 retina display, and of course you don’t want to put it down. You browse the net and your social networks, you play a quick game, and by mid-day you realize that the battery is down. You then have to choose between being tethered to a wall outlet all the time, stop using your device as much, or get an extended or external battery.

Marchello from Htcpedia chose the latter for his HTC Rezound, and we would too. The Rezound comes with a ridiculously small 1,620mAh battery for such a large device. Thankfully HTC offers a 2,750mAh extended battery, but that comes with two caveats. First, you have to shell out around $50 for the extended battery and second, it’s so large that the battery comes with an extended cover to accommodate the larger battery. The extended battery makes the Rezound quite thick, at around 3/4 of an inch, but also lets you go through a whole day of use without having to worry about recharging your phone.
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CyanogenMod team promises CM9 in 2 months, could be getting you to eat Ice Cream Sandwich in the dead of winter

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  • November 15, 2011 at 12:03 pm

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Cyanogen CM9 Android Ice Cream Sandwich tweet

You might know of the team over at CyanogenMod (CM), which creates and publishes for free its own streamlined Android ROMs for over 50 devices. As manufacturers and mobile carriers linger on old versions of Android, CM was the best way for many to update their devices to the latest Android version.

As promised Google made the source code of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich open yesterday. This means that developers can download the code and start tinkering.

Of course, the CyanogenMod team has followed suit and has announced via Twitter that we should be seeing an Ice Cream Sandwich infused CM9 in two months, more or less. This is great news, since most manufacturers will only start to officially update Android devices in the beginning of 2012, with attention placed on 2011 devices first, while some older devices might not be upgraded at all.
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How-to: Install any Android app on the Amazon Kindle Fire

Guides

  • November 15, 2011 at 10:12 am

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Amazon Kindle Fire 7-inch Android tablet

One of the limitations of Amazon’s new 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet, is that you are restricted to the apps available on Amazon’s Appstore for Android rather than the full Android Market. So what happens when you want to use an app that’s available in the Android Market but hasn’t yet reached Amazon’s store.

There is actually a not-too-complicated way around that limitation. Although, if you wanted to sideload applications on the B&N Nook Color you had to actually root it first, Amazon hasn’t really locked-down the Kindle Fire. It all falls down to enabling a simple option in settings.
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Adobe Photoshop Touch and five other Touch Apps now available for Android

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  • November 15, 2011 at 5:03 am

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Adobe Touch Apps

Adobe has just released its Touch Apps suite for Android tablets, made of five creative apps each priced at $9.99 and available on the Android Market. There is an Android 3.1 Honeycomb or higher requirement, while Adobe points out that you’ll need at least a 8.9-inch 1280×800 tablet to get the most out the applications. As the name implies, they are all touch optimized applications, but also integrate with Adobe Creative Cloud. You can open Photoshop or other Adobe desktop application files saved in the cloud, work with them on your tablet and then save them back to the cloud to continue working on a desktop or other device.

King of the pack is of course Adobe Photoshop Touch. You can get your images from social networking sites such as Facebook, use locally saved images or snap live from your tablet’s camera. The app includes layer support, various adjustments and filters, and of course you can share your results back to Facebook.
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Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet gaming hands-on and pictures (video)

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  • November 12, 2011 at 9:22 am

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Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime hands-on

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime 10.1-inch Android tablet is coming in December and it’s coming in hot. It will be the first mobile device to run on the quad-core (or should we say penta-core) Nvidia Tegra 3 chip. The Tegra 3 promises both amazing performance, with three times higher graphics performance than the Tegra 2, and as we’ve seen in our initial coverage, it will also offer better battery life, since it features a fifth low-power core which takes over automatically to reduce energy consumption.

The Eee Pad Transformer Prime is set to debut for $499 in December, while a keyboard dock accessory will also be offered, essentially turning it into a ‘laptop’, hence the the transformer part. It will initially come with Android 3.2 Honeycomb but a promised Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update will soon be in the works.

A Brazilian blog, Ztop, managed to get its hands on the tablet and has posted some first pictures of the Transformer Prime, showing off its thinness against an iPhone 4 and a Droid RARZ and getting friendly with the keyboard dock. There is also a hands-on video showing the tablet’s gaming abilities running the game Shadowgun; you’ll find it all after the break.
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Samsung Galaxy Nexus release date slips past the 21st of November in the UK and Europe?

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  • November 10, 2011 at 7:35 am

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Android Ice Cream Sandwich Galaxy Nexus

There’s a lot of anticipation for the release of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and that is no small part because it will be the first smartphone to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich — you might want check out our guide of what ICS has to offer.

Samsung confirmed the 17th of November as the official release date of the Galaxy Nexus in the UK and Europe two weeks ago during their Galaxy Note promotional event in London. It seems that this date has now been pushed forward to the 21st. Handtec, an online UK mobile device retailer, has posted on its blog that it has received confirmation from Samsung distribution that the Galaxy Nexus will arrive to retailers in the week commencing 21st of November, here is their original post:
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Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core mobile chip revealed: more power, better battery life (video)

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  • November 9, 2011 at 5:23 pm

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Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core mobile chip

The Nvidia Tegra 2 monopolized Android Honeycomb tablets this year and we already knew that Nvidia had a successor in the works with the codename ‘Kal-El’. Today Nvidia has come clean with a host of new details on the project and the official Tegra 3 name, and yes mark it down as the first mobile quad-core CPU, yeah ever.

Nvidia is claiming that the new Tegra 3 chip will offer up to five times the performance of the Tegra 2 with its 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex A9 processor and three times the graphics performance with a new 12-core graphics unit. What’s more interesting is that Nvidia has included a fifth, low-power 0 to 500MHz “companion core”. When you don’t need the power afforded by the quad-core unit, the companion core takes over, taking care of light-weight tasks, like listening to music, or during standby. The chip is also intelligent enough to scale the main 4 cores between single, dual and quad-core modes on demand as well.
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HTC Edge Tegra 3 quad-core Android 4.7-inch beast-phone to have optically-laminated display, NFC, 8.8mm profile

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  • November 8, 2011 at 1:22 pm

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HTC Edge leaked picture

More details have come through on the HTC Edge, a rumored 4.7-inch 720p Android smartphone and the first to sport a quad-core Tegra 3 processor. Well it seems that the 720p HD display is not just any plain LCD but rather an S-LCD with optical lamination.

Usually, there is a gap between the LCD display and the cover glass. Optical lamination eliminates that gap by bonding the screen to the glass, so that the screen appears to be floating on the surface of the device, making the touch experience better by making it more direct. This also improves the clarity and sharpness of the display by eliminating light refraction, otherwise caused by the gap; dust under your screen also becomes history. The same technology was used for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S’ amazing display, but obviously here we’re talking about a 4.7-inch screen rather than a 3.5-inch one.
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