A small Taiwanese company has tried to promote its new Action Pad tablet by getting an actor to portray Steve Jobs with wings and a halo. Disgusting.
Tag / Android
Casio announce G-Shock phone: running Android and looking hideous
Pictures of Casio’s new phone with G-Shock branding appeared during CES, clearly showing a rugged and chunky Android device. In the style of G-Shock watches, many extraneous plastic lumps protect the device and house the buttons which, unlike most Android devices, are around the edge and not on the base. We know nothing about the hardware specifications yet, but the phone appears to be running Gingerbread and will be able to withstand a whole tonne of pressure. It will also be shock-resistant to 10 feet and waterproof to 1 bar, meaning that it’s no RAZR. What do you think? A rugged dream or design nightmare?
Why I hate Android
I loathe Android for many reasons. I can’t help it, and I apologise for that. I have my reasons, and I believe they are valid, so here we go.
Motorola (re)build on the RAZR line with MAXX, Droid 4 and purpleness
Sorry for the lack of posts but the start of a term doesn’t mix well with CES for a teenage blogger. We will get through the big stuff this week but it may take time!
At CES, Motorola announced 3 new devices based on the RAZR, a phone that is officially as old as Digixav. While it seems unlikely that they will ever hit the UK as none are featured on the Motorola website, it gives us an excuse to look at the phone that narrowly lost out on our Best Design Award. Despite it’s godawful screen that somehow manages to look bad in adverts.
On the left, we have the RAZR MAXX. As the name suggests, this is a RAZR that is fatter and equipped with a bigger and better battery of 3300mAh. This gives you (supposedly) 21 hours of talk-time and 6 hours of LTE video streaming. It is 8.99mm thick and is otherwise a bog-standard RAZR. This is coming soon for $299 with a 2 year plan.
In the middle, we have the purple RAZR. It is a RAZR. It’s purple. Along with the cut-price white and black models, this will be $199 on contract.
On the right, we have the Droid 4. It’s like a 4 inch RAZR with a sliding QWERTY keyboard and 4.6mm thicker. It’s what the Droid 3 should have been. Like how the heavily delayed and redesigned Bionic is a fat RAZR. The Bionic is like the RAZR MAXX, but with a worse battery. Pricing is currently unannounced but it’ll probably be $249.
All of these phones are Verizon exclusives in the USA and have ‘4G’ LTE, the same internals as each other, splash-resistant nanocoating and Motoblur as a skin. If you are in America and feel the need for Android, forget these and get a Galaxy Nexus. Or get a Windows Phone on AT&T. Made by Nokia.
Android AOTW: Launcher 7
For our first Android app of the week, I have chosen Launcher 7 by Timo Kujala.
This app is a perfect cure for those of us that have #droidrage and crave a Windows Phone. It replaces whatever launcher you have, in my case HTC Sense 1.0 for Android, with a smooth interface that looks just like that of Windows Phone 7. While you don’t get the full OS, you do get a live tile for your contacts and some bitmap images to use as app icons such as a smiley face for the messaging app and the IE logo for the browser. The status bar takes on a WP7 look when you are on the home screen and widgets are supported by being embedded in tiles. Most noticeably for me, however, Launcher 7 is less processor intensive than HTC Sense and other OEM skins and the phone therefore runs much faster in everything and multitasking actually works. While I struggle by with an HTC Wildfire, I assume that a slight performance improvement will be noticed on almost any Android device, be it a phone or tablet.
If you have an Android phone, download the free version of this. (You have to put up with 1 ad in the app list but it’s not obstructive or distracting.) You WILL love the Metro UI and then you will almost certainly want to get a Windows Phone at the earliest opportunity.
Launcher 7, Android, Free or £1.28
Download from the Android Market
Deal: Grab a Dell Streak 7 for less than £100 at PC World
The Dell Streak 7 was recently discontinued and, like a certain other tablet, this action is a cue for price cuts. It has now hit the low low price of £99.97 at PC World which will get you a Tegra 2 powered slab with an 800 x 480 resolution and, while sporting Froyo out of the box, an official update to Android 3.2 ie. Honeycomb is available over the air. It is unlikely that you will ever see Ice Cream Sandwich officially on this but, at this price, you may as well give it a go. The deal is in store only so head on over to your local PC World to grab this bargain.
LG to announce new Prada Phone 3.0 on Wednesday
Engadget are reporting that LG and Prada have announced an event that will take place in London on Wednesday. The invite clearly states that the ‘Prada Phone by LG 3.0’ will be presented to the tech press of the world. The phone is rumoured to have the model number P940, an unannounced device that has already been benchmarked. The Antutu benchmarks say that the device will be running Android 2.3.7 and not Ice Cream Sandwich upon release and will come equipped with a 1GHz CPU. The FCC certifications for this phone say that it is 9mm thin and has a 4.3 inch display with ‘4G’ HSPA+ download speeds. Whether we see the same QWERTY keyboard as the Prada II remains unknown but we will all find out on Wednesday.
The Poll: What is the best tablet at the moment?
The Poll: What is the best smartphone at the moment?
Nokia Lumia: Meet the new king of smartphones
The Nokia Lumia range was launched on Wednesday morning at the annual Nokia World event in London. Along with the Asha range of budget Series 40 phones for the next billion internet users, Stephen Elop’s company unveiled the Lumia 710 and the flagship 800. This announcement would be the most important event in the history of Nokia. Symbian was seen by many as a disaster (THE FONT!) and MeeGo only appeared on one device before becoming Tizen. For Microsoft it was important as well. Windows Phone 7 has been well received, but has failed to gain traction in the overcrowded (by Android) smartphone market. Together they could rejuvenate both their brands with affordable, premium devices, full support, backing and promotion from networks and a multi-million pound ad campaign everywhere you look.
And that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Digixav 