Lenovo allegedly developing a five-inch Android tablet

9to5 Staff

Lenovo’s Android adventure has been a mixed bag of what some may call overpromising and underdelivering. The company’s separation of tablet lineup into consumer and business families surprised those who deemed the tablet market a consumer game. They debuted the 10.1-inch consumer-focused IdeaPad K1 and the ThinkPad for business back in July, following up with a seven-incher two and a half months ago.

That device, the IdeaPad A1, resembless last year’s Galaxy Tab from Samsung. They also promised a 10.1-inch Ice Cream Sandwich tablet for next month and now Engadget has it that a brand new five incher is in the works. Resembling Dell’s ill-fated Streak 5 tablet, the device is said to be marketed under the IdeaPad moniker in the Western world and the LePad in China.

It should pack in a dual-core processor, a micro-USB port, HDMI output and a front-facing camera, amongst other perks. The three capacitive buttons led the publication to speculate that the gizmo may not run Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich, but we’d find this hard to believe as Honeycomb is specifically tailored for seven-inch tablets and beyond.

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Google squashes the Galaxy Nexus volume bug

9to5 Staff

An issue with the volume control on the Galaxy Nexus handset spontaneously going to zero plaguing some UK users have been addressed and fixed, Google said in an official statement to The Verge:

We are aware of the volume issue and have developed a fix. We will update devices as soon as possible.

This is good news for owners who feared the volume bug was actually a hardware flaw with the device whereas it was actually a software thing. Google will likely squash this bug with a next point Ice Cream Sandwich update delivered over the air. A video clip, included below, outlines the bug which manifests itself as another phone is put near a Galaxy Nexus device, causing it to cycle through the menu in bootloader mode, activated by the volume rocker.

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Galaxy Nexus reportedly lands on Verizon in December

Jake Smith

The Galaxy Nexus hit Europe last week and has even been reviewed, but believe it or not Verizon — the official carrier — has yet to announce an official date. Well apparently, Business Insider has said this evening that they’ve gotten official word from Verizon that the Galaxy Nexus is landing in December. Google originally made comment that the Galaxy Nexus would land sometime in November, but with only around a week left and with no official announcement from Verizon, November is running out. December seems most likely, and previous rumors are saying December 8th.

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The cheapest little Android you can Score in the US ($70 ZTE X500)

Jake Smith

Cheap Android devices aren’t just for the Third World.  The ZTE X500 Score, a prepaid handset available on Cricket, has become available for purchase on Amazon for $69.88 without a contract.

The Score packs a 3.5-inch display, 3.2-megapixel camera, 4GB of storage, and Android 2.3, Gingerbread. While we haven’t experienced Cricket firsthand, it is a subsidiary of Sprint so you should see some good speeds. This device seems ideal for youngsters or a new smartphone user with that low price tag and cheaper prepaid plan through Cricket. Or maybe you want to pick up a VoIP app and use that Wifi zone that you spend 98% of your life inside anyway.

Check it out on Amazon.  Video review below:

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YouTube redesign with Google+ integration, overhauled UI, and social focus rolling out

Jordan Kahn

There have been rumors that Google is testing a new redesign for YouTube. While we’re not sure if it’s rolling out to everyone today, we’re starting to get reports from Canada and elsewhere that the redesign is live. As you can see from the screenshots above and below, these are some quite significant changes including a new customized homepage that is essentially a news feed of trending content and your subscriptions and channels. A new sidebar on the left lets you manage and track all of your subscriptions, channels, and trending content, while Google+ integration lets you view and filter content recommended by people in your Circles.

You’ll also notice the new gray background, while the YouTube logo in the upper left now takes you to YouTube.com/guide.  In the image below you can see new resizing UI gives three buttons, one for your normal view,the second for an expanded widescreen view, and the third for full-screen. The rest of the site obviously gets a redesign in line with everything you see on the homepage. The screenshots below pretty much speak for themselves.

YouTube has also begun adding support for 1080p playback, native full-screen mode, annotations and captioning to the HTML5 video player  (via Electronista). More screenshots after the break showing the full redesign.
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Millennial Media: Android now double iOS in impressions

9to5 Staff

Mobile advertising and data company Millennial Media is out with a new MobileMix report based on ad impressions across their network. The results are admittedly surprising considering Android’s seemingly unstoppable march: Google’s operating system did not grow in October compared to the summer period. All Android devices combined in October logged twice the ad requests of iOS gadgets, 56 percent versus 28 percent.

Both operating systems recorded same respective shares during the summer, although Android actually fell two percentage points in August before returning to its 56 percent share in October. As for the other players, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS did 13 percent ad requests while Symbian, Windows and Other each logged just one percent. In fact, the entire pie chart above is exactly the same as the summer 2011 chart. Also, relative data pitting Android vs. iOS echoes recent surveys by Nielsen and Gartner.

Of the top 15 device vendors, Samsung grew seven percent month-over-month and had six of the top 20 phones on the Millennial Media network. Interestingly, the Samsung Freeform, a feature phone, made the list of top 20 phones led by iPhone (it’s the first feature phone on their list since May 2011). Android devices represented 14 of the top 20 cell phones in October (15 devices in the summer period), with a combined impression share of 24 percent.

Apple remained the leading manufacturer on their platform and Android remained the top OS when combining Smartphone & Connected Device impressions. More surprising than that, nearly three-quarters of ad requests, or 71 percent, came from smartphones. The remaining 15 and 14 percent came from feature phones and connected devices. Other interesting takeaways right after the break…

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