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 Insiderhas 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 Google originally made comment that the Galaxy Nexus would land sometime in November, but with only around a week left and with no official announcement from Verizon, November is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.
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.
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 (viaElectronista). More screenshots after the break showing the full redesign. Read more
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…
Samsung just let us know that the white Galaxy S II will be landing on T-Mobile just in time for the holidays sometime in the “coming weeks”. If you’re not familiar with T-Mobile’s current black Galaxy S II, you can expect a 1.5GHz dual core processor, 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display, 16 GB internal storage, and 1GB of RAM. As of right now that device is available for $229.00 on a two-year plan. The white model appears to only to be different in color, as pricing and hardware will likely stay the same.
“Samsung Mobile is excited to announce T-Mobile will launch a new white color option of the Samsung Galaxy S II in time for the holidays. We’ll have more information to share about when and where customers can pick up the white version in the coming weeks.”
Samsung and Verizon just sent out a press release announcing the Samsung Illusion, an Android 2.3-powered entry-level handset dropping online tomorrow and in stores in January. While it’s far from a competitor for high-end Android devices, when we start to take a look at the specs, sleek design, and price, it looks like a great option for anyone that might have been considering Apple’s iPhone 3GS.
As for specs, the Illusion doesn’t disappoint for a low-end Android and iPhone 3GS competitor. Included is a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 3.0-megapixel camera, 6-axis accelerometer with compass, Bluetooth 3.0, built-in Wifi, and a microSD card for up to 32 GB. Perhaps most impressive is the design itself, which appears to be much nicer than your typical cheapo Android handset. We know the display will most likely the be the 3.5-inch 320×480 capacitive touchscreen spotted previously, but the press release only mentions a “curved glass display”.
It will officially become available for $79.99, but starting tomorrow you’ll be able to get it for free on a two-year contract as a special online-only promotion from November 24 to November 28. Full press release below, if you’re interested. Read more
