Jordan Kahn

We originally got our first look at “S Choice” apps running on the new 5.3-inch Galaxy Note when Samsung showed off a selection of apps designed specifically for the device’s S Pen stylus at the launch event in London. While they already had a handful of apps including OmniSketch and Soonr Workplace up and running, the S Pen SDK (version 1.0) is now available for developers interested in creating their own applications optimized for S Pen.

Available from the Samsung Dev Tools portal here, the S Pen SDK allows you to create backgrounds for drawing with a ‘CanvasView’ feature, create panels for adjusting settings like line color an opacity with the ‘Pen Setting Popup’ feature, create panels for adjusting eraser widget with the ‘Eraser Setting Popup’ tool, and enable undo and redo. Screenshots after the break.

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We reported a couple weeks back that Disney and Google were partnering to bring Disney content to YouTube, and today the first of that content is beginning to roll out with movies from Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks available for rent at youtube.com/movies (U.S. and Canada).

Adding to the thousands of Hollywood titles already available for rent through YouTube, the company will roll out hundreds of Disney titles in the weeks to come, with a handful of titles available today including Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, Cars 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. As always you’ll have 48 hours to view the rentals which range from $1.99 for older titles to $4.99 for newer releases.

While YouTube has already signed up Warner Brothers, Sony, and Universal to provide content, the addition of Disney films sees Google buddying up with one of Apple’s closest allies. Apple has a close relationship with Disney, to say the least. Other than iTunes previously being one of the biggest online portals to Disney content, the company was also the first to back movies on iTunes and became even closer connected with Apple as the acquisition of Pixar saw Steve Jobs become the largest individual shareholder at Disney.  More recently, Disney CEO Bob Iger joined Apple’s board after restructuring named former board member Arthur D. Levinson Chairman. This major push of Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks content to YouTube could prove to be one less reason to pick iTunes over Google’s content services.
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Some pretty alarming news coming from the Android hacking community today. If you haven’t yet heard of Carrier IQ, it’s essentially tracking software that has been found loaded into the source code of several devices being shipped by Samsung, HTC, and other Android vendors. The software is said to track and log user activities. Now, this has been known for sometime and wouldn’t normally be newsworthy at this point, but the company behind Carrier IQ is now actively threatening XDA-Developers member Trevor Eckhart, a.k.a TrevE, the same dev who first discovered the software.

As part of Eckhart’s research to expose the software, he posted training material that the company had already made available publicly online. Following his analysis and criticism of the software, Carrier IQ  removed the training material from their own website and issued a cease-and-desist letter to Eckhart demanding that he remove the documents and replace his report with a statement written by Carrier IQ renouncing his research. They also want him to issue that statement as a press release.

Eckhart didn’t back down, fortunately. On his behalf, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has issued a response to Carrier IQ’s cease-and-desist letter. Here’s an excerpt:

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When we reported HTC’s last earnings call for the third-quarter, the company doubled profits and revenues year over year and had an all around solid quarter. While Q4 revenue will be on par with the same quarter last year, approximately NT$104 billion ($3.4 billion), the Taiwan-based company is lowering revenue estimates by 23% in the face of competitive product lines from Samsung and Apple. Bloomberg reports:

“Due to global macroeconomic downturn and market competition, the assumptions of 2011 Q4 financial forecast provided earlier are no longer applicable,” HTC said. Growth will return in the first half of next year, it said.

Previously the company had estimated  between NT$125 billion and NT$135 billion in sales for Q4, and while HTC’s quarter-on-quarter sales have grown since Q1 2010, this marks the first quarter in nearly two years sales have slowed. HTC shares also hit  NT$565 (a 5.8% drop) before today’s announcement, which accounts for the lowest share value since September 2010.  Inline with HTC’s original estimates, analysts estimates seem to be much higher than the NT$104 billion announced today. Bloomberg grabbed the average of 23 predictions from analysts, which resulted in an a estimate of NT$136.7 billion for Q4.

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Qualcomm has announced the world’s first device to use their new Mirasol display technology in partnership with South Korea’s largest book seller, Kyobo. While at first glance the vividness of the display might not impress, the fact that it provides the new Kyobo color E-reader with weeks of battery life under normal usage is enough to get us interested.

Kyobo’s new Android 2.3-powered e-reader is the first device to utilize the mirasol technology and sports a 5.7” 1024×768 display, 1GHz Snapdragon S2 class processor, and “battery life measured in weeks”. Now, before we get too excited about the incredible battery life provided by the mirasol technology, Kyobo warns battery life estimates are based on 30 minutes of daily reading time, with WiFi off, and the display set to 25% brightness. With those settings, depending on just how many weeks the device actually lasts, many of the e-readers currently on the market, such as the Kindle Touch, are comparable. The new Kyobo e-reader is available now in South Korea for $310 USD.

If you’re unfamiliar with Qualcomm’s mirasol technology, the displays essentially utilize a micro-electro-mechanical system “composed of two conductive plates” which are used to create color from ambient light. The end result is extremely decreased power consumption in comparison to traditional displays, while still providing a bright, always-visible color screen that can handle video and animations. Qualcomm describes it as having “the benefits of the e-reader, coupled with the benefits of the handset, and the disadvantages of neither”. Thankfully, Qualcomm is hard at work on the second generation mirasol technology that might make its way into smartphones sometime in 2012. The video below walks us through exactly how the technology works.

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Motorola, Samsung and just about every Android vendor has held a recent event announcing their new product lineups, especially in anticipation of the holiday shopping season. Not to be left out, LG has sent out invites (via Engadget) announcing an ‘exclusive launch event’ for December 1st. While we don’t learn anything from looking at the invite, Engadget claims the image file is titled “LG Nitro”. There have been rumors of a “Nitro HD”, which is thought to be the Optimus LTE variant for AT&T. We’ll of course be bringing you updates as the announcements unfold next Thursday.

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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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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.”

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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. 
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It looks like the first quad-core Tegra 3 tablet is getting one step closer to a final release with the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime officially going up for pre-order on Amazon today. We knew it would be landing for $499 sometime in December, but today it’s listed at a slight discount for $492.20 for the entry-level 32GB model ($584.22 for 64GB).

Asus also today officially listed the device on their website with full specs, however we don’t learn much more than we already found out last month. Some new pieces of information– ‘SonicMaster’ audio tech brings the “most precise processing protocols and codecs, superior speaker construction and large resonance chambers”, and a power saving mode which according to SlashGear lets you switch off three of the CPU’s four cores. Asus notes their battery life estimates are measured using the powering saving mode.

We also learn there will be a bunch of preloaded apps including the SuperNote note taking app, MyCloud for cloud storage and remote access, MyNet for streaming over home networks, and My Library which stores all downloaded publications in one convenient location. There will also be the Asus launcher, Asus sync app, and TegraZone, and a full list of accessories can be found here.

The page confirms an Ice Cream Sandwich update will be coming, while Nvidia (via TheVerge) gives us our first look at Android 4.0 ICS running on the Transformer Prime in the video above.

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Google has just released an update to their Google Search iOS app bringing with it a brand new design for iPad and full-screen mode for search results and pages on iPhone.

The new iPad interface is noticeably inspired by the design recently rolled out across the majority of Google’s web services. The main search page now has four grey icons as shortcuts to History, Applications, Voice Search, and Goggles, while a new side-by-side view allows you to browse webpages and search results simultaneously. Also included in the update in a full-screen browsing mode for images and a new visual UI for history allowing you to  thumb through results as pages. Instant Previews and Google Instant are now also baked into the iPad version.

As for the iPhone, the update only lists the usual minor bug fixes along with the full-screen mode mentioned above. As always, you can grab the updated Google Search app as a universal download now (iTunes link).  More screenshots below:

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The guys and gals over at iFixit are once again tearing down our favorite electronic devices, this time the new Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble. The end result is a repairability score of 6 out of 10 and a few interesting findings, especially in comparison to the Kindle Fire. Today we also get our first root for the device, allowing the Android Market to run with some minor limitations. Liliputing (via SlashGear) has compiled a complete guide using tips from various posters on Xda-developers.

A few noteworthy findings that you may have previously be unaware of include:

Storage– While Barnes & Noble advertises 16GB of onboard internal storage (saying the 6GB included in Amazon’s Kindle Fire makes it “deficient for a media tablet”), the truth is only 1GB is available for content other than B&N content. iFixit says only 12GB of the 16GB is actually available to the user, while only 1GB of that 12 is available for content other than that downloaded from the B&N app store. Looks like the majority of your content (other than content purchased from B&N) will have to be stored mostly on microSD.

We also get a nice comparison of the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. iFixit explains:

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Following Adobe’s decision to kill development of mobile Flash and willingness to admit HTML5 is the future of content on mobile devices, we’re now starting to find out exactly what this means for Android.

According to Pocket-lint, Adobe has confirmed that a version of Flash is currently in development for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and is slated for release before the end of this year. However, beyond ICS, Adobe has no plans to continue Flash development for Android. Here’s what they had to say:

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On Monday we updated you on Microsoft’s ongoing attempts to collect royalties from Barnes & Noble for their use of Android in Nook devices. In the process we got a look into some of the tactics Microsoft has been using to sign up Android vendors in licensing agreements.

Now, in another detailed report from Groklaw, we learn that Google has filed an objection to Microsoft’s most recent request for the company to respond to its motion in a reduced period of time. More importantly perhaps, Barnes & Noble has bombarded the ITC with almost 44 pages of prior art, in a “Supplemental Notice of Prior Art” filing. We of course can’t go over even a fraction of all the prior art listed in the full PDF, but you can expect to see just about everything from a ton of old Netscape Navigator stuff, to articles and technical documents on Adobe products, Hypercard, Mosaic, IBM OS/2, the Arena web browser, and articles on Apple’s Newton MessagePad 2000.

Barnes & Noble is also requesting the ITC issue a letter rogatory to Canadian company MOSAID Technologies, who hasn’t voluntarily handed over evidence of a deal it made with Nokia and Microsoft. As they describe (below), B&N seeks to use evidence of that deal to defend itself against Microsoft’s claims. A letter rogatory is essentially a letter of request from one country’s court to another, in this case the appropriate Canadian court, to request permission of an act that might “constitute a violation of that country’s sovereignty” otherwise. In other words, they need to get the Canadian’s court permission before going after MOSAID.

B&N described the situation in filing 464403 from November 16, 2011:

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Following Motorola winning a possible injunction against Apple mobile products in Germany, Apple has told a German court it is set to lose $2.7 billion if it rules in favor of Motorola regarding a patent case related to an “emailing syncing patent”, according to a report from Bloomberg (via BusinessInsider). Apple has reportedly requested the court to demand Motorola provide $2.7 billion in collateral in the event the judge sides with Motorola. Bloomberg reports:

German courts often require the winning side in a case to post collateral if it wants to enforce a ruling while the other side is appealing. The amount reflects the losses the party is facing when forced to comply with the ruling. If it wins the appeals, it can seek damages and can make use of the collateral held for that.

While we have no information about how exactly Apple has come to that figure, the judge hearing the case apparently doesn’t agree with Apple’s valuation:

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The Galaxy Nexus just became available in the UK today and the early reviews are already starting to come in. We’ve posted snippets from a few below, but you can check back for 9to5Google’s full review in the coming days.

The Verge:

The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android phone ever made. It’s one of the best smartphones ever made, and with a couple of minor tweaks (particularly to the camera), it could be the best smartphone ever produced.

Cnet:

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While we still don’t know exactly when Asus will let us get our hands on the Tegra 3 quad-core Transformer Prime, eeepc.it (via Android Police) just spotted an iPad-like “Smart Cover” belonging to the device on Amazon’s German site. While we don’t learn much from the Amazon listing, it’s clear from the images the accessory’s design is largely inspired by that of Apple’s iPad 2’s smart covers. Of course the notable twist being a more intricate origami-style folding system allowing you to prop up the device in various viewing modes. Some are saying it will connect magnetically like Apple’s smart covers, although we’ll have to wait to get our hands on it to see how it stacks up.

It’s available for pre-order now for EUR 39.99, however we still don’t know when it or the Transformer Prime will end up shipping. As of latest reports, we expect to see it sometime in December. More images after the break, if you’re interested.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CdD8s0jFJYo]

Today is the day that UK customers can finally get their hands on the Galaxy Nexus, with Google updating the device’s page to include links to retailers and carriers including Phones4U, Three, Carphone Warehouse, Vodafone, and O2.

Earlier Samsung sent out a tweet of Alex Ioannou, the first customer to purchase the device this morning. However, it looks like Ioannou  might not have had the best of luck, as Engadget reports the man got home only to find a pre-release developer build of Android with a bunch of developer tools including “Report a WTF condition”. Needlessly to say, Ioannou has since replaced the device, which somehow must have slipped through the cracks without getting the final ICS treatment.

Google has also posted a bunch of videos to their Nexus YouTube account showing off some of the new ICS features of the Galaxy Nexus including multitasking, face unlock, camera and panorama, and Android Beam. One video, entitled “Getting Started (US)”, shows the US version of the device with “Verizon 4G” branding and all. You can check out a selection of the videos below.

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As expected, T-Mobile has joined Google execs on stage for the unveiling of the new Google Music iTunes competitor, announcing that users will be able to purchase Google Music through their phone bill. While announcing 90% of their smartphones run on Android, T-Mobile execs also announced they will have an exclusive selection of Google Music for their customers from artists such as Drake and Busta Rhymes.

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Alongside the announcement of their new Google Music store, Google has announced the “artist hub” allowing users to upload and sell their original content- full albums or individual songs-  as well as build and customize their artist page for display in the store. An artist can even make changes to their uploaded content at any time, including adding or editing tracks, editing an artist bio page, or including “new demos, live recordings and unreleased tracks”.

The service essentially works the same way developers sell their apps through the Android Market. Goog says artists will keep 70% of revenues and also get to set the sale price of their music. There will also be a one time fee of $25, but no other fees associated with the service.

Once users purchase an artist’s uploaded music, the artist will be able to manage their revenues and track profits through a “Payments” tab within the artist hub. One of the first notable artists using the service is DJ Tiesto, who will be debuting his new single today. Visit music.google.com/artists/ to learn more.

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Starting today, Gap Inc. has announced that Google Wallet will be available in over 65 of their Bay Area stores including Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap, Gap Outlet, and Banana Republic Factory Stores. To celebrate the roll out, Gap is offering 15% off your entire purchase when using Google Wallet in any of the participating stores. The promotion will be available via the Google Wallet app’s Offers section.  You can check out a full map of all the included stores here.

Over the last couple months Google has begun rolling the MasterCard-powered service out to new retailers, allowing customers to makes purchases using the Google Wallet app on a supported Android smartphone (as of yet just the Nexus S). In October Google added a bunch of notable new merchants including OfficeMax, Macy’s, Guess, Foot Locker, American Eagle Outfitters, Toys “R” Us, and Jamba Juice. Last month they also updated the app with an overhauled UI and in-app offers. 

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