Android

While LG is not officially set to unveil its G2 flagship until August 7th, Engadget has just gotten its hands on clear, detailed images of the device, as well as a video that basically take all the suspense out of LG’s official event next month. According to the leak, the device will feature a 5.2-inch 1080p display with an incredibly small bezel that makes it appear edge-to-edge. Visually the G2 looks a lot more like the Nexus 4 than the original Optimus G. It has a more rounded design, as opposed to the blocky design on its predecessor. On the back is the volume rocker, which we saw in leaked images last month.

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Dropbox kicked off its developer conference in San Francisco today and with it came a few updates including new tools for devs and the announcement that the service now has 175 million users. That’s up about 75 million users from just last November.

The developer conference also included some announcements about new tools coming to let third-party app and website developers easier integrate Dropbox. The company is introducing a platform for developers that includes a new API called Datastores, allowing app devs to store and sync data from their apps across multiple devices and platforms. It’s something developers have been doing on their own for a while (for example 1Password), but now Dropbox is making easy for all:

The Datastore API provides developers a new way to sync data beyond files across a variety of devices and platforms. The Datastore API allows developers to save their app’s structured data (e.g. contacts, to-do items, and game state) on Dropbox and handles all the magic necessary to sync it quickly and reliably. Users of a Datastore-enabled app can be sure their data will be up-to-date across all their devices whether online or offline.

It also showed off new “Drop-ins” that will let devs easily integrate the ability to open and save from Dropbox within their apps:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PiYolKRuY7Q

There’s been a lot of interest surrounding the wearable computing market recently, with Apple going on an iWatch trademarking binge and the Pebble being released to Best Buy locations around the country. Samsung, who you have to figure is interested in the wearable market, showed off its vision for the future of wearables at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco (via AllThingsD).

Samsung chief strategy officer Young Sohn showed a video full of concepts for wearable devices. Specifically, the video focused on the health benefits of wearable computing. It shows a women using her device to quickly send health test results to her doctor. “We think the health area is a really key area of innovation,” Sohn later said. Samsung things that, though the market for wearable devices is small at the moment, it will rise quickly when the technology is further integrated into watches, glasses, and more. The video also shows Samsung’s vision for  displays and how you could be able to easily expand and compress your device to get a larger or smaller form factor.

We haven’t heard too much about a Samsung wearable device, but we have to imagine that it is in the forecast, as both Google and Apple are reportedly eying the market.
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Rumors of a Galaxy Note III, dating back to March, appear to have been confirmed by a User Agent Profile on Samsung’s website, reports SamMobile.

Samsung’s own UAPROF confirms the Galaxy Note III, model number SM-N900T and SM-N900A showed up. The model corresponds to Galaxy Note III and confirms the rumoured screen resolution of 1080×1920 … 
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As it does every month, Google has just updated the Android distribution data to reflect the month of July. Jelly Bean is now running on 37.9 percent of devices, with 32.3 percent of those running Android 4.1.x. That’s up from 33 percent this time last month. Gingerbread fell from 36.5 percent to 34.1 percent, which makes Jelly Bean the most used Android operating system. Ice Cream Sandwich is now at 23.3 percent, down from 25.6 percent last month.

Froyo is now at 3.1 percent (was at 3.2 percent), Eclair has fallen to 1.4 percent (was at 1.5 percent), Honeycomb and Donut are both now at just 0.1 percent.

Google collects this data during the first week of each month by logging the devices that access the Play Store. It use to be that the data was collected when the device simply checked-in to Google servers.
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Alongside the iOS and Mac update that rolled out earlier this afternoon, Twitter for Android has also been updated with several new features. Most notably, direct messages now sync across all of Twitter’s official apps (Mac, iPad, Web, Tweetdeck, mobile web, Android). Before today, if you read a direct message on your desktop, it would still be marked as unread on your phone.

• Now when you read a Direct message it will be marked as read in all of your official Twitter apps (including twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for Mac, Twitter for iPad and TweetDeck) and vice versa.
• As you search you can now see user avatars and clear past searches from the dropdown menu
• Richer search results indicate when there are new Tweets for your query and show account results with bios and social context

Missing from this update is the new reply field that iOS devices got, but hopefully that feature comes sooner rather than later. 
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Over the weekend, Techdy released high quality video of a makeshift budget iPhone with glued together parts, and now the same company has released a video showing the device running Android. The company is selling the device, dubbed the Basic Bear, for just $199. It features a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor and the same 4-inch 1136×640 Retina display as the iPhone 5. The device is made from a polycarbonate material and feels much sturdier than the Galaxy S line of devices, according to the company.

Based on the design of Apple’s budget iPhone, we have made an Android
version called the Basic Bear. It rocks a 4 inch display (1136 x 640),
1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage, 8
megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 2 megapixel camera w/ 1080p HD
video recording, Qi-wireless charging expansion slot, 2300 mAh
battery, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and much more. The best part? It
costs just $199, and comes in 5 vibrant colors.
For more information, visit our Techdy store: http://techdy.com

For what it’s worth, the company also sells a Bear Pro, with a design similar to the HTC One for $249.
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Update: LG has sent out another invite to the same event, this time with an image the same as the one in the video.

Last month, LG sent out a press invite to an event on August 7th and given all the leaks and rumors, almost everyone assumed the event would be for the LG G2, a successor to the Optimus G flagship. LG has now released a video teaser for the event that essentially confirms that it will be for the G2.

Throughout the entire video, a man walking through New York City sees “To me, you are perfect. From G…” posted everywhere, from benches to taxis to graffitied walls. The video ends with a slide reading “Great 2 have you” with the date and time for the event listed below.

We’re still about a month away from the August 7th event, but we’ll be sure to bring you everything you need to know regarding LG’s next flagship.
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One of the problems with the Samsung Galaxy Beam and its anticipated successors is that the projector and batteries that need to go along with it make the phone a bit of a brick.  You carry a phone with you every day and trying to sell a device that double the thickness and weight for a function (projecting) that you only use on rare occasions is tough.

But, with new DLP and LED technology that is reducing the battery drain and a bigger form factor (read: tablets) you can almost miss the additional weight and size required to add a projector to a portable device.  TI gave me a SmartDevices U7 projector-tablet to play around with for a few months to see how I liked the form factor.

Taking it out of the box, it feels like a more dense Nexus 7. While the form factor is largely the same, this SmartDevices tablet contains a 35 Lumen DLP projector that comes out of one of the sides of the tablet. That’s up for 15 Lumens on the Samsung Beam and a very noticeable improvement. While the beam requires a lowering of the lights, this projects to the 50-inch size in well-lit rooms. We’re not talking real projector quality but certainly viewable…
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Update: According to a source speaking with CNET, Motorola does not plan to unveil the X Phone at the press briefings next week, saying the event is about “something else.”

We already know a lot about the upcoming Moto X Phone. Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside announced it at the D11 conference earlier this year, and since then, we’ve seen images, specs, and details regarding customization options leak. The main thing we need to know is when it will be announced and when it will be released. On an episode of his This Week in Google show, podcaster Leo Laporte stated that he has been invited to an event at the Google campus on July 10th by Motorola employe Guy Kawasaki. It’s a small event, according to Laporte, with only 50 journalists being invited. The same event will also be held on July 11th with another group of reporters.

There are all sorts of things Moto/Google could have up its sleeves for this event, but Laporte seems pretty adamant about it being the Moto X Phone. It could also be something simple, such as Motorola wanting to further introduce its new strategy with reporters. Given the fact that it will be held on the Google campus, it could also be something entirely unrelated to Motorola, such as Android 4.3. As Google has said before, Motorola is supposed to be operated entirely separate with no direct access to Google.

On the ad released by Motorola earlier this week, two people were jumping into a lake forming “XI” with their bodies. In Roman numerals, X1 is obviously the number 11, which further leads to the possibility of the X Phone being announced at these small events. However, that’s a lot of speculation on top of very little information, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

For all of the details from Leo Laporte (not many) jump to the 40 minute mark in the video below:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhM-DuM2WgE

Above we see a new ad that Samsung recently aired for its flagship Galaxy S4 in Iceland. The ad itself is a little on the strange side, but what’s not surprising is the fact that Samsung is once again not so subtly going after Apple. The point of the ad, in case you don’t speak Icelandic, is to drive home the fact that Apple doesn’t yet support the language for Siri or dictation features. Samsung’s YouTube description for the ad notes that the S4 allows users to dictate emails and messages in Icelandic, while the tagline for the ad reads “Get a phone that understands you.” We’re not exactly sure where the ninjas fit into that message, however. 
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Following Samsung’s monster profits from yesterday, HTC has now released its unaudited results for Q2 2013 (via TechCrunch). The company reported total revenues of $2.35 billion (NT$70.7 billion) and profits of just $1.63 million (NT$1.25 billion). While the profit is up over the NT$85 million it reported in Q1 2013, it’s still lower than analysts expected and down 83% year over year.

Many were expecting HTC to have a good quarter, as its One flagship is finally available on three major United States carriers and the device was well-received by critics. Sales in May for HTC were up 48.03%, but things nose dived in June, falling 23.88% month-on-month and 26.43% year-on-year.

HTC had hoped that a unified line-up of devices could help it better compete with Samsung, who posted over $8 billion in profit for Q2, but it looks like the struggles for the Taiwanese company are deeper than we thought. 
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Samsung has released its estimated earnings for Q2 2013, with a full announcement scheduled for later this month. The company estimates profits of $8.33 billion (9.5 trillion won), up nearly $2 billion over Q1’s $6.4 billion profit.

Reuters reports, however that this number was less than the 10.16 trillion won South Korean Analysts were expecting, which they blame on slowed momentum in Samsung’s smartphone division.

“The slowdown in its handset business appears to be worse than expected and the disappointing result simply reindorses the market view that Samsung’s smartphone growth momentum is slowing,” said Lee Sei-chul, an analyst at Meritz Securities.

Samsung’s component division, however, showed solid growth in Q2.

“But it’s got the component side of the business, which is showing solid improvements, and new handset product lineups for the third quarter, so (overall) earnings are likely to grow again in the current quarter.”

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