Android

First, there were the poor reviews. Then there were order cancellations for the HTC first. And now, in the final admission of failure for Facebook-skinned phones, TechCrunch reports that even Facebook itself is advising that the front-end can be switched off … 
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Twitter announced today on its blog (via The Verge) that its video capturing and sharing app Vine is launching today for Android.

Vine was acquired by Twitter before it debuted publicly and was only available on iOS prior to today’s announcement. Twitter also announced today that it has topped 13 million users of its video app, something we imagine will jump astronomically now that it is available on a plethora of new smartphones.

Much like when Vine launched on iPhone, it doesn’t support front-facing cameras just yet but we expect Twitter will add more features based on the rate at which it has updated the iOS variant. However, as Erica Ogg reports, Vine for Android does one-up its iPhone companion with its ability to zoom.

Vine for Android should be available soon from the Google Play Store.
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While we knew from earlier reports that Samsung was planning on unveiling a new high end tablet with an Intel processor, today Samsung has officially announced the device alongside a new 8-inch variant of its Galaxy Tab 3 line.

Adding to the 7-inch variant that it launched back in April, Samsung today announced the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3 (which it later confirmed is indeed using a 1.6GHz dual-core processor from Intel), as well as an 8-inch variant of the device with a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU.

Inside the 10.1-inch model you’ll find 1280 x 800, 149PPI WXGA TFT display, a 3-megapixel main camera and 1.3-megapixel front facing cam, Bluetooth 4.0, microSD slot, and a 6,800 mAh battery. It weighs in at 510g for the WiFi only model, but will also be available with 3G and LTE capabilities when it launches running Android 4.2 later this month.

The 8-inch version comes with a 1280 x 800, 189PPI WXGA TFT display, 5-megapixel cam on the back, 1.3-megapixel on the front, Bluetooth 4.0, a 4,450 mAh battery, microSD expandable to 64GB, and the rest of the usual specs you find in Sammy’s tablets.

Samsung said both devices will be arriving in 16GB and 32GB variants sometime at the beginning of this month. Full specs for both devices below:
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ASUS announced a bunch of new products at Computex (via Engadget), with the relevant ones for us being a tablet, a phablet and … well, this.

The Transformer Book Trio is a weird hybrid laptop and tablet. Nothing especially odd there, you may think: it’s just an Android tablet with a detachable keyboard. Except in this case there’s a Windows 8 notebook housed in that keyboard, enabling the device to run both systems. Why Trio rather than Duo? It also comes with a dock housing a 750Gb hard drive and connectivity for an external monitor, which ASUS reckons makes it qualify as a desktop PC too … 
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We’ve been hearing more and more about the Galaxy S4 Active lately– the rugged S4 variant that Samsung is hoping will help attract more corporate and government customers. Today we get an official look at the device courtesy of theunlockr.com with what appear to be official press shots of the device for AT&T.

The report adds that the device will sell with model number SGH-I537 and arrive in dark grey and teal alongside a few other Samsung devices coming soon to the carrier including the S4 Mini and the Galaxy Mega 6.3. The details arrive ahead of a Samsung event scheduled for June 20 where the company is expected to introduce the Galaxy S4 Mini and other devices.

We already knew a new white version of the Nexus 4 would begin rolling out after LG confirmed as much earlier this week. It first launched in Hong Kong on Wednesday, and today the device has finally hit both Google Play and T-Mobile’s online store for customers in the US.

You can grab the device now in both 16GB ($349) and 8GB ($299) variants from Google Play. Google is also offering a free white bumper with your purchase.

T-Mobile also began offering the device on its online store store today with a list price of $427. According to the often reliable TmoNews.com, the pricing and note of the device not being eligible for a monthly payment plan is a mistake:

Barring the error in pricing on the website, the Nexus 4 will set you back a $19.99 down payment and 24 monthly payments of $17.

Your #Nexus4 should be as stylish as you! Check out the new white finish and pick up yours online today: http://t.co/U3vpPgvH6k

— T-Mobile (@TMobile) May 31, 2013

The device is expected to roll out to other retails across Asia, the US, and Europe in the coming weeks.

It might look a little like Windows 8, but that’s Android

The blurring of the line between PCs and tablets looks set to be accelerated after Acer announced an All-In-One (AIO) PC powered by a  3GHz Core i5 Haswell processor, but running Android instead of Windows.

Choosing Android over Windows reduces costs not just by saving the licence fee to Microsoft but also by allowing significantly lower specs: the machine will come with just 1Gb RAM, for example … 
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efE2k2gGFPM

UK carrier Three has posted a youtube video giving a quick look at the Samsung S4 mini, officially announced yesterday …
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After launching its new Google Play All Access music streaming service earlier this month at Google I/O, Google’s head of Android Sundar Pichai just confirmed during his interview at the D11 conference that the service will be making its way to iOS. Sundar said the service would be available on iOS in the next few weeks.

Google announced its new ‘All Access’ $9.99/month streaming service as part of Google Play Music at its Google I/O keynote presentation a few weeks ago. The service offers curated playlists, but also allows users to access a radio feature that automatically creates endless radio stations with the ability to remove unwanted songs.

Since launching, the service unofficially arrived on iOS last week via an update to the third-party gMusic client for iPhone and iPad. The app is one of the more popular Google Music clients allowing iOS users to access Google’s music services, but today is the first time Google has confirmed its plans to bring the service to Apple device’s through its own apps.

Live from his D11 interview today (live blog here), Google’s head of Android Sundar Pichai just confirmed the rumors of a stock Android HTC One. The device will officially be launching on Google Play on June 26th, alongside Samsung’s Galaxy S4, for $599. HTC also announced the device on its blog today:

Response to the HTC One has been phenomenal with reviewers praising the gorgeous design and innovative features. We’ve paired the stunning all-metal unibody with innovative HTC Sense features and the result is something truly remarkable. Now, we’re excited to offer HTC fans and admirers alike a new experience on what we think is the best hardware available today.

The stock Android HTC One will come with 32GB, an unlockable bootloader, and will be SIM-unlocked for GSM networks like T-Mobile and AT&T when it goes on sale at the end of next month– the same day as the recently announced stock Galaxy S4. The new stock ‘Nexus experience’ HTC One will initially only be available to users in the US.

You can see how the new Nexus experience HTC One stacks up against the Developer Edition and SIM unlocked version direct from HTC in the comparison chart below:
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It may not look like much, but this anonymous-looking plastic box could represent the future of military sensor and surveillance systems. It’s a prototype of a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) design for a modular sensor system for military applications called ADAPT, an acronym DARPA somehow manages to get from Adaptable Sensor System …
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Russian site hi-tech.mail.ru (via Unwiredview) has posted what it claims are the specs of two more products it says will be unveiled at Samsung’s press event in London (whose star will be the S4 mini): the S4 Zoom camera and S4 Active, the ruggedized version of the company’s flagship phone.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, will look a lot like Galaxy S4 Mini and will come equipped with:

• 4.3” 540x960px Super AMOLED display
• 1.6 GHz dual-core CPU, no LTE support
• Android Jelly Bean OS
• 8 GB of built-in memory, micro-SD support
• 1.9mpx fron facing camera
• 16 megapixel main camera, with 10x Optical Zoom
• Bluetooth 4.0LE, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, A-GPS
• 1900 mAh battery … 
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We’ve known for some time that it was coming, with the leaks starting back in March and further confirmations since then, but Samsung has now finally made it official: the phone is being launched at a press event in London on June 20. We’ll be there to bring you the hands-on.

It’s interesting to see the different paths taken here by Samsung and Apple where phone sizing is concerned: the screen on Samsung’s mini phone is actually larger than the iPhone screen. So it may be ‘mini’ in Samsung’s eyes, but it’s not an especially small phone.

No pricing info is yet available, but the specs are, as expected, almost identical to its bigger brother: same processor, same super AMOLED screen technology (in a smaller size, of course), same connectivity (with exact mobile data specs varying by market). There are a couple of compromises in what will presumably be a significantly cheaper handset: the main camera is 8MP instead of 13MP, and while the S4 comes with either 16, 32 or 64GB of on-board memory, the S4 has just 8GB – though offers the same microSD card capacities of up to 64GB …

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At the D11 conference, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has confirmed that it is preparing a major phone called the Moto X for launch. The phone, he says, is heavily focused on sensors. For example, the phone is contextually-aware in that it could tell when you are in a car.

Another example is launching the phone’s camera sensor when the phone is taken out of a pocket.  Notably, the phone will be built in the United States. Production will occur in a 5000 square foot facility in Fort Worth, Texas. 2000 jobs will be created because of this launch by August.

Woodside confirmed that he is currently carrying this device (which is built to compete with Apple and Samsung’s offerings), but he will not demonstrate it to the crowd. Additionally, he says, Google executives have seen the device.

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Twitter announced on its blog today that an update to its Android app is rolling out with a number of new features including full previews and other enhancements to photos, a new Tweet composer, and richer notifications.

Most of the new features listed below are rolling out to both the Android and iOS apps, but Twitter is also including more info about interactions to the Notification Drawer on Android:

One of the most requested features we’ve heard about from Android users is richer notifications. With this update, you will now see more details about your interactions on Twitter right in the Notifications Drawer. Just swipe the notification to expand and see more details.
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As expected from a previous leak earlier this month, Google just announced on its official Gmail blog that it’s rolling out a brand new UI for Gmail on both the web and mobile that brings a new Categories based UI for easier organization of emails. The screenshots below line up with the images that we posted last week showing new customizable Categories that users can assign to manage emails according to content. For example: ‘Social’ for emails related to social networks, ‘Promotions’ for promotional material, ‘Notifications’ for reservations, bills, etc, and ‘Forums’ for mailing lists and forums.

On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs. You simply choose which categories you want and voilà! Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when.. You can easily customize the new inbox – select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.

The update is not only rolling out to desktop users, but also to iPhone and iPad and mobile devices running Android 4.0 and up. On the mobile apps, users will first see their “Primary” inbox and can switch to other categories using the side navigation bar. Google says the new inbox is rolling out in the next few weeks but users will be able to try it sooner with a new “Configure inbox” option in Settings.
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