Android

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DlXp41WwpOs

At a press event today in New York City Acer has officially taken the wraps off its new 7.9-inch Iconia A1 tablet. While the display specs put the device somewhere slightly under the Nexus 7 and iPad mini, Acer has managed to offer a quad-core tablet well under the $199+ price point that most competitive tablets currently sell for.

Acer today unveiled the Acer Iconia A1, the company’s first full-featured 7.9-inch tablet targeted at modern day explorers, adventurers, digital freaks and mobile executives requiring an all-day mobile companion. Thanks to a sleek and light-weight design that is comfortable to hold in one hand, it also easily fits into a purse or bag. The new Acer Iconia A1 keeps people entertained and connected with smooth and speedy navigation, browsing and media playback powered by a fast quad-core processor.

The Iconia A1 runs the latest Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, packs in a 1.2GHz quad-core CPU, roughly 7-hour battery life, and an LED-backlit IPS display with 1024×768 resolution and aspect ration of 4:3. Other specs include Bluetooth, built-in 3G, GPS, microSD, and a 5MP rear camera.

The device will be hitting retail in June starting at $169 for an 8GB variant and $199 for the 16GB model.  
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Earlier this week we told you that the Defense Department was nearing a decision on approving the three major mobile platforms through new security approvals that would allow widespread use of devices by government agencies and the DoD networks. While the department is yet to grant approval to Apple’s iOS 6 for for nonclassified communications by military agencies, today the Wall Street Journal provides an update noting that both Samsung’s Knox security software and BlackBerry 10 have now received the approvals ahead of Apple:

RIM announced late Thursday that the Department of Defense approved smartphones and tablets running on BlackBerry 10, the company’s new operating system, for use throughout DOD networks…Samsung devices outfitted with Knox, the company’s new security software offering, also received Pentagon approval Thursday, according to a DOD spokesman. Apple’s approval is still expected in the “next few weeks,” according to the spokesman.

As of February, BlackBerry made up the majority of the 600,000 devices on the DoD’s networks. Currently the networks consist of around 470,000 BlackBerrys, 41,000 Apple products, and 8,700 Android devices, although that could quickly change thanks to the new security approvals allowing more government agencies to adopt Samsung and Apple devices.

Photo: slashgear.com

Nook HD and HD+ owners will now be able to download content from Google Play after Barnes & Noble reversed its previous position of limiting app downloads to its own service (via Engadget).

Barnes & Noble had previous justified its locked-down approach on the basis of quality-control. The new policy allows Nook owners to download not just apps but also books, magazines and movies from Google Play …
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Update: We’ve been asked to remove the picture.

We’ve been sitting on some good Motorola X Fon information for awhile but weren’t able to confirm it until the most recent leaks which seem to corroborate what we have.  It turns out that the leaked images by Tinhte and @Evleaks appear to be legitimate Motorola X prototypes according to our source.  The phone above is a drawing the X FON which now appears to be the same phone pictured below:

The information we’ve heard from our source who has seen it a LTE version was that it will be released on all 4 US carriers and come in over 25 different color options.  The bottom bezel is remarkably small as you can see from the drawing above and the Tinhte.vn images. Like the other ones pictured, this one was 32GB storage, 2GB of RAM, and no SDCard.  Like the others, it was still running Android 4.2 recently and was codenamed ‘ghost’.

Both volume and power buttons are on the right side. Headphones jack is on top center, charging port was on bottom center.

The display was estimated to be 4.7 inches but with the very slim bezel on the bottom it felt very small. Perhaps as small as a 4.3-inch phone.

What we’re thinking at this point is that this phone looks like the successor to the Droid RAZR or RAZR M – small bezels, 4.3-4.7-ish display, extremely long battery life. But what about all of those colors and protection we’ve heard so much about?

Here’s what we’re thinking: Motorola is going to offer protective plates/skins in 25 colors from the point of ordering. 80-90% of people buy protection for the phones so perhaps Motorola is owning this aspect of the device from the order and can provide almost an almost indestructible, perhaps water-resistant customization.

Well, that’s our current thinking. We’ll likely hear what’s on offer at Google I/O in a few weeks.

While there might not be much information surrounding Google’s recent hire of Noah Falstein, the company’s decision to pick up the game design veteran as its “Chief Game Designer” certainly gives the impression Google has something big planned in the way of first party titles. TechCrunch first spotted the job title on Noah’s LinkedIn page and notes that an earlier cache of the page shows his new gig at Google used to be listed as “Chief Game Designer at Android Play Studio.” That’s a pretty good indication that whatever Falstein is working on is likely Android related.

Google of course has its feet into gaming through Google Play and Chrome apps, but it has not been active in developing its own titles for Android or Chrome OS. Falstein has worked as a game designer and producer at a number of studios over the years including LucasARTS Entertainment, DreamWorks Interactive, and the 3DO Company. More recently he has been active in developing the concept of serious games. 
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Web visits from devices running Android 4.3  – an as yet unannounced version – have been showing up at various Android-related sites, including 9to5google.com – suggesting a possible launch at the Google I/O developer’s conference on May 15-17.

The Mountain View location (Google’s HQ) and Android Authority logs revealing that most of the devices running 4.3 were Nexus devices do tend to suggest the profiles are genuine …
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Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 on) has overtaken Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x) for the first time, with 28.4 percent of active Android devices now using it against 27.5 percent for ICS …
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The iPhone and iPad have already been cleared for use by a number of US government agencies, and in February the US Defense Department confirmed plans to open its networks to 100,000 new devices from Apple and Google by February of next year. Today, The Wall Street Journal reports the DoD is about to grant two more important security approvals that could increase the number of agencies allowed to deploy iPhone, iPads, and Samsung Galaxy devices:

The Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA, the agency that sanctions commercial technology for Pentagon use, is set to rule that Samsung’s Galaxy line of smartphones, preloaded with Samsung’s Knox security software, conforms with the Pentagon’s so-called Security Technology Implementation Guide, according to people familiar with the approval process. That would allow it to be used by some Pentagon agencies for things like sending and receiving internal emails, according to these people.

Separately, DISA is expected to rule that Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 6, conforms to a different security-requirement guide, these people said. That would allow iPhones and iPads to be used by military agencies for nonclassified communications, like email and Web browsing.

The report from WSJ explained Samsung has been steadily increasing its attempt to break into corporate and government markets by hiring a new team of security experts and former RIM employees to reach out to Western governments and corporations:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JHGlUpO634g

Today AT&T made things official for the upcoming US release of the LG Optimus G Pro, confirming that preorders for the device will begin this Friday on May 3rd. The device will officially become available on May 10 and, as expected, will sell for $199.99 on the usual two year contract. The device will also be available through AT&T just launched Trade-in promo that will offer up to an additional $100 off the device.

As for specs, there aren’t too many surprises following earlier leaks of the device with AT&T confirming the 5.5″ 1080p Full HD IPS display with 400 ppi, 1.7 GHz Quad-Core Snapdragon CPU with 2 GB RAM, a 13 MP Full HD Camera, and a 3,140 mAh battery. The device will also run Android 4.1.2 out of the box and including a 2.1 megapixel front facing cam, and 32 GB on board storage expandable to 64GB of memory via microSD.

We’ll be covering LG Optimus G Pro making its official US debut today at an event schedule for 8pm in New York City. Full specs from AT&T below:
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HTC has followed Samsung’s, uh, lead in replicating the ‘making of’ video format made famous by Apple. The HTC One Design Story features engineers and execs talking about the handset, while showing pretty video of the construction.

So here in sequential order are the iPhone 5, Samsung S4 and HTC One videos …
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If you love the HTC One but are not so keen on its price-tag, HTC may have the solution in the form of a lower-cost variant currently code-named the M4 (the HTC One was code-named M7).

Phone Arena says the handset is almost identical in appearance to the HTC One, but smaller, using cheaper materials and with a lower-spec – a similar approach to that taken by Samsung with its S III mini version of its then flagship S III. Or perhaps in the previous generation – where the HTC One S was the mini version of the One X.

M4 reportedly steps down the processing power, to just a dual core CPU, and storage is just 16GB, but RAM is still a healthy 2GB, and the camera also contains HTC’s lauded (but somewhat controversial) UltraPixel technology. With less powerful components come less stringent power needs, and in this case, HTC has allegedly opted for a 1700mAh, non-removable battery.

The handset is said to have a 4.3-inch 720p display, LTE and is expected to run Jelly Bean 4.2, a step up from the One’s 4.1.

T-Mobile customers who download the official Major League Baseball app At Bat 13 before June 30th will get free streaming access to the MLB.TV Game of the Day, as well as live & away radio broadcasts and highlights from home & away games around the league …
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More cool Android news from Africa, this time a Google service called BebaPay which allows Kenyans to pay for transport by tapping an NFC card onto a card-reader – the card-reader in question being an NFC-equipped Android phone …
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Android Authority has conducted a real-life drop-test, pitting the Samsung Galaxy S4 against the iPhone 5. The S4 failed in the final drop, a better result than it achieved in the more scientific one by warranty company Square Trade below on the very first drop …
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Image: Engadget

Twitter appears to be testing an official Twitter for Glass app, which would allow Google Glass users to tweet photos directly from the gadget, reports AllThingsD …
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Samsung focused blog SamMobile, which has been accurate with details surrounding product launches in the past, today claimed Samsung is set to introduce a number of new devices in 2013 including an 11-inch Nexus-branded tablet.

According to the report, Samsung is working with Google on the Nexus 11, a 11-inch tablet that will debut as the world’s first octa-core tablet and including an “Octa-Core A15 / A7 (Exynos 5410)”, 8 megapixel main camera, and 2 megapixel front cam. The blog also claims to have details on another 11-inch tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 11, that will include similar specs but with a dual-core processor.

The report also says Samsung has a 7-inch Galaxy Tab, not unlike the Galaxy Tab 3 announced this morning, that will be equipped with a DUOS option for dual-SIM card support.

Finally the report claims to have details on an 8-inch Galaxy Tab coming this year that will support some decent specs including an 8-inch 1080p AMOLED display, a quad-core A9 processor, and 5 megapixel camera, although the SamMobile notes “Samsung need to solve AMOLED burning problem first.”