Google Maps is making headlines in a variety of ways this week.
A Jan. 10 update to the Android application made noise at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show yesterday. The Google Maps upgrade claimed to increase battery life while improving location tracking within Google Latitude.
The latest version Google Maps also improved Transit Navigation and more closely estimates location position when GPS signal is lost. The update even increased the number of possible transit routes from three to four.
The final update includes indoor maps that can —well— navigate around various indoor venues in the United States. In this particular update, maps for CES in the Las Vegas area were included (hence all the commotion).
“We hope that these indoor maps will come in handy when finding your way through the slots and to the shops,” announced Google on its LatLong blog. “And for those of you who catch gadget-fever with CES in town, we’ve also partnered with a number of Best Buy stores in the Las Vegas area.”
A busy “Press Day” on the show floor of CES 2012 just wrapped up. Today was busy with announcements from AT&T, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, Panasonic, NVIDIA, Sony, and more. While we only covered the Google-oriented side of things, there was also a lot of news around HDTVs. Samsung unveiled it’s’ rocking 77-inch TV that just looks plain amazing, and Microsoft wrapped up its very last CES keynote ever. However, we are here for the Google news.
We will be on the floor tomorrow, showing you cool gadgets and a few hands-ons of the products announced today. CES is just kicking off so do not go anywhere! Without further ado, here is a round up of today…
The tablet will be priced at $249 and will have a quad-core Tegra 3 chip inside powering the Kindle Fire competitor. The 7-inch (1280×800) Transformer Prime tablet will also ship with Ice Cream Sandwich.
Samsung just announced the Galaxy Tab 7.7 with Verizon 4G LTE at its 2012 Consumer Electronics Show event. The device’s specifications include a 7.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 3-megapixel rear-camera, 2-megapixel front-camera, 16GB of internal storage, and Android 3.2 with TouchWiz. Information on pricing or availability was not made public yet.
As expected, Motorola just announced the 4G Motorola Droid 4, in addition to a purple Droid Razr and the new Droid Razr Maxx. There is not much news when it comes to the Droid 4′s specifications: 4-inch qHD display, 1.2Ghz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and a five-row QWERTY keyboard. The device will run Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with an ICS update coming soon, and it includes 16GB onboard memory expandable to 32GB via microSD. The device will be available “in the coming weeks”.
The new Sony Ericsson Xperia ion —the handset maker’s first 4G LTE smartphone seen above— is an AT&T network-exclusive boasting a 12-megapixel camera and a large 4.6-inch display. The 5.3-inch Galaxy Note largely resembles its European counterpart, sans the added support for 4G LTE radio technology.
The Arrows prototype, photographed above, packs NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor, an LTE chip, 13.1-megapixel camera with an ISO of 25600, 4.6-inch HD display, and Ice Cream Sandwich. Boy, is she pretty!
Samsung just announced the Galaxy Tab 7.7 with Verizon 4G LTE at its 2012 Consumer Electronics Show event. The device’s specifications include a 7.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, 3-megapixel rear-camera, 2-megapixel front-camera, 16GB of internal storage, and Android 3.2 with TouchWiz. Information on pricing or availability was not made public yet.
Samsung also announced it sold 300 million smartphones in the year of 2011 —breaking company records.
Reports flew yesterday that Samsung’s 5.3-inch Galaxy Note would make its United States debut sometime in early 2012. The rumors came from accessory maker Anymode who sent out the CES Media Alert below confirming the device would be “available in the United States in early 2012 through AT&T.” While Anymode later retracted its statement, we have heard separately that Samsung and AT&T will officially announce the U.S. Galaxy Note at CES 2012 set to kick off Jan. 10.
Anymode provided the following retraction since issuing the media alert (via Engadget):
Anymode Introduces First Accessories for Samsung Galaxy Note” contained inaccurate information pertaining to AT&T and the release of the Samsung Galaxy Note. The information was not provided by Anymode, AT&T or Samsung , nor did Anymode, AT&T or Samsung approve it. The issuing party apologizes for the publishing of the inaccurate information and any inconvenience it may have caused.
Samsung recently announced it shipped over 1 million Galaxy Notes worldwide since the device first launched abroad in November. 9to5Google will be bringing you live updates from the floor at CES 2012 Jan. 10 to Jan. 13 in Las Vegas.
