Latest Mobile Phone News

Panasonic’s line of Toughbook notebooks can handle a whole heap of abuse, and the company is now cleverly expanding into the tablet market with the same basic principles of durability and security. Panasonic on Monday unveiled its Toughpad family of Android-powered devices, with both 7 and 10-inch options. The first model, the Panasonic Toughpad A1, is a 10-inch tablet that features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 16GB of storage, FIPS 140-X compliance, optional LTE or WiMAX connectivity, GPS, a drop rating of 4 feet and 10 hours of battery life. Panasonic’s tablets will also be able to withstand a wide range of temperatures and are resistant to dust and water, in addition to sporting anti-reflective and anti-glare displays. The first Toughpad, the 10-inch A1, will go on sale starting in Spring of 2012 for $1,299, and the 7-inch Toughbook B1 will go on sale later in 2012.

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RIM is betting the future of its smartphone, tablet, and embedded systems on a new operating system: BBX. But there’s no word when it’ll be available, or what devices it will support. At its BlackBerry DevCon Americas conference in San Francisco, Canada’s Research in Motion officially announced BBX, an new single operating system RIM says will run on all its hardware platforms: smartphones, tablets, and embedded systems. RIM is touting BBX as combining the best elements of its existing BlackBerry OS with the best of QNX (which powers the PlayBook tablet), combined with cloud service capabilities and an emphasis on high-performance HTML5 development. DevCon being a developer conference, RIM also rolled out a bunch of tools for BlackBerry developers, including the BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps on the PlayBook as part of a beta of PlayBook OS 2.0. The upshot is that PlayBook users may soon begin to tap into the very large (and fast-growing) world of Android apps. What is BBX, how is it distinct from RIM’s previous operating systems, and — perhaps most importantly — will it help RIM recover market share and profits lost to the likes of Android and Apple’s iOS?

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Whether Motorola’s Droid Bionic, Samsung’s Galaxy S II and Series 7 slate, Lenovo’s IdeaPad and ThinkPad, Toshiba’s ultra-thin Portege Z830, a variety of transforming devices from Asus, or a set of 7- and 10-inch tablets from Acer, this fall is looking like a particularly fertile period for any consumer (or business buyer) on the lookout for some mobile devices to call their own. As demonstrated at a recent event in New York City, Android is very much a front-and-center part of these manufacturers’ newest offerings, whether smartphones running some variant of Android 2.3 or tablets with Android 3.0. As always, those manufacturers all give their devices some added tweaks or features, in hopes of making them more attractive than rival offerings. Many of these value-adds come in the hardware department. For example, Lenovo is betting with its ThinkPad tablet that users (particularly those in business) will want to use a stylus as input in addition to fingers. Toshiba’s Portege Z830 is ultra-slim, with roughly eight hours of battery power. Research In Motion is also offering a fresh line of BlackBerry devices with sleek-looking bodies and the new BlackBerry 7 OS. Tablets are becoming more powerful, and laptops over the next few months will offer Intel’s second-generation Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. For your average consumer, the goal will be deciding on one particular smartphone, tablet or laptop among very, very many.

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The Amazon tablet may soon be upon us. And unlike some other tablet manufacturers that tried—and failed—to bend the touch-screen market in their favor, the online retailer has a sizable chance of leaving a lasting impact. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler recently had an opportunity to play with an early version of the tablet and, in lieu of being able to snap photographs, did his best to describe its capabilities. In addition to a custom Android interface (complete with a tabbed Android Webkit browser and a dock for displaying available books and movies), the device offers a 7-inch screen and 6GB of internal storage for books and applications. Those hardware features aren’t necessarily enough to rock Apple’s iPad back on its heels or carve out a sizable niche among the Android tablets currently on store shelves. However, Amazon offers an Android applications storefront in addition to a full collection of multimedia offerings, which could allow it to compete head-to-head against Apple’s iTunes and App Store. Other tablet manufacturers have been slow to build robust multimedia hubs, and their products rely on Google’s Android Marketplace for apps.

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Back in June, Google announced that Android 3.2 would be arriving beginning this summer for Honeycomb tablets. Motorola, being Google’s launch partner for Honeycomb, was first to get the update. Next on the list was ASUS and as of late last week, Eee Pad users in the US started getting their version of Android 3.2. I updated my Eee Pad over the weekend and the process went seamlessly. As long as you’ve got more than 25% left on your battery you’re good to go. If you haven’t updated your Eee Pad since the launch you’ll need two updates to get to 3.2. The 3.2 update on the Eee Pad brings about a new splashscreen as well as a TegraZone app. TegraZone is NVIDIA’s custom marketplace that leverages the Android Market. TegraZone is used exclusively for games that are optimized for NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 SoC.

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It’s been a long and twisted road for Acer’s 7-inch Honeycomb tablet, but after all the starts and stops, we’ve finally got an ETA for the Iconia Tab A100. According to an email sent out to Acer retail partners today, the slab should land in stores sometime in early August with a suggested price tag of $300. The Tegra 2-powered device was originally slated for a mid-May launch, but was reportedly held up by Honeycomb compatibility issues. Also arriving early August, is a pair of new Aspire notebooks: the 15.6-inch 5750Z and the 17.3-inch 7739Z, ringing in at $475 a piece. Both laptops rock 4GB of DDR3 RAM (upgradable to 8GB), 500GB of storage, and Intel Pentium processors. Given the extra three months Acer’s had to get the Iconia Tab A100 to market, that Honeycomb better taste extra sweet when it finally makes its debut.

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The imminent launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy Tab 10.1 is going to be a rather confusing affair, as the hardware maker is planning to launch an unbelievable TWELVE separate memory/radio versions of the new Android tablet. According to the individual listings, you’ll be able to buy black or white versions of the 10.1, with each model also coming in 3G and wi-fi only options. Which means you can have any of the below configurations:

• 16GB, wi-fi only, black
• 16GB, wi-fi only, white
• 16GB, 3G, black
• 16GB, 3G, white
• 32GB, wi-fi only, black
• 32GB, wi-fi only, white
• 32GB, 3G, black
• 32GB, 3G, white
• 64GB, wi-fi only, black
• 64GB, wi-fi only, white
• 64GB, 3G, black
• 64GB, 3G, white

Absolutely insane. A total logistical nightmare for the boys in the warehouse. The August 4th launch date only applies to the cheaper black & white wi-fi only models, which will arrive on that day for £399. The 3G models and the larger capacity variants will launch throughout August, with the top-spec 64GB 3G model costing a whopping £659.99 and arriving on August 23rd.

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Motorola is beginning to roll out Android Honeycomb 3.2 for its Xoom tablet. The Google update includes a couple of key enhancements that will also roll out to other Android tablets in the near future. The update will introduce a new viewing mode, referred to as “zoom to fill,” and fully enable SD card slots. Motorola will be the first tablet vendor to get this update. Imagine viewing your app at the size of a phone screen then zooming in about 200 percent. Stretch-to-fill is the standard layout resizing, while zoom-to-fill screen is the new screen compatibility mode, according to the blog.

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Sprint launched its first Android tablet yesterday compatible with the new 4G “Wi-Max” network. The gadget is also the first Android tablet out there capable of running Netflix. Unfortunately, despite being first in line for 4G and Netflix, Sprint’s HTC Evo View tablet ships with the older version of Android: 2.3 (Gingerbread), not version 3.0 (Honeycomb). A future software update will bring Honeycomb, the version of Android made specifically for tablets, to the device.

That speaks to a larger problem of “fragmentation” on Android devices: the inability to implement the platform consistently across multiple types of hardware made by different manufacturers. Fragmentation is also the key reason why Android tablets have been slow getting popular video-streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu onto its devices. It presents a problem for making sure that Digital Rights Management technologies — or applications that make sure you aren’t ripping and recording any of the streaming content you’re watching — function across all devices.

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The tablet space is the most active in the mobile world with just about every company trying to cash in on the iPad success. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has been beleaguered lately over poor performance and was hoping its PlayBook tablet would turn things around, but a report indicates that is not the case. Meanwhile Amazon is rumored to be readying its own tablet for market, which has industry watchers ready to scrutinize its first entry into the world’s tablet market. Android tablet producers are vying for sales to compete not only with the iPad but with each other for a piece of the slim pie. While Android tablet providers jostle for sales, Apple just keeps selling iPads like hotcakes.

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April was a busy month for HTC, announcing no less than seven new devices for the South African market. Apart from the Sensation superphone (featured on p5) the Taiwanese manufacturer released the HTC Flyer tablet, two Facebook integrated smartphones and three new smartphones. All of which will be on the shelves in the next month.

HTC Flyer

The HTC Flyer is of course the Taiwanese company’s first foray into the tablet market. This 7″ tablet runs HTC’s Sense interface on top of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread, not Google’s 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets) and also includes HTC’s unique Scribe Technology. Scribe basically allows you to write on-screen with a special pen and either share your creations online or save it for reference. For the brief period that we played with the device it impressed with its speed thanks to the 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, while the new 3D interface of the Sense skin looks very smart.

Facebook on ChaCha and Salsa

Social network junkies are going to adore the ChaCha and Salsa, both coming with an integrated Facebook button. Press the button and you have access to the key functions of the Facebook services that are integrated throughout the HTC Sense experience, including updating your status and sharing your location or photos. Both devices feature Android’s latest Gingerbread 2.3.3 version, with the Salsa sporting a 3.4″, 480 x 320 resolution touch display. It was rather the ChaCha that grabbed our attention with its integrated QWERTY keyboard, slanted body and 2.6″ (480 x 320) screen. It is all the new Black-Berry Bold 9780 should have been and we got the impression that if the ChaCha featured services such as BBM and BIS it would have been really tough times for RIM.

Smart, Smarter, Smartest

Finally HTC introduced three updated models of previous HTC smartphones. The Wildfire gets improved in the form of the budget conscious Wildfire S, HTC’s smallest phones ever. Inspired by the HTC Legend smartphone’s aluminium design, the HTC Desire S boasts Qualcomm’s new 1 GHz Snapdragon MSM8255 processor and a 3.7″ (480 x 800 pixels) Gorilla Glass display and Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but unfortunately it does not include the new HTC Sense interface as found on the premium Sensation. The Incredible S, with its special contoured back, boasts the same processor as the Desire S and also some very impressive multimedia capabilities, such as surround sound, an eight megapixel camera, a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera and 720p video recording.

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Yet another major electronics manufacturer may throw its hat into the tablet ring this summer according to a recent report. Chinese PC manufacturing giant Lenovo has plans to debut its Android 3.0-powered ThinkPad Tablet come June, according to a leaked Powerpoint presentation obtained by tech reporter Joanna Stern. As the document says, the device will be powered by Honeycomb, the tablet-optimized version of Android. It will run on the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, a chip which has virtually reached mobile-industry standard status after being featured on myriad phones and tablets debuted in 2011.

Other touted specs remain similar to the already-existing pack: Micro USB, HDMI, SD card and USB 2.0 ports are all included. 16, 32 and 64-GB versions will be offered, as well as the eventual release of 3G and 4G-enabled versions. The tablet does deviate from its brethren somewhat, but you’ll have to spend a little more to see the differences. Optional choices include a stylus pen for “sketching and note-taking,” as well as a docking bay with keyboard attachment, which essentially turns the tablet into a laptop. Think HTC Flyer meets the Motorola Atrix.

Since Lenovo’s tablet is marketed in the Powerpoint pictures as the tablet “for on-the-go business professionals…and the IT Managers that support them,” we may be seeing a rival to Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, a device also aimed at the enterprise market. Originally a laptop designed and manufactured by IBM, the ThinkPad brand was purchased by Lenovo in 2005.

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Most know that Apple is always a bit behind when delivering latest technology in their iOS gadgets, even though the iOS realistic would no doubt say or else. But as far as I am aware Apple doesn’t have any 3D plans for their device. 3D appears to be the next big thing in the mobile space and no doubt the iOS faithful wouldn’t want to lose out, but if Apple doesn’t bring 3D to their gadgets it appears someone else will.

Actually this resolution involves placing a film over your iOS display and combining with softwareto deliver 3D and actually the film doesn’t hamper with your multi-touch gestures. So just so you can check out what this new 3D film and software does, we have a video of 3D in action on the Apple iPad for your viewing contentment below which lasts just 46 seconds by does look relatively remarkable.

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Toshiba’s tablet comes loaded with Android 2,2, the most recent Android upgrade and, at 10,1 inches, the Folio 100 has slightly more screen real estatethanthe iPad. It boasts a 16GB solid state hard drive, with another 32GB of storage available via SDHC card. There’s an HDMI connection for running movies to your TV, Bluetooth and N Wi-Fi for speedy web browsing and app downloads from Android Market. Unlike the iPad the Folio 100 runs Flash 10.1, letting you access all the videos on the net, and sports a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video confc’ccing. With a 3G version on the way, the Folio 100 is proof that there’s more to tablets than the iPad.

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