The New Android Phone to Beat

There is a not-so-silent war going on between Samsung and Apple. Part of the war is happening in the courtroom, where Apple is suing Samsung for patent infringement and in copying its iPhone software design. Another part of it is happening right in front of your eyes.

Just look at some of the ads Samsung has run knocking Apple iPhone users for being unoriginal and part of the flock. Or the ones in which they make fun of the people waiting in line to buy the iPhone 4S.

What does the Samsung Galaxy S III have to do with that war? It's the next battle. The Galaxy S III is Samsung's new flagship Android phone, and like its Galaxy S II predecessor, it's going to be the Android phone -- the one among what feels like hundreds -- to take on the iPhone (and the next iPhone). The phone hits all four major U.S. carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile -- in the coming weeks for $199 with a two-year contract.

Google Confirms no Flash for Ice Cream Sandwich, for the time being

If you lucky owners of the Galaxy Nexus in these first days of its release complete with the first iteration of Ice Cream Sandwich, you’ll notice that you do not have Adobe Flash Player installed, nor do you have access to a download on the Android Market – Google has just confirmed with us that this is normal and that Flash support will only come once Adobe makes the call to update the mobile version for Android 4.0. You currently will not have the ability to load either a new version or one of the older versions of Flash Player for Ice Cream Sandwich until Adobe makes the call to update their app to be compatible with this newest version of Android. Don’t get too frazzled quite yet though, that’s not the whole story.

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Amazon takes only slight loss on Kindle Fire

BY NATHAN OLIVAREZ-GILES
Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — Amazon.com Inc. is taking a loss on each $199 Kindle Fire it sells, according to a report from the research firm IHS iSuppli that pegs the total cost to make each tablet at $201.70.

The Seattle-based retailer, which is making its tablet debut with the Fire, has been projected to sell between 3 million and 5 million before the year is done.

The Fire’s 7-inch screen is the priciest part of the device, coming in at a cost of about $87 per unit, IHS said. Supplying the displays for the Fire are LG, which also makes the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet’s 7-inch screens, and E Ink, which produces the Kindle e-reader displays.

Texas Instruments is a major hardware partner of Amazon’s as well, making the Fire’s 1-gigahertz processor, IHS said.

“The TI OMAP4430 processor costs $14.65, accounting for 7.9 percent of the Kindle Fire’s total,” IHS said. “However, TI also supplies other devices, including the power management device and the audio codec. This gives TI a total of $24 per each Kindle, or 12.9 percent” of the Fire’s build costs.

IHS also said it has spotted the OMAP4430 processor in its tear-downs of the Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet and the Motorola Droid Bionic and LG Optimus 3D P920 smartphones.

Amazon also saved money by not including items such as a camera, microphone, microSD card slot, HDMI port, 3G or 4G wireless radios and other features found in many rival tablets.

At $201.70, the Fire is cheaper to produce than the bestselling tablet on the market, Apple’s iPad 2, which has a production cost of about $326, according to an earlier IHS tear-down. Apple sells its base iPad 2 at a profit-making price of $499.

The research firm came up with its cost-to-build estimate based on taking the Fire apart and pricing out each of the components inside. In Amazon’s favor to help it recoup some costs, if the IHS estimate is correct, is the fact that the company is likely to sell books, music, movies, TV shows and apps to Fire owners.

And of course, as more devices are made, they often become cheaper to make, and Amazon already has said it will be building more Fire tablets than it had first planned.

iPhone 5 to get an Android 4.0 rival: Release date in October or November

In an interview with Salesforce, Google’s Eric Schmidt unveils the possible release month of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system build, which is expected to slap all critics claiming that the operating system is “fragmented.”

Read more: http://popherald.com/news/iphone-5-to-get-an-android-4-0-rival-release-date-in-october-or-november/10854

Ice Cream Sandwich might be christened Android 4.0

By Sovan Mandal

Android’s next version, the Ice Cream Sandwich has started making the right noises. While the new Android iteration is all set for a release towards late October or early November, new evidence has cropped up pointing towards the version being actually called Android 4.0 and not 2.4 as some had thought. Both the figures have been doing the rounds as the Ice Cream version would be an amalgamation of sorts of Android Honeycomb that is tablet specific and Android Gingerbread that is meant for use more in a smartphone. Ice Cream though has been designed to find application in both a phone and a tablet device.

In any case Android 4.0 makes more sense as Android 2.4 would have meant going back after we have already seen Android 3.0. Also, while details are being kept away from public glare as of now, what seems certain is the addition of an iPhone style app tray to ICS when used in a smartphone.

As for whether it would be a match to Apple’s iOS 5, we will have to wait for the things to emerge first.

via droid-life

Apple iPad Has a New Enemy: Amazon Tablets

This October the tablet market will have one more important member: Amazon’s own tablet. According to analysts and investors, Amazon plans to release a tablet computer by October. It will solidify Amazon’s position as the world’s largest Internet retailer.

Information on the features of the upcoming tablet is scarce. It’s expected to be a roughly 9-inch screen tablet which will run on Google’s Android OS, presumably Android 3.2 (or later, if another version comes available).

Unlike the iPad, it won’t have a camera. According to the Wall Street Journal's report, some people familiar with the device said the online retailer won’t design the initial tablet itself. What’s more, its production is being outsourced to an Asian manufacturer.

In a recent note, computer hardware analysts at Canaccord Genuity wrote to investors, saying that at least 1.5 million Amazon-branded tablets are being produced for the third quarter of 2011. And the target for the whole year of 2011 is 4.5 million to 5 million units.

This new plan will intensify the competition between Amazon and Apple Inc. Before, they have battled on digital books, digital music and mobile applications and they’ve already had some bitter clashes. In March, Apple complained saying Amazon had violated the trademark on the name "Apple Store".

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs had also once said that Apple’s general-purpose device iPad is much superior to Amazon’s single-purpose Kindle electronic-book reader.

"Amazon and Apple are frenemies" — both friends and enemies — said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester Research analyst. They “rely on each other as partners.” For instance, Amazon sells digital books via its Kindle app in Apple’s iTunes Store. However, they also aggressively compete for customers' attention and dollars.

Currently, Apple is the incomparable leader in the tablet market. Since the iPad entered the market last year, Apple has sold 19.5 million of the devices by the end of March. There is a tough and long road ahead for Amazon to battle Apple in the tablet market.

However, compared to other companies, Amazon has more strength to go up against Apple, Epps said. One reason is because Amazon already has a digital-content store with a significant selection and following. What’s more, it has heavily promoted its digital offerings this year. Also, it can offer cheaper tablets. In fact, it could sell the tablet for a loss, hoping to make money on sales of movies, music and books.

Nonetheless, Amazon doesn’t have a natural brick and mortar outlet to sell its products, while Apple has its own retail stores. Besides, iPad is in its second generation and Amazon’s tablet may be not as refined as the iPad.

Will Amazon be able to compete with Apple head-to-head on hardware sophistication? Only time will tell.

Android 3.2 to hit Motorola Xoom

Motorola Xoom users will be pleased to hear that Honeycomb 3.2 will be released soon for tablet. A Motorola representative spoke to CNET and said “Google has started rolling out Android 3.2, in phases, to Motorola Xoom users”.

The update is going to offer a new viewing mode will will be tagged as ‘zoom to fill’, and it will enable SD card slot support also. Motorola will be the first company to get this update, which is positive news for Xoom owners.

The Android developers blog gives more information on this, which makes for good reading.

“When the user enables this new screen compatibility mode, the system no longer resizes your layout to fit the screen. Instead, it runs your app in an emulated normal/mdpi screen (approximately 320dp x 480dp) and scales that up to fill the screen—imagine viewing your app at the size of a phone screen then zooming in about 200%. The effect is that everything is bigger, but also more pixelated, because the system does not resize your layout or use your alternative resources for the current device (the system uses all resources for a normal/mdpi device).

In cases where an app does not properly resize for larger screens, this screen compatibility mode can improve the app’s usability by emulating the app’s phone-style look, but zoomed in to fill the screen on a tablet.”

Other tablets get improvements, including 7 inch designs. Other optimisations and tweaks are on the way, according to reports.

Kitguru says: Xoom users should be happy to get this roll out as it offers real world benefits for everyday tasks.