New Samsung Desire could be announced on September 1st

It is going to be a busy first day of September. HTC will most likely introduce a couple of new mobile phones and now it turns out that Samsung could be announcing a new Desire model as well

September 1st is going to be an interesting day. HTC are most likely having something new on display and now it looks like Samsung Mobile has something for us as well. A new teaser video from Samsung Mobile could indicate that a new Desire is on its way. Samsungs YouTube channel has released a new video teaser indicating that a new mobile phone will be announced. We do not see the acctual device itself but a clue in the video is the text "Sketches of Your Desire". Is this a clue that Samsung is about to announce a Desire model?
It is the second video tease, but it is the first one giving some clues of a Samsung Desire model. It is Guerilla marketing at its best.
If a Samsung Desire is on its way, it has a big screen. Thats the second clue found in the video. Is it the 5.3 inch smartphone we have heard of earlier? Well, we will know in 12 days.

 IFA in Berlin, Germany is a global trade show for consumer electronic with 235.000 visitors last year. The trade show opens on September 2nd.

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Mozilla foundation proposing a mobile OS project called Boot to Gecko

Mozilla earlier this week announced the Boot to Gecko (B2G) project which aims to build a complete standalone operating system based on Linux

The Boot to Gecko project are currently in planing phase an not much code has been written so far. But this might change rapidly as Andreas Gal, a researcher at Mozilla Corporation said that the project is in its infancy and some pieces of it are only captured in our heads today. Boot to Gecko will offer a couple of interesting new web APIs for exposing devices and OS capabilities to content. Such as Telephony, SMS, Camera, USB, Bluetooth, NFC and more. The operating system will be complete, standalone for the open web. It will be based on the lowest level elements of the Android platform such as the device drivers and kernel. If we understand the proposal correctly, every device capabilities will be exposed for both applications and web pages.

Mozilla are announcing the new OS in a very early stage. This is because they want all their developers and the open source community to contribute with ideas and code from the beginning of the project.

Do you think Mozilla will succeed with the new OS? Can it compete with iOS, Android and Windows Phone?

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Android 2.3 Gingerbread available for Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Sony Ericsson today announced the release of Android 2.3 Gingerbread for their first Android device

The update has been announced earlier, but an exact date for the OS update has not been communicated before now. Today, the official Sony Ericsson product blog announced that the roll out of Gingerbread started today. As you probably know, the X10 has a 1 GHz CPU and should be capable of running the updated OS without any trouble. As usual, the non-branded generic trade kits will get the update first. Some operator branded handsets will also receive the update in a short while, but sadly some customized versions of X10 will not receive the update.
Android 2.1 was initially the last update for the Xperia X10, but Sony Ericsson has listen to their customers and made another upgrade available.

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LG announces two new Android smartphones

LG Electronics has announced two new smartphones running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Both the LG Optimus Pro with full QWERTY keyboard and the Optimus Net are mid-range models

Last week, LG announced two new Android smartphones for the masses. Both models has a 800 MHz processor and they are running version 2.3 Gingerbred which is the latest version of Android operating system.
LG Optimus Pro has a 2.6 inch display and a full QWERTY keyboard below. In addition to the usual Android keys and the QWERTY keyboard, it also has dedicated keys for email and scheduler. Most manufacures now use the Pro name on models for QWERTY and business models and so does LG.
The Optimus Net will have some features available to specific markets. Some carriers will offer the Optimus Net with Near Field Communication (NFC) for mobile payments while North American carriers will include a QWERTY keyboard. Brazil, China, Asia and the CIS region will have a model that's dual-SIM compatible.
Both phone models will be for sale this summer.
LG Optimus Pro highlights

• Size: 119.5 x 59.7 x 12.9 mm
• Weight: 129 gram
• Full QWERTY keyboard
• 2.8 inch display, 240 x 320 pixel resolution. TFT, Capacitive touch
• Networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSPA 900/2100
• 256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM, 150 MB user memory. Expandable up to 32 GB with microSD card. 2 GB card included
• 3 megapixel camera, fixed focus. VGA video recording
• Bluetooth 3.0
• USB connectivity
• Wi-Fi
• DLNA
• aGPS
• FM Radio
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• 1500 mAh battery
• 800 MHz ARM11 processor

LG Optimus Net hightlights

• Size: 113.5 x 59 x 12.1 mm
• Weight: 122 gram
• 3.2 inch display, 320 x 480 pixel resolution, TFT capacitive touch
• Networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSPA 900/1700/1800/2100
• 512 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM, 150 MB user storage. Expandable up to 32 GB with microSD card. 2 GB card included
• 3 megapixel camera, autofocus. VGA video recording
• Bluetooth 3.0
• USB connectivity
• Wi-Fi
• DLNA
• aGPS
• FM Radio
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system with Optimus UI 2.0
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• 1500 mAh
• 800 MHz ARM11 processor
• Market specific features:
  • NFC for Europe
  • QWERTY for North America
  • Dual-SIM for Brazil, China, Asia and the CIS region

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Motorola announces Droid 3

Another Droid has seen the light. No reason to change the Droid name when Droid has established itself as one of the most feature packed Android smartphone model. 

 

Compared to the Droid 2, Droid 3 has got a larger 4 inch display with higher resolution, increased the camera resolution from 5 to 8 megapixel and it has a dual core 1GHz processor. The look and feel seems to be very similar to the Droid 2.
The Droid 3 is available on Verizon in the US. As with the Droid 2, a global model might be released later.
Motorola Droid 3 highlights

• Size: 123.3 x 64.1 x 12.9 mm
• Weight: 184 gram
• 4 inch touch screen display, 540 x 960 pixel resolution, 16 million colours, Corning Gorilla Glass
• Dual core 1 GHz processor
• 8 megapixel camera
• 1080p video recording
• Full QWERTY keyboard (worlds thinnest QWERTY model)
• Networks: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, CDMA 800/1900, WCDMA 850/1900/2100, HSPA 10.2 Mbps, CDMA EV-DO Release A
• aGPS
• Memory: 16 GB storage. Expandable with microSD card up to 32 GB. 48 GB in total
• Android 2.3 Gingerbread
• WiFi, DLNA
• Bluetooth 2.1
• HDMI (HDMI cable not included)
• Battery: 1540 mAh
• Standby time: 300 hours
• Talk time: 550 minutes
• Sensors: Accelerometer, Proximity, ambient light and eCompass

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Skype with video call for Android

Skype today announced that its Android app now supports video calls on selected devices

Skype has updated its Android app and added video call as one of the new features. Currently only few handsets are supporting video call and these are HTC Desire S, Google Nexus S, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo and Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro. The requrement for using the video call feature is that the device has a front facing camera and are running Android version 2.3 Gingerbread or later. We have tested the app on our Xperia Neo and it seems to be working as advertised.
During video call it is possible to switch active camera from front to back as well as turning the video camera off. In the settings menu, video call quality can be toggled between High and Low. Both quality settings record video in 320x 240 resolution but High uses 95% of the 1 GHz Xperia Neo CPU. Lowering the quality to Low reduces CPU usage to approximately 65%. Both modes will drain your battery quicker than you like.
Skype for Android is available from skype.com/m

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500.000 Android devices activated daily

A tweet by Android co-founder Andy Rubin revealed that the number of activated Android devices per day now are over 500.000

According to Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Android Inc, now Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, the number of activated Android devices are over 500.000 every day. The claimed numbers seems reasonable as they are following a trend we saw back in December last year.
It seems like the number of new Android devices activated daily increases with 100.000 per quarter. If the trend continues like this the next year, number of activated Android devices in August 2012 would be one million device activations per day. The one million mark also matches the 4.4% weekly growth rate tweeted by Rubin.

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