The Big Android Chart™: A Definitive History of Android Version Adoption

Alleged Samsung Galaxy S3 photo shows both physical and capacitive buttons

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Alleged-Samsung-Galaxy-S3-photo-shows-both-physical-and-capacitive-buttons_id29554

Tegra 3 AP37 base specs revealed, AP40 in retail before years end

the AP37 which is a faster version of the AP33 which is currently
found in most high-end Tegra 3 handsets. As you can see, clock speeds
are set to be increased, but sadly we don't have an exact figure
although nVidia is targeting 1.7GHz for the high-end parts with the
possibility of some slower 1.5GHz parts. Note that the 1.7GHz speed is
only likely to be single core clock speed, but we haven't managed to
confirm this.

The GPU performance is also said to be boosted by about 25 percent and
this has simply been done to be able to drive higher resolution displays
as the market moves towards full HD and beyond for high-end tablets and
smartphones. Yes, you did read that correctly, smartphones are expected
to get 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 displays this year and we know of at
least two, if not three panel makers that are already busy churning out
displays and it's likely that there are even more companies working on
it as we speak.

Rumor: HTC is working with ST-Ericsson on their own custom smartphone chip

According to Unwired View,
HTC is working together with ST-Ericsson on a custom chip that’s
purpose built for low-end Android smartphones due to hit the market in
2013. We don’t know how much work HTC is actually going to do with
regards to the chip design process, but something tells us that they’re
going to do little, if anything, other than give ST-Ericsson a set of
performance and power figures that they then have to build a product
around. Looking at ST-Ericsson’s portfolio, the chip that’s likely being
discussed is a variant of the U4500.
Announced back in February of 2011, the U4500 combines a 1 GHz ARM
Cortex A9 processor with an ARM Mali 400 GPU and an HSPA+ modem. There’s
also WiFi/Bluetooth/GPS and even NFC support. Said chip is supposed to
enable smartphones that cost around $100.

http://www.intomobile.com/2012/04/22/rumor-htc-working-stericsson-their-own-custom-smartphone-chip/

Either that or Huawei and Mediatek will eat their lunch... imo, unless HTC starts providing cloud service that is fun and useful, it doesn't have to be expansive, but must be unique, they will have margin squeeze against huawei and mediatek brigade.

Qualcomm defies Moore's Law with 2.5GHz quad core chipset, coming 2012

Single, dual and
quad-core architecture Qualcomm processors will be hitting smartphones
in 2012. The new chipset is known as Krait and is very much a glimpse of
the future.

We've just got back from an event in London where Qualcomm unveiled
its road-map, which leads all the way up to 2.5GHz quad core chipsets
(MSM8960) in 2012.

To be available in either single, dual or quad core flavours, the new
Qualcomm processors will effectively decimate current standards of
power such as the chipsets present in the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S2
and HTC Sensation.

These silicon monsters boast 2.5GHz of processing muscle, which is
more than our home PC and its Intel Q6600 CPU. Granted, numbers aren't
everything - we doubt a quad core PC chip is going to lose to a mobile
variant just yet - but this sort of power in a mobile would've been
unthinkable a couple of years back.

Qualcomm has said these chips will also support full 1080p displays.
Obviously a mobile is going to struggle with resolutions of 1080-pixels,
so we assume this is more to do with the tablet display side of things.http://www.knowyourmobile.com/blog/976309/qualcomm_defies_moores_law_with_25ghz_quad_core_chipset_coming_2012.html

How I do it: Covering live events with the Samsung Galaxy Note

Media crunching - USB Host, Video Maker and YouTube

This is probably the coolest and most useful set tricks the Galaxy
Note has up it’s 5.3-inch sleeve. The device supports USB Host (aka USB
OTG), meaning you can hook up removable storage to the phone using an
USB OTG cable. That includes your SD card reader, and even some digital
cameras. And when you consider that the Note also includes a
fully-functional video editor and (like all Android phones) YouTube
upload capabilities, it suddenly becomes feasible to check, edit and
upload hands-on videos directly on the device.

In the right situation, this has meant we’ve been able to shoot
hands-on videos back-to-back, and have them processing and uploading on
the Note while we’re recording the next one. That, in turn, has meant
that our videos are already uploaded and waiting for us when it's time
for things to be written-up.

That’s not the only benefit of USB host, though. Often companies at
major tech events will provide specs, press releases or official images
on SD cards or USB sticks, and being able to view these without firing
up that PC or Macbook can be invaluable, especially, when you’re huddled
outside an auditorium.

http://www.androidcentral.com/how-i-do-it-covering-live-events-samsung-galaxy-note

B&N to spin off NOOK business, Microsoft to invest $300 million

I guess now Microsoft has "book" content for their windows 8

There are more android tablet than iPad in the world yo... but most are unregistered.

--------------------------

Add it all up, and as of March, Apple has sold more than 67 million iPads since its original debut in 2010. Not bad.

But let's do some math.

Apple reportedly has 55 percent of the tablet market. Apple's sold 67
million tablets. Taken together, we can extrapolate the size of the
current market to be roughly 123 million devices.

ComScore puts the Kindle Fire at 54% of the remaining 45%, or 24.3%
of the whole... which makes the Kindle Fire's share of the tablet market
just over 29 million units.

To repeat, that's nearly 30 million Kindle Fires sold since its September, 2011 introduction.

Or almost half the number of iPads sold to date.

The Android-based Kindle Fire has sold nearly 30 million units since November. That's almost half of all iPad sales, combined.

Tizen 1.0 SDK released (OS for phones, tablets, netbooks)

The developers behind the Tizen Linux-based operating system for smartphones, tablets, and netbooks have released version 1.0
of the software developer kit. It’s code-named Larkspur, and it’s an
important milestone for the project as Tizen hopes to encourage
developers to write applications optimized to run on the operating
system.

The Tizen project emerged from the ashes of MeeGo — and open source
operating system which was itself created by the merger of Intel’s
Moblin netbook OS and Nokia’s Maemo smartphone operating system.

MIT reinvents glass to be non-fogging, self-cleaning, glare-free

Samsung Galaxy S III Screen protector outs size and shape of up coming Device

http://androidspin.com/2012/05/01/hooray-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-screen-protector-outs-size-and-shape-of-up-coming-device/

Android's operating-system (OS) share of the smartphone market in the
U.S. regained some ground against Apple in the first quarter (Q1) of
2012 versus the prior quarter. Sales of new smartphones running the
Android OS grew 24 percent over the prior quarter to reach 61 percent of
the market. Apple's iOS share fell from 41 percent to 29 percent, which
is a quarter-over-quarter decline of 29 percent. Even so,
year-over-year smartphone sales for both companies remained strong,
representing 90 percent of smartphone sales with Android gaining 20
percent in 2012 and Apple gaining 7 percent.

Based on The NPD Group's monthly Mobile Phone Track service, the
top-selling smartphone operating systems in the U.S. in Q1 were as
follows:

• 
      Android: 61%
•     iOS: 29%
•     RIM: 5%    
•     Windows Phone 7: 2%

While handset models running Android's operating system continue to
own the lion's share of the U.S. handset market, Apple's iPhone devices
held onto the top three spots in NPD's overall handset ranking in the
first quarter of this year:

1.    iPhone 4S

2.    iPhone 4

3.    iPhone 3GS

4.    Samsung GalaxySII

5.    HTC EVO3D

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/02/prweb9467359.DTL

New iPhone to get supermodel look -- no curves -- report says

A new report from iLounge said that the sixth-generation iPhone
will launch this fall with a taller 4-inch screen, metal back, remade
dock connector and new aspect ratio, according to a new report.

"Approximate
measurements are 125mm by 58.5mm by 7.4mm — a 10mm jump in height,
nearly 2mm reduction in thickness, and virtually identical width," wrote
iLounge editor Jeremy Horowitz.

Not quite the "brick house"
curves some of us were hoping to have return to the device. (Curves just
sit better in the palm.) Instead of the "teardrop" shape that has been
written about, this report said that Apple will stick with a
glass-bodied design made partially of thinner, stronger Gorilla Glass 2.

Of
course, speculation about iPhone is practically sport, and this report
seems to fit with a spate of other recent speculative reports that the
new device would have a larger screen, comparable to much of the
competition on the market today.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-apple-iphone-5-rumors-20120503,0,1923496.story

Apple Buys Liquidmetal IP

In a recent 8-K filing with the SEC, Apple  made public that it had essentially acquired “substantially all of [Liquidmetal's]
intellectual property assets,” not to mention a “perpetual, worldwide,
fully-paid, exclusive license to commercialize such intellectual
property in the field of consumer electronic products in exchange for a
license fee.” In other words, Apple just bought up the rights to
integrate Liquidmetal’s amorphous metal alloys into its product line,
which would allow the company to create lust-worthy metallic widgets
with enormous creative freedom.

iPhone 5 Won’t Feature Liquidmetal, Says Inventor

Atakan Peker has suggested that it might take a few years and $300 to
$500 million ((£185 to £309 million) for Apple to take the technology to
a new level, suitable for commercial applications. Currently though,
there is no manufacturing infrastructure capable to implement
Liquidmetal on large scale production.

http://www.itproportal.com/2012/05/04/iphone-5-wont-feature-liquidmetal-says-inventor/#ixzz1ttiYiohC

1. next generation phones will all be sub 130g. How are they gonna do it with all metal chasis

2. there is going to be more antenna, more heat from processors. All metal enclosure? if they have to make complicated windows and curves...it'll add cost. and no point having metal as it becomes very weak.

next generation material is reinforced plastics with nano coatings..ultra light with all sort of funky textures and colors.

Samsung Galaxy S III S Voice demonstration

Being able to talk to your phone and have it talk back to you isn't
necessarily a new feature, but it's certainly been made popular with
Siri on the iPhone 4S. And in some brief testing today on the Samsung Galaxy S III,
we found it to work pretty well. We're going to wait to give it the
full what-for when we're out of the demo environment and on the mean
streets, where seconds count when you're finding out whether it's
raining out, where to hide a dead body -- or how much wood a woodchuck
can chuck.

There's not a whole lot to say here, right? We all
know the iPhone backward and forward. There's really no way not to
(especially when you've got the likes of iMore.com in your stable). And after we don't know how many Samsung Galaxy S III
posts, we're fairly familiar with it, too. One's metal and glass. The
other is predominantly plastic. But it's a skinny bugger. Lanky, almost
wiry. 

Body styles notwithstanding, the major difference is
in screen size. The iPhone still wins out in pixel density, but that's
because it's still at a rather quaint 3.5 inches, whereas the Galaxy S
III is a whopping 4.8 inches (crammed into a slightly smaller body).

So which would you choose? Made-for-human plastic? Or the cold, hard reality of aluminum and glass?

Galaxy S3 goes on Pre-Order in UK. Sim-free Priced £500

http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-wrap

Nokia Sued for 'Fraud' Over Windows Phone Sales

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403989,00.asp

ouch, this gonna leave mark.

I think Nokia will pass the point of no return soon. 2-3 quarters. It's in exact same position as Palm inc. after years of dragging feet upgrading OS, when apple comes in, it collapses within 4 quarters. Nokia has lost every single key market . It has no hope of keeping china and india, last remaining money maker territories. (local indian, huawei and ZTE eat its lunch.) , soon it will have to defend home turf, finland.