If you are at all interested in astronomy, you’ve likely heard of a little site called APOD. Short for Astronomy Picture of the Day, NASA’s APOD posts an incredible astronomical photo each day, with a written description by a professional astronomer.
“But Ben, how does this fit into mobile technology which is covered on this site? inch you might ask. Well dear readers, it turns out that astrophotos make awesome background images.
One of my favorite Android apps is called Astronomy Picture of the Day (by Sam Oakley). In addition to downloading the latest picture and description from APOD for your perusal, it’ll automatically set the photo as your background. This is even cooler if you have multiple Android devices because it’ll keep them visually in sync.
Did I mention that it’s free? Definitely give it a try if you want a hassle free way to get a fresh background automatically every day.
The prototype ruggedized Android Tablet from Mobile Tout Terrain shown in the video below and in the gallery here is not certified for the sort of environment we’re seeing in north-east Japan right now but it’s certainly more rugged than your average tablet or ultra-mobile PC (UMPC.) Think about hiking, traveling, the beach, your bike and even extreme situations like baby drool or even, and this is one I’m interested in, the bath!
Mobile Tout Terrain, a French company, are aiming to get this IP67-spec tablet ready for Q3 2011 at a price that sounded wrong. €350 sounds way too low for a splash-proofm dust-proof device.
Specifications and pricing are subject to change but we’re looking at a 1.2Ghz CPU (of unknown type) and an 800×480 multi-touch capacitive screen. There’s no telling what version of Android will be on it in 6 months time but we heard that 2.2 is being worked on. GPS is included, micro SD, 512M RAM and Web Cam.
Styling work is planned for the connector/holding block but as it is, I found it incredibly easy to hold in landscape mode.
Extremely important for this, even critical, will be that it has a full Google suite of applications. Without Google Maps, Talk, Latitude, SkyMap and all the other great applications available through the market this will only be interesting for companies wanting to develop their own applications. Mobile Tout Terrain may just be aiming for such a niche of tour-guides, meter-readers and surveyors but I really hope not because there’s so much more this device could do. I’m sure you can think of a huge list of applications here.
Google’s Nexus phone program aims to combine top-end hardware and the latest Android software to create a flagship Android smartphone (and arguably, a developer phone). The first phone from the Nexus program was the Nexus One (HTC). Just recently Google has partnered with Samsung to bring the intuitively not intuitively named Nexus Two Nexus S to market. Does Google + Samsung = Success, or is the Nexus S being quickly superseded by other devices, even if they aren’t yet running the latest Android built? Step inside to find out.
All About Updates
There’s one thing we should talk about up front. Google’s Nexus phones offer updates to the very latest Android built right as it’s released regardless of the carrier or manufacturer. On pretty much every other Android phone/device, updates are pushed through the carrier or OEM. This means that if users want the latest enhancements for Android (and who doesn’t?) they have to wait for a middle-man to get around to setting everything straight before they get the update. Unfortunately promised updates have failed to come to fruition in a number of cases, leaving users without important feature updates and performance improvements. And even when promised updates do eventually come through, they aren’t always as simple as upgrading right on your phone, making updates unobtainable for those less versed in the computer world.
With the Nexus program, Google provides access to the very latest Android software. Updates always come as soon as they’re released from Google, and they install straight through the phone. This gives any of the Nexus devices an advantage over most other phones. The Nexus S is one of the only [perhaps the only] devices on the market today that comes out of the box with Android 2.3 installed. And, even then after powering it on, the phone will ask to install several incremental upgrades that have been made since the initial Android 2.3 release.
And now back to our regularly scheduled reviewing!
Hardware
Let’s has a quick look at the specs of the phone and a tour around the device. As usual, you can see detailed specs, links, photos, and even compare devices with the Nexus S at it’s tracking page in our device database.
Briefly, before we get to the aforementioned, you might be interested in having a look at our Nexus S overview video:
Specs:
Android 2.3
Cortex A8 (Hummingbird) CPU @ 1GHz
4 inch curved Super-AMOLED capacitive touchscreen @ 800×480 (1.67:1 aspect ratio [non-standard])
512MB of RAM
5MP rear camera (only capable of 720×480 [DVD quality] video recording) with single-LED flash
I am certainly not qualified to talk in-depth at the Xperia Play gaming experience but I was certainly quite excited to see the hardware controls and game quality. In the video you hear me talking to a Sony Ericsson representative about the product. We discuss battery life, pricing, availability, get a gaming demo and take a look round the device.
The Xperia play runs Android 2.3 on a Snapdragon 1Ghz CPU (MSM8255with Adreno 205 GPU) with a 4 inch ‘Reality’ display at a true 16:9, 854 x 480 resolution. Note that Android 2.3 brought in some touch responsiveness extensions and enhancements.
What’s important to me is that another major company is now switching to the ARM/Android chassis for another product category which means Android is now in phones, tablets, media players, cameras, gaming devices, TVs and smartbooks. What’s category do you think Google are looking at for it’s next ‘device-specific ‘ branch of Android? Set-top-boxes is something I’ve been keeping an eye on.
MSI have the Tegra powered Windpad behind glass here at CEBIT.
The images above show full sd card slot, mini-hdmi, mini-USB, one full-sized USB port and the same optical mouse as seen on the Windows-based Windpad 110w.
MSI say that this will be available in the Q2 timeframe and MSI are aiming for the Honeycomb OS.
Posted from WordPress for Android with the Galaxy Tab
Nicole Scott of Netbook News tells me she isn’t too impressed. She has a point. Its hardly the most attractive device in the Tablet space. The thing is, this will come in at a very nice price. Ben has already highlighted a $300 price which means you have a better option than the Viewpad 7. You’re getting an arm v7 more which means significant performance implements with Android 2.2 and the ability to run apps like flash 10.1. I have a video which I’m going to upload as soon as I buy a new charger for my netbook bit at least I can give you some images from the showfloor here at MWC. One of the images includes the specs and we’ll get this in the database for you as soon as possible.
Mobile World Congress is well underway with announcements and product launches coming from a bevy of manufacturers, HTC included.
At their press conference this morning they announced no less than 6 new Android devices, one of which is the Flyer, a 7 inch 1.5GHz packing tablet weighing in at 415 grams.
The Flyer has up to 32GB of internal storage expandable via microSD card, 1GB RAM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, 3G, GPS and both front and rear facing cameras at 5 and 1.3 megapixel respectively.
HTC plan to differentiate from other tablet manufacturers by including a capacitive stylus for handwriting, note taking and general annotation. Notes can be captured in ink or voice and have built in Evernote synchronisation. Also included with the Flyer are access to several new key services from recent partnerships or acquisitions that the company has made. Their recent investment with OnLive, a gaming service that renders 3D games and streams games to your device see’s integration with the Flyer whilst HTC’s acquisition of Saffron Digital will provide access to downloadable movie titles via the new HTC Watch application.
At first it looked pretty chunky to me in the press photos but JKKmobile has managed to get his hands on and compare it to the Galaxy Tab and the difference was fairly minimal.
Whilst its certainly got a lot of character I have to wonder about the new tablet version of HTC Sense running on a Android 2.4 core, sure there will be a lot of additional functionality added in typical HTC fashion but with Honeycomb around the corner, its a risk.
Whilst we wait for Chippy to do his thing and get some hands on time check out JKK’s video;
I’ve just shot a video of the Iconia A100 tablet here at MWC and its an interesting one. Tegra 2, Honeycomb, 5MP AF cam, gyroscope, hdmi outand possible 3g. No word on pricing or timescales. This could make a great mobile gaming device. Video coming later.
If you are at all interested in astronomy, you’ve likely heard of a little site called APOD. Short for Astronomy Picture of the Day, NASA’s APOD posts an incredible astronomical photo each day, with a written description by a professional astronomer.
