After a vague press conference announcing the device at CES in January, followed by months of leaked details, we now have almost the full story on what is officially called the Streak.
As previously stated by Dell, it's a 5-inch touch screen tablet that will run the Android operating system. On Tuesday, Dell said that the tablet will later be upgraded to Android version 2.2, just announced at Google I/O. The device comes with an ARM-based Snapdragon chipset and 1GHz processor, 2GB of storage (expandable to 32GB with … Read more
The software, which went up in the Android Marketplace Friday, lets users quickly open up PDFs they download from a browser, or that they've received in e-mail attachments. It packs multitouch gestures for zooming, landscape orientation, and a tool that will resize the text on wide documents to fit your phone's narrow screen.
After a quick spin with the software on … Read more
We already know that the Nexus One and other HTC phones will get a Froyo update, but what about other phones? Well, Motorola Droid owners wondering if their beloved handset will be getting Android 2.2 need not worry.
The handset-maker already plans to make Froyo available via an update before too long. Slashgear reached out to Motorola over the weekend in hopes of getting it to open up about the latest version of the platform. Not surprisingly, the company was somewhat vague in its response.
We're excited to see Google's news of the next version of the … Read more
If you know of Pandigital, you probably know it for its photo frames. However, the company is moving into the hot e-book reader market with a device that a lot of people have been waiting for: an affordable color screen e-book reader with ties to a major bookseller.
Integrated with the Barnes & Noble's e-book store, the Pandigital Novel is an Android-powered e-book reader that has a full color 7-inch touch-screen display, Wi-Fi connectivity, and multimedia capabilities. According to Pandigital, the reader will cost $199.99 when it ships in June.
While we're surprised to see Barnes & Noble partnering with Pandigital, but as anybody who has played around with the iPad knows, it's not a big leap from digital photo frame to e-book reader. Judging by the Novel's press shots, it looks a lot like the rumored smaller version of the iPad that some sites and analysts have been alluding to. That said, the Novel 800x600-pixel resolution display isn't as sharp as the iPad's is, and its resistive touch-screen interface--while responsive--isn't as responsive the iPad's capacitive touch-screen interface is.
An Arm 11 processor powers the Novel, which measures 7.5 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick and weighs 16 ounces. It has 1GB of built-in memory and has an expansion slot for SD/MMC memory cards--with support for cards up to 32GB in capacity. Pandigital rates its Novel's battery life at six hours in reading mode. That's not a terrible battery life, but it's neither near the iPad's battery life nor the battery life of dedicated e-ink-based e-book readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, that don't have to be recharged for days or even weeks.
While the Novel has multimedia features as well as a built-in Web browser, e-mail client, calendar, and alarm, Pandigital is billing its new devices first and foremost as an e-book reader. According to the company, Novel owners will have "easy access to Barnes & Noble's expansive eBookstore catalog of more than one million eBooks, newspapers and magazines, a wide variety of free eBooks and more than half a million free classics." Novel users can also use Barnes & Noble LendMe feature that lets you share certain e-books with friends and family for 14 days; however, currently you can only lend a book out once. … Read more
Besides the wheel, fire, and air conditioning during the month of August, caller ID is on the short list of life-changing inventions. Though its one hang-up (no pun intended) is that its directory of phone numbers, which is attached to names and readily available for landline phones, has not been carried over to mobile phones. Instead, mobile-phone users get numbers only.
Google has released the source code for an an Android phone GPS program called My Tracks, which lets people record where they've been, log journeys in Google Docs, and post their trip maps online.
"You can expect My Tracks to become better than ever with the contributions we hope it will receive from other developers, and also that many applications which work side-by-side with My Tracks will be written," Google engineer Rodrigo Damazio said in an e-mail list posting Friday. "For instance, one could easily build an application for tracking fitness activities, geocaching, aviation, and so … Read more
Now that all the juicy details of Android 2.2 "Froyo" are out, the question for current Android phone owners inevitably turns to "When do I get it?" Well, there is good news for some, bad news for others, and no news for the rest.
Starting with the good, Google announced via its Google I/O Twitter account that Froyo will be served to Nexus One users in the next few weeks. Not terribly surprising that the N1 would be one of the first to get the update considering its direct ties to Google (though that … Read more
Google kept us busy with announcements at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco, like news of a Chrome Web Store, Google TV, a forthcoming update to the Android operating system that includes the first full-fledged Flash Player for a mobile phone, changes to the camera app, and support for tethering and portable hot spots, among a list of other additions.
We happen to have a version of Android 2.2 (albeit a prefinal one) loaded on a Nexus One, and dove inside to survey the new features for ourselves.
I was never a fan of the original Dolphin browser for Android, but when DolphinHD was released for Android 2.0 and above I figured I'd check it out for the feature set alone. Little did I know that within a day I'd make it the default browser on my Motorola Droid.
Much like the Skyfire browser, which boasts unique in-house Flash video playback, DolphinHD's feature set gives users significant feature enhancements over the default browser. There's tabbed browsing, link sharing via your installed social networking apps, add-ons, themes, smoother in-browser multitouch, a generally high level of customization, the ability to save your cache and history to the SD card, and one of the most logical features for a touch-screen phone browser, customizable gesture support.
There used to be one other awesome feature: YouTube video downloading. But lest you think that only Apple played hardball with its application developers, Google forced Dolphin's publishers to remove the feature for a Google and YouTube Terms of Service violation within a week of the browser's release.
For me, the gesture support is Dolphin's killer feature. It comes with several default actions, including jumping to your bookmarks, moving forward and backward in site navigation, jumping to the top or bottom of the page you're on, reloading the page you're looking at, and sharing the page you're on. You can also set gestures to load specific sites, open new tabs, or add a bookmark. In all, Dolphin comes with 20 gesture options. A few have been wedded by default to predetermined gestures, but you can overwrite them easily with motions more to your liking, or move the gesture hot corner around. … Read more
Mobilizy, maker of the Wikitude augmented-reality apps for iPhone, Android, and Nokia phones, has announced Wikitude Drive, the first augmented-reality turn-by-turn navigation app for Android phones (OS version 1.6 or greater). The app utilizes the phone's camera and GPS receiver in tandem, layering the selected route over a live view of what's ahead of the car. Sort of like Google Maps' Street View, but in real time.
The Wikitude Drive app entered limited beta Thursday for the first 2,000 downloads from the Android Market. Once the app hits the 2,000 mark, it will be pulled … Read more
What's the #1 music streaming-app for iOS? Who wins in an iPhone v. S4 faceoff? We've got it covered with iPhone news, rumors, app recommendations, and more.
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