Android

Netgear announced today the availability of its top-of-the-line true dual-band router, the N600 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router Premium Edition (model WNDR3800).

Introduced at CES 2011, the WNDR3800 is an upgrade to the company's existing WNDR3700. Netgear says it's the first home router to offer the Clear Channel Selector feature and also the first that's capable of creating private cloud file sharing through Netgear's new ReadyShare Cloud service.

Clear Channel Selector, which the company says is generally available only in expensive wireless routers for businesses, "automatically detects when the Wi-Fi channel currently in use becomes … Read more

We may have the name of the Samsung phone Verizon has scorned the Galaxy S II in favor of.

Boy Genius Report says the carrier will exclusively launch the Droid Prime in October instead. Apparently, Verizon worries that the Galaxy S II won't be able to compete with the iPhone 5 when it finally drops, and is opting to throw its weight behind a new Android flagship phone, likely to be one of the first running Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich."

If all rumors are true, it could set up a holiday shopping season showdown between the latest, most updated devices running both iOS and Android.

Samsung is also launching its own new instant-messaging service, available not only on Samsung Android phones like the Prime--or whichever model is tapped to go head-to-head with the new iPhone--but also as a download for iOS and Blackberry.

Verizon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNET.… Read more

Update, 10:24 a.m., PT: Verizon Wireless is saying that September 8 is not an official date for the Droid Bionic's release. We'll have more details when we get them.

At long last, the national nightmare is almost over for Android fans for the Motorola Droid Bionic will finally be released on September 8 with Verizon Wireless.

The announcement came via the official Droid Bionic Twitter account, and a subsequent tweet stated that preorders were not being taken yet. Pricing information also was not revealed at this time, though it's rumored to be in the $299.… Read more

Anyone who picked up a $100 HP TouchPad at the recent fire sale may eventually be able to run Android on their new tablet.

The crew at CyanogenMod, which creates customized builds of Android for mobile devices, has succeeded in porting over a version of Android that can run on HP's now discontinued tablet.

An open letter and video from CyanogenMod posted on the RootzWiki Web site yesterday show that developers have so far been able to run a Cyanogenmod version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread on an HP TouchPad.

The video reveals the Android OS booting up and launching into a home screen and then displaying icons for a few apps. Though the developers seem to be making progress, one major feature still missing in action is touch-screen support. In the video, CyanogenMod is controlling the tablet through a remote console.

But the narrator of the CyanogenMod video acknowledges that "these are just the very first steps and there will be more progress soon, I hope."… Read more

We knew that Samsung had something up its sleeve for IFA later this week in Berlin, but the company has let the news slip a little early in a press release issued today. As expected, we'll not only get a version of the Galaxy S II, but also we'll see the return of the Galaxy Tab 8.9.

The Galaxy S II LTE smartphone will feature a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display will offer 3D graphics, though its size also means the device will be far from compact.

Additional features include Wi-Fi, e-mail, and messaging, an 8-megapixel camera, a personal organizer, a digital music player, Bluetooth, and the usual access to Google apps. And as its name suggests, the handset will support 4G LTE networks. … Read more

Writer Caprice Crane joins us in the studio today to tell us what it's like writing for shows like "90210" (2.0) and "Melrose Place." She also gets life-changing news halfway into today's preshow, so tune into Monday's show to find out how to win a copy of her book, "Little Luck."

Caprice also has a new Web site for self-deprecating stories called I'm A Total Loser, and she sticks around in the second half to give us her take on stories about social networking leading to drug abuse, a peer-to-peer alarm clock that smells like Chatroulette, and how social networking is blowing the cover of covert police officers.

Samsung is expected to unveil a refreshed iteration of its popular Galaxy S II at next week's IFA trade show, improving the handset on numerous fronts.

According to information passed on to SammyHub, the revamped Galaxy S II will feature a larger 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, a faster dual-core 1.5GHz processor, and added support for LTE. The inclusion of an NFC chip and a higher-capacity 1,850mAh battery are also expected in the new device. By contrast, the first release of the Galaxy S II offered a 4.3-inch display and dual-core 1GHz processor, but lacks … Read more

A professor of civil and environmental engineering at Michigan State University has unveiled a device that, in conjunction with an iPod Touch or Android-based tablet, analyzes microRNAs to detect cancer quickly and affordably.

Syed Hashsham says his Gene-Z device, which he demonstrated this week at the National Institutes of Health's first Cancer Detection and Diagnostics Conference, in Bethesda, Md., could dramatically improve early cancer detection in developing nations that have few, if any, cancer screenings services.

"Until now, little effort has been concentrated on moving cancer detection to global health settings in resource-poor countries," Reza Nassiri, the … Read more

The effort to port the Android operating system onto the HP TouchPad seems to have splintered into two separate teams after a brief but nasty civil war that included name-calling and allegations of theft.

HP's WebOS tablet recently became a hot commodity following the company's announcement that it was discontinuing the tablet, and liquidation pricing as low as $99--or 80 percent off--led to lines at Best Buys and ubiquitous "out of stock" pages at online retailers.

Earlier this week, a project emerged on the RootzWiki forums with the goal of putting Android on the TouchPad. A … Read more