Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones News - Page 309

Before the sure-fire-hit $199 tablet from Google and ASUS hits, the Nexus 7, the tablet has been overclocked, flashed with a custom ROM, rooted and replaced with a full tablet user interface (UI). 'FadedLite', a member of the XDA-developers forum posted some instructions on how to do the rooting.

But, it seems that rooting the Nexus 7 isn't as easy as previous smart devices, as the Nexus 7 features a locked bootloader. We all know that things like this can usually be overcome, with experienced developers trying their hand on the Nexus 7, provided they have sdk, can use adb as well as fastboot, and have debugging on the Nexus 7. They'd also need to download Su and CWM.

Overclocking on the Nexus 7 is impressive already, ramping up to 1.5GHz thanks to a kernel build from zaventh. The kernel does sport other features such as voltage tweaks, and support for init.d. The kernel is insecure, which is to be expected in its early days. User 'jcarrz1' offers an "enhanced" Android Jelly Bean experience with a custom ROM. This custom ROM sports init.d support, Zip alignment, a host file that blocks ads, the Aroma installer, Busybox, the Nexus 7 boot animation, an uncluttered appearance, the removal of some unnecessary apps, and enhanced speed.

It seems as though LG wants to claw their way back up that smartphone winning mountain, with their first quad-core smartphone arriving in the form of the Optimus 4X LTE this month, but there is a follow-up coming soon that should also impress. This device is said to have a camera that beats the Optimus' 8-megapixel rear-snapper.

A report from The Chosunilbo says that LG Electronics chairman Koo Bon-moo has direct input into the planning and development of the as-yet-unnamed device, which is due to his dissatisfaction that the mobile-making division of LG has not taken full advantage of technology produced by fellow LG subsidiaries.

What makes Bon-moo's blood boil is that parts from LG Display, LG Chem and LG Innotek are featured by numerous LG competitors, including Apple, but last year, the LG Electronics chief said to have pointed out that LG is not "making enough" of the technology. Recent smartphone industry data from Strategy Analytics revealed that LG hold just 3.7-percent of the industry-wide shipments, with Samsung taking 30.6-percent, and Apple with 24.1-percent.

With Microsoft making the decision to make their own hardware may have upset other OEMs, Samsung are still going full steam ahead on releasing a smart device based on Windows RT and it will be released in October.

The Windows RT-based tablet from Samsung will sport an ARM-based processor, and has now opened up a new avenue of business for the company, since they're now supporting Windows 8 and Windows RT-based devices. The move is sure to help Samsung have more devices on offer, with multiple OSs to choose from, to combat their main competitor, Apple.

Windows RT is set to become the first mainstream OS from Microsoft built for touch-screen devices that works on energy-efficient chips that are usually bound for smartphones. Most traditional desktop and notebook PCs run x86-based processors.

Amazon's first-generation Kindle Fire started off with a bang, but sales of the tablet are dropping off, which means we're headed toward next-generation territory. Sources close to AllThingsD have said that Amazon are looking to unleash the next-gen Kindle Fire in Q3, and are talking to developers about hardware already.

The next-gen Fire is meant to be both thinner and lighter than the original Fire, sporting a built-in camera and much-improved display. Developers have also been told to build their apps for a display with a 1280x800 pixel display, different to the 1024x600 display of the current Fire.

This makes the next Kindle Fire's screen to look better, as well as featuring a new aspect ratio, meaning the display has an entirely new width-to-height ratio. DisplayMate President Raymond Soneira told AllThingsD:

Motorola have just outed their next Atrix phone, known as the Atrix HD. The listed specs show the Atrix HD will sport a 4.5-inch HD Colorboost display with a resolution of 1,280x720, a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and the swish look of the Droid RAZR.

Filling out the sepc we find a 1,780 mAh battery, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, and measures in at just 8.4mm thick. Motorola make it "business ready" as the Atrix HD features Gorilla Glass and Kevlar fused together, so it should be tough as nails.

There's no news on when the Atrix HD will hit stores, but if you want to find out more about it and sign up for updates, check out this link.

The rumor of an iPad mini from Apple have been around for quite a while now, even as far back as October last year. We've reported on them many times, and it is the perfect path for Apple to take to combat the impending Google Nexus 7 tablet, as well as the Amazon Kindle Fire, and upcoming next-gen Fire.

The latest reports are coming in from the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, both claiming anonymous sources with "knowledge of the plans" confirming a screen between 7- and 8-inch in diameter, and the component suppliers in Asia are preparing for a mass production of this new product in September.

The WSJ reports that screen suppliers will be LG Display and AU Optronics, with a rumor yesterday stating that Sharp would be supplying IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) displays, measuring at 7.85-inches, which would give a better image on a thinner screen, with a potential pixel density of 330 ppi. One of the most interesting bits of this new information is the speculation that Apple may choose not to use the iPad name, in order for the company to avoid flack for contravening to late co-founder Steve Jobs' assertions that 7-inch devices are "tweeners - too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with the iPad".

Research in Motion may have hurt BlackBerry lovers last week, announcing the delay of the BlackBerry 10 OS until 2013, but between now and then, there's sure to be tonnes of news to keep us happy. A leaked hardware roadmap has been leaked, and gives us a good idea of what to expect from BlackBerry 10-based devices in 2013.

But, before 2013, we should see a release of the BlackBerry PlayBook 4G which should be launched in Q4 of this year, perfect timing for the holiday season. This device does pre-date the BB 10 launch, so there shouldn't be much to do hardware-wise with the PlayBook 4G.

Q1 2013 is where the fun begins for RIM, with the launch of BB10 and the first full-touchscreen BlackBerry device, which is the BlackBerry London/L-series device. After the London/L-series device launches, we should see the BlackBerry Nevada/N-series, sporting a full QWERTY pad.

Google's $199 Nexus 7 tablet is barely even available and the team at iFixit have torn one apart and looked around inside the tablet. Nexus 7 is just a millimeter thicker than Apple's iPad, but that 1mm can make a huge difference when it comes to repairability according to iFixit, who gave the Nexus 7 a score of 7 out of 10.

To compare this against other popular tablets, Apple's iPad scores a repairability score of two out of 10, Amazon's Kindle Fire scores an eight, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet takes home a six out of ten. iFixit said in their report:

That's the difference between being able to open a device and service all of its internals, and not. That's the negligible difference between extending the life of your device through repair, as opposed to tossing it in a landfill. And most of all, nobody will complain about that one millimeter difference in day-to-day use, but the user-serviceability it brings will make all the difference when the device breaks.

We saw that Google's Nexus 7 tablet was unveiled yesterday, where we found out ASUS was the hardware partner in the deal. But ASUS' chairman, Jonney Shih, along with Google's head of Android, Andy Rubin, have revealed at the $199 Nexus 7 tablet is sold at cost.

They also revealed that the Nexus 7 was designed and manufactured in just four months, Shih says to AllThingsD "our engineers told me it is like torture". ASUS was told that they needed to get the Nexus tablet ready in just four months, it had to be high-end, and should not cost over $200.

Shih also said that his team learnt a lot from working so closely with Google's engineers, and in order to get it ready in four months, Shih sent people to work at various locations, including Silicon Valley. This put his workers closer to Google, and also allowed his engineering team to have a 24-hour development cycle.

Google unveiled Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" at their Google I/O conference yesterday, and now news that Samsung had prepared ahead for their flagship GALAXY S III smartphone is floating onto the surface of the Internet.

The Verge has heard that Samsung baked extra RAM into the S III specifically to make sure that it would be capable of handling Google's latest mobile OS. By making this move, Samsung hoped to "future-proof" the smartphone, and to ensure that it would remain comparably fast and powerful no matter what shifts occurred in the OS landscape.

At the time of design and manufacturing, the final specifications for Android 4.1 weren't set in stone. So, in order to be "100-percent sure" that the GALAXY S III would be capable of handling Google's next-gen OS, Samsung's engineers bumped the S III's internal RAM to 2GB.