The Motorola Droid Bionic has been taking its time to launch. First announced at CES, the smartphone has since been delayed over the last six months to incorporate some new enhancements. It’s been speculated that the enhancements should include both boosted internal specs as well as a new form factor. Today, a leaked Best Buy ad confirms that the Droid Bionic has indeed been redesigned with a new look.
Although no specifics were given on the enhancements, the changes are said to be in response to feedback received at CES and possibly to beef up its specs against then competitor, the Atrix 4G. After being incubated for six months, the Droid Bionic is looking to be a real killer phone with mighty specs and a new look that’s more slick and squared-off.
The Droid Bionic will have a giant 4.5-inch qHD touchscreen now powered by a dual-core processor, the first to also be running on the blazing fast Verizon 4G LTE network. The Best Buy ad’s tag line sure conveys a powerful message: “With the ferocious force of Verizon 4G LTE, the Droid Bionic is an all-powerful, unstoppable machine.” However, no details hint at a more specific release date, although recent FCC documents suggest the device is for sure on its way.
Looks like some of the Skype crew might’ve had a sleepless night to please owners of the Nexus S 4G. If you’ll recall, June 30th saw a major update to its Android app enabling video chat on four devices; although the Nexus S was part of the club, its door was locked for Sprint’s 4G variant. That’s quickly changed, however, as the team’s set loose a hotfix to grant it access — this despite initially stating we’d have to wait for a “future release.” You can grab the app from the Android Market if you haven’t yet, and be sure to let us know how it goes in comments. Oh, and for those anxious Thunderbolt owners? We’d recommend not holding your breath until after the 4th of July holiday.
43 percent of smartphone sales are Android based, according to Nielsen. Android devices currently hold a 27% market share, putting Android in a close race with Apple and RIM. As you can see from the graph below, Android is climbing sharply, while Apple is staying roughly even, and RIM is declining.
This is particularly interesting when you consider that this huge climb in marketshare has happened in just one year. This is likely helped by the fact that the Android platform is available on a large range of devices, while the iPhone OS and the RIM BlackBerry OS are only available on their branded devices. Likely, this growth will continue over 2011, with the Android OS quickly becoming dominant.
Jack Wong is a very lucky guy. Or you can say he’s very unfortunate. On one hand, his eight-year-old Meizu label — literally meaning “the captivating tribe” — has rapidly become one of the most popular brands amongst Chinese gadget lovers, yet all he’s producing right now is just the one phone: the M9. On the other hand, the now-discontinued M8 had notoriously caught unwanted attention from Apple, and even the recent M9 launch saw accusations of Meizu hiring people to stand in line. But the latter points are irrelevant for now — what we’re really interested in is how a teensy MP3 player factory managed to outpace its numerous competitors to become a reputable smartphone maker with a huge fan base. To help us understand what drives the company, we decided to pay Meizu a visit. Go on, you know where to click.
RadioShack has announced a new plan that will help mobile phone users that want a new device get one at a discount called Fresh Phone February. The plan will get the customer $50 off a new phone when they trade in a working existing phone of any sort.
To be eligible for the trade-in program the phone the user trades in must work, the case must not be broken, the screen can’t be cracked, and the phone can have no signs of water damage. If your device meets all those criteria, you can get $50 off a new device like the HTC EVO 4G or the Evo Shift 4G.
The phones that you can get the $50 credit towards will change and the EVO 4G and shift 4G are the devices from now until February 12. The event runs until March 5, but the devices available to choose from will change on the 12th.
Intel promised way back in 2009 that we’d be seeing Medfield-based smartphones in 2011, and it looks like those have now gotten one step closer to reality. While there’s unfortunately few details to be had, that’s apparently a Medfield-based smartphone of some sort in the hand of Intel’s Anand Chandrasekher above, who apparently showed off the phone (possibly a prototype) ever so briefly at the company’s sales and marketing conference last week. Could it be a sign of things to come at MWC next month? Maybe, maybe not, but we’ll be there to find out.
The numbers are finally in for Q4 2010 from Canalys for the smartphone market. According to the company, Android grabbed the top spot in the global smartphone market away from Symbian. Android smartphone shipments hit 32.9 million units in the quarter.
Symbian smartphone shipments were 31 million for the quarter according to the statistics. The smartphone market as a whole boomed during the last quarter of 2010 with total smartphone shipments of 101.2 million units. The overall shipments show that the smartphone market grew significantly at 89% growth compared to Q4 2009.
Google’s smartphone OS’ were helped by strong performances from LG, Samsung, Acer, and HTC who all posted significant growth for the quarter. The most growth came from LG who racked up 4,127% growth compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Apple shipped 16.2 million units for the quarter, RIM shipped 14.6, and Microsoft shipped 3.1 million.
One day somebody will write a book called “The rise and rise of Android” and this moment will be highlighted in bold. Canalys’ latest smartphone sales figures show that Android phone makers managed to shift a cool 32.9 million handsets in the last quarter — more than any other smartphone platform out there, including the previous leader, Symbian, which sold 31 million units. That’s a mighty leap from the 20.3 million Android devices the stats agency estimates were sold in Q3 2010. Symbian itself grew from 29.9m in Q3 to its 31m total in Q4, but Android’s pace of expansion has been so rapid as to make it irrelevant.
The current trend in smartphone design is that of a vertical symmetry. It’s important to make sure the left and the right of the screen, (that being the right and left when the phone is held in a portrait mode,) are equal, or at least appear to be equal. The future of the phone is presented in a project by Jason Wang, a designer who believes that the next logical step in the evolution of the handheld communicator is symmetry in landscape mode. As a proof, he offers a conceptual design by the name of Nokia E2.
Wang believes that as the past several years have yielded a set of smartphones that are overwhelmingly similar to one another, it becomes difficult for the consumer to differentiate between them. He believes that the first step toward a new type of phone is the 21:9 aspect ratio. He notes though, that upon first viewing a traditionally designed 21:9 phone, it lacks visual appeal, especially due to the fact that they’re designed, still, to be held upright.
His solution is the E2, a 21:9 device with a horizontal symmetry, and what he says is “a large screen, a relatively small size, no vertical orientation bias, and no compromises.” Specs for his concept phone are as follows:
4.6″ 21:9 ClearBlack display
Proximity sensor
12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and 720p recording at 30fps
Concealed SIM and MicroSD slots (under the left side of the back cover, tilted 2 degrees)
3.5 mm headphone jack
Micro USB port
Multi-Purpose button (center, top) 3 zone button/rocker with capacitive layer
HDMI output
Stereo Speaker
Call speaker
Call microphone (with noise-cancellation, activation upon upward facing orientation)
2nd call speaker
2nd call microphone (with noise-cancellation, activation upon upward facing orientation)
*What these two call mics do is assure the user that any way they hold the phone, its the right way.
What do you think? We’re already sort of leaning this way with flip-out keyboards and gamepads like the upcoming XPERIA Play – is this the way of the future?
Ladies and gentlemen of the, ahem, jury, we intend to show — through rumors and circumstantial evidence — that Apple might very well be building Nexus S-like NFC capabilities into next-generation iPhones and iPads. We present for your consideration exhibits A, B, and C: three Apple job posts, seeking two managers of global payment platforms and one test engineer for iPhone hardware. According to the original post, the right engineer possesses a background in both ICT (information and communication technology) and RFID (radio frequency identification), which forms the basis for NFC. Suspiciously, Apple removed the “ID” in “RFID” sometime in the past 24 hours. Still not convinced of Apple’s NFC involvement? Consider this: Apple’s manager of global payment platforms is tasked with contributing “to the analysis and development of new payment types and processes.” Okay, so there’s not a smoking gun in sight, but a little innocent conjecture never hurt anybody.
