When you go into cardiac arrest, you’ve got about ten minutes to live if you don’t receive medical attention, and the average emergency response time is seven minutes after you dial 911. In an effort to get folks help more quickly and leverage the iPhone’s life saving abilities, the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District in California has created the FireDepartment app to enlist the help of the citizenry in fighting the (unfortunate) results of a lifetime of eating tacos. The iPhone app — Android and BlackBerry versions are currently in the works — allows emergency dispatchers to notify users via text of a nearby crisis. For those feeling heroic, the app displays a map with the victim’s location and any nearby automatic electronic defibrillators, and provides “resuscitation reminders” in case you’re the CPR teddy-toting type. For now, the service only works in San Ramon but there are plans to port it for use elsewhere. That means we can look forward to a nation of amateur EMTs, which makes us thankful that mouth-to-mouth is no longer a part of CPR. Check the video after the break to see the app in action.
The software on Motorola’s upcoming Atrix 4G has already been subject to some stern (and premature) scrutiny, but here’s some rather more concrete information about it, courtesy of the company’s own spec page for the device. As it turns out, Moto intends to launch the Atrix with some of its hardware capabilities clipped — specifically its Tegra 2-derived power to encode 1080p content — but will deliver them to users in an update (hopefully soon) thereafter. LG’s Optimus 2X, which is built around the same dual-core chip from NVIDIA, has been spending its time before launch showing off exactly what those 1080p encoding skills can deliver — both with video recording and through its HDMI connection — so it’ll be a downer for Moto fans to learn that their hallowed new superphone won’t be able to match up at launch. Then again, when we think about how often phone makers fail to tap the full potential of their hardware, maybe we should just be happy that 1080p abilities are coming to the Atrix at all, eh?
Paying a monthly fee — or any fee, for that matter — for turn-by-turn navigation on Android devices has felt pretty unpalatable ever since Google Maps Navigation happened, but Verizon’s still trying to make things interesting with the latest version of its VZ Navigator product. A quick feature rundown of its new “Version X” is up on YouTube right now, and we’ll admit, we’re a little intrigued by some of this stuff: realistic 3D buildings in major cities (unlike the nondescript boxes in Google Maps, we imagine), some form of dead reckoning capability for those times that you don’t have GPS reception, satellite maps, overhead street signs, social integration for letting folks know where you are, and a whole bunch of views for customizing the experience. We’re assuming service is the same $9.99 a month that Big Red charges currently, but there’ll also be a free version — VZ Navigator Maps — that dispenses of some of the crazier features. We’re hearing this might be officially announced in a few hours, so more details will presumably be in tow; in the meantime, follow the break for the teaser video.
To hear most mobile companies tell it these days, you’d think that NFC (or near field communications) is only for mobile payments. That’s not the case at all, of course, and a group of researchers at Stanford’s MobiSocial lab have now thrown a few new ideas of their own onto the table after getting a pair of Nexus S phones to play with. After first making a few tweaks to overcome some of Gingerbread’s limitations — it only uses NFC for reading tags — they were able to develop a few social-minded applications that make use of the P2P functionality possible with NFC. That includes one example that lets you share photos simply by pressing two phones together, and a second that lets two phones share an application — collaborative whiteboard, in this case. Unfortunately, those aforementioned tweaks to Android mean you can try out the apps yourself just yet, but the researchers are hopeful that similar applications will eventually be supported by Android and other platforms. Head on past the break to check them out on video.
So we’ve just installed Google’s first public-access preview of its tablet-focused Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, an early build of the platform’s SDK that features “non-final” code and APIs; it’s intended primarily for developers who want to get a head start on making their tablet app dreams come true, but naturally, we needed to install it and take it for a test drive ourselves. Here are our quick observations:
Like Android SDK emulators before it, Honeycomb’s is extremely slow — nearly to the point of uselessness in this case. We’ll give them a mulligan since this is a preview build, but seriously, we wouldn’t recommend installing this unless you enjoy pulling your hair out.
There appears to be some sort of orientation bug that prevents us from going landscape, which is what we really wanted. Sorry about that! We’ve shot the video sideways and rotated all of our images; if we’re able to figure it out or a newer build is released with orientation properly working, we’ll update.
The browser looks great — specifically the UI, which is going to make desktop browser users feel right at home perhaps more than any other tablet browsing experience to date. As with the rest of the emulator, it was too slow to really use — and it kept crashing on us — but we’re digging the look.
The system for adding and managing widgets is a joy to use — it makes your entire desktop accessible from a single screen, and we like the amount of detail you can preview for each widget before deciding whether to use it and where to place it.
In general, the window animations and screen transitions seem cool, but none were smooth or fast enough in the emulator to know for sure. Jury’s still out until this gets faster or we’re using Honeycomb on actual tablets.
We’re not in love with the dim, squashed segmented display that Google is using for the time in the lower right; we’re hoping there are plenty of alternative fonts available.
Since the emulator doesn’t provide a “Google experience” build with access to the Android Market, Gmail, or other “branded” Google apps, we weren’t able to deep-dive on how real-world applications are going to look on the platform — but with any luck, Motorola’s Xoom should be shipping within a few weeks. In the meantime, check out a video after the break!
Update: We’ve figured out the orientation trick — you need to uncheck automatic orientation in Settings, then flip the emulator from landscape to portrait (counterintuitive, we know). We’ll be updating the media as soon as we can!
Update 2: Second video (in the correct orientation this time!) added after the break.
We, like you, have looked longingly at the Parrot AR.Drone. We’ve had a lot of fun experimenting with its augmented reality gaming ways and spent a lot of time sighing at its $299 price. Thankfully there’s now a much cheaper option — much less sophisticated, but one that is nevertheless cheaper. It’s the AppToyz helicopter, coming to retail soon and costing a (relatively) affordable £50, or about $80. It looks to be evolved from the standard, tiny, IR-controlled helicopters that are everywhere now, but this one’s controlled by your iPhone or iPod touch courtesy of an attachment that clips into the headphone port, much like the suite of universal remote iPhone dongles we’ve seen over the years. There’s also an RC car coming, somewhat more affordable at £30, though only the copter is demonstrated in the video embedded below. Go ahead and watch, and then start eagerly awaiting their release, currently slated for April.
Oh yes. After all the unbearable teasing since we unveiled the first ever photos of the PlayStation Phone, we’ve finally managed to get hold of the real deal for an in-depth preview. Honestly, we couldn’t wait any longer with this thing floating around in China; we’d otherwise have to wait until MWC, where we expect the phone to be launched as the “Xperia Play” (and we shall refer to this name henceforth). Before you pop the cork for us, do bear in mind that what we’re seeing here is subject to changes, so don’t be alarmed by any missing features or exposed cables in our preview. When you’re ready, head right past the break to find out what Sony Ericsson’s cooking up.
South Korean carrier SK Telecom is billing its new Galaxy S Hoppin from Samsung as a “smartphone that can also serve as a set-top box,” but in reality, it’s basically an Android phone just like any other in Sammy’s stable with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display — the big difference is that it comes bundled with a dock that cables up to your home television and lets you watch streaming video off of the company’s new Hoppin entertainment service either on the road or in the comfort of your La-Z-Boy. Movies will run anywhere from 1,000 to 3,500 won — 89 cents to $3.12 — which isn’t bad, all things considered. The remainder of the phone’s specs are standard fare at this point: 1GHz Hummingbird processor, Android 2.2, a 5 megapixel cam, WiFi, and Bluetooth 3.0 round out the package. Look for it to launch this week.
After a bit of a false start, Google’s finally officially turned on Google Voice number porting for all existing users. $20 is all it takes to swap your main line over to the service, although you’ll have to cancel your existing service contracts to make it all happen. The service is currently only for existing GV users, so you can’t open a new account and port straight away, but Google says new accounts will get the option in the “next few weeks.” So — anyone out there going to take the plunge?
Last year’s Apple Peel 520 turned your iPod touch into an iPhone — mostly, accepting a SIM card and allowing you to send and receive calls, texts, and even throwing a little extra battery life your way. Now we’re looking at the next generation device and, which certainly looks a lot more sleek and less bulky than the previous model — from a distance it could be confused for an iPhone 4. This version also allows the use of GPRS data, as you can see demonstrated in the video below. No mention of price or availability just yet, but review units are said to en route to other news sites, so hold that phone — or iPod as it were.
