Friday, February 18, 2011

HTC Wildfire S

Other than that, it's same old same old. Which rings true for the HTC Wildfire S too. The phone is actually more related to the Aria with a 3.2" HVGA display, but HTC are keen to make a point that it's their smallest smartphone yet (that means shorter than the original Wildfire and the Aria/Gratia).


The HTC Wildfire S is 101.3mm tall, 59.4mm wide and 12.4mm deep (the Aria measures 103.8 x 57.7 x 11.7mm). Anyway, the phone runs a Sensed Android (should be ver 2.3 Gingerbread again) on a 600MHz CPU with 512MB RAM. It has a 5MP camera with LED flash and a microSD card slot.

 Source from http://www.gsmarena.com/

HTC Desire S

The HTC Desire S has an aluminum unibody (just like the Legend). With a 3.7" WVGA screen, the handset is powered by a 1Ghz Qualcomm chipset - so it's got a single-core CPU with 768MB RAM and Adreno graphics. It should ship with Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

The Desire S camera is a 5MP snapper with 720p video capture, coupled with a VGA camera up front. There's been a minor reduction in the overall size of the HTC Desire S - 115 x 59.8 x 11.63mm and 130 grams. Wi-Fi 802.11n support has been added and data speeds have increased to 14.4Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink.  




HTC Incredible S

HTC just announced the Incredible S, Desire S and the Wildfire S. The letter S tacked on the back of their model names do little to justify the new release. The three phones are not exactly full of new features.

The leader of the pack, the HTC Incredible S, is not the Desire HD2 from the early leak. It's actually pretty similar to the Droid Incredible. The phone measures 120 x 64 x 11.7 mm, weighing 135.5 grams with recognizable Incredible styling.

The major difference is the screen - a 4.0" WVGA Super LCD, a first for HTC. It also has one pretty unique feature - the icons of the capacitive keys rotate with the screen. There's no Bluetooth 3.0 or HDMI, just BT2.1, Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb For Tablet



Well we’re starting to get in depth details on the new Android 3.0 for tablets, and it looks promising. Optimization for the larger screen area and added base functionality look like the main things here.
They’re going for a PC like interface with an “ActionBar” in lieu of a “taskbar” or dock. This of course houses the most used functions that you’ll have. This ActionBar is also used for application management, so it looks like you can flip through apps like tabs on a browser. 

From what we can see (unless you download the SDK and play with it yourself) the bar has an app folder, and a large section available for application tabs, a search bar (using Google I assume), and buttons for menus and settings. I also see two arrowed Android Share button up there so it looks like they’re streamlining social updates; definitely a useful little change what with those two cameras the Xoom will be rocking. On the bottom there’s a clock and navigation arrows. I also see a clock VERY reminiscent of the Arcs clock from Rainmeter. Maybe we’ll get to modify our home page with all those awesome custom Rainmeter skins and widgets like we can on PCs. Keeping my fingers crossed on that one. And of course all these buttons will most likely be able to be moved or removed as you see fit, to keep in line with Android’s high level of customization. Speaking of customization, I wonder if we’ll be able to cruise the Android system files through the tablets themselves and modify them as we please like in Windows, or if we will have to do it through a computer. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Another new feature, the Fragment system, makes it easier for developers to create multi panel apps and add some neat little upgrades. It allows interface options, like buttons or links, to be displayed in one panel while information and excerpts are on the other. The demo version is set up to switch to just the list if you flip it to portrait orientation which is a nice change from hoping your web page or app will all fit onto your screen without you having to flip it to make it align correctly. More for the developers is the FragmentManager, which manipulates and keeps track of the various fragments that you interact with during use. It automatically animates fragment switching and keeps a history of what you’ve looked at, so you’ll be able to use the back button in your apps, just like in a browser. There’s also a widget that graphically displays your location in the stack of fragments so you can easily navigate back and forth between fragments (or pages). This could be extremely useful for quick reference when writing or doing some kind of research. We all know proper scientists will be using Android tablets.


All in all, Android 3.0 is looking to be very exciting and the Xoom looks more and more enticing every day. Expect to see me in the midnight release line, if there is one. Yes indeed, Sweet dreams are made of this.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830


Without any fanfare Samsung made the Android-running S5830 Galaxy Ace official. The full-touch mid-range smartphone popped up on the Indonesian web page of the company, confirming all rumors we heard so far.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 packs a 3.5" capacitive touchscreen display of HVGA resolution. There's an 800 MHz CPU ticking under the hood and a 5 megapixel camera at the back of the Android 2.2 Froyo device.

As expected from even mid-range smartphones nowadays, the Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 offers all kinds of data transfer options. You get Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi b/g/n, dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G with 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE. microUSB and 3.5mm jacks as well as a GPS receiver are also on board.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Acer Iconia Smart

The Acer Iconia Smart is part tablet, part phone, all droid. The tablet/phone has an extra-wide screen with aspirations of portable multimedia perfection. Also, the Acer Liquid Metal changed its name but not its specs.
The Acer Iconia Smart features a 21:9 widescreen display, 4.8" big with 1024x480 pixels resolution - now that's downright impressive. Dolby surround sound technology enhances viewing movies even further.



The Iconia Smart runs Android 2.3.2 Gingerbread covered with the latest Acer UI version 4.0, also called "Breeze". The whole thing is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon chipset, which has enough power to drive Flash 10.1 in the web browser.
There are two cameras - an 8MP main camera with LED flash and 720p video recording and a secondary 1.3MP camera for video calling.
The Acer Iconia Smart has a unibody metal casing and it will be available in Silver. A gyroscope and an accelerometer will enable high-precision motion-controlled gaming.
The Acer Liquid Metal showed up at Acer's booths under a new name - the Acer Liquid mt. Nothing else has changed, just the name.