Wow, it seems like every single electronics manufacturer has jumped on board the Android tablet bandwagon, and Sharp is no exception to that trend. The company introduced the first two members of its Galapagos lineup way back last year, and today, a third device has officially been added to the family.

The Sharp Galapagos A01SH tablet has just been unveiled along with its final hardware specs and projected release date, at least in Japan, that is. What we have here is a 7-inch tablet with a display resolution of 1024 by 600 pixels, and a NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset clocked at 1GHz is what makes it tick. A couple of cameras are in tow as well – a 5-megapixel main one with autofocus and LED flash and a 2-megapixel secondary shooter for self-portraits and video conversations. The device’s battery is rated at 7.5 hours, and Android 3.2 Honeycomb is the operating system in charge of the show. Nothing revolutionary in terms of hardware, we know, but it seems like pricing will be a main selling point for the Galapagos A01SH.

The Galapagos A01SH will be launching in Japan later this month, yet Sharp has promised that its tablets will make it to the US later this year. As the A01SH has already cleared the FCC, it wouldn’t be surprising if it lands on a shelf with a price tag on in the near future. However, it better be priced reasonably as there doesn’t seem to be another factor that will help it stand out of the crowd.

Source: EAccess (translated) via Electronista

Tablets for toddlers – does it sound like a strange idea to you? Well, it didn’t to the guys who designed the VINCI Tab, which is a tablet meant to be used by the youngest of gadget aficionados.

The VINCI Tab is made for kids of up to 4 years of age and as such, it looks more like a toy rather than a modern tablet. It is covered by a layer of rubber armor and its display is about as tough as the windshield of your car, so you can rest assured that it will survive after your kid sends it flying across the room. There may be no way of hooking up the device to the Internet due to the lack of Wi-Fi or 3G support, yet that is more of a relief to a parent, who will be sure that junior will not be surfing the web unattended.

Taking a peek under the tablet’s hood, however, shows that the VINCI Tab is not that different from your run of the mill slate. It features a 1GHz processor, 512 RAM, 7-inch 800 by 480 touchscreen display and Android 2.3 is running the show, presumably customized in a way to make it appeal to children. There is also a 3-megapixel camera with HD video recording capabilities, and using the microUSB port you can easily hook up the device to a computer and load it with content. The VINCI Tab will come with books, games and video pre-loaded, yet additional content will be available at the manufacturer’s website.

One of the possible applications of the VINCI Tab is to make sure that your children stay away from your fragile iPad while having a gadget of their own to keep them entertained. What might make you have second thoughts about purchasing it, however, is its relatively steep price tag of $390 for the base model. Nevertheless, if you think that your little angel deserves to have something to brag about at kindergarten, the VINCI Tab will be available for purchase after August 10.

source: ViNCi via Gizmodo

Google has taken a valuable employee off of Uncle Sam’s hands, by hiring FTC’s patent specialist Suzanne Michel. She has been with the Federal Trade Commission for a good 11 years now, and her specialty was antitrust and patent issues, so we expect her to jump right smack in the whirlwind of Android litigation.

In fact, Suzanne Michel recently authored a report for the FTC, which gave an overview of the current patent system in the U.S. and what needs to be overhauled to actually promote innovation, instead of patent trolls.

Speaking of those little creatures, Samsung has supposedly been approached to entertaining a bid for InterDigital, which is another exemplary wireless patents holder. InterDigital’s CEO recently issued a memo that its collection of patents related to the wireless industry is even stronger than Nortel’s one, which received the largest ever patent portfolio payout of $4.5 billion.

We doubt that Samsung will be willing to spend north of $5 billion, as the rumored InterDigital asking price is, not to mention that Google, Apple and others are reported to also sniff around the company. A Google/Samsung combo, however, might do the trick. It’s good times for wireless patent holders – InterDigital had $17.2 million net income last quarter, and $5 billion for its patents surely sounds like a princely sum to the CEO.

Samsung is supposedly in the process of examining what exactly InterDigital keeps, so it might be willing to pick and choose some of the 8800 patents. In any case, the little green robot is apparently lining up a patent defense, which has to go a long way fending off the established competition.

source: Bloomberg & LATimes

Android devices make up for nearly half of all smartphones and that might be the main reason behind the growing number of malware infected content. Actually, now you’re 2.5 times more likely to stumble upon a virus or malware of some kind than you were six months ago, mobile security company Lookout summed up.

“This number is likely so high because users on mobile devices often encounter threats targeting PCs–people read email, Facebook messages, text messages, and tweets on their phones just as they do on their PCs,” Lookout says.

It has also estimated that the number of infected apps has grown from 80 to the whopping 400, while nearly 500,000 people were affected by malware on Android in the first half of the year alone. The sampling size however is what matters most, and for Lookout it’s 700,000 Android and iOS applications and 10 million Android-powered devices.

Where is the threat coming from? First is DroidDream, found in some applications which later infected your phone with a trojan, and second is GGTracker which tries to trick you that it is the Android Market and then you download an app signing you up for premium text message subscription. A little caution goes a long way, and in the latter case you can protect yourself by paying extra attention as the Android Market for example would never open in the browser.

Curiously, the report also suggests that even when picking your apps carefully you could still get infected by first downloading a benign app, which then upon update is changed to contain malware. Have you personally had any malware-related problems on your device? Feel free to share in the comments below.

source: Lookout via CNET

It is no secret that Sony is getting ready to enter the tablet market with a couple of devices of its own. The Sony Tablet S1 and S2 have posed for the camera more than once, and if the rumors turn out to be correct, we may see them hit the shelves as early as next month.

One of the marketing tricks that Sony is pulling off in order to promote its tablets is the set of teaser videos, the fourth of which has just seen the light of day. Marbles rolling, bells ringing and bubbles floating – it can all be seen taking place in the gloomy room with all the action revolving around the S1 and S2 tablets. There may not be a whole lot of features shown off this time, yet we are treated to a glimpse of the S2 connected to an HDTV, seemingly over a wireless network. Besides that, the S1 appears to be capable of turning TVs on and off thus acting like a fancy remote control, though that feature has yet to be confirmed officially.

Sure, this may be quite unorthodox of a way to promote a gadget, yet sometimes it does not hurt being different, does it? The fifth and last episode of the installment is coming soon, and in case if you have missed the previous ones, we have them available here and here.

source: Sony (YouTube) via Engadget

Gameloft is one of the biggest gaming studios in the world, but now its profit is increasingly dependent on the mobile industry – the company’s titles for smartphones and tablets made up 30% of the total sales in the first half of the year. Tablet and smartphone Gameloft releases grew by 55% in sales in the first semester to reach some $32.7 million (23 million euro), and contributed to the developer’s consolidated sales of nearly $109.2 million. That’s an increase of 15% when compared to the same period last year. The biggest chunk of Gameloft’s sales fell on Europe with 33%, followed by North America with 28%.

The growth is set to continue in the second half of the year as Gameloft plans on releasing some twenty new titles for smartphones and tablets. The company also mentioned the growing importance of emerging markets and technologies like social network gaming and smart TVs.

Gameloft is the studio behind games like the Asphalt series and NOVA shooters, but it’s not the only company to ride the mobile wave. EA Sports has also suggested that with so many platforms all offering the same games, it might be a wise move to offer their gaming portfolio for one fixed price across different systems. Even if this doesn’t happen in the near future, though, mobile gaming seems to have established itself as a key factor, one that gaming producers can’t afford to ignore.

source: Gameloft via IntoMobile

The Huawei Vision might not have the guts to compete with dual-core equipped powerhouses ruling the market, but with a 3.7” and 1GHz chip powering Gingerbread it definitely has what it takes to sell 1 million. And that’s the exact sales target of the Shenzhen network equipment and phone maker Huawei.

The Vision is among the company’s first attempts to go head-to-head with the big names in the industry, but it also kickstarts a series of smartphones for the company that are expected to be better linked to the cloud. Huawei’s upcoming Cloud+ platform is expected to come with functionality similar to what services like iCloud aim to offer: remote access to media and applications. That certainly makes sense given the company’s networking background, but Huawei was mum when it comes to particular details about the cloud features.

The Huawei Vision comes in an aluminum unibody frame with a variety of color options including gold, silver and charcoal, and you can notice how much thought went into the stylish design right away. It’s pretty slim at 9.9mm and not too heavy either tipping the scales at 121g. The handset also features a curved 3.7-inch display (a la Nexus S).

When it comes to the pure hardware muscle, the 1GHz chip is of the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8255 variety, supported by 512MB of RAM. On the back, there’s a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and capable of capturing 720p HD videos. Connectivity is well covered with Wi-FI b/g/n, Bluetooth, microUSB and a microSD card slot recognizing cards of up to 32GB.

On the software side, Gingerbread is skinned with Huawei’s own 3D carousel interface allowing you to quickly access your home panes with a quick swipe. The phone will also ship with the smash hit Angry Birds pre-installed.

The phone is coming to select markets including the UK (no word on the US) this September, and we can only keep our fingers crossed that Huawei can get the pricing right to make Android space even more competitive. So far, the company has only clarified that it expects the phone to sell for no less than some $305 (2,000 yuan) off contract.

source: Huawei via Engadget

We know the merits of Android handsets equipped with Texas Instruments’s OMAP family of chipsets. They usually shine at benchmarks, and the image processing algorithms are second to none.

The only downside is that this and last year mostly Qualcomm and NVIDIA were placing their silicon inside Android handsets. Qualcomm because it has tightly integrated chipsets that include the baseband radios, and Nvidia because it was first to get its foot in the door with Honeycomb tablets and dual-core phones.

It seems that Google has been watching closely the roadmaps of major chipset manufacturers, though, and is preparing to enter a love affair with Texas Instruments for its upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) version that will merge the smartphone and tablet experience.

TI representatives have been showing the presentation slide on the right for a while now, claiming it will be used for happenings “in the fall”, when ICS is expected to be unveiled.

Now we don’t know which exactly of the OMAP chipsets will be the main man in future Android phones and tablets with ICS, but there are several plausible candidates. It won’t be the 2GHz dual-core OMAP5 family, since it’s not supposed to ship for another year. We’d bet on the 2011 crop, of course – OMAP4430 is already found in the BlackBerry PlayBook and LG Thrill 4G, so it’s old news, but Q3 should see the launch of the dual-core 1.5GHz OMAP4440, which might go into ICS handsets and tablets.

Even better, early next year, when the majority of manufacturers should have flagship handsets with ICS, Texas Instruments is supposed to ship OMAP4470, which goes up to 1.8GHz, and, more importantly, features the PowerVR SGX544 GPU, which is insanely fast.

Now, we’ve heard a few rumors about an upcoming Samsung phone with 1.8GHz dual-core chipset, which will, however, be outside of the Galaxy family. We also know that one of the reference designs for the Nexus Prime given to Google for review is by Samsung, and, rumor has it, it has won the hearts and minds at Mountain Dew, so that might be it.

Couple this with the fact that these speculations are pointing to late fall release for a monster Samsung/Google handset, plus the Koreans announcement that the next, 2GHz version of its own Exynos silicon, won’t be entering phones until next fall, and we might as well see a Nexus with TI chip inside announced by the end of this year, as an ICS poster child.

Either way, if TI has scored a partnership with Google over ICS devices, this will bode very well for its bottomline and stock price, and the company’s OMAP family surely deserves it.

via SlashGear

The latest breakdown of OS software build on Android devices shows that Froyo still leads the way. Android 2.2 is on 55% of Android branded phones and tablets. But while still a clear majority, Froyo has lost 10% of its share since the last report as the Gingerbread build has become more ingrained into the Android platform.

Following Android 2.2 is the 23.7% of Android devices powered by Android 2.3.3 and the top of the line 2.3.4. One of the major differences between the two is that the latter is enabled for gTalk video chat. 15.2% of Android powered phones and tablets still run Android 2.1 while the 2% of Android 1.6 follows.

The survey was conducted over a two-week period ended August 1st, 2011 and shows that of the tablet optimized Honeycomb builds, Android 3.1 has the largest share among all Android devices with .7%, followed by the .4% of Android 3.0 and the .2% of Android 3.2

As more phones get updated to Gingerbread, we should continue to see Froyo’s percentage drop while Gingerbread eventually takes over the majority of Android models. By that time, Ice Cream Sandwich should start to appear in a small number of phones.

source: Google via AndroidCentral

Despite losing 10% of its share of Android phones since the last survey, Android 2.2 still is in the majority of Android handsets

When Honeycomb tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Asus Eee Pad Transformer seem to set the standard amongst the crop, there are a lot of expectations riding with newcomers – like the recently launched Toshiba Thrive.

Pricing, as we’ve all come to know by now, can dictate how well a particular product will sell, but seeing that the Thrive is currently selling for $429.99 for the base 8GB Wi-Fi model, some might still view it as being pricey – especially when compared to the 16GB Asus Eee Pad Transformer.

Fortunately, eBay’s Daily Deal manages to place the spotlight on the Toshiba Thrive, which is now priced for a limited time at $379. Needless to say, some will be attracted to the affordable price point, but considering that it might not be the best-looking Honeycomb tablet out there with its massive girth, you’ll have to weigh in the pros and cons of picking one up.

Regardless of that, there appears to be plenty of value with it since its internal hardware is identical to what’s offed by the competition – meaning, it’s packing some modernized goods under the carriage. So if you’re considering on picking one up, you’d better think fast on your feet since quantities are limited.
source: eBay via IntoMobile