Sony Ericsson officially becomes the first cell phone manufacturer to launch its own app channel in Android Market. It is a carrier-dependent feature, from what we understand, so not everywhere the My Apps option will be replaced by the Sony Ericsson channel, but it should have started rolling out as we speak. My Apps is still there, you just have to hit the menu button to access it, as it seems.

The idea is to group all apps that are specifically designed for the company’s handsets, under one roof. We bet this is a precursor to offering phone-specific apps too (nudge, wink, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play), like exclusive titles for the only Android handset with a dedicated game controller. As per Sony Ericsson, its own Android Market channel will:

” – Provide recommendations to help you find the best games & apps that enhance your Sony Ericsson ‘most entertaining’ experience.
– Provide a way to easily find original apps from Sony Ericsson such as Timescape plugins etc.
– From time to time offer exclusive games & apps only available in this channel.
– Help our developer partners promote their apps & games giving them a highlighted market space to our consumers.”

We are already marking a trend here, with phone and chipset manufacturers, as well as other entities, creating their own tidy little universes inside the ragtag Cosmos of Android Market, all in the name of product differentiation.

source: SonyEricsson

In the latest battle of epic proportions, dual-core behemoths meet the new contender: the HTC Sensation 4G. Does it have the technical guts and software polish to win the dual-coreathon kicked off by the T-Mobile G2x and Motorola Atrix 4G? To see its prospects we broke down specs meticulously, but before jumping into that let’s mention the software that runs the show.

HTC takes pride in its flashy Sense UI and in its newest 3.0 version it has quietly improved not only the looks, but the functionality as well with dynamic updates of widgets straight from the lockscreen. To support its memory-hungry muscle, HTC has included 768MB of RAM and a 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor. Samsung’s TouchWiz UI is much less demanding, but you don’t get that many snazzy effects, but rather a clean down-to-business interface. It’s those two handsets that will come out with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, giving them a slight edge over the Froyo-powered T-Mobile G2x and Motorola Atrix 4G. While LG went with vanilla build of the green robot, Motorola chose the controversial Motoblur skin.

In terms of hard silicon, the Sensation 4G matches the clock speed of the Galaxy S II, but its slightly less RAM leaves it second. The Galaxy S II also scores a first with Bluetooth 3.0 + HS, capable of delivering 21Mbps transfers and we’re eager to test it. And here’s the tale of the tape: the Samsung Galaxy S II stands out with its razor sharp 0.33″ body and unmatched weight of 4.09 ounces. The rest is the poetry of numbers and we’ll let you enjoy it in the detailed breakdown below. Already got a favorite? Feel free to leave your opinions in the comments below.

It’s claimed that the LG Revolution, which is set to be the first Verizon handset to offer Voice over LTE (our demonstration here), is in the good, loving hands of some (official) testers, and this may be treated as a massive hint this handset is well on course to be released in Q2 of this year.

Truth be told, we live in a day and age where we can honestly say there is nothing that revolutionary about the LG Revolution’s specs – a 4.3-inch screen with a 480 x 800 resolution, single-core 1GHz Snapdragon processor, two cameras and Froyo are not specs that leave the mobile world in awe, and yet they are quite respectable, not to mention that the best thing about this handset seems to be its VoLTE feature, which, unfortunately, won’t be available at launch, as it is scheduled to go live sometime in 2012.

While we are patiently waiting for this handset to hit the shelves, you are strongly advised to check our LG Revolution hands-ons here and here.

source: Android Central

We saw the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro 2, also known as the SK17i or Mango, a mere week ago, but now it’s launch seems ever so close as it poses for the camera again. This time it appears in the hands of a SE employee at the company’s Shenzhen factory, who managed to confirm that the processor is to be of the Snapdragon family clocked at 1GHz. The Chinese insider mentions that it could be one of the earliest Snapdragons, the QSD8650, but we’ll take this with a grain of salt as we expect to see a newer generation of the CPU. What seems much more credible is that the Xperia Mini Pro 2 will sport a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera on the back, capable of recording 720p HD videos.

It comes with a display measuring at least 3” with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. By the looks of it, we’ll have a customizable SE skinning on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread. In terms of design, the chiclet-style full QWERTY keyboard slides out from the side, while on the front there is a single large physical button surrounded by two capacitve keys.

Another insider suggests that the handset will come with 512MB of RAM and 1GB of ROM when it becomes wider available in May. Guesses are that the Xperia Mini Pro 2 will carry an off-contract price of 60 euro less than the Xperia Neo, but while other details are scarce, there are plenty of pictures to illustrate what’s coming in the near future. So what are your thoughts about the Mini Pro 2? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion in the comments below!

source: IT168 (translated)

Intel is definitely left out in the cold to snivel watching the mobile revolution unveiling in front of its very eyes. First Microsoft abandoned it to diversify into ARM-based chipsets, which fit mighty power in a small power-sipping form factor, then Nokia dealt a blow, ditching its MeeGo devotion.

What’s the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer to do but pick itself up, dust itself off, and start addressing the realities. The mobile Atom family will start gracing tablets in its Oak Trail reincarnation as soon as this summer, and Intel’s marketing director said the other day that the company will bring Android 3.0 Honeycomb compatibility to Atom officially. Take that, Microsoft! Google also doesn’t mind hedging its bets, since Andy Rubin said the other day the Android team is supportive of putting Google’s mobile OS on as many device form factors and processor architectures, as possible.

We already saw at CES in January $600 Oak Trail tablets from indie manufacturers, running the Windows 7, Android and MeeGo trifecta, and that’s exactly what’s in store for this summer. The developers claimed 6-8 hours of battery life in Windows mode, which is not iPad 2 class, but still leaps and bounds better than what we had with Atom-powered tablets until now, and you have a full-blown OS. The battery life when running Android, however, is claimed to be the astounding sixteen hours on such Oak Trail tablets, so that’s something to keep an eye on.

Oak Trail is still sporting the old PowerVR SGX535 graphics subsystem, that was in the first iPad, tweaked to deliver Full HD video playback, so even with Oak Trail Intel will still be trailing the dual-core iOS and Honeycomb tablets in horsepower. We wouldn’t underestimate the manufacturing prowess of Intel, though, and the chip giant said it plans to produce its next tablet chipset, codenamed Cloverview, with the 32nm process (today’s dual-core chipsets are done with 45nm manufacturing), which will mean even more power in a smaller footprint at lower battery consumption.

source: PCWorld

HTC’s press event brought a new treat to your senses – the HTC Sensation with dual-core processor and Super LCD screen, but if you’ve ever wondered how it all looked like in real life, now you can partake in the excitement of yesterday’s London announcement.

The Sensation is the latest flagship by HTC and sports an all-new version of Sense UI supporting various dynamically updated widgets straight from the lockscreen. The phone comes with what looks like a very capable 8MP snapper with dual-LED flash featuring instant capture, which translates into nearly instanteneous shots. The handset is to hit shelves as soon as May in Europe, while in the States it is set to arrive in the summer months on T-Mobile. For everything rest we have a full hands-on here, but you’ll have to check out the video below to get a sense of the atmosphere in London.

It would appear that Motorola DROID X users have finally received their serving of Gingerbread thanks to an quietly executed OTA download. There is one minor problem-those who have rooted their phone will lose root access with the download and the new Bootloader that comes with the upgrade prevents the user from regaining the root access.

More speculation centers around a .jar file that allegedly says the word Netflix in it. This could indicate that the video rental app will be coming soon to the device.

The Motorola DROID X might no longer be Verizon’s flagship handset considering that the HTC ThunderBolt is now available with LTE on board. And the early word on the Droid X2 is that-as we reported- the phone will be sticking to 3G connectivity. But for those who don’t care about the difference between 3G and 4G speeds, and for those who worry more about battery life-the Motorola DROID X still remains a beast. Add to that the upgrade to Android 2.3, and some of the problems that have been reported by ThunderBolt users and the DROID X remains a relevant phone even in this age of dual-core, 4G enabled handsets.

If you are one of the lucky Motorola DROID X owners who have received the OTA upgrade, let us hear about your experiences with Gingerbread by filling out one of the comment boxes below!

source: AndroidForums via Phandroid

Verizon appears to be silently rolling out the Android 2.3.3 upgrade for the Motorola DROID X

You know something is brewing when an online wireless phone retailer begins to announce pre-orders for an upcoming Android powered tablet – which could literally hint to a very close launch.

We haven’t heard too many things regarding the G-Slate from T-Mobile, but that’s not stopping LetsTalk from opening up pre-orders for the tablet starting tomorrow. Yeah, you heard that right! You can essentially guarantee yourself the 3D photo/video taking capable tablet with a pre-order with LetsTalk, but more importantly, their announcement could possibly hint to a relatively close launch in the near future.

The rumors have previously pinpointed to April 20th as being the launch date for both the T-Mobile G2x and the G-Slate tablet – so the news about LetsTalk offering pre-orders for the tablet could provide some credibility to that speculated April 20th release date.

source: Twitter via TmoNews

Although we’ve been seeing some good indicators regarding the Motorola XOOM with Sprint, the latest reporting about the Honeycomb filled tablet with the pin dropping network throws a pickle into the mix.

Just when we were hoping to see a WiMAX driven Motorola XOOM in the very near future, we’re now hearing reports that Sprint will basically offer the Wi-Fi only version of the tablet first – then some time after that, we’ll see the WiMAX variant. However, it’s not known exactly what kind of time frame the wait will be between when the Wi-Fi only XOOM is released and when the WiMAX version becomes available.

Additionally, it’s rather difficult to confirm whether or not this move is possibly related to technical issues with Honeycomb, or rather, something that’s happening due to the exclusive deal that Verizon has with the tablet.

Let’s just hope that it’s not a long wait considering that other tablets will be making their presence known – which may lessen the desire for a WiMAX Motorola XOOM.

source: BGR

Possibly related to Google’s recent new promotions and deals with its check-in feature with Latitude, we’re greeted with a minor update to Google Maps for Android which brings it up to v.5.3.1.

There’s nothing much in terms of new features with this update, but instead, we basically find some bug fixes that help improve some of its Latitude features. Specifically, the new version of Google Maps for Android essentially corrects some bugs with the auto check-in and Manage My Places. Aside from those two specific items addressed, there really isn’t anything else from this update.

So if you plan on using the location based check-in features with the app, just be sure to install the new update so you’re all set to get those nifty new deals.

via Android Central