In what we see as one more step towards our dream bendable phone, researchers at Queens University Human Media Lab in Ontario, Canada, demonstrated a flexible display gizmo, whose software can be navigated by different bending gestures like flexing the screen’s corners.

The inventors call this PaperPhone, but the concept can also be used in other portable devices, like tablet computers. “This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cellphone, flipping the corner to turn pages or writing on it with a pen. It can be best described as a flexible iPhone“, commented creator Roel Vertegaal, the director of the Human Media Lab.

From what we see in the pictures and video below, this thing is actually running some sort of Android, and the idea about flexing the screen around to invoke actions from the mobile OS can certainly come in handy – if you are wearing gloves, for instance. In the research paper PDF there appears to be a whole set of suggested bend gesture movements for various navigational functions, based on user input, so you can hit the source link for some bedtime reading on the matter.

While we are seeing some pretty rigid contraption to be attached to the PaperPhone, where presumably some of the non-elastic circuitry is, the flexible E-ink display, which transfers its shape-shifting into software commands, is a step in the right direction for our dream future of bendable smartphones. We’d still place our screen type preferences on Samsung, with its foldable AMOLED screen concept that doesn’t leave a crease in the middle, but perhaps the bending gesture idea can co-exist in concepts like the Samsung Skin, coupled with those flexible transparent batteries as well.

source: HumanMediaLab via LATimes

Don Bailey and Matthew Solnik from iSec Partners demonstrated how to break into a car, hacking into its remote control system via text messages.

Their research was demoed at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, and they unlocked a Subaru Outback and started the engine from afar using an Android handset and the so-called ‘war texting’. You need to set your own GSM network around the car for that, and then intercept the password authentication text messages between the server and the car, all in the span of a few hours.

Actually the researchers are not worried about breaking in cars, “Gone in 60 seconds”-style, but rather that the same remote control systems with text messaging updates are in traffic lights and security cameras, as well as the power grid and water supply infrastructure. If anyone with skills, an Android handset and some relatively inexpensive wireless network equipment can hack into the remote control system of popular car brands, what’s to stop someone from doing it on a grander scale, they argued.

“I could care less if I could unlock a car door. It’s cool. It’s sexy. But the same system is used to control phone, power, traffic systems. I think that’s the real threat.”, said Don Bailey for CNN.

source: TGDaily via Engadget

There is no doubt that the Motorola XT531 Android 2.3 Gingerbread phone is cute as a button, which begs the question why it won’t be seeing the shelves in the US.

Its affordable nature is going to Europe, under the moniker Motorola Fire XT (no associations with eXTinguisher, please), and to Latin America as the Motorola Spice XT some time this fall.

We guess that leaves the uninspiring XT531 name for China, where the handset will be available as soon as this month. Buyers in Hong Kong and Taiwan will have access to Motorola’s SHOP4APPS service, besides Android Market.

Motorola XT531 carries a 3.5″ display, 5MP camera with flash, 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM, with all the requisite connectivity options and a microSD expansion slot. Special attention has been paid to the battery, which is the generous 1540mAh, promising eight hours of talk time out of the handset, and 28 days of standby, even with 3G left on.

Another point for the phone is that it will have a dual-SIM version in certain Asian markets, where this feature is extremely popular.

source: Motorola

Taiwanese phone maker HTC posted record sales in July reaching nearly $1.56 billion (T$45.11 billion), growing 83.3% year-on-year as Android sales remained strong. In June consolidated sales of the company stood at $1.55 billion. The company’s current high-end offerings include the HTC Sensation and HTC EVO 3D, both of which rely on dual-core processors and offer the company’s latest Sense UI 3.0.

HTC has also announced plans to buy Dashwire, a Seattle-based company focusing on delivering content from the cloud to various web-connected devices, for $18.5 million. The acquisition will help the Taiwanese company to widen its cloud offerings as Dashwire could bring valuable insight on syncing devices, but the move could also be seen as muscling up HTC’s innovation efforts and might help the company in its court struggles as Dashwire has licensed patents from Intellectual Ventures.

“People want access to all of their important content wherever they are on any device. The addition of Dashwire’s cutting-edge sync services and deep mobile cloud experience strengthens our ability to deliver these services,” HTC commented. Dashwire’s cloud syncing services will be built in to extend HTC’s Sense UI.

source: HTC via Reuters

Asus might be having problems with the 3D overlay and some others for its 7″ Honeycomb tablet Eee Pad MeMO 3D, according to a spokesperson of Asus Netherlands.

Thus the Asus Eee Pad MeMO 3D might be pushed for some time in 2012, or be cancelled altogether, if the issues don’t receive a prompt and cheap resolution. While Asus is not the only manufacturer delaying its 7″ Honeycomb tablet, as Google just recently updated its tablet OS for this size, it will still be sad to see an innovative form factor like a 7-incher with 3D overlay go the way of the Dodo bird.

The Asus Eee Pad MeMO was first shown at the CES show this year in January, then officially announced by Asus in May with the surprise addition of a 3D screen layer as the Asus Eee Pad MeMO 3D. Now it seems that the announcement has been premature and, either Asus has determined that there is not much market for such a slate, and is weaseling its way out of the concept, or it has just plain run into production difficulties.

source: TabletsMagazine (translated) via Tinhte

If you are one of those brave souls that are always poking around your phone despite that the warranty period just started, you might have gotten unlucky with the Motorola PHOTON 4G and hard-bricked the device, trying to go above and beyond what its creator and carrier intended.

Fortunately, if your Motorola PHOTON 4G had been lying at the bottom of your drawer after unsuccessful attempt to root or apply some other voodoo on it, now XDA-Devs have a solution.

A System Boot File (SBF) leaked on a thread in the forum, and the process to apply it to your comatose device is fairly straightforward, considering some others we’ve come across with. The Motorola PHOTON 4G (gently referred to as MoPho on XDA-Devs) will require activation again after the SBF is applied

Working through the SBF will restore your phone and, naturally, you will lose that root you’ve applied, but you can solve this problem afterwards.

source: XDA-Devs via BriefMobile

Set to enrich Verizon’s Android portfolio on August 25, the LG Enlighten leaked on the manufacturer’s corporate site, complete with a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

While the handset’s specs are nothing to write home about, at 800MHz processor and 3.2″ LCD touchscreen with 320×480 pixels, it is sure to come at a very affordable price point, and runs the newest Android 2.3 Gingerbread to boot.

The 3.2MP camera on the back shoots video at VGA resolution, the phone has 150MB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot, weighs 5.54 ounces and… that’s about it. Good thing is that all the connectivity options are here, like 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and the LG Enlighten has a generous 1500mAh battery, rated for six hours of talk time.

source: Droidlife

Texas Instrument’s Brian Carlson says that by 2013, it will be producing OMAP chips using a 20nm process. And this line of chips will allow for “true all-day computing” according to Carlson. With low battery life currently a major issue for Android phones, a processor that allows a phone to be used all-day without a recharge is sure to find a place under the hood of some high-end smartphones using the Google open source OS.

Discussing a 2013 OMAP release would seem to put the kibosh on rumors that TI would be selling the line after the launch of OMAP5 in 2012. Speculation was centered on a bidding war between Intel and NVIDIA that would have brought some big megabucks to the Dallas based semiconductor giant.

Currently, TI’s OMAP4 processors can be found on high end phones like the Motorola DROID 3, and the chip is expected to be on the Motorola DROID Bionic. Earlier this year, as we reported, TI announced the quad-core OMAP5 with 2 cores running up to 2GHz each with 2 others acting like go-fers to fetch the coffee and donuts to save battery life and run things quickly and smoothly. With the OMAP5, 3D video can be captured in HD. The OMAP5 also improves upon current picture taking technology allowing adjustments for a shaking camera, and motion blur. Augmented reality will also get a boost from this chip thanks to better object and text recognition. The TI OMAP5 is expected to have 3 times the performance and 5 times the graphics power of the current chip. But when it comes to improving battery performance, we will have to wait for 2013.

source: TechCrunch

Even though we recently reported about the September 8th launch date for the Motorola DROID Bionic, ever since Motorola sent the phone back to the plant to be re-designed, we never really had a firm idea of what the phone would look like. But DroidLife has obtained some pictures said to be that of the much awaited device and now we have a much clearer idea of what every Verizon customer with an upgrade in his pocket is waiting for.

The back consists of the soft touch material that you can find on the back of the Motorola DROID 3. The hump on the device that is near the top of the device on the DROID X and DROID X2 is more in the middle of the phone instead of being by the camera’s housing. This could be for the 4G chip. Compared to the Samsung DROID Charge, the Motorola DROID Bionic is bigger with a squared-off design as opposed to the former’s rounded corners. The difference in size could mean that the DROID Bionic will present with a 4.5 inch qHD display, and how glorious would that be?

Verizon’s first dual-core LTE enabled device is just a tad more than a month away, and for those who just can’t wait, just keep looking at the pictures. As we move closer to launch, we are sure that there will be some more photographs of the device that many thought would never get here.

source: DroidLife

Photographs of the Motorola DROID Bionic and the Samsung DROID Charge

The Amazon Appstore has become the whipping boy of developers recently because of missing features, troubling practices, and an ecosystem that is designed more to benefit Amazon than the developers. The Amazon Appstore launched in March, and last month the troubles for developers got to the point where some began to leave. The first story to get circulated around was from developer Bithack, which pulled its physics game, Apparatus, from the Appstore because of a number of problems with the way Amazon ran its store. Now, just a couple days ago developer Shifty Jelly pulled its Pocket Casts app from the Amazon Appstore and posted a scathing review of the service.

Developer issues

Both Bithack and Shifty Jelly have a number of issues which overlap. First up on both of the lists of complaints was the lengthy review process. Unlike the Android Market, which gets its own flak for being something of a wild west where anyone and anything goes, the Amazon Appstore has a slow approval process for both new apps and updates. Developers cite a 2 week long review process, and Bithack had to go through an extra week after its app was declined and had to be resubmitted. In a unified ecosystem like iOS, something like this wouldn’t be a problem, but because submissions are instant in the Android Market, it means that there will often be a newer, updated version of an app in the Android Market as compared to Amazon. Many times, this may not cause much of a problem, but there have been some big troubles. For example, when UberMedia was tagged by Twitter for TOS violations, Twidroyd became unusable. The update was pushed to the Android Market immediately once the issues were fixed, but the Amazon Appstore was left with an unusable Twidroyd app being downloaded by unknowing users…

Check out the full article at PhoneArena.com