A source for BGR is saying that Google, possibly feeling the heat from an expected late September/early October launch of the Apple iPhone 5, is planning on moving up the release of Ice Cream Sandwich and the early devices that will be powered by the latest Android build. One possibility is that a next-gen model of the Nexus line will be the first or among the first handsets to rollout with the latest Android build.

While at this point everything pertaining to an Ice Cream Sandwich launch is mere speculation, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a launch of an early Ice Cream Sandwich device on Verizon since the carrier will have a large number of ready made buyers with all of those Motorola DROID owners coming up to the 2 year anniversary of their purchase. And of course, Verizon will presumably be one of the carriers that will be offering the Apple iPhone 5 when it is launched. Google will want to re-up those Motorola DROID owners with expiring contracts before they get a gander of what the next iPhone might bring.

source: BGR

Not to be forgotten amongst the heap of newer Honeycomb tablets that are on the market, the 3D video recording capable T-Mobile G-Slate is more than likely to start receiving its Honeycomb 3.1 tasting tomorrow; August 10th.

Actually, LG says that they’ll be rolling it out some time today, but device owners would more than likely see it come in tomorrow – especially when it’s being rolled out in waves. Either way, it’s expected to arrive over the course of the next few days for the majority of people.

As we all know, Android 3.1 Honeycomb isn’t a dramatic upgrade, but rather, T-Mobile G-Slate owners will find the host of improvements to be more than satisfactory in the near term. In fact, it features some UI refinements, connectivity for USB accessories, the recent apps list is now scrollable to see all opened apps, certain core widgets are resizable, support for external keyboard, and some updates to some of the preloaded apps.

Taking into account that it was one of the very first Honeycomb tablets to arrive on the scene, the update surely did take some time to come to fruition, but it’s nonetheless nice to see it finally here.

source: LG via TmoNews

Market research firm Kantar Worldpanel has released its newest numbers for the mobile phone sales for the past 12 weeks. The numbers include data from 7 areas around the world including: USA, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. Some of the numbers aren’t so surprising, like the fact that Symbian has taken a dive worldwide, or that Android is selling like gangbusters. Some of the numbers are pretty shocking though. Two of the most surprising leaps in sales came from Germany and France. In Germany, Windows Phone 7 is starting to make a run pulling in 7.1% of the sales for the 12 weeks ending July 12, 2011. In France, Bada is making an even more impressive run pushing up to 9.6% of sales.

Overall, smartphones are booming, as we all knew. In Great Britain alone, 67% of all mobile phone sales were smartphones. And, smartphones made up at least 50% of all mobile phone sales in the USA, Australia, Great Britain and Germany. Kantar says that Italy, Spain and France are expected to cross that threshold sometime within the next quarter.

Android is leading the way with over 50% of sales across the 7 regions for the time frame, with iOS coming in second at 25%. Not surprisingly, Symbian was the big loss leader across most regions, except for the US where it never really had much market share to begin. Instead, the US had BlackBerry losing a huge chunk of its share, although BlackBerry held relatively steady in other areas.

source: Kantar Worldpanel via WMPU

A short 10 second video shows off the new LG Prada K2, a high-end device that is related to the first capacitive touchscreen handset, the LG Prada. The new device has some mighty fine high-end specs such as a second generation 4.3 inch NOVA display with 1,000 nits to keep the screen well-lit. Android 2.3 is running the show while a dual-core processor of undetermined speed is under the hood. A rear and front-facing camera come in at 8MP and 1.3MP respectively while a 21Mbps HSPA+ radio is aboard.

Like the LG Prada and the LG Prada II, it is expected that the LG Prada K2 will not be available in the States. The device will be thin, coming in at less than 9mm thin. It will be a stylish device, as you would expect from any item with the Prada name on it. While the first 2 versions of the LG Prada offered a touchscreen and some decent features, both models were handicapped by not being a smartphone. With the LG Prada K2, not only is the hardware much improved, but with Android Gingerbread on board, so is the software.

source: Pocketnow via AndroidCentral

LG Prada K2 from Evan Blass on Vimeo.

A new study by Professor Dennis Gallatta at the Harvard Human Factors in Design lab has tested which smartphone OS is the easiest to navigate for first time users. The study found that iPhone and Windows Phone 7 are easier to use than either Android or BlackBerry, but the testing was fairly limited, meaning the results may not be as reliable as one would hope.

Of course, we don’t want to become the official naysayers of all studies done in the mobile world, but when doing a usability study on smartphones, it seems a bit silly to limit the test to just 3 tasks: making a call, adding a contact, and sending a text. Those three tasks are probably the least likely tasks for a smartphone user to perform (or at least the first two of the three tasks), especially when there is music to hear, pictures to take, videos to watch, web pages to browse, e-mails to read, and Angry Birds to launch. At the very least, it seems that the study could have added purchasing an app from each platform’s app store, or performing a web search.

Each test was rated from 1 to 5 stars, 5 being that the task was very easily performed. iPhone and WP7 each had a total of 11 stars for the 3  tasks, followed by Android with 9, and BlackBerry with 8. Android was the only OS to score a perfect 5 on a task, and that was for making a call, although that was followed by a 1 in adding a contact. There should be a couple of notes made on the study as is: first, the Android phone used was an HTC device meaning it had the Sense UI, and didn’t include the Contacts app on the homescreen. Other UIs and phones include that on the homescreen which theoretically could have made this task easier to complete. Alternatively, in the sending a text task, the only user that didn’t have to initiate a new SMS was the iPhone user, who merely replied to an SMS (and seemingly didn’t know how to get back to the Messaging home screen.)

That said, it seems like the real winner may be Windows Phone, but as mentioned before, there is far more to using a smartphone than the 3 tasks covered here. And, the minimalist icons of Windows Phone did seem to lead to confusion, which may hurt overall usage. As always, UI usability could just be a matter of personal preference, with the exception of BlackBerry, which just needs a major overhaul. Of course, we’d need to see a more complete study to come to any real conclusions, but this was interesting nonetheless. Check out the full video below to see the fumbling noobs!

source: Human Factors via WMPU

Convinced that your smartphone is immune to malware? Well, as long as you don’t download any apps coming from suspicious sources, then you are virtually safe, but the thing is that every single mobile platform has its own security flaws exposing your privacy at risk.

The latest vulnerability that was brought to our attention targets Android users, and although it has not caused any damage yet, it has the potential to give you quite a headache. It has been discovered that “a design flaw” in the Android operating system could allow for unwanted pop-ups to appear whenever a set application is running thus defiling your smartphone with annoying pop-ups. However, if executed properly, the flaw could potentially be used for phishing attacks to be targeted at your device.

In a nutshell, when the malware detects that your banking app or e-mail client, for example, is running, it can launch an identically-looking pop-up app asking for your credentials. What makes things worse is that the execution of the pop-up app can happen so fast that the user would probably never realize what has happened until it is too late. The malware could even install itself as a service and run seamlessly in the background even after the phone is rebooted.

There have been no registered cases of the so-called design flaw being used in a malicious way, but a proof-of-concept application has been demonstrated just recently at the DefCon hacking convention. That is why we have said it before and we will say it again – you should always be extra careful when downloading apps from any shady-looking software marketplaces as you never know what might be coming along with them.

source: CNET

The 3.7-inch Huawei Vision aims to bring the best of both worlds – stylish body flavored with Gingerbread on the software side and an affordable price tag. It’s not cutting edge in terms of pure specs and you wouldn’t expect this from Huawei just yet, but it covers all the bases and aims to make an entrance in cloud sharing with Huawei’s upcoming Cloud+ platform. The phone has now got its own promo video which depicts all the beauty of Huawei’s own 3D-esque interface running on top of Android 2.3, but it’s worth watching for one more reason – the refined looks of the handset.

Under the hood of the Huawei Vision, a Snapdragon chip roars in with 1GHz of clock speed, while 512MB of RAM back it up. In addition, the 5-megapixel LED flash-equipped shooter on the back is capable of recording 720p HD videos. In terms of connectivity, you’re also well covered with Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth, microUSB and support for microSD cards of up to 32 gigs.

The Shenzhen network equipment maker is set to make a strong stand with the Vision – it plans to sell more than a million devices when the phone starts shipping in September. The US launch date however wasn’t yet announced. Don’t expect this to be among the cheapest Androids though – with a price tag of no less than $305 off contract, it aims to compete with plenty of mid-range offerings. Does it have what it takes to succeed? The phone has just cleared the FCC, so it’s one step closer to getting released, but in the meantime feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.

source: Huawei via GSM Arena

AT&T’s LG Thrill 4G might have been delayed until August 21st, but meanwhile it also showed up in Best Buy’s product catalog for August under the LG Thrill 3D moniker. The 3D-enabled handset was put up for pre-order at RadioShack, but the initial release date of August 7th was pushed and pre-orders were extended to August 15th.

A tipster of ours now confirmed that Best Buy is expected to launch the phone for pre-order soon, but had no further details about the device. Well, we already know plenty about the phone, which was launched as the LG Optimus 3D outside of the States. The 4.3-inch display on this powerhouse supports glasses-free 3D using a parallax barrier, which acts as a slit plate on top of the screen filtering content so your left and right eye see a slightly different variation of the same picture, thus achieving the 3D effect.

The Android-running LG Thrill 4G comes with a dual 5-megapixel camera setup for 3D image and video capture. Design-wise the phone mimics the Optimus 3D with both its solid heft and bulkiness – it weighs a considerable 5.92 ounces, but in exchange packs a lot of horsepower. Are you getting the Thrill 4G?

Thanks, optikawn!

Earlier today we reported that the Samsung Hercules appears to be the Samsung Galaxy S II variant for T-Mobile. But two more Android handsets seemingly set to join the lineup of the nation’s fourth largest carrier were both uncovered today. The ironically named LG Flip II is not a flip phone, but offers a side sliding QWERTY keyboard that is divided in two by a secondary display. It is not clear what the secondary display does in terms of functionality, and with specs for the phone fairly scarce, it is uncertain which build of Android will be on the model. Speculation centers on a September 14th launch.

The HTC Ruby is another Android model coming to T-Mobile. Lack of a genius button tells us that this will not be a ‘myTouch’ model. Without any hint of what the specs will be, we can’t file this as being a low-end or high-end model. Originally known also as the HTC Arrive, the Ruby actually started life as a Windows Phone 7 model as we reported back in January. Last month, leaked photos allowed us to say that the phone has a camera with dual LED flash and a 3.5mm audio jack, not the most important specs that you need to know about when picking a handset to buy. Four days later, we were able to tell you that the HTC Ruby is an Android flavored model. Unfortunately, that is where things still remain.

It is hard for T-Mobile customers to concentrate on anything right now besides the Samsung Hercules. And while the LG Flip II does have that unique screen that cuts the slide out landscape QWERTY in half, it will take more than a unique design to upstage the Samsung Galaxy S II. And as far as the HTC Ruby is concerned, it could be anything from a low-end budget special to a high-end Superphone. Right now it is Hercules who will be doing the heavy lifting for the carrier.

source: Pocketnow (HTC Ruby), TmoNews (LG Flip II)

The HTC Ruby

The LG Flip II

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