Three major Android manufacturers, Samsung, HTC and Motorola, have all recently announced their big-screened flagship handsets, just in time for the holiday season. Now that everybody’s cards are on the table, we take another look, comparing the 4.65-inch Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich bearing Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the rugged and super-slim 4.3-inch Motorola Droid RAZR and the Beats Audio sporting and retina busting 720p 4.3-inch HTC Rezound. If you are an Android fan, it’s never been harder to choose a new smartphone, hopefully our handy comparison, which is after the break, will help you make up your mind.
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You can now watch the full 52 minutes and 55 seconds of Samsung’s London event showing off their Super AMOLED HD duo, the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Nexus. The Note was the star of the show, with Samsung representatives going over every detail of the 5.3-inch tablet-phone and embellishing over the S Pen stylus. However the last fifteen minutes were devoted to the upcoming Galaxy Nexus — if you missed it, you can watch the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 event here.
You can find the video after the break. We should let you know that you can get the Galaxy Note right now in Europe (U.S. availability still under speculation), while the Galaxy Nexus will roll-out first in Europe on November 17th and a U.S. release will follow shortly after.
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Samsung has officially confirmed, at its Galaxy Note event in London, that the Android 4.0 bearing Galaxy Nexus will be available in the UK and the rest of Europe come Thursday November 17.
Amazon UK already has the Galaxy Nexus up for pre-order for £549 without a commitment, and as we’ve found in these cases, it’s good to get ahead in line. As far as UK carriers go the Galaxy Nexus is expected to be available on Vodafone, O2 and Three, but you might want to check directly with them for availability.
Note that in the U.S., Verizon has already has confirmed that it will carry the smartphone and has put up a registration page, where you can ask to be notified when the Galaxy Nexus becomes available. Other carriers have yet confirm availability.
For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, it’s going to be the first device to carry Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s also a large screened, 4.65-inch, Super AMOLED HD curved beauty. We’ve already discussed how Samsung managed to achieve a 1280×720 HD resolution on the AMOLED screen using PenTile Matrix technology and any caveats that might entail. Well there has also been a lot of discussion whether the Galaxy Nexus features the scratch resistant and durable Gorilla Glass to protect its large display.
Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass, have now confirmed through Twitter that the Galaxy Nexus doesn’t use their trademark technology.
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We quickly covered this issue when we originally reported on Samsung’s new Super AMOLED HD display technology back in August, way before the Galaxy Nexus was announced. All current smartphone HD (over 1280×720 resolution) AMOLED displays that Samsung is producing use PentTile Matrix technology. The displays can be found in Samsung’s just announced, Android 4.0 bearing, Galaxy Nexus and the 5.3-inch mammoth Galaxy Note.
So what’s the big deal you might ask, well display purists will tell you that PenTile technology is sort of Samsung’s way of cheating into getting a higher resolution display, overcoming current AMOLED manufacturing limitations of packing ‘subpixels’ more densely.
In standard RGB flat panel screens, each pixel is made of three subpixels, one for each color, Red, Green and Blue. Samsung’s PenTile screens have only two subpixels per pixel, and instead ‘borrow’ subpixels from neighboring pixels to ‘mix’ the right color. This leads to a blurring of sharp edges, while white blocks may get a tint at the edges. The higher pixel density a PenTile display has, the less profound these effects would be.
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If you missed the Google and Samsung event, when was it streaming live, you can now watch the entire event below. The event covered most of the basics of what’s new in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and of course unveiled Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy Nexus.
If you are a fan of little green robots, you will find the video after the break.
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So it’s now official, both the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich have just been announced. If you had watched the online live stream from Hong Kong you already know the meat. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is one handsome phone with killer specs.
We had already gotten most of the specs in previous rumors but here is the official recap. The new Nexus will be a very large screened device, with a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD (1280×720 resolution) display. It will run on a 1.2GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 processor, with 1GB of RAM and 16 or 32GB of built-in storage. It has LTE/HSPA+ radios, Bluetooth 3.0 (no 4.0 like the iPhone 4S and Motorola RAZR), NFC, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, proximity sensor and a barometer (say what!). The Galaxy Nexus only got a 5 megapixel back and 1.3 megapixel front-facing cameras but will be able to do 1080p video and motion panoramic photos.
All these are contained in a 135.5 x 67.94 x 8.94mm (5.33 x 2.67 x 0.35 inch) curved body — the LTE version will be a bit thicker — weighing 135 grams (4.76 ounces). The battery is 1750mAh.
The bigger news is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which has a new universal design (merging tablets with smartphones), new typography, a built-in photo editor, better multitasking interface with previews, notifications that can now be individually dismissed, face unlock, Android Beam to quickly share things with other NFC devices, resizable widgets and a host of other changes.
Head over after the break for more photos of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and a video showing-off the goodies.
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We’re only hours away from the official unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (or Nexus Prime) and we just go our most comprehensive spec list yet. The leaks come from a number of Asian websites and the source is supposed to be Japan’s NTT DoCoMo mobile operator. The phone is expected to be released on November 20th in Japan.
The leaked specs are the same to the ones we’ve already reported, though we are still a bit surprised of the choice for a Texas Instruments processor over Samsung’s homegrown Exynos. Head across the break for the full list of specs, and be sure to also check out our rumor roundup for the Galaxy Nexus, HTC Vigor (Rezound) and Motorola Droid RAZR (Spyder)
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Three of the major Android manufacturers are each getting geared-up to release their new flagship handsets, all are large-screened, feature-rich, LTE Android smartphones.
Motorola and Samsung have events scheduled for tomorrow and HTC’s official announcement shouldn’t be far off. In anticipation of the announcements, we though of doing a recap, for all of you Android fans out there who like to live on the high-end. Here is what we know so far, though take everything we mention with a grain of salt as they are based on leaks and rumors.
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Two hotly anticipated Android smartphones have found their way on a Verizon Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) table. This means two things, first a release date is getting near, and second, they will of course be carried by Verizon.
The first handset is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (a.k.a. Nexus Prime), which we are expecting to be announced on October 19 (evening of October 18 in the U.S.). The second is the HTC Rezound (a.k.a. Vigor or DROID Incredible HD).
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The original event on October 11th was cancelled, which certainly created a lot of disappointment and anxiety to all those who can’t wait to get the official word on Google’s latest and greatest Android release, Android 4.0, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich.
Google and Samsung have just sent invites to a joint event to take place in Hong Kong on October 19 (October 18 in the US).
As with all previous big Android releases, we’re expecting a new Nexus device to be the first to carry the new operating system, and well, Samsung is the lucky manufacturer this time around. The Nexus Prime (or Galaxy Nexus) is expected to be a killer device, with a 4.65-inch Super AMOLED display sporting an HD 1280×720 resolution.
You can get a good look of both the Nexus Prime and Ice Cream Sandwich right here.
On the launch day, you will be able to get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich directly from Google as the event will be streaming live at youtube.com/android. The event starts at 10am HKT, 3am London time on the 19th, and 10pm on the 18th EST.
Just as we were getting warmed up for the release of the Nexus Prime and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on October 11th at the Unpacked event, Samsung and Google have come out with an announcement postponing the unveiling of the new product. The official word is:
Samsung and Google decide to postpone the new product announcement at CTIA Fall. We agree that it is just not the right time to announce a new product. New date and venue will be shortly announced.
The companies haven’t given a reason for the delay. We could speculate that the announcement was initially hurried to beat the shipping date of the new iPhone. Since an iPhone 5 hasn’t made an appearance, pressure for the two companies has eased leaving them some time to put any final touches to the device and software. But that’s only our own speculation.
In the meantime you can enjoy a video showing-off both the Nexus Prime and Android 4.0.
UPDATE: The two companies have now elaborated in a new statement that the postponement is out of respect to Steve Jobs: We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs’s passing
. Speculation now calls for rescheduling of the event for October 27th in London this time; clashing with Nokia World 2011 and the release of Nokia’s Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices.
You know that a new product launch is getting near when you have all sorts of leaks happening left and right. If you didn’t already know, the big news coming your way on the smartphone front is the announcement of the first Android 4.0 handset, rumored to be Samsung’s Nexus Prime (a.k.a. Galaxy Nexus) and happening at the next Unpacked event on October 11th.
The latest leak comes from the land of Dracula, mobilissimo.ro has posted a video of the Nexus Prime showing off the AMOLED HD beauty and most importantly Google’s latest Android build. A series of screen captures of the new OS are waiting for you together with the video after the break. Ice Cream Sandwich surely looks sweet!
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Next Tuesday, 11th of October, Samsung has another Unpacked event scheduled, this time headed for San Diego, California. The big news is that, this might be one of the most important moments for the Android ecosystem, the unveiling of the first Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” device: the Nexus Prime. Samsung has released a teaser video for the Unpacked event (which you can find after the break) showing a curvy smartphone with docking pins, citing “Something BIG is coming” and a Google logo making friends with a Samsung logo.
We’ve already reported on the rumored specs for the Nexus Prime, i.e. the device could sport a 4.6-inch Super AMOLED 1280×720 HD resolution display, 1.5GHz Processor, 5MP back and 1MP from cameras and shoot 1080p HD video.
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After we got official word from Google’s own Eric Schmidt, that Android’s next iteration, 4.0, codename Ice Cream Sandwich, is coming in October or November, speculation on the first handset to run it, is running high.
All bets are that Samsung is the lucky Nexus manufacturer this time around and the name of handset is Nexus Prime — Nexus Galaxy wouldn’t sound right, now would it? The latest leak comes from an unlikely source; a UK retailer just posted a webpage for the Nexus Prime listing a number of specs which we’ve already seen rumored for the handset.
The site lists: Android 4.0, 4.6-inch Super AMOLED, 1.5GHz Processor, 5MP Camera + F 1MP, 1080p HD Video, WiFi, GPS.
This could be a solid leak or just the attempt of a retailer to drive some free trafic to its website, it really remains to be seen.
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Well, well, well, it doesn’t get more official than this. Google Chairman and former CEO, Eric Schmidt, incidentally confirmed that the next big Android release, named Ice Cream Sandwich, should be coming this October of November. Eric Schmidt was at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco when he incidentally mentioned the timeframe for the release:
We have a new operating system, internally known as Ice Cream Sandwich, for some reason, which is being released in October/November; which everyone’s really excited about.
Ice Cream Sandwich is the update that will supposedly unite the smartphone (Gingerbread) and tablet (Honeycomb) versions of Android into one. This will hopefully make it easier for developers to create apps for different screen sizes and resolutions. It will also give smartphone users all of the new Honeycomb features, allow tablets to connect to peripherals and hopefully a few tasty surprises. As always, Google pairs a new Android version with a Nexus smartphone and this time around all fingers are pointed to Samsung’s rumored Nexus Prime.
You can check out the whole keynote video after the break, just letting you know that Eric’s comment is at exactly the 30:27 mark.
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We broke the news this morning about Samsung’s upcoming Super AMOLED Plus sporting smartphones. So what do we get now, a teaser video that ‘something big is coming’ at the Samsung Unpacked event at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin on September 1, 2011.
So what does a bunch of young hipsters have in their hands while treading the streets of old Europe? A ball of light? From the video, which you can find after the break, we can safely deduct that ‘something big’ will be a new smartphone. Could this be the announcement of the much rumored and awaited Nexus Prime, the first smartphone to run Android Ice Cream Sandwich on a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and a 4.65-inch 1280×720 Super AMOLED screen. Color us excited!
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So far Samsung hadn’t been able to pack pixels densely enough to create high definition AMOLED displays for mobile phones. By high definition (HD), we mean any display with a resolution higher than 1280×720 (720p). OLED-Info is now claiming that Samsung has been able to break the existing pixel density barrier.
The new technology will enable Samsung to create high-def AMOLED screens, named Super AMOLED HD, while the new fabrication process is said to also be cheaper than LCD screens, so expect quite a lot of devices to be packing these screens in the future. Compared to LCDs, AMOLED screens offer better viewing angles and better black levels. The new displays will use PenTile Matrix technology, that some argue does not offer the full resolution claimed, as each pixel is not made up of three (red, green, and blue) subpixels
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