Rumors about the naming of the next Android iteration have been around ever since Honeycomb came out and it seems most of them were right. The Ice cream sandwich moniker has just been confirmed by a Google employee on the Android support forums.

What’s more interesting though is that the same forum member mentioned that it will bring a fix for the SweepGradient on paint on Android 3.0 Issue. And no – it’s not important what that class does (though it’s fairly obvious) – what matters is that Android Ice cream sandwich will be an update to Honeycomb. It could be the Android 3.1 that Adobe carelessly mentioned last week. Read more »

Samsung have just released their Galaxy S WiFi duo – the 4.0 and 5.0 models to the European market. After their tour around South Korea the large-screened media player/tablets with a touch of Android are now on sale in Russia and Switzerland with more countries expected to follow in the weeks to come.

The 4” and 5” Galaxy S WiFi versions run on Android 2.2 Froyo, but will get an update to 2.3 Gingerbread eventually. The lack of cellular radio aside, their internals are almost identical to the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S former flagship – a Hummingbird chipset, featuring a 1GHz CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS , 8 or 16GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot. Read more »

More proof, if proof was needed that 2011 is the year of the tablet in the geek calendar was just thrown our way by Sony. The Japanese manufacturer has just announced that it is joining the slate race with a couple of pretty cool looking devices.

The Sony S1 is a 9.4″ tablet, coming in the classic form factor, while the Sony S2 is a folding slate featuring a couple of 5.5″ touchscreen displays and a custom book-style UI. Both the S1 and the S2 are powered by a Tegra 2 chipset and run on the tablet-friendly Android 3.0 Honeycomb. Read more »

Smartphones just don’t get any more extravagant than the Sprint-bound Kyocera Echo these days. We got to spend some quality time with the dual-screened Android smartphone at a New York event and we thought you might be interested to know what our first impressions are.

With the dual-screen concept so extravagant, we too were pretty curious if there’s a niche for such devices. In theory the two 3.5” WVGA screens that form a common 4.7 UI pane with a resolution of 800 x 960 sounds pretty exciting. The second-gen Snapdragon inside also feels quite nice, though it doesn’t sound as groundbreaking as the display. Naturally we feel a dual-core CPU would have suited the dual screen UI better, but things aren’t looking too bad now either. Read more »

With Sony Ericsson being kind enough to unlock the XPERIA Arc bootloader, rooting the device was the only thing missing for a grand hacker slam. Well now we’ve got that one completed, thanks to the ever helpful XDA community.

The best part is that you can try this at home and get full access to the system folders of your very own XPERIA Arc. There is only a single step required (check out the source link) so it shouldn’t be a problem to anyone who knows their way around smartphones. You will need to unlock your bootloader first though, if you haven’t done so already. Read more »

Toshiba has been pretty open about its development of a Tegra 2-powered tablet that runs Honeycomb, but only now we see its official announcement, complete with pricing, release date and name. The bad news is that the Toshiba Regza AT300 will only be hitting Japan and we are still in the wait for European and American versions.

Anyway the Toshiba Regza AT300 10.1-incher looks like a pretty powerful beast with its Tegra 2 chipset, featuring a couple of Cortex-A9 cores, clocked at 1GHz. Yet its main feature remains the glasses-free 3D screen with a resolution of 1,280×800 pixels. The adaptive display features some new technology, which allows it to adjust color balance in addition to brightness depending on the ambient light. Read more »

Okay we can’t say we are stunned since the 1GHz Galaxy S II was already blazing fast, but 1.2GHz version benchmark results are still pretty impressive. Obviously Samsung has not only managed to crank the clock speed up a notch, but they have also improved their drivers as the tested unit is 25% faster than the one we had at the office.

Apparently in their current states the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II is about twice as good as the HTC Sensation (or Pyramid if you will) on Smartbench, where it got 3732 in productivity and 2431 in gaming and it even manages to beat it at Quadrant with the astounding 3053 points. Read more »

Several sites have just started offering a new unlock service for the iPhones out there. Requiring no jailbreak or any other tinkering of you beloved smartphone, the new service has a permanent effect, which means that you can safely update to future iOS revisions without undoing it. You will also be preserving your warranty as long as you haven’t voided it already.

The bad news? At $170 the solution is quite expensive. Also it’s unclear what dirty tricks were used for making this service a reality. Honestly, it’s the first time a similar service has been offered for the iPhone in the 3+ years of the existence of the lineup. Read more »

Okay we got carried away a bit there with the title. You see the video-capable Skype for Android version really appeared online, but it seems unable to run on anything, but the HTC Thunderbolt. So unless you have purchased the LTE-packing smartphone, you will need to wait for the official version or at least another leak to experience the video-call goodies of the new droid Skype.

Anyway we got to see the first review of the application thanks to the guys at AndroidCommunity.com. Except for the addition of video-calling to other mobile users and desktop clients alike there isn’t too many updates brought by the new version. The four tabs remain as they were and work just the way they used to. Read more »

Craving for that sweet Asus Eee Pad Transformer tablet, are we? Well if you live in the UK, get that credit card of yours ready as the slate has just become available. Comet has it in store and despite being a few days early it doesn’t charge a premium price for the Eee Pad Transformer – it’s still the expected £380.

The bad news is that the keyboard/docking station is still not available so you will have to wait a few more days to get the full set. Still you now get your chance to experience the Tegra 2 prowess on a Honeycomb tablet on a price that’s not prohibitively expensive (we are looking at you Moto XOOM). Read more »

With everyone in the US so excited about the CDMA iPhone, you’d think that landing on Verizon’s network is the best thing that ever happened to Apple’s smartphone. However the survey that ChangeWave Research just published shows that iPhone users on both carriers are equally happy.

Apparently 80% of the iPhone 4 owners on AT&T are very satisfied, while another 18% describe themselves as “somewhat satisfied”. On the other side, 82% of the Apple-loving Verizon subscribers are very satisfied, while 16% are “somewhat satisfied”. Read more »

Add-ons are certainly Firefox’s greatest blessing, but sometimes they can also be its worst curse. Unfortunately, installing too many of them may seriously increase the browser start-up and page loading times even when you have some capable computer hardware at hand.

Fortunately, Mozilla is finally going to try and assist you in making your add-ons behave themselves. The company says that on average each add-on adds 10% to the start-up time on the Firefox browser so it suggests disabling the ones you are not using. Read more »

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 held its ground against hacker attacks for ages, but its defenses have finally been breached. The bootloader of the device was just unlocked, allowing for custom kernels to be installed.

Like most good droid things, this one comes courtesy of the XDA community – a guy named zdzihu made the breakthrough. Read more »

With the kind of success the Nikon D7000 had, it was only a matter of time that Nikon introduced a slightly trimmed down version that brings its great imaging capabilities to the lower market segments. Enter the Nikon D5100!

Built around the same 16.2 MP APS-C imager as the D7000, the Nikon D5100 can capture 1080p@24p, 25p or 30p video with continuous autofocus and even adds an articulated screen to what looks like an already attractive package. Notably more compact and 220g lighter than the D7000, the new D5100 retains the same screen size (3”) and resolution (921k dots). Read more »

A few days before those sweet-looking Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Eee Salte EP121 hit the shelves in the UK, we’ve got some extra information on their pricing. If you live in the UK you will be able to get the 16GB Tegra 2-packing Honeycomb-running Transformer on 6th April for £379 (€430), while £429 (€485) can get you 16GB of extra storage.

That price does not include the hardware keyboard featuring an extended battery. If you want get the full Transformer experience, you should get ready to part with an additional £50(€56). Asus will also be offering a 3G-enabled version of the Transformer about two months after the Wi-Fi-only model launches. Read more »