The Android market has just received an update, introducing a new UI and a couple of new categories. The update is already gradually rolling out to devices running Android versions 1.6 or later.

The homescreen and categories screens have been updated with a new more appealing carousel view. The individual app screen has been modified as well and now features all the required information in one place, instead of the tabbed layout it previously employed. Read more »

It’s been quite busy over at Rovio recently. The company has scheduled a press event for later today and they’ll have quite a lot to show there. A new system for in-game purchases, an update for Angry birds for Android and a PC version of the popular game are all going to be showcased.

Now we don’t have a specific launch date for the PC-compatible Angry birds, but chances are it will happen pretty soon. As far as the Android update is concerned – it will allow you to purchase the game to get rid of those ads if you find them too bothering. Read more »

If you are hoping to maybe someday replace your conventional laptop with one packing not one, but two touchscreens you might want to limit your Christmas spending and save a few bucks instead. Acer has announced the launch date for their Acer Iconia hybrid in Spain and it’s set for the 28th of January.

Of course other countries might get it sooner but I don’t expect serious time frame differences. The price is set at the whopping €1500 euro, but you didn’t really expect a specs sheet like that to come on the cheap, did you? Read more »

The Google dev team has just announced the availability of the new YouTube app for all Android devices running on Froyo and the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S. Packing a completely redesigned user interface YouTube 2.1 for Android aims to bring you the complete desktop experience without needing to use the browser.

The key new feature brought by the YouTube 2.1 app is the in-page playback, which allows you to read video descriptions, check-out related videos, rate and post comments, while the video is playing. Read more »

Is it just me or is the BlackBerry PlayBook getting more desirable after each public appearance? This time RIM’s VP of Special Projects David Neale demonstrated that the tablet is perfectly capable of playing a FullHD video in the background, while browsing Flash-heavy websites and checking out images.

But that’s not even the most impressive part of the demonstration. What excited me the most was the fact that it was all done using just one of the two cores of the PlayBook CPU. Imagine the heights this thing can reach, when its full potential is unleashed. Read more »

The announcement of one of the most peculiar Android smartphones took place in China yesterday. Samsung unveiled their W899 clamshell running on Froyo that will be available to China Telecom subscribers.

The Samsung W899 comes with both CDMA and tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz) radios and sports a couple of 3.3-inch Super AMOLED touchscreens of WVGA resolution. Read more »

A couple of weeks ago we introduced our new Photo Compare Tool and since then we’ve been working hard to fill up its database with more samples to make it all the more useful. We are now pleased to announce the first series of new additions, lead by the third 12MP cameraphone Sony Ericsson Satio and the only 8MP WP7 device HTC 7 Mozart.

The other handset to have debuted in the PCT is the HTC HD7 (its review is due today). We have also added Read more »

When Acer first entered the smartphone business Windows was their weapon of choice and it remained like this for quite a while. Later on Android entered stage and things started cooling off between Acer and Microsoft.

Apparently the limitations of Windows Phone seemed too great to Acer at first. Yet now that Windows Phone 7 has been released Acer’s CEO Gianfranco Lanci went on record saying that his company has realized that the new platform actually offers a lot of customization options. Read more »

The insanely popular physics-based mobile game Angry Birds is about to get a new version for this holiday season. The Angry Birds Christmas edition will hit iOS and Android in the following days, while its webOS version is a bug-fix away from availability.

The update will be free to all iPhone and iPad gamers who downloaded the one-dollar Halloween edition, as well as to Android users. Read more »

Nokia Beta Labs team has just released a neat little app that automatically adapts your phone to your current occupation. At first sight you might confuse Nokia Situations with the basic Symbian profiles app, but when you dig deeper into the available settings you will realize that it’s far more capable than that.

What Nokia Situations does is adjust your phone ringing volume, connectivity operation (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc.) according to your location, the time of the day, the day of the week or even the available networks. Read more »

Today Windows Phone 7 developer team’s blog announced that the platform is just about to reach the 3000 app milestone. Sure, the number might sound petty in comparison to virtually every other smartphone platform out there but the growth rate is actually quite impressive.

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace had just 1 000 apps exactly 22 days ago so it has been getting an average of 90 apps per day since then. Read more »

We just got pricing information on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and it’s excellent news indeed. Apparently RIM are going to deliver on their promise to release the slate with a sub-500 dollars price tag and then some.

According to the source the PlayBook will come in three different versions according to the amount of internal memory – 8GB, 16GB and 32GB (and not 16/32/64 GB as previously rumored). Read more »

The release version of the Opera Mobile 10.1 web browser has just hit the world’s most popular smartphone platform. The release version debuts the new just-in-time compilation (JIT) that should improve the Carakan JavaScript engine performance quite significantly.

In addition to providing nine times better JavaScript performance than its predecessor Opera Mobile 10.1 introduces quite a lot of new features. Read more »

Acer are surely taking the tablet game seriously. After the two Android-running slates we saw earlier, we are now getting one with a proper OS. Acer are not giving away the name of this one either, but they confirm that it has a 10.1-inch screen, runs Windows 7 and is powered by some AMD chip (could it be the Zacate E-530?).

The Acer Windows 7 tablet measures just 15mm of thickness and weighs under 2.2 pounds. It has a 1.3 megapixel cameras on its front and has built-in WiFi and 3G radios. Read more »

It seems that every computer manufacturer wants in on the tablet action and Acer are not an exception. The company is next to join the slate wars – Android 3.0 Honeycomb is their platform of choice and they will be offering a device in both the 7-inch and the 10.1-inch category.

Both tablets will run on dual-core Tegra CPUs and will have integrated 3G radios. Read more »