Yeah, the BlackBerry PlayBook can run Android apps, big deal – can it run DOS apps though? The answer is yes, yes it can – Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, Lion King and even Windows 3.11 all run on the PlayBook thanks to the efforts of self professed (ab)users over at the CrackBerry forums.

Running DOS on a device is like asking “Will it blend?” – it seems like a pointless ordeal but curiosity gets the best of you and you watch the video. Come after the jump, you know you want to look. Read more »

At yesterday’s Google Music event, Google gave a quick update about Android activations – over 550,000 droids get activated each day and their total number is 200 million (it was 190 million a month ago).

But is the number of activations per day tapering off? The quoted numbers make it seem like it is. Read more »

Poor Amazon Kindle Fire was subjected to both physical and psychological attacks – there’s already a one-click rooting tool for it and the 7″ tablet was disassembled by people curios to see what’s inside.

The usual suspects over at iFixit tore open the Kindle Fire and reported with a list of components and a fairly good repairability score. Read more »

XL – a universally recognized label for stuff bigger than regular. But don’t worry, the HTC Sensation XL fills its XL clothing with a 4.7″ screen rather than whatever the gadgetry equivalent of flabby fat is.

No, sir, this soldier here is a lean mean fighting machine. The XL packs virtually the same hardware as the recently reviewed HTC Titan – that means a single 1.5GHz CPU core and 8MP camera. But it’s a Sensation and like its sibling (the recently reviewed XE), it comes with the Monster iBeats headset which gives a hefty boost to the value for money of the package. Read more »

If you own one of the 60+ devices supported by CyanogenMod, you can rest assured that your droid gadget will be getting a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) one way or another. The Cyanogen team announced they have already started working on CyanogenMod 9, which will be based on ICS.

We can expect results as early as two months from now (keep in mind the ICS source code was just released). It will probably take most makers and carriers much longer than that to put out the ICS update for their devices. Read more »

IDC queried devs that use the Appcelerator platform and has some very interesting stats to share. The Nokia/Microsoft dual effort to attract developers is paying off – Windows Phone comes out as the third most desirable mobile platform to develop for (a big thing, considering WP7′s limited market share).

Also, Amazon’s new Kindle Fire is stirring things up in the Android tablet world, overtaking the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the US as the Android tablet most devs are interested in working for. Read more »

The upcoming Windows 8 is a huge jump ahead in terms of touchscreen usability, but some worry that’s at the cost of non-touchscreen usability. Well, Synaptics are showing off a cool concept which uses the touchpad on a laptop to mimic a touchscreen.

The concept is called Synaptics Gesture Suite (SGS) and works surprisingly well for some gestures – switching between app with a horizontal swipe, docking apps to the screen, using tabs in Internet Explorer all seem highly usable and cool. Read more »

We got our hands on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus yesterday and we fiddled with its camera. Today, we decided to run a few benchmarks to see what would happen. The phone is running a buggy developer version of Ice Cream Sandwich, but managed to show some impressive scores.

We pulled a few numbers from benchmarks we’ve ran before, so we can compare the Galaxy Nexus against some of the high-end droids on the market. Read more »

The iPhone 4S is already sweating through our tests – and it has impressed us quite a bit so far. We’re busy shooting photo and video samples, running benchmarks and otherwise examining Apple’s newest superphone.

One part of the camera testing is done – a side-by-side comparison of the FullHD videos that the iPhone 4S shoots and a 720p HD video from the iPhone 4. Consider this a teaser of what’s to come. Read more »

PCWorld did a meticulous shootout with the new iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4 and some of the best Android shooters. The shootout covers both still and video capturing capabilities and includes a point-and-shoot camera as a control.

Here’s what PCWorld found, along with our commentary on the sample images. Read more »

Have you ever heard of quantum superconductors? Well, you’ll want to see what they can do when you throw in some magnets. This is just the kind of thing that can result in an antigravity car, like uncle Ben and Luke rode around on Tatooine.

Check out the video to see the quantum-y levitation action Read more »

Samsung is launching their ChatON service today – a free service that lets you send text messages (including group chat), multimedia and even hand-drawn animated messages. The Android app is live now and there’s a Bada app incoming. Some feature phones are getting it too.

Basically, ChatON is Samsung’s answer to iMessage and BBM, with the added advantage of covering more platforms than just iOS and BlackBerry. Both platform will be supported by ChatON in the future. Read more »

The Walkman brand is making a comeback in the Sony Ericsson lineup – if the W8 seemed unconvincing, the Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman should dispel any remaining doubt.

The specs sheet quotes the Xperia mini most of the time, but there are some changes exclusive to Live – like the stereo speakers on the back, the dedicated Walkman button and accompanying light. The screen has grown to 3.2″, but has kept the HVGA resolution. Read more »

Got an HP TouchPad, do you? Well, you either got it before HP axed it or you snatched one up for $99 (lucky you!) – either way, there’s a good chance you want to lose the WebOS and move to a more popular OS, Android to be precise.

Ask yourself how much you want it – because you can get it right now, the CyanogenMod team just released an alpha of v7.1 that you can install. But it’s a really early version and the team themselves discourage you from installing it because you’ll encounter problems “ranging from the benign to the very serious”. Read more »

We’re continuing our work on the Nokia N9 review and we have another bit to share with you – a quick look at the new camera. It’s a clever system that Damian Dinning (Nokia’s camera guru) explained at length, but we decided to do a quick test ourselves.

We took two shots with the N9 and the Nokia N8, check out the camera samples after the break. We also prepared 100% crops to highlight the differences between the two phones. Read more »