Mar 26, 2011

GumPack wearable vitals monitor: the new MedicAlert bracelet?

It may not have the charm or good looks of, say, the uBOT-5, but a new wearable vital signs monitor could cut back on doctor's visits for the chronically ill. Produced by a Kansas State University student, the GumPack -- known as such for its size -- is a multi-sensor monitoring device that fits in the palm of your hand and relays vital stats to your doctor via the internet. Along with a built-in camera and microphone for record keeping, as well as WiFi capabilities for connectivity, the battery-powered GumPack will sport various sensors, like a reflectance pulse oximeter or a two-thumb ECG. The monitor is still in the concept stage, and will likely not be available for mass-market distribution for years -- if ever -- but with technology like this in the works, the "I've fallen and I can't get up" lady might as well start looking for a new gig.

Ah, if only we could flip a big happy switch and convert all the web's Flash content into (functional) HTML5 code. It's a dream shared by many and, funnily enough, the company pushing to make it a reality is none other than Adobe itself, the owner and proprietor of Flash. Its Labs research team has just released an experimental new dev tool, dubbed Wallaby, that's targeted at taking Flash-encoded artwork and animations and turning them into a more compatible mix of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Of course, the intent here is not some magnanimous move to free us from the shackles of Flash -- Adobe openly admits that the initial goal for the new tool will be to help convert animated banner ads so that they work on the iOS platform -- but hey, even bad tools can be used for good sometimes, right?

Want some more Droid 3 eye candy? If you just recently bought a Droid 2, the answer is probably "no, please, no" -- but nonetheless, we've got some for you. A couple more shots of the rumored refresh have popped up on HowardForums once again, showing off a QWERTY keyboard that looks largely similar to the one it's replacing with one very, very notable exception: it's a 5-row deal this time around with what appear to be half-height keys for the numeric row. People love 5-row keyboards, so if this is legit -- and we really have no reason to doubt that it is -- that feature alone could move a lot of phones. More on this soon, we hope.

We've had an affinity for INQ's Cloud Touch since we Poked and prodded the little device back in February, and now thanks to Carphone Warehouse we've got the all important pricetag to accompany the specs. Starting April 6, you'll be able to pick up the Facebook-ified device in the UK completely SIM-free for £300, or about $486. Not a bad deal for a 3.5-inch Android 2.2 handset with a 5-megapixel shooter and a custom Facebook homescreen. Of course, it lacks the Facebook Buttons of HTC's offerings, but if you simply can't wait to be the first person on the block with a Facebook phone you should definitely give the Cloud Touch a peek.

Dell's Streak 5 tabletphone hasn't held our interest much lately, even with Android 2.2 on board, but Dell's got a new deal that may be too good to pass up. If you already had your heart set on nabbing a Dell notebook or desktop PC priced at over $699 -- say, one of those shiny new Sandy Bridge rigs -- you can add an unlocked Streak 5 to your cart for an additional Benjamin. Now that's what we call an impulse buy.

The Samsung Nexus S 4G for Sprint is pretty much what you'd expect: a Nexus S with its GSM / HSPA radio swapped for a set of Sprint-compatible CDMA / EV-DO and WiMAX radios. While the Nexus S 4G lacks a SIM slot, it's actually 0.3mm thicker than the Nexus S -- that's the thickness of a business card, and is meaningless for all practical purposes. The phone also features a 4G signal indicator in the status bar, along with a 4G sub-menu in the wireless settings. Our demo unit was running Android 2.3.4 (!) -- a version we have not yet come across -- but we were told that neither the hardware nor the software are final at this point. So don't be surprised if the production model receives a few tweaks before launch. Perhaps a Sprint logo? Hop past the break for our hands-on video.

Baidu's CEO Robin Li hinted that China's largest search engine may be planning a lightweight mobile OS for smartphones and tablets. Hot on the heels of retreating Google, Baidu currently enjoys 75 percent of China's web search revenue to Google's 16 and may well be pressing in the OS domain as well. The OS concept will center on the search box -- or Baidu Box -- with the end goal seeing it become the sole interface on a mobile device. Mr. Li further stated his hope would be to see that interface up and running on the device within a second of boot up. While this OS will apparently be search-centric, its other features will focus on social media and other online content. Of course, this is a three to five year plan, so we can definitely expect hardware advances and system advances to help make this lofty dream into a reality.

No, you won't be able to use it on your next flight, but if you're lucky enough to have your own business jet, you will soon be able to get Aircell's new Android-based smartphone designed for aircraft use. While the company's staying fairly mum on specifics at the moment, the phone is said to pack a 3.8-inch capacitive display, and it's designed to be backwards-compatible with all Aircell Axxess communications systems currently in production, as well as its forthcoming Gogo Biz Voice service. No word on pricing just yet, but Aircell is promising to reveal that sometime before the phone launches in "late 2011."

Google promised us the ability to buy stuff while inside Android apps, and sure enough, it's now just about ready to deliver it. Eric Chu, responsible for the company's Android Developer Ecosystem, has announced app submissions are now being accepted from those wanting to offer up purchasable items within their software. He also points out there'll be about a week's worth of internal testing before the whole system opens up to the public, likely before the end of the month so that Google may stick to its word of rolling out the service in the first quarter of this year. Once that's done, you'll finally be able to buy your way to in-game glory instead of having to grind away at it like some unenlightened schmo.

Final Fantasy Creator launches Hippos Lab for smartphone game development

Square Enix isn't exactly a stranger to the smartphone scene, but it looks like the company behind Final Fantasy (among countless other games) is now going to be moving quite a bit beyond ports of its existing games for other consoles. The company has just announced the launch of its new Hippos Lab game development studio, which will be primarily focused on creating "high quality original content" for smartphones. Details are unfortunately still pretty light beyond that, but the studio has apparently been up and running since March 7th, and it says it hopes to have its first game "ready soon." No word if they've scored the license for Hungry Hungry Hippos.

This one isn't quite completely official just yet, but a helpful tipster has passed along the screenshot above which quite clearly suggests that some software updates are coming to a trio of Sprint's Samsung devices on March 21st. That includes a new and hopefully improved over-the-air upgrade to Android 2.2.1 for the Epic 4G, as well as an Android 2.2 update for the Transform, both of which also include a number of other additions like Flash 10.1 on the Epic and Swype on the Transform. Also not left out of the fun is Sprint's version of the Galaxy Tab, which is getting the Sprint ID update we saw first hand at CES back in January -- it's headed to the Epic and Transform as well.
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[Technorati Tags: Samsung, Epic 4G, Galaxy Tab]

Just about every other carrier has its own variant of LG's fast-selling Optimus One smartphone, and you can now even count Cricket Wireless among that group. It recently launched the LG Optimus C, which offers yet another oh-so-slightly-different design along with all the same specs we've seen before -- a capacitive 3.2-inch HVGA display, 3.2 megapixel camera, a 600MHz processor, and Android 2.2 with some minor LG customizations. That may not sound like much, but we've found the other versions of the phone to be surprisingly snappy and solid for such a budget-priced smartphone. That budget pricing of course continues on Cricket, which is offering the phone for just $130 after a $20 web discount and $50 mail-in rebated -- and, yes, that's without a long-term contract, although you will apparently have to sign up for Cricket's $55 a month unlimited Android plan to start with.
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[Technorati Tags: LG, Optimus C]

Survey Finds Android Users Love The Little Green Robot

The world is awash with smartphone operating systems and whilst a lot of people don't care about them and are quite happy to use whatever is put in front of them there are equally a lot of people who very much do care about those differences. So much so that some users might be better described as 'fans' rather than users. Looking at this sort of behaviour British research firm ICM Research conducted a survey of 2,000 British adults using Android late last year and they have recently made their findings public.

One of the biggest questions to answer would be why people choose Android over other platforms. Answering that we have a wide range of responses from the 70% of people who said that Android offers better value for money than other platforms to the 48% who said Android is a better long term investment of their resources. 61% of those surveyed cited the wide range of handsets as a factor in choosing Android. Hit read more for details.

Google and China don't exactly have a great history together and in the latest twist Google has accused the Chinese government of blocking access to its Gmail email service. A Google spokesperson summed it up:

There is no issue on our side, we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.

Gmail users within China can apparently still login to their account, but they can't actually carry out tasks such as sending email or accessing contacts. In other words it's pretty much unusable. Hit read more for details.

iPhone 5 To Have Metal Back? Already In Mass Production?

The summer is just around the corner and that means it's almost new iPhone time. Anyway iPhone 5 rumours have been gathering pace for a while now and the latest is that the newest iPhone will keep the same shape as the current iPhone 4, but will feature a larger screen and also a metal backing. Speculation around the screen centres on what sort of resolution it will have with some commentators wondering if Apple might push it up even higher thanthat found in the iPhone 4.

To reinforce this rumour we have some sightings of the iPhone 5 apparently having been made at Foxconn, Apple's Chinese manufacturing partner. The iPhone 5 is said to be in mass production there in anticipation of a summer launch. And no, that isn't the real iPhone 5 picture above.

How many of our readers have just switched over form Nokia to Android and are saddened by all the saved messages that will go away with the old phone. You don't need to worry now. We have here a step by step guide to help you transfer those messages from your Nokia to your Android. Please let us know how it went and ask us any questions in the comments section below if you need further help. Good luck!

Description

Nokia2AndroidSMS is a small application that allows you to convert SMS messages from Nokia Ovi datafiles into an xml file supported by SMS Backup & Restore Android application.
Process for transferring SMS messages to your new Android Phone is the following.
Nokia phone side:

Install Nokia OVI, (You don’t need the OVI account!)
synchronize messages from your phone with OVI
Disconnect your Nokia Phone and close the Nokia OVI application. WATCH OUT. Noia OVI likes to minimize to system tray please be sure you really closed the application

Hit read more for further instructions.

Is this real? Is this happening? It's been over four years since AMD and ATI completed their $5.4 billion merger with the promise of Fusion hybrid CPU / GPU chips, and after what's seemed like nearly endless delays, the company's delivering here at CES 2011. And it's delivering in a big way -- the first Fusion chips are a direct assault on Intel's Atom and the netbook market, offering what AMD says is better CPU performance, vastly better GPU performance with DirectX11 support, dedicated 1080p HD video processing and HDMI out, and "all day" battery life that can hit 10 or more hours. There are four total chips in two families built around the new "Bobcat" CPU core to start: the "Zacate" E-Series for mainstream laptops, AIOs and small desktops will have an 18W TDP and come in the 1.6GHz dual-core E-350 and the 1.5GHz single-core E-240, while the "Ontario" C-Series for HD netbooks and "other emerging form factors" will clock in at 9W TDP and come in the dual-core 1.0GHz C-50 and the single core 1.2GHz C-30. The "Llano" A-Series designed for mainstream laptops will offer up to four cores and arrive later this year. Hit read more for details.

It's March 20th and, right on schedule, Sprint has started taking orders for its first Windows Phone 7 handset. The HTC 7 Pro, renamed the Arrive on the Now Network, can now be had for $200 after rebate when bought with the customary two-year contract. Amazon's doing its usual thing of undercutting carriers' own pricing by offering it up for 150 greenbacks less at $50, and we suspect other online retailers will follow suit. So affordability shouldn't be a problem.

HTC Orders A Million Tablets For First Run

HTC is yet to enter the tablet game, but it will soon with its first device the HTC Flyer. It's an Android 2.4 tablet with a 7 inchs creen, 1.5 GHz chip, 32 GB of internal memory, 1 GB of RAM and a 5 MP camera.

Taiwan Economic News is reporting that HTC placed an order for a million of these things to be made for the first run. HTC clearly has high hopes for its debut tablet and that's in addition to the two other rumoured tablet devices HTC is expected to announce/launch this year.

Initial speculation has the Flyer priced somewhere in the $600 range, which is roughly equivalent to what we're seeing from other manufacturers although crucially $100 cheaper than the iPad 2 3G model.

Apple haven't been forthcoming with sales figures for the iPad 2 yet, but they have given us the next best thing, a pretty obvious statement. Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller claims "Demand for the enxt generation iPad 2 has been amazing. We are working hard to get iPad 2 into the hands of every customer that wants one as quickly as possible".

Pretty much everyone who has been stocking the iPad 2 has already sold out including the likes of AT&T, Best Buy, Walmart etc. So even in the absence of actual figures we can see what we expected to happen, the iPad 2 is a hit.

Care for a cup of Google data, anyone? The vice president of location services, Marissa Mayer, stated some interesting facts about the state of all things mobile at the Goog. Most notably, the company provides its map service to 150 million users. Just to give you an idea of how many peeps that is -- it's about half the number of individuals in America. Crazy, we know. What's more, Mayer claimed thatGoogle Maps guided users 12 billion miles per year and that its latest build of the app saves people an average of two days worth of travel time each year. Another bit worth noting is how the company feels about Google Maps for iPhone. "We like being the default provider, but we'd like to get some of these updates out to a broader audience. That's still a debate / question we're considering." Updates? Anactual Google Maps application that works as a GPS on an iPhone? Wake us up when iOS 5 is previewed, or we can just keep dreaming.

The Motorola Droid 2 and Droid X are both headed toward their one-year anniversaries this summer, which has pretty much become the culling hour for a smartphone of any creed these days. Their successors, ingeniously titled the Droid 3 and Droid X 2, have seemingly made an appearance over atHowardForums, courtesy of longtime forum member wnrussell. He's also kindly provided imagery of a heretofore unknown device, called the Targa, which promises Verizon 4G LTE and has a protrusion on its rear that looks to be dedicated to accommodating an outsized camera sensor. It reminds us most of Motorola's XT720, though it sports a chrome outline to its body similar to what you see above on the purported Droid 3. Click past the break to get an eyeful of this Targa device and its Droid X 2 brandmate.

Even before the Incredible S was announced as the company's new top-of-the-line set back in February, the rumored Pyramid was the upcoming HTC phone that was capturing everyone's imagination thanks in no small part to its promise of a dual-core processor -- something the Incredible S notably lacks. We hadn't seen what this beast might look like, though... until today. Chinese site xda.cn has posted alleged renders of the Pyramid's front and rear, showing a careful evolution of HTC's current design language along with claims of a 4.3-inch 960 x 540 display, 8 megapixel primary and 1.3 megapixel front cameras, 768MB of RAM, and Android 3.0 (that last bit doesn't sound right to us, though -- Android 2.x with Sense would be more plausible). Rumors have this one pegged for launch on T-Mobile at some point this year; it'd be nice if that happened at CTIA next week, but considering how tied up they might be with Sprint at the show, it's hard to say if that'll happen.

Moving on, we've got some visual evidence here that HTC's pressing on with its Windows Phone line. The first of the two, the Ignite, looks like a midrange slate thanks to an 800MHz Qualcomm processor (clocked slower than the current batch of 1GHz units that are out there), a mere 3.7-inch display, and a 5 megapixel camera around back. The Prime, meanwhile, looks like a little brother to the 7 Pro thanks to a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and similar specs to the Ignite -- not blockbusters by any stretch, but HTC (along with other OEMs) might be waiting to pull out the big guns until Mango. Check out those renders at the source link.

Leftlane has come up with a detailed report on the repercussions worldwide of the Japanese earthquake on the auto industry. It is a detailed company by company view of what and how will be affected. In the end they say that the true damage will only be revealed with time. Hit the source link for the detailed report!

Source : Leftlane

Some noise has been made today over the news that Nokia is going to be chatting up its Harmattanplatform at May's MeeGo conference in San Francisco, suggesting that Nokia will be releasing Harmattan devices as a precursor to its MeeGo offerings -- some sort of postmortem Maemo 6 sendoff before Espoo starts to take MeeGo seriously. In reality, there's nothing new here: it's been known for the past year that Harmattan was happening -- and it's looking more than ever like it's Nokia's full-on MeeGo play, having pulled the code over from the work it had already done on Maemo 6. The abstract for the Harmattan session at the conference says that Nokia will "clarify" the relationship between the project and MeeGo proper, but at no point has Nokia skirted around the fact that Harmattan was still in the works -- and with the company's commitment to MeeGo beyond its 2011 product line a big question mark right now, we wouldn't be surprised if Harmattan was as far into the MeeGo ecosystem as Nokia ever got.

General Motors says that its Shreveport, Louisiana, truck assembly plant will be closed next week because of a parts shortage directly tied to the massive 9.0-scale earthquake that ravaged Northern Japan last week. The automaker has not specified what parts come from Japan for vehicles produced at its Shreveport assembly plant, although transmission components and electrical parts are often sourced from the country.

The Shreveport plant currently builds GM’s smaller pickups, the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon. It previously built the Hummer H3. GM has slated the plant for closure next year, although a recent announcement suggests that the automaker has not given up hope on a sub-Chevrolet Silverado pickup for North America could potentially change things. Hit read more for details.

Flash 10.2 hits Android today, Adobe hopes for viewable 720p playback in a matter of weeks

Today, Adobe Flash 10.2 will hit the Android Market for devices running Froyo, Gingerbread and Honeycomb, and by now you're probably familiar with what it brings -- increased performance for dual-core smartphones running Android 2.2 and Android 2.3, and the promise of seriously sped-up Flash content and better battery life for Android 3.0 tablets (not to mention Flash, period). Well, we've already spent a full day with the latest build of Flash 10.2 for Android and quizzed the company thoroughly about the release, and there's actually a surprise to be had today, and more coming soon.

First off, you don't absolutely need a dual-core phone to take advantage of Flash 10.2 -- Adobe VP Danny Winokur told us, and we confirmed in testing, that there are slight performance improvements on earlier devices too. With our trusty Droid 2's 1Ghz OMAP3 chip, we saw a slight but noticeable boost in framerate when playing a YouTube trailer at 480p, which admittedly only took took that particular video from "unwatchable" to merely "fairly jerky." With the Tegra 2-toting Motorola Xoom, however, 480p videos ran perfectly smooth, even as the tablet had trouble rendering 720p content as anything but a series of images. However, Adobe says even that will change soon, as this beta release doesn't take advantage of full hardware acceleration -- it's actually turned off right now. Though the Tegra 2 is natively decoding video, Adobe told us that hardware rendering and compositing will be added in a subsequent release, and when they are it "will bring 720p playback to a really smooth, enjoyable level." The other work-in-progress is Flash integration into Google's Honeycomb browser, which presently has trouble detecting finger taps when Flash isn't played full screen, but which will -- Adobe hopes -- play exactly the same inside and outside the browser when work on Flash 10.2 is complete. Sounds promising, no? Then why not download it yourself and give it a go?

T-Mobile must be feeling a tinge of regret for hooking up with the Korean hardware manufacturer lately, as TmoNews reports both the G-Slate tablet and a new G2X smartphone (believed to be the US moniker for the Optimus 2X) won't be coming Stateside for at least another month. Neither will be exactly late, mind you, since both feature dual-core Tegra 2 chips and the G-Slate runs Google's freshest Honeycomb software, however a launch date of April 20th does put LG a step behind its direct competitors. Motorola has already rolled out its own Xoom and Atrix alternatives, while Samsung is making noise about its new Galaxy devices, which might well beat LG's wares to the market. Rumor is we'll get an official date out of T-Mobile at CTIA next week, so keep your eyes peeled for that one.

The road to Android 2.1 may have been a long and treacherous one for Milestone users, but the one to Android 2.2 wasn't even certain of reaching its goal. Thankfully, Moto has managed to conclude its "exhaustive testing process" and is now making a Froyo firmware update available to Milestone users wishing to step their software up a notch. Flash Player 10.1, a faster browser and mobile hotspot capabilities await the intrepid updater, but Motorola warns that any DRM-locked media you have on your SD card will be lost. Weirdly enough, there's also a caution that "users may experience some adverse effects associated with the upgrade which could include slower operation of some phone functions and applications." Once you've read and understood all the warnings, smash the source link to download the new software.

Is this the creepiest ad ever produced to introduce a new video game console? That's a high bar to pass -- but is it the creepiest ad for a new smartphone? Perhaps. The minute-long spot for Sony Ericsson's upcoming Xperia Play called "The Donor" appears to explain the backstory behind its last ad, relaying the tale of a young gentleman who was clubbing with friends, met an attractive woman, took her home, and woke up the next morning to discover that his thumbs were stone cold gone (notice the dirty, poorly-bandaged stumps on the table as he tells his tale of woe to a local law enforcement official). Cut to the next scene, where we've got our cute, lovable Android bot waddling around town... oh, and he's got human thumbs crudely sewn onto his arms. Go ahead, recoil in horror, vomit in the trashcan next to your desk, then cue the inevitable increased desire in owning this phone. Follow the break for the video, if you dare.

Android 2.3 update is looking more real -- and more imminent -- than ever thanks to a Facebook post from Samsung Mobile's Romanian team a few days ago. Basically, it's sounding like the Froyo update will be online until the 20th of this month, at which point the Gingerbread update will start rolling out from the 20th until the end of March... which could ironically stand to make the Galaxy S one of the first non-Google devices to get an official Gingerbread update anywhere in the world. No word on how this timeline corresponds to dates for other countries and SKUs, but it's a good sign regardless.

Apparently in an effort to reduce confusion and settle the situation once and for all, Sony Ericsson's Spanish outpost has taken to the wires today to clarify the pricing and availability situation of the Xperia Play there: €649 off contract and unlocked (which works out to roughly $907) on April 1st. That more or less lines up with what we've been hearing in other European locales, though in Spain, Vodafone will have a 15-day exclusive on the white model -- other carriers will only have access to black at first, andnone of the carriers have come clean with on-contract pricing details just yet. Clearly, $900 is an enormously tough sell, but a weak dollar never helps these situations -- we'll need to wait for word on the US retail picture before we've got the whole story.

Hey, that's just $100 per screen, right? Sprint has just announced that Kyocera's unusual dual-display Echo clamshell will be launching on April 17th for $199.99 on contract, though you'll be able to notch your interest early -- March 26th, to be exact -- via pre-order. As a refresher, the phone offers a 5 megapixel cam with 720p video capture, 1GB of onboard storage augmented with an in-box 8GB microSD card (expandable to 32GB), Android 2.2, and -- of course -- a pair of 3.5-inch WVGA displays that should set it apart from the crowd. We'd have liked a dual-core processor to go along with the trend here, but you can't have it all, can you?

Think you'll be heading to the Android Market to get your next fix of Rovio Mobile's insanely popularAngry Birds? Think again. The next installment in the aviary vengeance saga, Angry Birds Rio, will launch exclusively on Amazon's upcoming Appstore for Android. That does sound like it will eventually achieve universal distribution via the Market, but in the interim Amazon has scored a pretty big scoop in its efforts to attract users to its own app repository. We're also promised the Appstore is launching "very soon" and Amazon has just inaugurated an @amazonappstore account on Twitter to keep us abreast of when precisely that will happen.

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