Since March 2 brings the iPad 2 to us, Mead was most likely “announcing” an LTE slate there. This doesn’t mean we won’t also see an LTE version of the iPhone 5. Apple is thought to be very bullish on the new 4G technology. I’d imagine sales estimates for the Xoom will take a bit of a dive if it ends up losing its LTE advantage to the iPad as well as its camera advantage.

If Verizon does launch an LTE iPhone 5, does that mean AT&T will launch a “4G” iPhone of their own, with access to HSPA+?

[Via Phonescoop]

If this counter is ticking down to a game announcement, it could come at the end of next week’s Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. The last Call of Duty was launched in November of 2009. It has a 94% score on Metacritic, and over twenty million copies have sold worldwide. It remains one of the finest ways to have your parentage insulted by a fourteen year old yet devised by man.

The last game in the series shocked easily shocked people worldwide with its brutal display of a massacre at an airport. Money guesses on what horrible thing Infinity Ward will show us next include: the bathroom in a freshman male dorm on March 18, a fire-fight in the world’s largest orphanage, and Steve Buschemi’s basement.

[Via USA Today]

Google expects these changes to affect roughly 12% of search results. 84% of the top dozen blocked domains on Google Chrome were included in the sweep. Since this is a blanket change, there is some fear that it could cause issues for legitimate sites. Sorting the good sites from the bad ones is complicated by the fact that many content farms also have legitimate arms. For example, Demand Media also owns Cracked.com, which is very definitely not a ‘farmed’ site.

Demand responded to these changes earlier today. Their EVP of Media and Operations noted that some of their properties rose and some fell due to the move. He did state that “at this time” Demand has not seen a material impact on their business from the change.

While every piece of analysis you’ll find on this change will mention the phrase “content farms”, Google has avoided using that term. Matt Cutts, of Google’s spam fighting team, told Search Engine Land that “I think people will get the idea of the types of sites we’re talking about.”

[Via Google Blog]

“We sincerely hope that the United States government will carry out a formal investigation on any concerns it may have about Huawei.”

So there you have it. The ball is in our government’s court now. It remains to be seen if any investigation could be thorough enough to ease the Pentagon’s mind, but at least the offer is out there. Huawei has also sparked concern over in the UK, where they recently bid on a telecommunications company named Marconi. In 2008, the Pentagon reported to congress that Huawei had “close ties” to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

The Director of National Intelligence is on record as claiming that the 3Com-Huawei merger would “undermine” U.S. national security. I can personal vouch that the company reps at MWC 2011 had a suspicious number of Android pins. I can only suspect collusion with the Google booth.

[Via Reuters]

The ad is pretty much standard Android fare. Boy meets hovering tablet in an unlikely location, boy touches tablet, boy is enveloped by crazy alien pod. The pod appears to be a spacecraft from the new game Vendetta. If that’s the same space shooter Motorola was showing off at MWC 2011, it looks a hell of a lot like Jumpgate made love to Wing Commander.

That’s a positive comment, in case you can’t tell.

Anyway, if you too want the chance to be enveloped by a gigantic metal pod while wearing a fashionable leather flight suit, order a Motorola Xoom today. They’re $600 on contract or just $800 unsubsidised. Yeah “just” may not be the best word for that. But hey, what are your options? Buy another Honeycomb tablet?

The chemical process behind the transfer is safe, and the only byproduct is water vapor. There’s no price or release date yet, sadly. Which is exactly the problem with Horizon’s super cool gadget fuel cell chargers. This technology always seems to be just beyond the next hill. One day…

[Via GoodCleanTech]

The Ego is battery powered and designed to be piloted just like a car. Each battery charge is good for six to ten hours and the boat has a top speed of four knots. It is on display at the Miami boat show right now, and there don’t appear to be any distributors offering this vehicle at the moment. Anybody want to pool some submarine money with me? You can have half the cockpit.

[Via w ooh ome]

At the end of the teardown, iFixit put together a few comments. They noted that the phone “feels solid in the hand” but jabbed the rear panel for feeling “chintzy”. Two large ribbon cables soldered to several components were listed as the main barrier to a detailed excavation. The LCD is a separate piece from the front panel, which means you can replace either without replacing both.

iFixit is totally right about the “chintzy” feeling back. I’ve had several opportunities to play with an Atrix, and every time the rear panel bugged me. How Motorola could have such an ugly oversight on their flagship smartphone is a mystery.

[Via iFixit]

He may also be a bit of a sociopath, because the mechanism by which this thing wakes you up is both ruthless and devastatingly effective. Upon waking you up, it rings “incessantly” until you answer from one to three brain teasers. The battery compartment is tamper-resistant. I hope they make it thrown-against-the-damn-wall resistant too.

The Adult Swim app is free, and includes a schedule for the network, a music player, and a list of every iOS app the network has made. But let’s face it, you’re never even going to see that stuff. Once you’ve got instant access to streaming episodes of the best animated shows on earth (and also SquidBillies) you won’t have much time for anything else. I’m thinking a tiny Bluetooth earbud and this app is all you’ll need to blot out entire productive days at the office.

[Via AppAdvice]

The phone will not charge from the MHL port when it is plugged into a normal HDMI-slot, but MHL televisions (when they hit) will be able to charge the device as they pull media from it. You’ll also be able to connect and charge via USB as normal.

[Via SamFirmware]

Crummier images and a spec sheet already leaked out earlier today. These new notebooks are expected to launch on Thursday. They’ll be unveiled just a few days ahead of the next iPad, which is due on March 2nd.

Based on the box, this new Pro will have a 2.3 GHz dual-core Intel core i5 processor, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 13.3″ LED-backlit display and Intel HD graphics. It has a FaceTime HD camera and an 8x slot-loading SuperDrive. The Thunderbolt port, along with two USB ports, an SDXC slot and a FireWire port, are revealed in the side-shot of the chassis.

[Via 9to5Mac]

The golden Xoom bears a striking resemblance to the European model Xoom. While the US version has an all-black back, the Oscar and Euro versions are black at the top but feature a different colored panel underneath. Motorola looks to be shipping these tablets out in a special case that has been designed to mimic an Oscar award envelope.

Interested in winning a golden Xoom of your own? Swing on by the contest page for details on how.

[Via Twitter]

“…the company is fundamentally, and has always been, organized to trade in commodities.”

In other words, Nokia traditionally deals in end-products. Putting devices together and getting them where they need to be. They fall short when it comes to designing an experience though. Adam seems to feel the engineering teams have too much say in the way users interact with new products and services.

“It’s just not particularly wise to allow engineers to make decisions about things like product and service nomenclature, interface typography and the graphic design of icons: they’re, I daresay, not even neurocognitively equipped to do so.”

The rest of the article is well worth a read, especially for anyone who wants to form a more complete picture of what the upcoming Windows Phone 7 partnership might look like.

[Via SpeedBird]

Each brush is hand-made. Cost per-unit is just $24. Now, all we need is a “grain of rice” application and a “detail” capacitive brush. Campy fairground gimmicks and hastily drawn caricatures have never been so accessible to the common man!

[Via TUAW]

A few hours ago, the cards were up to a mere £28. That price didn’t last. With 5 days and 22 hours left on the bid, these cards are currently up to £225. Somewhere out there is a geek who will spend more on this pack of playing cards than he did on his iPad. Which, by the way, has a pretty damn good solitaire app.

[Via Mac Stories]

This information comes from the app Instapaper. They tend to have a stable ranking- between #2 and #5 in the App Store news category, and thus their sales may act as a decent gauge for iPhone sales. Rather than seeing a huge influx of totally new customers due to the CDMA iPhone, the numbers remain stable.

From this, it seems reasonable to assume that most of the Verizon iPhone sales have been users switching over from AT&T. This isn’t a bad thing, at least not for Verizon and Apple, but it may point towards a better Q1 for Android handset manufacturers than any of them had dared hope.

[Via Marco]

This news will greatly lower the barrier to entry for Kinect hobbyists, which is exactly what Microsoft wants. This is new technology, and fans who, say integrate the Kinect with a Flash-based interface represent (to Microsoft) useful feedback on possible future features.

Craig Mundie, Microsoft chief research and strategy officer, said that he expects a “huge explosion” in interest. It looks like their unreasonably reasonable reaction to Windows Phone 7 hackers was just the outer edge of a company-wide trend. Now, how much longer do we have to wait for Kinect for Windows?

[Via Pocket-Lint]

The new Bold is a nod back to traditional BlackBerry design. We’ve got the front-facing QWERTY keyboard, portrait-style display and overall control layout of the Bold 9000. But that display is a 2.8″ capacitive touchscreen now. It has a 640×480 resolution and a 5 MP camera capable of shooting 720p video.

This new Berry sports WiFi and mobile hotspot connectivity options, and it also contains an NFC chip. The biggest change in terms of form is a glossy back and sides that slant down to the front more steeply. The Touch is expected to be just 10.5 mm thick, which would make it the thinnest BlackBerry ever. Expect a launch in Q3 2011.

[Via Mobile Syrup]

WorldGSM doesn’t need to be cooled and can be set up by people with virtually no technical know-how. Each unit costs roughly $20,000 and provides up to 10 Mbps of connectivity. Each base station draws less than 50 watts, meaning solar panels can keep them running “off the grid”. The system is expandable too, allowing impoverished areas to broaden their coverage at a pace they can afford.

There are nearly two billion people online today, but billions more live in areas where the power grid itself is unreliable. But with data-driven cell phones and the WorldGSM, these folks finally have a practical option to get wired. Now, if only the unit on the show floor was working. A 10 Mbps connection sounds real nice, right about now.

Normally, network benchmarking solutions like this are unwieldy and fragile. But the new Diversity Ranger has a slick, hiking backpack form-factor. It packs a GPS unit and scanner options, plus dual hot-swappable batteries. The PR folks at the SwissQual claim it can get ten hours of use with both batteries charged.

This is what the Diversity Ranger looks like on the inside:

This is how it looks folded closed:

And this is it in “backpack mode” completely hidden and looking pretty much like every other hiking pack in the world. SwissQual claims it can survive being sprayed with 50 liters of water per minute and drops of 30 cm while running.

Mike Woodward, AT&T VP of mobile products, said this: “You need to look at the Atrix’s price against tablets. When you do that, it’s not that expensive.”

Heedless of the fact that “it’s not that expensive” has literally never convinced anyone to buy anything ever, Mike plunged on. “With all the integration between the phone and the dock, you can do more on an Atrix than you can on a netbook,”

Which is debatable. The Atrix does have a special laptop OS called Webtop to expand the handset’s functionality. You’ll be able to hook up to printers and browse in large-screen mode while still sending texts and placing calls. That doesn’t quite approach the functionality of a full PC. You won’t be opening up Photoshop or playing WoW on the Atrix anytime soon.

We’ll see how popular the Atrix- and its controversial price, prove with customers on March 6. Pre-orders begin on February 14. Users who want to buy the smartphone alone for $199.99 will be able to purchase the dock at a later date for $499.

[Via Forbes]

As it happens, those numbers were a crucial bit of code needed to hack the Sony PlayStation 3. Butler had revealed them to a whole world of Sony followers. It was an event worthy of two face-palms.

The Tweeter responsible was @exiva, or Travis La Marr. He expects Sony’s legal department to contact him soon. Considering the vigor with which they stamp out piracy, it wouldn’t be surprising.

[Via Wired]

Most of these come from people on Google’s public WiFi service. At least a few of the downloads came from within Google’s Mountain View HQ though. Maybe Larry and Sergey just couldn’t wait for Green Hornet to come out on DVD?

Google has been anything but pro-piracy in the recent past. They censored a laundry list of torrent-related terms from auto-complete and instant results at the end of January. This caused an uproar from the torrent community, especially since benign and totally legal terms like “Ubuntu torrent” were included.

The MPAA also lashed out at cloud storage service Hotfile today. They accused Hotfile of openly pushing users to upload pirated media, and profiting from it by charging a monthly fee.

[Via TechSpot]

One unnamed user reports that he has found a way to steal another user’s account information. All he has to do is pick up the user’s phone, take a screen shot of the app while open, and email it to himself. The thief can then present the picture and have it scanned by the Barista to make a purchase.

The whole process takes less than 90 seconds. The user who found the flaw notes that the My Rewards button, which offers up no private data, requires a username and password to view. But getting to the crucial barcode screen requires no input of security information whatsoever.

So yeah, as a reminder, keep your phones close and don’t trust anyone at Starbucks.

[Via Mobile Commerce Daily]

Developers will also have access to new advanced intent dispatching. This gives the app much more choice in what to do when a tag comes in range. Also new is limited support for peer-to-peer connection with other NFC handsets.

[Via Android Central]

In Q4, Android made up 28.7% of the US market. iOS had only 25%, while RIM still lead with 31.6%. The BlackBerry-maker dropped 5.7 percent from Q3 to Q4, a troubling sign of times to come if QNX phones don’t get here soon. Windows Phone 7 was down 1.5% to 8.4%, while Palm tumbled a little to 3.7%.

The fourth quarter saw a 60% growth, year-over-year, in smartphone ownership. 63.2 million Americans now own smartphones.

The holiday season was especially kind to Samsung, who pulled in 24.8% of customers in Q4. Samsung was the only (non-Apple) manufacturer who saw their share increase in this quarter.

[Via CNET]

One of the shots revealed a $1,199 price tag for one model, thought to be the 13″ Pro. A refresh of the Mac Pro and a new “mainstream” iMac are also expected for the near future. The new machines were delayed by a serious issue with the Sandy Bridge processor. Apple’s most optimistic estimate was given as March. It appears they were right.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Initially, it was claimed that the Adam could support looping 1080p video on full volume/brightness for 6 hours. Real in-use life estimates started at fifteen and went up from there. The iPad’s outstanding 10 hour battery and the super-efficient Pixel Qi display made this claim plausible.

But now two threads on the Notion Addicts forums have popped up, filled with complaints about the battery. User happy1′s response was characteristic of issues experienced by several users:

“The update did not fix the battery. I lose 22% every hour. Basic surfing, some app dowloading, some setting up. Wifi on, airplane on, sync off, cell off, brightness 80%. At this rate i will get about 4:45. I have the pq model.”

A few users did claim to have experienced battery life that measured in with Notion Ink’s claims, but they appeared to be in the minority. User kaozskyblade looped standard def video at 65% brightness with the WiFi on and saw a little under 6 hours. That would put the Adam in line with the Galaxy Tab…and far away from the iPad.

I’ve yet to find a rigorous test of the Adam’s battery life by a reviewer under controlled conditions. Until that happens- several times- we won’t know for certain if this is a flaw in the Adam or a manufacturing issue.

This isn’t the only worrisome sign to come from the promising Indian gadget-maker. Notion Ink’s design director Andre Rodrigues appears to have left the company. He tweeted his return to Mumbai recently, and updated his bio to reflect the change. This is an ominous portent for the fledgling Eden UI.

[Via Notion Addicts]

Supplies of the better T-Mobile phones- like the Vibrant and the G2, are likely to be rather constricted. If you plan to hit up a store, you’d better get there early. Nothing gets people to commit to expensive, multi-year contracts like a shiny free phone.

That’s what T-Mo’s betting on, anyway. The imminent Verizon iPhone has them quaking in their magenta boots. This is a (slightly desperate) attempt to reduce the potential pool of Big Red iPhone owners. Two million or more are expected to sell, so T-Mobile has their work cut out for them.

[Via T-Mobile]

Both the commercials are fairly well done spoofs of legit charity ads, and there doesn’t really seem to be any malicious intent behind them. Groupon intended them to be a fun way to announce their intent to donate to Greenpeace, The Tibet Fund and other charities. Many found the ads offensive and insensitive, throwing their complaints onto twitter and private blogs by the thousand.

The Tibet video has more dislikes than likes on YouTube, and China is pretty much unhappy with anyone mentioning Tibet for any reason. Which doesn’t bode well for the service’s plans to expand in that region. With any luck, most people will take this for the joke (arguably in poor taste) that it was. But Groupon may have to sweat the fallout from this for a long time to come.

[Via Switched.com]

It’s worth noting that most of these droids are very simple, in terms of their higher-functioning capabilities. They work to disable (or set off) explosive devices and inspect vehicles and blaze trails and other dangerous tasks that are best handled by something that doesn’t mind bullets. As it stands, our “AI” programming is too limited to allow any of these robots very much autonomy.

There are plenty of armed robots “over there”, though, and there is a great deal of debate over how they should be used. The Conflict Monitoring Centre reported that the last five years saw as many as 2043 people killed in US drone attacks in North-East Pakistan. The majority were civilians- although identification either way is made difficult by the fact that robots can’t tell the difference between civilian farmers with rifles and dangerous bandits with rifles.

So yeah…maybe those unmanned stealth bombers aren’t the best idea ever.

[Via Wired]

The next iteration of the MacBook Pro line was earlier tipped to launch in 1H 2011. The new Mac and MacBook pros will run Sandy Bridge processors. A “mainstream” iMac is also expected to launch during the first half of this year. Four new MacBook Pros gave been tipped.

Intel’s terribly embarrassing Sandy Bridge recall is believed to have delayed the new MacBook Pros and Mac Pros. Apple is reported to have estimated no chance of shipping until March. Intel believes that the fixed chipsets will not be ready in volume until April.

Whatever the truth is, we won’t have to wait long to learn it. If Wednesday passes with no announcement, expect a long wait for the MacBook refresh.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Something like an iPhone or an iPod is basically as good as cash. If the price is right, you’ll find buyers. Especially since some of these Chinese knock-offs are actually better than many comparably cheap American devices. As long as you don’t pay Apple prices, these Shenzhen iPods aren’t always a bad deal.

In Spring 2010, some 2,000 counterfeit iPhones were busted flying in to San Francisco. An estimated 81% of all imitation electronics come from mainland China. Some one in five Americans admitted to buying some form of counterfeit good in 2009.

We’re hungry for cheap knock-offs. Which is why this victory by the port police won’t matter much in the end. As long as we keep buying, they’ll keep selling.

[Via Cult of Mac]

Corning expects the number of tablets using cover glass to quadruple over the next four years. Total tablet sales are estimated to leap from 20 million units (2010) to 180 million units in 2014. An 800% increase over the next four years. Tablet PCs are already the driving force for growth in the PC industry. 7.33 million iPads sold in Q4 of 2010, and the market doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

[Via All Things D]

During fresh phone February, RadioShack customers will get $50 off the purchase of a new phone when they trade in their existing device. The Inspire 4G has a 4.3″ touchscreen, Android 2.2, HTC Sense and access to AT&T’s HSPA+ network. It has an 8 MP camera and Dolby Mobile and SRS WOW HD surround sound. Not bad for $50.

[Via PhoneScoop]

We’d originally expected the holiday-themed title to launch on Valentine’s Day. This early release will keep the title relevant- and selling- for longer. Expect falling hearts, winged blocks, flying bow-armed pigs and a handful of new bonus hearts. There’s no word yet on whether or not we can expect a Honeycomb version, but the Xoom’s Feb. 24 launch makes that a definite possibility.

[Via Android Community]

iOS 4.3 was originally tipped to launch in mid-December. Recently, the release of the third beta of 4.3 and the approval of apps with direct support for that version of the OS gave bloggers cause to speculate on an imminent release.

4.3 is expected to include bug fixes- especially surrounding early issues with AirPlay. App subscriptions will also come to the OS. We may also see multitouch gesture support and a Find My Friends feature. The expanded gesture support is believed to be the first step towards removing the home button from iPhones altogether.

[Via MacStories]

That big (probably) 4.5″ display will be Super AMOLED Plus, and the launch OS will be Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Expect microSD storage for up to 32 GB and an 8 MP camera with an LED flash, plus a 1.3 MP front-facing camera. There’s also an NFC chip, Bluetooth 3.0 and the standard micro-USB slot and 3.5 mm audio jack.

There’s no expected launch or reveal date for this new flagship smartphone, but MWC 2011 isn’t a bad guess for the first unveiling.

[Via Android Community]

An spokesman for the carrier would not give any details, but he did say that “we’re working with Apple,” to make it happen. AT&T is also giving away free microcells to increase reception. On Feb. 13, their data cap for tethering customers will expand to 4 GB. Will that be enough to stop iPhone-lovers from fleeing to Big Red?

It doesn’t seem likely. The subscriber-only iPhone pre-orders set a new first day sale’s record for the world’s largest carrier. The next round of orders- on February 9- won’t be kind to AT&T’s bottom line.

[Via AppleInsider]