One of the most unassuming pieces of hardware on the market that we happened upon this month was certainly Intel’s first Medfield-toting Android: the Lava XOLO. This smartphone was announced back a the tail end of April of this year and represents Intel’s first production Android smartphone available on the mobile market, toting its own Intel Medfield 1.6 GHz single-core Atom Z2460 processor and a 4.03-inch 1024 x 600 pixel resolution display – is this your next undercover powerhouse device?
The two big categories of interest at CTIA 2012 as far as we’re concerned are Devices and Accessories, the latter being what we’re going to have a look at today. Have a peek back at our CTIA 2012 Devices round-up from yesterday and prepare yourself here for a set of oddities and masterfully executed device helpers such as you’ve never laid your own eyes on before! This year’s CTIA was a little bit more tame than in past years for how powerful a delivery of devices it was, so we had a chance to hit accessories hard – behold the fruits of our labor, one by one!
This week at CTIA 2012 we caught up with Ryan Bidan, Director of Product Marketing for Samsung Mobile, who was glad to provide us with a hands-on comparison between the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note, two titans for the modern Samsung smartphone line. What you’re about to see is that in addition to the obvious differences between the two like the screen size and the fact that the Galaxy Note has a pen, the Galaxy S III provides its own set of wholly unique elements that the Galaxy Note does not yet have access to. Have a peek here and see if it’s time to pick up the Note or if you’ll be better off waiting for the next-generation Galaxy smartphone.
The first of two round-up posts we’ve got here for the US-based mobile show of the year CTIA is one of devices exclusively, everything you need to know about what was well worth seeing down in New Orleans here in 2012. This year we had a look not only at the devices and accessories that the show had to offer, but hit the attack on social networks as well, with several galleries for your perusal and snapshots throughout our journey so you could take on the trip with us. As for devices, there really wasn’t a whole lot of new action coming on from this week specifically, but what was new was fabulous, and what was once only overseas was brought on with a fury.
This week we spoke with the VP of Nokia’s map platform for location and commerce Christof Hellmis who has given us a full tour of what Windows Phone-laden Nokia devices have to offer the world in the maps environment. What he showed us during CTIA 2012 was several hands-on demonstrations of each of the apps that make Nokia’s Windows Phone smartphones unique, starting with Nokia Maps, Nokia Transport, and Nokia Drive and moving on to the newest application to hit Nokia devices worldwide: Nokia City Lens.
This week we got a look at the next generation in the Snapseed mobile photo editing and modification application, here on Android with the ASUS Transformer Prime first and foremost! This application has been live on iOS for some time now, and has found significant success in all things photo editing in the touch-heavy world of smart devices. Now it’s time for the application to take full advantage of the power of the quad-core processor the Transformer Prime works with, that being the Tegra 3 from NVIDIA!
The folks at myCharge have extended their product line again with a whole new series of battery packs for your iPhone, iPad, Android, and micro USB-capable products galore. We got the chance to take a peek at a few of them this week, with the myCharge Peak 6000 extended battery being the king of the pack right here next to the Quest 1000, Journey 1000, Trek 2000, and Summit 3000, each of them with their own set of plugs and abilities. Have a peek at not only the myCharge family here, but listen in as Greg from myCharge explains what makes this mobile battery solution unique.
This week we’ve caught up with of SwiftKey’s finest, Evan Tapper their community manager and Joe Braidwood their CMO, speaking today about how important their community of beta testers is to their final product. SwiftKey is an Android-based on-screen keyboard, it acting as a complete replacement for the keyboard you’ve got built-in to your own Android device. What we’ve spoken with SwiftKey about today is how this keyboard comes about: not just through a group of developers sitting behind desks, but through a community of users like you working with their developer team to bring about the best experience they can muster.
This week at CTIA 2012, HTC is taking the press on a tour of New Orleans as they allow us a look at the next hero phone with an HTC ImageSense chip onboard: the HTC EVO 4G LTE. This device is roughly similar in size to the HTC One X, has a black, red, and gray color scheme, and comes with no less than the last embedded kickstand on earth. What HTC is doing today is proving the power of this device’s 8 megapixel camera, 1080p video capabilities, and HTC ImageSense chip onboard the next big EVO to hit the market. The following post’s gallery of images is being updated throughout the night on May 9th, 2012 at this live bus tour event. Stick around for more!
This week we’ve gotten the opportunity to take a peek at a brand new set of gadget coverings made by a company that’s literally just begun to exist this week: NEXGEN Skins. This company creates skins that stick to your devices and offer up a solution that’s “unique to the market” the world over – in both thickness and dimensionality. These skins come in all shapes in sizes, starting here at the launch with 50 different devices with plans for 20 more devices per month through the future. Never before have we seen skins so incredibly thick and engaging – without a doubt.
Announced back at CES earlier this year, today the popular Bluetooth and audio company SuperTooth have just released their brand new Bluetooth in-car speakerphone. This zero installation and easy to use speaker is finally available starting today and we have a few hands-on pictures and video live here at CTIA 2012 in New Orleans.
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This morning at the 2nd full day's CTIA 2012 keynote, Spotify CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek shared his views on the future of mobile streaming music with the world. With both free and premium offerings, Spotify is the second biggest revenue stream in the whole country in the UK, this model of course being hoped for by Ek as Spotify grows in the USA. They're already doing fairly well with the average Spotify user in the USA listening to 100 minutes of music a day, they having created 700 million playlists with Spotify software in the short number of months the service has been available in the states.
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