SlashGear Week In Review - Week 28 2010

It was a busy week in tech with lots of new announcements and gear showing up during the week. Early in the week Android App Inventor launched to turn anyone into a developer of apps for Android smartphones. The software uses drag and drop goodness to make developing simple apps easy.

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Google showed off a new app that it created called Google Open Spot. The app lets you share locations of open parking spaces, which is a great thing for those who live in a very crowded area. A very slick looking HTC 1 Android concept device turned up that has a minimalist design and all kinds of sexy. We certainly hope the concept phone makes it into production.

The class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over the exclusive agreement for the iPhone got the green light this week. In dreamland, the suit would result in exclusive handsets being banned.

We got our hands on the cool new AT&T Samsung Captivate smartphone and did the unboxing the thing Monday. The little handset has a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor and a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen. Consumer Reports withheld their "Recommended" rating for the iPhone 4 this week. The reason was the issue with the iPhone 4 antenna reception.

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Apple started deleting any threads on its support forums that mentioned the Consumer Reports rating withholding. Apparently deleting threads means that it never happened. The iPhone 4 was officially unlocked this week. To unlock the device apparently required a complete rewrite of the ultrasn0w software.

Intel posted its Q2 2010 numbers this week and announced that it had the best quarter in the history of the company. Intel cited strong demand from enterprise customers as part of the reason for the record results. Sony unveiled the NEX-VG10 camcorder mid-week that has interchangeable lenses. The camcorder can use some of the same lenses as the firms DSLR cameras. PR experts stated early in the week that a hardware recall on the iPhone 4 was inevitable. The experts figured that the most important thing to Apple was their image and the iPhone 4 would be recalled over the bad antenna.

Insiders are claiming that late in 2010 we will see iPads with OLED screens land. The new iPads would be smaller devices than the original according to the insiders in 5.6-inch and 7-inch sizes. iOS4.1 landed this week and fixed the issue with signal bars on the iPhone not displaying correctly. The iPhone antenna issue was left the same though.

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HP announced late in the week that it was postponing its plans for an Android tablet. The tablet was expected in Q4 and the Windows 7 and WebOS tablets are still on track. Rumors that Apple was working on a new smaller and thinner MacBook Air floated around late in the week. The new Air is said to use an 11.6-inch screen.

Wicked Lasers put the cease and desist letter that Lucasfilm sent about the cool Spyder III Pro Arctic laser on eBay. The winner gets the letter and other materials that Lucasfilm sent demanding the laser be pulled from the market. Rumors than an Apple engineer warned about the antenna issue back ion 2009 surfaced. Supposedly, some of the carrier partners had the same fears for the antenna.

Apple denied that any engineer warned of a possible issue with the iPhone antenna on Friday. Apple told Bloomberg that the rumor was simply not true. We posted up a review of the iMo Monster 10-inch touch USB monitor Friday. The screen worked as we expected overall, though we wished for a more flexible stand.

Brother unveiled a new type of battery Friday that has a separate generator and can produce power from vibration. The batteries could be used in a remote control that gets a charge from shaking the device. Apple held a press conference Friday to talk about the iPhone 4 antenna problems. Anyone who expected a recall was mistaken, free cases all around is the fix.

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Apple reports that it considered every option to address the issue with the iPhone 4 antenna. However, recall was not at the top of the list. Jobs did note in the keynote that they can't make enough bumpers and will offer a choice of cases. That's all for this week's edition, thanks for reading!

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