Motorola promises more Lapdock action for 2012

- Martin James  Jan. 1, 2012 at 12:00

The Motorola Atrix will be remembered not only for claiming to be the most powerful smartphone in the world when in fact it wasn't, but also for introducing us to the Lapdock.

Yes, Asus may have taken the thing to the next level, but the Lapdock was nonetheless one of the best things Motorola came up with in 2011, and now it's promising to keep the concept going in 2012.

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Will someone else make the Kindle Fire 2?

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 31, 2011 at 18:00

Despite having some decent hardware with iPad-trumping specs, the Android tablet market is in a pretty depressing state. With one notable exception, of course.

Literally millions of Amazon Kindle Fires were sold each week in December, and analysts are speculating about how the tablet scene might change subsequently in 2012. How does the HTC Kindle Fire sound?

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Siri tells kid to 'Shut the f**k up'

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 31, 2011 at 15:30

An eleventh-hour entry for Story of the Year here, as The Sun reports that an iPhone 4S display unit in Tesco told a 12 year-old to “Shut the f**k up, you ugly t***.” Amazing.

Charlie Le Quesne had rather innocently asked Siri: “How many people are there in the world?” when the automaton responded with the foul-mouthed outburst. As much as we’d love to believe that Siri had gone sentient, there’s a perfectly good explanation.

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LG to show off Intel-powered smartphone at CES?

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 31, 2011 at 14:07

LG and Intel teamed up to demo a Moorestown-powered smartphone at CES 2011, way back in January, but the handset never made it to market.

According to ye olde rumour mill, the pair have teamed up once again, and at CES 2012 they’ll show off an LG smartphone with an Intel Medfield chip inside.

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Nokia N9 gets hefty price cut, now cheaper than the Lumia 800

- Martin James  Dec. 31, 2011 at 12:00

The Meego-powered Nokia N9 was never officially launched in the UK, but if you're willing to pay up front it can be had SIM-free from a good few online retailers.

And thanks to a hefty discount from Expansys you can now get in on the action for as little as £369, a full £60 cheaper than the equivalent Lumia 800 model.

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Symbian still rules global OS scene

- Martin James  Dec. 30, 2011 at 18:30

Nokia may not want it, and a lot of people view it as a relic from a low-tech past, but Symbian nonetheless ends 2011 just as it started it, as the planet's most popular mobile OS.

In fact, not only is it the most popular, but Symbian's market share has actually grown over the past 12 months, and it has been the best-performing platform of all since October.

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Orange expects its customers to go mental with calls, texts and data on New Year’s Eve

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 30, 2011 at 16:00

I hate New Year’s Eve. I resent the annual obligation to do something (Jesu knows what) in order to welcome in the New Year. It’s rubbish and invariably disappointing. The end.

Anyway, curmudgeonly mini-rant aside, Orange expects its customers to set all kinds of records with calls, texts, picture messages and data as we enter space year 2012AD.

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Harrods to offer BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 for £1,275

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 30, 2011 at 14:00

We first laid eyes on the intriguing BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 back in September, but didn’t have a clue – initially – what the hell it was.

In the following weeks, we learned that BlackBerry and Porsche had teamed up for some designer smartphone action, and that the mysterious chap was called the BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981.

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BlueStacks generates Mr Android 2011

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 30, 2011 at 12:00

BlueStacks’ bread and butter is essentially allowing Android apps to run on Windows, by way of its App Player for PC and Cloud Connect thingies.

For some bizarre-o reason, BlueStacks decided to compile data on Android users and show us – with an infographic – what the average Androidian looks like. What the…?

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Apple to unveil two new iPad 3s in January

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 30, 2011 at 11:16

Well, well, well. Ye olde rumour mill really can’t decide what the heck is going on with the next generation of iPads. Will there be a smaller 7.85 model? Is it coming in April? March? February?

Digitimes is going one better, and suggests that not one but two iPad 3s will be unveiled in – wait for it – January 2012.

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Quad-core Acer A700 tablet tipped for CES reveal

- Martin James  Dec. 30, 2011 at 10:00

Last week Acer founder Stan Shih promised big things from its mobile division in 2012, and it looks set to kick things off in style by revealing the quad-core Iconia Tab A700 tablet at CES.

That's the word from Russian site NoMobile, which claims the Tegra 3-powered slate will be arriving on the shelves before the end of Q1.

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HP TouchPad Go: the world's best non-existent tablet?

- Martin James  Dec. 29, 2011 at 19:00

Things may have gone pear-shaped for the HP TouchPad and webOS since, but for a while there the TouchPad was taking on the iPad and co on an even footing, and we were even talking about the prospect of a smaller-screened version appearing – the 7in TouchPad Go.

There's not much chance at all of the TouchPad Go actually appearing now, of course, but WebOSNation has managed to grab a unit for review all the same to check out what might have been.

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Phablets are fab: Samsung Galaxy Note hits a million units shipped

- Martin James  Dec. 29, 2011 at 18:00

It's not exactly a game-changing figure, but Samsung is nonetheless pretty chuffed that its super-sized Galaxy Note smartphone has hit a million units shipped since its launch a couple of months ago.

Now that's units shipped as opposed to units sold – and you can ask RIM if you're thinking there isn't much difference – but it's still a decent figure for a device that seems to resist all attempts at being categorised.

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Apple granted multi-touch patent, more lawsuits inevitable

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 29, 2011 at 16:00

It’s been a week since we mentioned patents, but fear not! The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple yet another – that’s in addition to the patent we all shrugged at recently concerning in-call app switching.

This new patent is all about multi-touch, one of 200+ “new inventions” Apple cited when it unveiled the first iPhone in 2007.

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Samsung aiming to sell 374 million phones in 2012

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 29, 2011 at 14:00

Samsung has punted a pretty ridiculous number of phones this year. Over 300 million to be precise, and – unsurprisingly – it’s aiming to crank things up a notch in 2012.

According to a Reuters report, Samsung hopes to raise its mobile game by 15%, from 325 million target sales in 2011 to 374 million next year.

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Windows Phone roadmap leaked, vague dates for Tango and Apollo

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 29, 2011 at 12:00

Mango, Windows Phone 7.5, arrived in September this year, finally bringing enhanced multitasking (and 500+ other “features”) to the Microsoft faithful.

Before Mango even touched down, we were hearing whispers of Tango and Apollo, and now a roadmap has provided an idea of when they might arrive. A very vague idea, I should say.

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Samsung Galaxy S III to be Galaxy S 3D?

- Lewis Curdie  Dec. 29, 2011 at 11:08

Samsung still hasn’t made anything official, but we’re fully expecting the Samsung Galaxy S III to touch down at February’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

That’s exactly what Korea’s ETNews is bawling, and it’s also speculating about the, uhm, specs. See what I did there? Sorry.

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Windows Phone hits 50,000 apps, but is that good or bad?

- Martin James  Dec. 29, 2011 at 10:00

Interesting landmark reached by Windows Phone: the Microsoft mobile platform has just racked up its 50,000th app submission to the Marketplace.

And yes, we say interesting rather than groundbreaking or amazing, as it's clearly an achievement nowhere near the scale of iOS or Android. And in fact it's only really interesting because it's quite a bit lower than we were expecting.

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Rejoice, Samsung Galaxy S users: your Value Pack is on its way

- Martin James  Dec. 28, 2011 at 19:30

Mobile news can move pretty fast, but there's enough of it out there that we seldom write two stories updating developments on the same subject on the same day.

But such has been the PR fiasco surrounding Samsung's very public debate over whether to produce an Android Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Samsung Galaxy S that we're happy to break our normal practice.

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Quad-core Android 4.0-toting Meizu MX confirmed for May 2012

- Martin James  Dec. 28, 2011 at 18:00

The Meizu MX name has been linked with some quad-core mobile goodness for a few months now, but now the company's CEO has confirmed some concrete details surrounding the elusive handset.

The first-gen Meizu MX may have launched recently as only a dual-core device, but the quad-core edition is coming, and it'll be bringing Android Ice Cream Sandwich underpinnings with it when it arrives in May 2012.

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