The upgraded Kindle Fire may be enticing with a $159 price-point, but power-hungry users may need a bit more. If you are a fan of 7-inch tablets, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 is your best bet. It has all the great specs that the Kindle Fire HD family members share, and comes with a very attractive $199 price tag. The tablet features a 1280
It’s only been around 100 days since its launch (wow, time flies), and Samsung is letting the world know tonight that the new sales numbers for Galaxy S3 have officially reached — wait for it — 20 million devices sold. Sweet geebus, that’s a lot of purple phones. It’s not surprising really. The Galaxy S3 was one of the first devices in the history of Android to launch on just about every carrier under the sun, seemingly at the same the time. Samsung did everything right by the S3, and the sales numbers prove it. [ Samsung ]
Today, the now famous jury foreman in the Apple vs Samsung patent trial sat down for an online interview with the readers of Gizmodo . They asked Velvin Hogan their most pressing questions involved in the case and like most anyone familiar with the tech industry — the questions got real good. Here’s some of the better ones as highlighted by Groklaw : Demon-Xanth: Did you have the opportunity to ask “Is this something that should be patentable?” during the trial? Velvin Hogan: @Demon-Xanth – No, however it was not the function of this jury to ask that. We were bound to use the law as it is today. The patents were issued the judge instructed us not to second guess the current patent system
Current checkout systems seem ancient when we consider how far we have advanced in technology. Isn’t it time to start using these tools to make shopping simpler? No customer likes waiting in line for a cashier to ring up dozens (sometimes hundreds) of items, and this is what Walmart is said to be fixing with Scan and Go. This app will allow users to simply scan products as they shop. The customer would then be able to come up to the register and simply pay for the products at a self-serving kiosk. Not only would this make it easier and faster for both the customer and the cashier, but it would alleviate part of the $12 million Wal-Mart pays cashiers (all over the country) per second
HTC Thunderbolt users must have been pretty ecstatic upon finding out the first Verizon 4G LTE phone would get a taste of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) by the end of August. Such excitement quickly started fading as we started reaching the end of the month, though. And doubt turned into anger when the month ended – clearly, HTC couldn’t fulfill its promise . Fortunately, HTC is not ignoring the situation, as the guys from Droid-Life noticed.
Those looking to get an affordable handset from Sprint this month may want to take a look at this one. The Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE has just been leaked, and is said to be a mid-tier device coming to Sprint this month. Samsung may not be feeling very “victorious” after its recent defeat against Apple , but it is nice to see they are staying strong. This little guy comes very well-specced for an affordable Android smartphone, offering a dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and 4G LTE connectivity. It does have its downsides, though. It only has a 480x800p display, meaning the screen should be rather small.
Rumors of a larger Amazon device (8.9-10 inches) have been circling the internet, and we even had a leaked image that was claimed to be the one. If the latest rumors are to be believed, though, Amazon will not be launching a 10-inch tablet this time around. Instead, there will be two 7-inch devices being announced. One of them will be a slightly improved version of the current Kindle Fire, while the second will come as a significant upgrade. We have no clue why Amazon decided not to expand its reach to the 10-inch market, but they may simply be trying to avoid high risks. With the Nexus 7 and other affordable 7-inch tablets around, it can not be easy to be Amazon at this point
We all know the story: Apple launched a holy war on Samsung for violating their trade dress and design/software patents — and won . A jury in the US ruled in favor of Apple last week, causing widespread panic and general angst among the Android community. Never one to rest on their laurels, Apple is now going after a few of Samsung’s newer devices (read: competition), alleging that Samsung’s Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note, and Galaxy Note 10.1 infringe on their ’721, ’604, and ’647. These how-the-hell-did-they-get-granted patents deal with slide-to-unlock, universal search, and clickable links inside of emails, text messages, etc. (which you may remember caused “the great banning of HTC devices” a few weeks back)
Just because Samsung wasn’t able to convince the tech-ignorant jury here in the states that they didn’t violate Apple software/hardware design patents, things are proving not so difficult overseas. In Japan, Samsung faces a similar suit after Apple claimed the Samsung
Well how’s this for a comeback? After being informed that they would have to pony up $1.05 billion for infringing on design and utility patents owned by Apple, Samsung has threatened to use a very important piece of firepower at some point down the line. Korea Times is reporting that Samsung is ready to sue Apple if the next iPhone has 4G LTE. Samsung enjoys an extensive patent portfolio pertaining to LTE technology, and they reportedly own 10% of all LTE patents currently floating around. Apple has shown a key interest in LTE with the advent of the iPad 3. Because of its arrival inside the latest iPad the tech industry fully expects Apple to follow suit with the next iPhone