Android Net 10

If contract free is the only way you like to roll, wireless provider Net10 is offering up a pair of LG Android devices for their $50 unlimited service. The LG Optimus Q and LG Optimus Net will be hitting Net10 in the coming days and if you’re interested, you can sign up to be notified as soon as these devices are released. Both devices feature 3.2-inch HVGA displays, 800MHz processors, 3MP cameras and running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

In case you’re not too familiar with Net10, they are a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) and a brand of TracFone offering both pay-as-you-go and prepaid monthly options. For only $50 you can get unlimited text, data and voice piggy backing on either AT&T or T-Mobile’s towers. Couple this with the MVNO’s first Android powered smartphones and you can save yourself a pretty penny if staying up to date with bleeding edge tech isn’t really “your thang.” [PH]

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Brillian Tab Android Tablet

The BrillianTab is the newest Android tablet from Chinavasion that sports a 7.0-inch 800 x 480 capacitive multi-touch display, a 1.2GHz Telechips TCC8803 Cortex-A8 processor, a 512MB RAM, a 4GB of storage, a microSD card slot (up to 32GB), a front-facing camera, WiFi, a USB port, a mini USB port, an HDMI port, a built-in speaker, a 3200mAh battery and runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS. If you’re interested, the BrillianTab can be yours for $189.42. [TF]

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Virgin Mobile USA is ready to release the new LG Optimus Slider. As its name suggests, the smartphone features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Powered by the Google Android Gingerbread 2.3 OS, the LG Optimus Slider features a 3.2-inch HVGA display, a 3.2MP digital camera, a 3.5mm audio jack, Bluetooth 3.0, a microSD card slot(up to 32GB) and Virgin Mobile’s Live 2.0 social networking app. Virgin Mobile USA will launch the LG Optimus Slider on October 16th, 2011 for $199.99.
[CP]

Nokia might be in the doldrums with their Symbian-powered devices not selling as well as they once did. I remember the glory days of Nokia when it seemed as though they could not do any wrong – their operating system was the easiest to use among all the other phones (remember how convoluted Motorola’s interface was?), and the phones were simple, tough and good looking. Too bad being too comfortable with themselves saw them miss the wave of the smartphone revolution, where Apple, HTC and Samsung started churning out winners, touchscreens and all.

Well, Nokia might have been too late to switch operating systems to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, but only time (and hindsight) will tell. While we know that the first Windows Phone 7.5 Mango smartphone will be known as Searay (the codename at this moment, although it might change in time), but another name has been bandied around – the Nokia Sabre.

The Nokia Sabre is said to come with a 3.7″ display with a microSIM slot ala iPhone – could this be so that those using unlocked iPhones can make the jump to Windows Phone 7 in a jiffy? Regardless, both Sabre and Searay have been listed as prizes in a Microsoft Canada Mango competition that states, “The estimated retail value of the phone is $600.00. The type of Windows Phone 7.5 will vary and will be selected at Microsoft’s choosing (examples include Samsung Yukon, Samsung Wembley, NOKIA Searay and NOKIA Sabre).”
[MW]

Samsung has announced a 64GB embedded memory (eMMC) meant for smartphones and tablets. The new 64GB eMMC touts industry’s highest performance that uses 20nm-based 64Gb NAND with Toggle DDR 2.0 interface and is really thin to make it suitable for slim mobile devices.

The eMMC can store up to 16,000 MP3 files and has a sequential read speed of up to 80MB/s and write speed of up to 40MB/s.
[SH]

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Sprint has unveiled the specification of the Motorola Admiral Android smartphone. The handset features a 3.1-inch HVGA touchscreen display with a full QWERTY keyboard, Sprint TV and Direct Connect. There is also a 5MP digital camera with LED flash and 720p video recording capabilities. Additional features include Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. Too bad, there is no info on pricing or availability at this time.
[CP]

Microsoft has announced that its new operating system, Windows 8, will include Xbox Live integration. This has been rumoured for some months, but is now official.

Exactly what this means isn’t exactly clear, but it is certainly possible that it will see Xbox games becoming playable on PCs for the first time ever.

Microsoft said the move will bring “games, music, movies, and TV shows to your favourite Microsoft and Windows devices.”

Microsoft has just wrapped up its BUILD conference, during which it revealed a lot of information about Windows 8. The OS will hit stores sometime next year, if rumours are to be believed.
[GW]

After yesterday’s announcement of its expanded Open Graph capabilities, Facebook has been sharing your music listening activity over its News Ticker, allowing for music discovery and the realization that as TechCrunch co-founder Michael Arrington put it, “A lot of you have just really terrible taste in music.

Well, in case you want to further delve into your friends’ terrible music taste, Facebook has just launched its Music Dashboard as a permanent bookmark in your profile’s left side bar. Inside Facebook’s Josh Constine points out that you can access it and dock it on your sidebar by clicking through to a friend’s Playlist or through this direct link here.

Right now the Music Dashboard shows you what songs your friends are listening to — aggregating friend listening patterns by band– as well as Top Songs and something called Featured Music Services which for me at least is currently advertising Earbits and Spotify.

While it seems like you must have at least one music playing partner app to listen to music through Dashboard, one of its coolest and most seamless features is that if you click on a song from a music player you don’t currently have Facebook gives you the, albiet mitigated, option to listen to it in your preferred player.
[TC]

There are many different platforms filled with so many different mobile applications that it’s quickly getting hard to keep track of. However, while each respective platform has its own official app store such as the iOS App Store and the Android Market, there are other ways to go about consuming applications as well.

Amazon, for one, is a perfect example as they have their Amazon Appstore for Google’s Android mobile platform. This Appstore has some perks to it such as the fact that Amazon offers a free application each and every day. But, the deal is about to get sweeter – as long as you’re willing to give Amazon access to your Twitter account.

That’s right, if you’re willing to link your Twitter account to your Amazon account along with following Amazon and sending out a promotional Tweet Amazon will give you with $2 worth of app credit. Of course, this isn’t a boatload of cash by any stretch of the imagination but it’s better than nothing, right?

[MW]

A mobile phone with various attachable and detachable accessories is not something very new.

It’s an interesting idea that many tried. We’ve seen Modu mini-phone with “jackets”, LG Expo handset with the attachable projector and NTT Docomo’s separable phone. And we’ve seen even more interesting stuff in Palm’s R&D department.

Alas, none of them became a successful commercial product yet.

Now it’s time for Microsoft’s R&D department to try something new. A slider phone with multiple interchangeable accessories:

It looks like your usual slider, but the sliding keyboard part is detachable and can be replaced with gaming keypad, second display, additional battery and other things.

What’s more – those same accessories can be operated independently, in a detached mode. For example, acting as a second phone, gaming stick, or remote control, to operate your smartphone while it streams games and videos to an attached TV set.

There are many reasons why such combined devices, even when they look great on paper, do not find many interested customers. And Microsoft is not getting into phone hardware making business again anytime soon. So the chances for this kind of slider to become a device you can buy, are pretty slim.

But if Microsoft decides to provide a reference design for such slider to its hardware partners and then adds an accessory support to Windows Phone OS… Who knows, someone may build something interesting with this.
[UWV]