Following LG’s statement that the company is “heavily in discussions” with Google to become the next Nexus partner, HTC said it too is in discussions with the software giant. According to a new report from TechRadar, the Taiwanese handset maker is in talks with Google in hopes of being selected to design the company’s next flagship smartphone. Google previously worked with HTC to craft the original Nexus One. “Google hasn’t chosen its Nexus partner for (Android) Jellybean as yet. So right now all the manufacturers are crossing their fingers,” HTC’s global online communications manager Jeff Gordon said in a statement that has since been removed. Gordon said that the notion of being the next Nexus partner is “still very attractive to all OEMs, despite the imminent takeover of Motorola.” Gordon didn’t give an exact date as to when Android 5.0 would be released, but stated the company’s current priority is to bring Ice Cream Sandwich to its current device lineup.

[Via Droid-Life]

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Continue reading Notion Ink's Adam II promises TI OMAP CPUs, Ice Cream Sandwich, broken dreams

Notion Ink's Adam II promises TI OMAP CPUs, Ice Cream Sandwich, broken dreams originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Piracy is still a huge problem according to the music industry and Hollywood, and it’s hard to dispute the notion that downloading a paid digital product without actually paying for it is theft. Now, as TorrentFreak releases its list of the 10 most pirated movies of 2011, we can see a possible correlation between illegal downloads and movie revenue continue to take shape. Read on for more.

Fast Five — the fifth film in Universal’s Fast & Furious franchise — was the most pirated movie this year according to TorrentFreak, having been downloaded 9.26 million times. The Hangover II followed with 8.84 million downloads, and Thor was the third most pirated film with 8.33 million illegal downloads. Source Code followed with 7.91 million downloads and I Am Number Four rounded out the top-5 with 7.67 million downloads.

At the same time, movie ticket sales and box office revenue declined for the second straight year in 2011 according to The Numbers. Moviegoers purchased 1.24 billion tickets in 2011 compared to 1.33 billion last year, and revenue from ticket sales sank to $9.9 billion this year from $10.46 billion 2010.

Perhaps even more telling are DVD sales figures in 2011 compared to 2010. While legal digital downloads certainly gained popularity in 2011 and likely had a more significant impact on DVD sales, the disparity between DVD revenue in 2010 compared to this year is much more pronounced than it has been in the past. Seven movies saw DVD sales that exceeded $100 million in 2010, lead by Avatar, which pulled in more than $183 million. In 2011, no DVD did $100 million in sales; Disney’s Tangled was the highest-grossing DVD of the year with just $96 million in sales.

A complete list of the top 10 most pirated movies of 2011 along with torrent download totals and worldwide gross revenue totals follows below.

Read [top 10 torrents] Read [ticket sales, revenue] Read [DVD sales]

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Ecosystems take years to build and depend on other companies. Really, who has the time these days? Plus, they kick in only if a product reaches critical mass. Microsoft and SanDisk demonstrated the risk a few years back with their digital media players in seeding the market with third-party cases and docks using their own proprietary and now abandoned connectors. Over the past year, though, we've seen a number of tech companies take a new approach to mobile product development -- the corporate showcase -- where they convincingly shun any notion of silos by throwing just about everything they've got into a product.

Continue reading Switched On: Assets in gear

Switched On: Assets in gear originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Oct 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPad continues to sell as fast as Apple’s manufacturing partners can build them, and other vendors are bound to get in on the action as well once they realize they’re doing it wrong. After all, just about every visible analyst has gone on record with the belief that the tablet market will explode over the next few years. Interestingly, however, several analysts also agree that the explosive tablet market will have very little impact on personal computer sales, and new data from a recent survey reaffirms this notion. Private equity firm Robert W. Baird & Co. recently conducted a survey of 1,114 consumers found that only 6% believe they can do without a PC today. Another 11% say they might be able to live without a PC in the future, but 83% say PCs will live on as a commodity for the foreseeable future. Among the respondents who were current or future tablet owners, 74% said they still need a PC despite owning a tablet. Finally, Baird found that 93% of current tablet owners surveyed use Apple’s iPad. Among prospective tablet buyers, the iPad held the interest of 94.5% of respondents followed by HP’s TouchPad (10.4%), Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 (8.3%), Motorola’s XOOM (8.5%) and the HTC Flyer (4.3%). Two charts showcasing Baird’s findings follow below.

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha on Tuesday said that his company is open to building smartphones powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. The Motorola boss said that while the company is focused on Google’s Android platform right now, it would absolutely consider the new Microsoft mobile OS under the right conditions. “I think we’re completely open to the notion of Windows as a platform,” Jha said during the Oppenheimer Technology & Communications Conference. “Clearly, all of our focus today is on Android.” Jha said that in order for Windows Phone to work for Motorola, the company would likely need to secure a deal similar to the one between Microsoft and Nokia, which allows the Finnish phone maker to customize and alter the OS in ways other OEMs cannot. The CEO noted that while his company would be willing to evaluate the platform, he’s not certain that Windows Phone will succeed in a world dominated by Android and Apple’s iOS. Jha does not believe Windows Phone, webOS and RIM’s BlackBerry OS will all survive in the long run, though it is not yet known which of the three platforms will thrive and which will fail.Read

Friend suggestions on social networks may already be a little too eerily accurate for some, but a team of researchers from Cambridge University now say they can do one better. They've devised a method that doesn't simply rely the usual friends-of-friends approach, but on where those people tend to hang out. According to researcher Salvatore Scellato, "it turns out that the properties of the places we interact can determine how likely we are to develop social ties," and that places like offices and gyms are better indications of potential friends than football stadiums or airports. That notion was borne out in their research (conducted over a period of four months using Gowalla), which found that "about 30 percent of all new social links appear among users that check-in to the same places." With the two prediction methods combined, the researchers say they're able to account for 66 percent of all new social ties. No word if they've moved onto predicting crimes next.

[Image credit: Gowalla]

Cambrige researchers tout new location-based method to predict friends on social networks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Aug 2011 07:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The notion of infinity is fundamentally beyond the human ability to comprehend, but that hasn't stopped mathematicians from trying. So just what is infinity, and why is there more than one of them? And just what is infinity plus one? More »

Let all those questioning their open-source smartphone overlord be silent. Responding to the recent ruckus caused by an O’Reilly article and subsequent report by The Wall Street Journal, Google has let it be known that it is not tracking your location… unless you give it permission. In a statement to blog TechCrunch, Google writes:

All location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user. We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices. Any location data that is sent back to Google location servers is anonymized and is not tied or traceable to a specific user.

The Wall Street Journal called in to question the notion that data sent to Google was, in fact, anonymous. Google addressed this claim, stating that when users opt-in to the service data is often linked with a phone’s unique identifier . The unique identifier is not, however, then partnered with a phone number, serial number, name, or email address — making it difficult for Google to associate the location information with a specific user. Apple has yet to issue a statement about the utility of its gathered location data.

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Dell unveiled a mighty business laptop lineup this morning, but only a few stood out -- like this Dell Latitude XT3 convertible tablet PC with a quad-core Intel Sandy Bridge processor inside. Yes, it seems Dell's decided to forgo the incredible battery life of its predecessor for potent performance instead, with this particular unit packing a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M CPU and 2GB of RAM underneath that swiveling 13-inch display. While the prototype XT3's screen seemed a little washed-out and viewing angles left something to be desired, we have to admire its matte dual-digitizer display, which takes multitouch input from at least three fingers simultaneously and also recognizes a pop-out stylus pen (the former responsive enough to navigate Windows 7 by touch alone, and the latter beyond our can't-draw-a-straight-stick-figure ability to easily test). That sunlight-readable screen isn't just for traveling artists, though, as Dell was quick to inform us that the XT3 is the company's attempt to make a convertible tablet that corporate IT will accept as one of its own, thanks to the same magnesium frame and universal docking port as the rest of the new Latitude lineup. We can't lie: we'd be pretty excited about the potential for awesome here, if we had any notion of release dates or price. Find some pictures below, and mosey past the break for a hands-on video.

Myriam Joire contributed to this report.

Continue reading Dell Latitude XT3 convertible tablet, hands-on (video)

Dell Latitude XT3 convertible tablet, hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When we first made contact with Clover System's SunBook, it was but a glimmer in Pixel Qi's transflective eye, but today, the little guy is ready to step out on its own. Like Notion Ink's Adam, the "the first sunlight-ready netbook" packs dual lighting displays, allowing you to shut off LCD backlights while under direct sunlight and cut your power consumption in half. You can also leave both functions on for easy indoor-outdoor transitions. It's sporting a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 10.1-inch display, 1024 x 600 screen resolution, USB 3.0 as well as WiFi and Ethernet capabilities. So basically, it's a perfectly acceptable netbook (on paper, at least) and it's packing a promising display, but we have to admit Clover's marketing for SunBook leaves something to be desired. In fact, if we hadn't seen this thing at CES we'd advise you to proceed with caution. Being that it's got the Pixel Qi seal of approval, however, we'll leave the decision up to you. You can purchase the sunlight-ready netbook for $795 via Clover's website, handily linked below in the source.

Clover SunBook offers 'first sunlight ready netbook,' questionable graphic design originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Notion Ink Adams arrive to eager unboxers, first OTA brings new meaning to DOA

Notion Ink Adams arrive to eager unboxers, first OTA brings new meaning to DOA originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We don't see it in the FCC database yet but Notion Ink's charming Rohan Shravan just penned a post on the company's blog with news that Adam has official clearance from the US government. That's right, after several delays the tiny startup will finally condense its occassionally vapory molecules into a solid slab of shipping tablet starting "around Wednesday" after the hardware receives its FCC tattoo. A tablet good enough to earn a Best of CES 2011 honorable mention at an event absolutely flooded with tablets from a who's who of consumer electronics companies. While our first impressions of the production unit were positive, we're holding off on making a final judgement until we've had the chance to perform a full review. Having said that, Adam's final NI3421A01 product code is so nerdy -- 3421 are consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci series -- that we're almost tempted to place an order ourselves. Almost.

[Thanks, John]

Notion Ink Adam clears FCC, begins shipping 'around Wednesday' originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 04:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As promised, Notion Ink has just released a video of the Adam tablet in action, complete with that snazzy new Eden UI -- the first anyone's seen of the device since its very first working prototype. While the footage itself is of disappointingly low quality, it seems to show a device somewhat worthy of the hype, with a responsive screen, an multitask-friendly interface and plug n' play peripherals -- though we're holding out for Pixel Qi screen tests and some closeup shots before we place any orders ourselves. Notion Ink singled out vocal critic AndroidPolice to launch the (seemingly incomplete) video and gave the publication an exclusive interview too, so if you've any lingering doubts about the tablet's capabilities, you'd best head on down to our source links.

Notion Ink releases Adam demo video, attempts to explain itself (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The guys over at Notion Ink in India have revealed some user-interface updates for their upcoming Adam tablet. The tablet is expected to ship in late November 2010 and will sport a re-worked Android browser with a novel system to allow for non-intrusive tab switching. Amongst other small UI tweaks, the developers have uploaded a video of the tablet cutting through a 1080p clip like butter. The Adam tablet will come in two flavors, an LCD model and a Pixel Qi trans-reflective LCD variant; both of which rock a CPU/GPU combo of 1GHz dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor and Nvidia Tegra 2. Connectivity wont be a problem since the tablet is believed to feature 2 USB ports, a micro USB port, an HDMI-out port, a microSD card slot, and SIM card slot. Android aficionados will be happy to know the tablet will run Android 2.2 when released. Whilst the tech specs are more than satisfying, it remains to be seen if it can live up to buzz. Hit the read link for the latest update on the Adam.

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The Pixel Qi and Tegra 2-packing Notion Ink Adam has long been one of our favorite pieces of perfectly plausible vaporware, but founder Rohan Shravan's just made a pretty fantastic claim -- he says he's getting a minimum of 15 hours of battery life from his personal tablet and calculates you'll get up to twenty with the 24Wh, potentially user-replaceable battery nestled in its frame. While those are the figures for the $498 transflective version of the tablet and not the $399 juice-gulping LCD, they're still so stellar that they could easily make or break the Adam's sales depending on their veracity. Please don't let us down.

Notion Ink founder claims Adam tablet will go 15+ hours on a charge originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's no secret that HP's Todd Bradley is one of the leading candidates to succeed ousted CEO Mark Hurd, and it doesn't look like he was doing much to dissuade that notion at the now happening TechCrunch Disrupt conference. In addition to addressing a question about whether it's ethically wrong to charge so much for ink by responding "ask me next year, if I take the [CEO] position," Bradley also sounded more than a little like a CEO throughout, and made a fair bit of news in the process. That includes a confirmation that HP won't be licensing webOS to other companies, and the attention-grabber of a statement that "emulating Apple is not part of our strategy." As if that wasn't enough, Bradley also made the rather bold promise that HP will sell 15 million webOS-based printers next year alone, and he predicted that tablets will become a $40 billion market within the next few years -- a market that HP plans to enter in a "big way." Head on past the break for a video of the interview.

Continue reading HP's Bradley says company is not trying to be Apple, will sell 15 million webOS printers next year

HP's Bradley says company is not trying to be Apple, will sell 15 million webOS printers next year originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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