.::REALITYRECALL::.

Because the read-things-on-devices market isn’t crowded enough, the Wall Street Journal claims Google is looking into a “digital newsstand” to deliver major print media outlets onto Android-powered devices. A subscription-based news model would put Google in direct competition with similar efforts by Amazon and Apple, none of which have been overwhelmingly successful, but competition in the field and the likely lower resulting prices couldn’t hurt news outlets’ chances at gaining wider acceptance. Do you want your news delivered to your Android, app-style? [Wall Street Journal via CNET] More »

Can’t say we’re surprised — after all, last time we checked in the tally was hovering around 9.3 million — but now Samsung has officially met its goal of 10 million Galaxy S phones sold around the globe. That’s less than seven months since the device first hit the market, which by Sammy’s fuzzy math averages to about one unit for every two seconds it’s been on sale. According to Samsung Tomorrow, North America contributed the most with 4 million in sales, followed by Europe at 2.5 million. Let there be cake, and once that’s over, let there be progress on those Froyo updates.

Samsung reaches goal: 10 million Galaxy S phones sold worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 05:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Let the Tegra 2-powered, Android Honeycomb tablet announcements begin! Apparently (and understandably) staying away from a Folio 2 moniker, Toshiba is kicking off CES with its new unnamed 10.1-inch Android tablet, and we have to say from our brief look at a non-working unit a few weeks ago, it may just have what it takes to stick out from the rest.. at least on the spec and manufacturing quality front. The tablet has a capacitive, high 1280 x 800-resolution display along with an accelerometer and ambient light sensor (or what Toshiba has dubbed as Adaptive Display technology). It also has a 5 megapixel rear camera as well as a 2 megapixel front-facing one. Yep, this one is well stocked and just a quick look at the pictures below will show that the slab has got full sized USB and HDMI jacks, a single mini-USB socket, and an SD card slot.

While we couldn’t turn on the dual-core Tegra 2-powered tablet, which will eventually run “the next version of Android designed for tablets” aka Honeycomb, we have to say the EasyGrip, spill-resistant, rubberized back felt really solid in hand and the 1.7-pound, .6-inch thick tablet felt comparable to the iPad in terms of portability. Oh, and did we mention that the aforementioned rear cover is swappable, so not only can you change its color but you can replace the battery? We told you it had some of the ingredients to make it go far, but we’re obviously lacking quite a bit of information here to make any further decisions. Toshiba’s maintaining that the tablet will be released in the first half of 2011 (it obviously has to wait until Honeycomb has been made official) and the pricing will be competitive, but we’ll be digging for more when we get to Vegas and hopefully reporting back with some impressions of a working unit.

Toshiba announces unnamed Tegra 2-powered Android tablet, waits only for Honeycomb originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Jan 2011 03:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many iPhone customers had some explaining to do after they overslept to start the new year, due to a glitch in the gadget’s alarm clock feature.

A 7.1-magnitude earthquake has struck central Chile, sending tens of thousands of people near coastal communities for higher ground over concerns it would generate a tsunami.

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Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back emails of old.

After more than a month of speculation, the Saskatchewan Roughriders may have found their newest head coach in Greg Marshall.

Pardon us if the headline is a little sensational, but this is one that we’ve personally experienced — and it’s not pretty. For at least the last couple versions, Android has been plagued with a couple extremely serious bugs in its text messaging subsystem that can ultimately end up causing you to text the wrong contact — even contacts that you’ve never texted before. There appear to be a few failure modes; the one we definitely experience on the Gingerbread-powered Nexus S involves being routed to the wrong thread when you tap it either in the Notifications list or the master thread list in the Messaging application, so if you don’t notice, you’ll end up firing a message to the wrong person.

More seriously, though, there’s also an open issue in Android’s bug tracking system — inexplicably marked “medium” priority — where sent text messages can appear to be in the correct thread and still end up being sent to another contact altogether. In other words, unless you pull up the Message Details screen after the fact, you might not even know the grievous act you’ve committed until your boss, significant other, or best friend — make that former best friend — texts you back. There seem to have been some attempts on Google’s part over the year to fix it; we can’t confirm that it still happens in 2.3, but for what it’s worth, the issue hasn’t been marked resolved in Google Code… and it was opened some six months ago.

This is akin to an alarm clock that occasionally won’t go off (we’ve been there) or a car that randomly won’t let you turn the steering wheel — you simply cannot have a phone that you can’t trust to communicate with the right people. It’s a deal-breaker. We’re pretty shocked that these issues weren’t tied up and blasted to all affected phones as an over-the-air patch months ago, but whatever the reason, we’d like to see Google, manufacturers, and carriers drop every other Android update they’re working on and make sure this is completely resolved immediately.

Want to see this fixed as much as we do? Scroll to the bottom of the Google Code page and hit “Vote for this issue and get email change notifications.”

Android still has horrible text messaging bugs that’ll get you fired, busted, or otherwise embarrassed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 31 Dec 2010 13:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Canadian Google users have long been frustrated by having to wait for new online toys they can’t try but the company vows that’s going to change.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall promised to hold a province-wide referendum on the controversial topic at the same time as the next provincial election, scheduled for Nov. 7, 2011.

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In October, Amazon announced that it would begin allowing Kindle owners to lend books to friends and family, so long as they use a Kindle (or the Kindle app), too. The company promised the feature would arrive before the end of the year and, while Amazon is cutting it pretty close with a December 30th launch date, it stayed true to its word. Users can now lend e-books for up to 14 days, although they won’t be able to read the books while they’re out on loan, and publishers will ultimately decide whether to allow their books to be lent out at all. The total number of loanable books is unclear, but Amazon has said that it includes over half of the currently available library. Instructions for how to loan out books can be found here.

Amazon Finally Lets You Lend Kindle E-Books originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Owners of 2010 and 2011 Ford Sync-capable whips can now send direction and traffic info to their cars from their Androids and iPhones with Ford’s free Sync Destinations app. Hey, it’s better than fiddling with the car’s GPS controls. [Sync] More »

Android: If you’re tired of manually adding new bookmarks to both your PC and your phone, ChromeMarks will sync all your bookmarks between Android and Chrome with minimal setup. More »

If you’ve been keeping an ear to the techie ground, you’ll probably have heard some analyst chatter suggesting RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook may be delayed due to issues relating to its supposedly poor battery life. That scuttlebutt has now turned out to be mostly unfounded, with RIM clarifying the situation through a communiqué sent to Erictric:

“Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life.”

To be sure, it’s not an outright denial that there may be PlayBooks floating about with disappointing battery performance, but the immaturity of the software on them is clearly such as to invalidate any conclusions drawn. Perhaps more important than the imprecise discussion of battery longevity (what does “comparable” even mean in this context?) is the note that the company is still on track to complete its software optimizations and deliver its first tablet on schedule. Guess we can all quit worrying now.

RIM: BlackBerry PlayBook battery life is still being optimized, won’t cause delays originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Dec 2010 04:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It's hard to believe how much the world has transformed in the past decade — but our handy infographic tells the whole story. Click to enlarge! More »