gingerbread

The weeks leading up to CES, the annual Consumer Electronics Show, are usually slow, but a new Android smartphone, the Huawei Mercury, is heating things up for Cricket.

At least, that's what Cricket hopes will happen with the phone it's claiming as its most advanced ever.

Previously known as the Huawei Honor (see review) or Glory, the Mercury boasts a 4-inch FWVGA touch screen (480x854-pixel resolution), a 1.4GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera with HD video capture, and a front-facing camera (with a basic VGA resolution). The device has 2GB of internal storage. Cricket's new tethering plan lets you use the Mercury to provide an Internet connection to up to five other devices.

Although the Mercury ships with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Cricket apparently hasn't decided whether it will upgrade the device to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, according to a Cricket representative.

The Huawei Mercury is available now and costs $249.99 without a contract.… Read more

It's about time LG got really fired up about Android, and the LG Nitro HD could be just the fuse this phone maker needs to rocket through the ranks.

The Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone contains all the premium parts you'd expect in a superphone. It all starts with a brilliant 4.5-inch high-definition touch screen (1,280x720-pixel HD resolution). Then you have 4G LTE for data speed, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor for internal speed, an 8-megapixel camera for standard shots, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for self-portraits and video chatting, and support for HD (1080p) video recording. Plus, it's got a ton of storage space for photo, video, music, and games right out of the box.

So why isn't this phone scoring off the charts? There are a couple of drawbacks here and there that in my opinion fail to create a device that sweeps them all away. Still, the Nitro HD is a great smartphone, one that will hopefully jump-start LG's aspirations to build amazing, and amazingly competitive, handsets.

See the video, the photos, and the pros and cons in the full LG Nitro HD review.… Read more

The Samsung Transform Ultra is about as close as you can get to a pure Android experience on a slide-out QWERTY keyboard phone. It runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, of course, over which its most notable overlay is Sprint ID. If you use it, Sprint ID will let you download preconfigured packages of apps and wallpaper, for example, that fit a specific theme.

It has a front-facing VGA camera for video chats, a 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a $79.99 price tag--with that new two-year service agreement and after a $50 mail-in rebate.

Watch the video, see the photos, … Read more

Verizon is doing two things: ballooning its collection of superpremium smartphones, and shrinking its feature phone and flip phone offerings. That leaves the carrier channeling budget-keepers toward middle-of-the-road smartphones, like the Samsung Illusion.

For $79.99, you get Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 3.2-megapixel camera, and a 1GHz single-core processor, plus all of Google's services and Verizon's V Cast apps. It's a decent smartphone, thanks to hardware that can mostly hold up and software that's by now standard. The Illusion is pure utility; just don't expect to be wowed.

Watch the review, see the photos, and read all the pros and cons in the full Samsung Illusion review.… Read more

Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread, has officially taken over half of the Android ecosystem, according to new data.

As of yesterday, Gingerbread's many versions were running on 50.6 percent of all the Android devices in the wild, data published on the Android developers page shows. Android 2.2 (Froyo) trailed with 35.3 percent market share. The only other Android version with notable market share--Android 2.1 (Eclair)--captured 9.6 percent of the space during the 14-day period.

Honeycomb's various flavors, which are running on the majority of Android-based tablets, were only able to nab 2.… Read more

This year has been the year of the superphone, but LG seems to have missed the memo the first time around, offering some solid Android handsets, but very little to cut into Samsung, HTC, and Motorola's Android dominance.

With the premium LG Nitro HD phone for AT&T, the handset-maker hopes to close out the year with a bang.

AT&T ruined its own surprise by announcing the Nitro HD a full four days ahead of its launch event in New York, but it wasn't until then that we got a chance to see it in the flesh.

Design The Nitro HD starts things off right with a 4.5-inch "true HD AH-IPS" display and a 326ppi-pixel density. As with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the HTC Rezound, the Nitro HD has a 1,280x720-pixel resolution. Much is made of screens these days (as it should be), and LG is claiming that the Nitro HD's screen will pack 500 nits of luminance, a measure of brightness. (The LG Marquee has an extremely bright 700-nit screen.)

The screen was large, bright, and beautiful indeed, and colors looked vibrant, and true to life. We won't be able to get really down and dirty with screen comparisons until we lay the Nitro HD, Rezound, and Galaxy Nexus side by side and put them all through their paces for color, brightness, and clarity. … Read more

AT&T today introduced its next Android smartphone, the 4G LTE-capable LG Nitro HD.

Expected to arrive online and in stores on December 4 for $249.99, the LG Nitro HD boasts a 4.5-inch True HD AH-IPS display, a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera, and 4GB internal storage. What's more, the Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread smartphone comes with a 16GB microSD card and support for Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA connectivity, matching up quite nicely with Korea's recently announced Optimus LTE. … Read more

Owners of certain LG Optimus smartphones can look forward to a bite of Ice Cream Sandwich in the near future.

The mobile phone maker confirmed via its Facebook page today that it will be deploying the latest version of Android to select Optimus phones. Included in the upgrade will be the Optimus 2X, the Optimus Black, the Optimus 3D, and the Optimus LTE, all of which hit the market this past year.

LG is also examining Ice Cream Sandwich to see which of its other smartphones can run the new OS in an effort to upgrade as many users as … Read more

AT&T's Samsung Captivate Glide is one of the carrier's two new Android-toting slider phones (the other is the Samsung DoubleTime.)

The Captivate Glide looks and feels like a member of the Samsung Galaxy S II pack, albeit a lesser model, with slightly more modest specs. There are still 4G speeds to be had with the HSPA+ network, and a dual core processor running the show with Android Gingerbread. However, there are also a couple of design flaws I had a hard time looking past, like the weak link of the keyboard, a bad Achilles heel to … Read more