Maimpok

Sony’s been rather busy lately, releasing a bunch of new phones, as well as a pretty well-received tablet, but that doesn’t mean it has forgotten all about slightly older devices. The Tablet S has never been extremely popular, despite being upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich back in April, but maybe it’s finally time for the 9.4-incher to shine.

That’s because Sony’s decided to extend its software support to its 2011 flasghip tab, rolling out a new OTA (over-the-air) update for U.S. users. Granted, it’s not Android 4.1 Jelly Bean that’s hitting the Tablet S, but it might just be the next best thing, bringing the slate’s software on-par with the one on the new Xperia Tablet S.
The changelog is pretty massive, and, while Sony forgot to mention anything about the upgrade’s “weight”, you should make sure your battery is above the 50% mark when starting the download and installation.
Guest Mode is by far the upgrade’s piece of resistance, being highly acclaimed by pretty much anyone who’s seen or used an Xperia Tablet S. The new feature on the S will allow you to “easily share your tablet with family and friends”, meaning you can create different modes for different people using the gadget and restrict or grant access to specific apps.


There aren’t any more brand new features and functions hitting the Tablet S with the Android 4.0.3 update, but you should notice improvements to several apps, including the media players and the Remote Control.
The IR app has been upgraded to allow you to add six programmable macro keys, so you now have the ability to turn on and control multiple devices at once, including TV sets, Blu-Ray Disc players and audio systems.
As for the media player apps, they have been redesigned from the ground up, offering several new helpful functions, but also looking sleeker than before and working much smoother. The Small Apps feature has itself been improved with much more liberty for the user, while the Social Feed Reader Cloud has been revamped as Socialife.
Last, but not least, there are new widgets added to the Home Screen, which might annoy some of you that are into vanilla Android, but which will definitely give the Tablet S another touch of originality. We’re guessing a number of bug fixes should also be rolled out with the brand new update, although there’s no mention on Sony’s blog about anything like that.
Now if only Sony would understand that keeping this big guy’s price over the $300 mark is a big-time mistake…

Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus might have been overshadowed by the snappier Galaxy S3 or HTC One X in the past months, but it’s still a darn solid phone that won’t let you down. There are two extra reasons why you should consider getting Verizon’s variant of the GNex these days, the first being the official Jelly Bean update that is currently rolling out “in waves”.

The second? Well, this might even be more appealing than Android 4.1’s buttery smooth experience. It’s a discount from $100 to… are you sitting down?… $0.97. I know, that sounds like a deal to blow your socks off, but unfortunately there is a catch.
Walmart is offering the on-contract Galaxy Nexus for less than a buck, but, as of right now, the deal only seems to be going on in brick and mortar stores, and not online too. Moreover, the only hint about it comes from a photo snapped by a Reddit user inside what looks like a Walmart store.


Still, it sounds like it could be worth your while to go down to your local Walmart to check it out. The deal seems to apply to both new 2-year carrier agreements and device upgrades. Oddly enough, the phone goes for $700 in its unlocked flavor in that specific store, while online Walmart has the SIM-free GNex at $590.
Verizon’s Samsung Galaxy Nexus variant is very similar to the international model, rocking the following specs and features:

• 4.65-inch Super AMOLED display with 1280 x 720 pixels resolution
• Dual-core 1.2 GHz TI OMAP 4460 processor
• 1 GB of RAM
• 32 GB of internal memory
• 1,850 mAh battery
• 4G LTE connectivity
• 5 MP rear-facing camera with LED Flash
• 1.3 MP front-facing cam
• Wi-Fi, DLNA, Bluetooth, NFC
• 5.1 ounces weight
• 5.33 x 2.67 x 0.37 inches dimensions

There’s no quad-core goodness, the battery is a bit meager, the rear-facing camera might seem outdated to some. But to pay only a buck for that unbelievably crisp screen, Jelly Bean, 32 GB of on-board storage, and 4G LTE speeds? Now that’s a deal you can’t say no to! Can you?

The wait for the ZTE Engage on Cricket is nearly over. You’ll be able to snap it up for $250 off contract from Tuesday, October 2. Is it worth snapping up? Let’s take a look at the specs.
You’ve got a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8655T Scorpion processor, a 4-inch WVGA TFT capacitive touchscreen (that’s 800 x 480 pixels), an 8MP rear-facing camera with LED flash, and a 0.3MP VGA front-facing camera. The phone runs Android 4.0 (ICS), it has support for Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and it has a 1,900 mAh battery.

It also comes with Cricket’s Muve Music service with a 4GB Muve Music SD Card included. If you subscribe to the Muve Music service you get access to “millions of songs” bundled with your call minutes, text, and data. So there is no pay per song or separate contract required.
The no contract plans start at $50 for unlimited talk, text and 3G data plus 1GB of full-speed data per month. You can pay an extra $10 per month for 2.5GB of full-speed data and for $70 per month you’ll get 5GB of full-speed data. Tethering is allowed.
To be honest the phone itself doesn’t look great, but the unique plans that Cricket is offering might tempt some people. What do you think? Anyone have experience with Cricket? Does the ZTE Engage look good to you?

You know we love hype building campaigns as much as the next guy, but HTC is very close to cross that line between interesting and annoying. We knew for a (loooong) while that there are two “beasts” coming from the Taiwan-based company, but we’re still wondering when will the One X+ and One X5 actually be released.

Fortunately, the One X+ rumors seem to gain some traction, so, even if we still have nothing official on the One X’ successor, it’s pretty obvious that it exists and it’s coming soon.
Less than 48 hours after spotting a blurry pic of what @evleaks claimed is the T-Mobile version of the One X+, the phone makes another unofficial appearance, this time in the UK. The claimed O2 flyer offers us another glance at the new handheld’s design, and  also mentions some of its specs and the first pricing details.
In terms of looks, the One X+is no big surprise, closely resembling the One X. Still, the corners seem just a bit sharper, while the three capacitive buttons appear to be glowing red. As far as the tech specs go, with the worthy exception of the 64 GB of internal storage, the One X+’ spec sheet brings now surprises.


The first gen One X only came with 32 GB, and, after we saw what looked like an AT&T model of the One X+ getting FCC certified, we were pretty certain that the new One X+ will also come with 32 gigs. Now the storage space seems to have been upped, although it’s possible that we’ll see a 32GB version as well.
Other than that, there’s the predictable 1.7 GHz quad-core processor (most likely an NVIDIA Tegra 3), Android Jelly Bean (hooray!), Beats Audio, 25GB of free Dropbox storage, but also an “amazing” 8 MP camera that sounds a bit disappointing. We know that it’s not all about the megapixels, but we would’ve liked HTC to keep up with the 12MP+ cameras on the Oppo Find 5 or the LG Optimus G.
By far, the most interesting detail on the brochure is the phone’s pricing, said to be £479.99 on UK’s Pay&Go, which would translate into around $779. We certainly hope to see the SIM-free version of the One X+ available in the US for less than that, while the subsidized price is still difficult to predict.
Hopefully, HTC decided after all to crank up the battery on the One X+. But the fact that the detail is not mentioned on today’s flyer is a bit worrying. It’ll also be interesting to see if this is the first handheld that O2 and HTC are planning to release without a battery charger, and if the market will react as our readers did in this poll.
Still excited about the One X+? Annoyed? A little bit of both?
[Updated] The folks at Pocket-lint got their hands on alleged image of the HTC One X+, which confirms that the revised One X will be virtually identical to the original HTC flagship.

You know we love hype building campaigns as much as the next guy, but HTC is very close to cross that line between interesting and annoying. We knew for a (loooong) while that there are two “beasts” coming from the Taiwan-based company, but we’re still wondering when will the One X+ and One X5 actually be released.

Fortunately, the One X+ rumors seem to gain some traction, so, even if we still have nothing official on the One X’ successor, it’s pretty obvious that it exists and it’s coming soon.
Less than 48 hours after spotting a blurry pic of what @evleaks claimed is the T-Mobile version of the One X+, the phone makes another unofficial appearance, this time in the UK. The claimed O2 flyer offers us another glance at the new handheld’s design, and  also mentions some of its specs and the first pricing details.
In terms of looks, the One X+is no big surprise, closely resembling the One X. Still, the corners seem just a bit sharper, while the three capacitive buttons appear to be glowing red. As far as the tech specs go, with the worthy exception of the 64 GB of internal storage, the One X+’ spec sheet brings now surprises.

The first gen One X only came with 32 GB, and, after we saw what looked like an AT&T model of the One X+ getting FCC certified, we were pretty certain that the new One X+ will also come with 32 gigs. Now the storage space seems to have been upped, although it’s possible that we’ll see a 32GB version as well.
Other than that, there’s the predictable 1.7 GHz quad-core processor (most likely an NVIDIA Tegra 3), Android Jelly Bean (hooray!), Beats Audio, 25GB of free Dropbox storage, but also an “amazing” 8 MP camera that sounds a bit disappointing. We know that it’s not all about the megapixels, but we would’ve liked HTC to keep up with the 12MP+ cameras on the Oppo Find 5 or the LG Optimus G.
By far, the most interesting detail on the brochure is the phone’s pricing, said to be £479.99 on UK’s Pay&Go, which would translate into around $779. We certainly hope to see the SIM-free version of the One X+ available in the US for less than that, while the subsidized price is still difficult to predict.
Hopefully, HTC decided after all to crank up the battery on the One X+. But the fact that the detail is not mentioned on today’s flyer is a bit worrying. It’ll also be interesting to see if this is the first handheld that O2 and HTC are planning to release without a battery charger, and if the market will react as our readers did in this poll.
Still excited about the One X+? Annoyed? A little bit of both?
[Updated] The folks at Pocket-lint got their hands on alleged image of the HTC One X+, which confirms that the revised One X will be virtually identical to the original HTC flagship.

There has been quite a lot of concern about the flaw in some Android phones, including some Samsung Galaxy S3 devices, that allows a hacker to create a simple HTML page which can cause the phone to reset and wipe all of its data. Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) commands can be issued due to a combination of flaws in the stock Android web browser and the Android dialer.

To help worried Android users, Bitdefender has released Wipe Stopper which warns users of any attempt to run a USSD command on their device, allowing them to prevent their phones from executing the malicious commands. The way the app works is to register itself as a alternative app for receiving USSD commands along with the phone dialer. When a USSD command is run via the web browser the user can choose between the dialer or Wipe Stopper. Setting Wipe Stopper as the default means that all USSD commands issued via the web will be intercepted. Once the USSD command has been caught, Wipe Stopper offers the user the chance to continue to the dialer or cancel the action.
“The moment the vulnerability came to light, Bitdefender set some of the best minds in the industry to working,” said Bitdefender Chief Security Researcher Alexandru Balan. “We came up with the best solution available – Bitdefender Wipe Stopper. It’s free, so we recommend pretty much every Android owner use it.”
The app also offers a test link which will open a page on Bitdefender’s website and ask for the phone to return its IMEI via a USSD command. If the IMEI is returned it means that all and any USSD commands can be issued via a web page, including the commands to wipe the phone and restore it to its factory defaults.
I tested it on my HTC One S, which it turns out is vulnerable,  but now thanks to Wipe Stopper I am now protected. I also tested my carrier’s native app (which also issues USSD commands) and thankfully it runs normally, even with Wipe Stopper installed.
You can download BitDefender’s Wipe Stopper from Google Play.

Despite having what looked like a winner on its hands, Acer didn’t make a huge effort in advertising the 7-inch Iconia Tab A110 tablet. Still, the “Nexus 7 killer” looked quite enticing to those who heard about it, especially after Acer officially announced that it would be coming with Jelly Bean on board.

The A110 has now finally started shipping, but Acer still doesn’t seem to have learned its lesson – it all happened very quietly, with no fuss around it whatsoever. Then again, we’re not exactly dealing with a full-fledged launch, seeing as there’s only one retailer selling the 7-incher in one European country.
As expected, the honor of exclusively selling the A110 has gone to EBuyer, the UK retailer that listed the tablet on its website ever since August. Unfortunately, besides being the only one shipping the device, it seems that EBuyer also has limited stocks – at the time of this writing there are only 200 units still available.

The pricing has fortunately not budged since the pre-orders started a few weeks back, so you’re still asked to pay £179.98 (including VAT) for the device. That comes to around $290 based on today’s conversion rates, but when and if the A110 will hit the U.S. it’ll surely come for much less (fingers crossed for $180, though $200 seems fair, too).
Before hitting the States, we should probably see the 7-incher going up for sale in other European countries, but also from other UK retailers and straight from Acer UK. Right now, the tablet is nowhere to be found on Acer’s UK or U.S. websites, so we might still have to wait for a while.
For the time being, let’s go through its specs and features real quick and see how the A110 will stack up against the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD:

• 7-inch TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen with 1024 x 600 pixels resolution and 170 ppi pixel density
• Quad-core 1.2GHz NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 8GB of on-board storage (there might also be a 16 GB version coming soon)
• MicroSD support for expanding the memory with an additional 32 GB
• 2MP front-facing camera
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with not many tweaks or improvements
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS
• USB 2.0
• MicroHDMI
• 3,420mAh battery capable of running for around 7.5 hours of video playback between charges
• 370 grams weight
• 7.68 x 4.61 x 0.52 inches dimensions

Basically, the Iconia Tab A110 sports a less capable screen than the Nexus 7 and comes with a smaller battery, but has microSD support, HDMI, and a better front-facing cam. As for the Kindle Fire HD, that also has a cooler display, a dual-core processor that might or might not be slower than the quad-core Tegra 3, better storage options (though no microSD support), no camera or GPS. The software is very different on the Fire HD, which runs a skinned version of Android 4.0 ICS, but ultimately the three tabs, if priced equally, look very similar to us.
Do you agree? Can the A110 go head-to-head with the Nexus 7 and Fire HD and hope to come out on top?