Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Samsung have always been a major player in every corner of the electronics market with their good reliable products, whether it be the telly, the mobile phone or the computer. With the obvious popularity now of Apple’s iPad it was only a matter of time before Samsung entered that market too and with everyone trying to out-do Apple in whichever way they can, what will Samsung bring to the table.

We got our first sighting of it’s tablet from the official Samsung South Africa Twitter account, showing a 7” tablet PC next to it’s already well reviewed Galaxy S smartphone ( the obvious comparison to the iPhone/iPad relationship) So what’s it got? Available in 7”, 8” and 10” screen sizes the slate runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) and is powered with a “faster than iPad” 1.2GHz processor. It has 16GB of inbuilt storage which can be expanded to 48GB with a MicroSD slot.

With the obvious speed ability over Apple and Google’s popular OS with all it’s apps this could be a true contender for the market. We have no price details yet and no exact date but it should be available in September.

As of yesterday one can now pre-order Google’s top notch ‘Droid phone the Nexus One on a Vodafone contract. Before punters could only buy one direct from Google, which unless you had all the cash spare in one go hasn’t been easy for those looking on a subsidised contract.

Available in stores on the 1st May if you pre-order online you could receive it a day earlier. The cheapest contract deals start at £25 for a 24 month contract and obviously different deals and prices are in effect as to what minutes, text and data allowance you can get.

To top that off, it is believed that Android 2.2 or “Froyo” as it’s being named should be available in May, or so rumours suggest. It has also been said that the Nexus One will be the first phone to get the OS upgrade too. This has come about from apparent phones spotted online, surfing the web using what is more than likely a test of Android 2.2. Couple this with the fact Google are having a conference at the end of May and hopefully that’s when we’ll get the details.

Hopefully all the older droid phones still not running 2.1 will get a quicker upgrade.

Google’s “Nexus One” phone has been stirring up plenty of interest in the past few weeks, not only as Google’s next big phone after the slightly disappointing one that was on T-Mobile not so long back (apparently this is the phone that should’ve been) and the apparent lack of originality in the name(according to the Philip K. Dick family estate saying they stole it from the author’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? AKA Blade Runner). However all this aside a little birdie(a Voda spokesman to Engadget) let slip that the release will be “imminent” and should be shipping “within weeks”

The UK will be the first country in Europe to receive the Nexus One with the rest of Europe having to wait till later in the year.

The Nexus One is a collaboration between HTC and Google and from what we’ve seen it looks nice and on paper looks………nice!!! Powered by Snapdragon, OLED touchscreen, 5MP camera, Android 2.1 OS(animated wallpapers, lovely window transitions……..nice!) This could really be the next best rival to the iPhone. Hopefully when we get the full officialness we can let you all know the exact prices and dates!!

It seems that HTC the Taiwanese mobile company will continue to use the Android platform with a supposed 20 new phones on the horizon. With the success of the Hero and the well reviewed HD2 this can only be a good thing.

The rumours have come from a text thread inside the new Android 2.1 ROM. Some of the names within have been seen before but some new have shown up. Since the first phone released the T-Mobile G1, HTC have used the Google made OS in its phones. I personally have not used one but with the sheer volume of new phones using and big mobile manufacturers switching to it, it must be a solid performing OS leading to so many great reviews of Android phones.

The full list of names within the ROM are Bahamas, Bravo, DesireC, Dragon, Dream, Espresso, Halo, HeroCT, HeroC, Hero, Huangshan, Incredible, Legend, Liberty, Memphis, Paradise, PassionC, Passion, Sapphire and Supersonic. Obviously some of the names will be phones probably based in the East but it shows HTC’s future in the Android Mobile business.

Source : T3

Well them Google developers don't mess around do they?

Google has commented on the issues saying:

“We’ve been notified of this issue (Jailbreaking of Android) and have developed a fix. We’re currently working with our partners to push the fix out and updating the open source code base to reflect these changes.”

It is likely the update will be rolled out in the next few days.

Via: Androidcommunity, via xda-developers

It has only been a few days since the launch of the T-Mobile / Google G1 and hackers have already bypassed the restrictions implemented on the Android platform.

This hardly comes as a surprise as Android is open source, and hackers didn't take too long to crack the closed iPhone system.

The hack allows the user to access the phone as a root/superuser.

The process seems relatively easy, you need to get PTerminal, a command line tool, from the Android marketplace. From there, you navigate to your system/bin folder (where the binaries are kept) and type telnetd to launch the telnet program which lets you login to the phone remotely.

Make sure your Wi-Fi is switched on then type netstat to get your IP address. From there, you just grab a computer on the same network and telnet in. You now have root access to the entire file system.

It is worth noting that this will essentially allow anyone to access the phone as a super user as the phone has no authentication. So it is advisable to shut everything down once done.

At the moment the hack has mainly been used to install applications onto the SD card which is prohibited normally. However it should be possible to use this technique to unlock the phone, allowing you to use it on any network.

It is expected Google/T-Mobile will try and fix this issue ASAP as T-Mobile cover the cost of the phone based on the user being tied into a long term contract.

Personally I think things like this could end up being one of the strong points of Android. When a system can be opened up and customised by individuals it tends to get a huge community following. Just look how many people contribute free work to things like Linux, WordPress and Joomla. Granted Android is quite different than them 3 examples but you get my point.

Via: Wired

Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore has informed the New York Times that he was able to install a keystroke logging application by redirecting the G1's web browser to a malicious web site that automatically installed the software.

Google has acknowledged the security flaw and points out that the sandbox-nature of Android limits the damage to a single application. Unlike other smart-phones and PCs, this security flaw only affects the web browser and will not compromise any other portions of the phone. Google has already patched the open-source version of Android and is currently working with T-Mobile and HTC to get the security patch out to current T-Mobile customers.

Some videos and pictures of the new T-Mobile G1.

Hands on pictures from Engadget

Google Android walkthrough on the G1