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Hands On With The LG Optimus Vu VIDEO

LG Optimus VU, LG, CTIA 2012, Nibletz, Thedroidguy, Samsung Galaxy Note

LG Optimus Vu (left) next to Samsung Galaxy Note

Last year at IFA in Berlin Samsung introduced an entirely new device with an entirely new form factored. The device, dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Note, was a cross-breed of tablet and phone. Many are calling the device category “phablet” or “phoneblet”.

Samsung is having great success with the Galaxy Note. They recently announced that they’ve sold 5 million of the devices to date.

It didn’t take LG long to develop a device to compete head to head with their South Korean rival. LG’s new 5 inch Optimus Vu looks to do just that.

The Optimus Vu features a 5.0 inch display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1024×768. LG uses the IPS panel in the Optimus Vu that you can find in the LG Optimus LTE 2.

Like the Samsung device, LG’s Optimus Vu also features a stylus. Their stylus is a little more bulky, about the size of a #2 pencil. That may actually be a good thing as many have found the stylus that ships with the Galaxy Note to be a little too short and a little too thin. Samsung actually offers an accessory to make the stylus more of a pen size. Unlike the Galaxy Note though the LG Optimus Vu doesn’t have a place on board to store the digital pen, which may result in costly accessory purchases.

The LG Optimus Vu runs on top of a 1.5ghz dual core processor. It has 1gb of RAM and supports 4G/LTE (as does the Galaxy Note). It features an 8mp camera on the rear which shoots 1080p HD video.

The LG Optimus Vu is available now in Europe and Asia. The LG Spokesperson in the video below wouldn’t mention anything about a U.S. release.

Cricket Holding Huge Mother’s Day Sale

If you’re out and about today and you still haven’t gotten your mom anything for Mother’s Day, you may want to check out your local Cricket Wireless store. What’s better than getting your mom a great Android powered smartphone that is pay as you go so you’re not stuck with a long term bill?

Cricket announced a last minute Mother’s Day Sale to reach all those last minute shoppers looking for the perfect technological gift for mom.

The sale includes a good mix of Android powered smartphones, phones with Cricket’s Muve Music and even the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Here are all the deals from the prepaid carrier:

ZTE Score (MSPR $149.99, $69.99 after instant discount and web discount) is a value priced, full featured Android smartphone that includes Wi-Fi capability, XT9 Trace for easy text entry, 3G Real Web Browsing and a 3.2MP camera/camcorder.
Huawei Ascend II (MSPR $179.99, $99.99 after instant discount and web discount) comes packed with a 3.5″ HVGA touch-screen, Wi-Fi capability, 3G Real Web Browsing, 600MHz processor, Android 2.3 Gingerbread and a 5MP camera/camcorder.
Samsung Vitality (MSPR $219.99, $129.99 after instant discount and web discount) fast 800 MHz processor, 3.5″ HVGA touch-screen and easy access to social networks is designed for an interactive experience. Samsung Vitality is loaded with a 3.2MP camera/camcorder, Wi-Fi capability, 3G Real Web Browsing.
Huawei Mercury (MSPR $249.99, $229.99 after instant web discount) offers a beautiful 4″ display and is powered by an ultrafast 1.4 GHz processor, features an 8.0MP rear camera, VGA front camera and an Android 2.3 OS. Named by PC Magazine as the best pre-paid smartphone in America

The Samsung Galaxy Tab™ 10.1 is available in Cricket company-owned stores (MSRP $499.99, $399.99 after instant rebate). Running on Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS, with a beautiful 10.1″ widescreen TFT (1280 x 800) display offering HD clarity, a super-fast dual core 1GHz processor, a 2MP front facing/ 3MP rear-facing camera, the Samsung Tab is perfect for watching movies, cruising the internet and sharing photos with family and friends.
The Crosswave Broadband Device, which is available in Cricket company-owned stores (MSRP $149.99, $24.99 after instant rebates and bundled with Samsung Galaxy Tab), creates an instant mobile hotspot and supports multiple Wi-Fi devices nationwide. Bundle the Crosswave with a Samsung Galaxy Tab and receive additional discounts worth up to $225.00 for a final Tablet + Crosswave all-in price of $424.98 (does not include monthly broadband service rate plan).

Head into your local Cricket store now or hit Cricket up on the web here

Zynga Sues Kobojo Over The Use Of “Ville” In Their Social Games

A French developer has created an egyption based social game where you need to make egyption pyramid cities. The game is called PyramidVille and it plays on the classic model of Zynga’s Farmville, Cityville, Frontierville and other Ville style games.

Zynga has now sued the French developer over the use of the word Ville. The suit, which was filed in a San Francisco court, is asking a judge to ban Kobojo from using the word “Ville” in the US release of the game.

Zynga’s attorney Dennis Wilson said Kobojo’s use of Ville was a “willful violation of Zynga’s trademark by a competitor seeking to exploit Zynga’s hard-earned reputation in the social gaming space.” With the game’s focus building an Egyptian city, we can see where the confusion may come in to play.

According to this report Zynga tried to work this out with Kobojo but they willfully ignored the social game studios requests. Kobojo has already released a mobile version of PyramidVille.

Zynga build a franchise around their Facebook integrated social games. Their first game, Farmville, became a blockbuster hit. CityVille followed soon after that.

Zynga has also made a presence in the social mobile space after purchasing “Words With Friends” they’ve also got a version of Hangman played with friends. Their first mobile game, Zynga Poker is also a big hit.

Their most notable mobile news was the nearly $200 million dollar purchase of New York based game studio OMGPOP. Zynga acquired OMGPOP after their hit game Draw Something was able to knock Words With Friends out of the top spot in the mobile games arena.

The staff of OMGPOP was absorbed into Zynga and Dan Porter, the CEO of OMGPOP became Zynga’s Vice President of their New York operation which to date only includes the Draw Something title. We ran a feature story on Dan Porter and his unique use of HBO hit series “The Wire” characters as the names of OMGPOPs conference rooms.

Source: ABS-CBN News

Rovio Mobile Finally Has A Follow Up Game To Angry Birds

It took over 50 games for Finnish game development studio Rovio Mobile to come up with the smash hit Angry Birds. Angry Birds has grown to over 1 billion downloads and a merchandising arm worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.

Rovio Mobile has done two spin off games of their franchise Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Space. The latter becoming the fastest growing mobile game in history after being released in March and shown off at SXSW.

The company announced their 2011 earnings results on Monday. In that call they revealed that Angry Birds had generated $106 million dollars in revenue in 2011. “The strong growth in revenue clearly demonstrates the popularity of the Angry Birds brand.” CEO Mikael Hed said. He continued; “The heavy investments made in 2011 to all business areas will be seen in future products. To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services.”

More after the break
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Asus Releases Demo Video For New PadFone

Asus really burst onto the Android scene with their tablets last year. The Eee Pad Transformer sold pretty well for a computer company mostly known for it’s lower end netbook computers. The Eee Pad Transformer was one of the original Tegra 2 powered Android Honeycomb tablets. It features a sleek looking design alongside top notch features for it’s release time last year.

They were able to follow up the Asus Eee Pad Transformer with the first Nvidia Tegra 3 powered tablet dubbed the Eee Pad Transformer Prime. They were even able to thwart off a trademark case from Hasbro, the toy maker who owns the trademark for the Transformer branded toys.

Last year rumors started flying around that Asus was going to release a tablet that had a phone powering it. They showed off this device, called the PadFone at both the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, and again in late February at Mobile World Congress. Many tech enthusiasts and Android enthusiasts alike have been biting their nails waiting for the device to actually hit the market.

Well it looks like that time is getting closer as Asus has posted an official demo video highlighting the features of this exciting new device.

While we weren’t sure what a tablet phone (not a phoneblet like that Galaxy Note or LG Vue) would be like, we soon discovered that it’s similar to the Motorola Atrix series of devices. However, instead of a keyboard, laptop type dock, it docks into a 10.1″ tablet screen.

Other features of the PadFone include:

– 4.3″ SuperAMOLED qHD display
– Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor with Adreno 225 GPU
– 8mp camer with LED flash
– three internal memory sizes 16/32/64
– HSPA+
– HDMI out
– 1520 mah battery

Check out the video below:

Plantronics Introduces Back Beat Go BlueTooth Headphones At CTIA 2012

Plantronics, a trusted name in audio headsets and devices designed to make business and communication easier, has released a new product at the CTIA 2012 show in New Orleans last week. The headphones that go by the name Back Beat Go, connect to any Bluetooth enabled device for up to 4.5 hours of listening pleasure.

With the Back Beat Go BlueTooth headphones by Plantronics there’s no wires and no hassles. They easily fit into your pocket, purse or backpack and provide full on stereo sound. Now you can listen to music, chat with your friends, and watch movies on any BlueTooth enabled device, be it your tablet, phone or computer.

In addition to the 4.5 hours of listening time the Back Beat Go headphones have up to ten days of standby time. They also give you maximum room to move allowing you the freedom to be up to 33 feet away from the BlueTooth enabled device. Best of all they go from dead to fully charged in 2.5 hours.

Other features include:

• Amazingly light, incredibly small wireless stereo earbuds with Bluetooth® technology

• Compact design easily slips into your pocket, and tangle-free cable keeps things simple

• Enjoy your favorite music or movie with up to 4.5 hours of listening and talk time

• Three sizes of cushioned eartips and optional stabilizers make the fit custom, secure, and comfortable

• Inline controls make it easy to take calls, skip tracks, and adjust volume

• Bluetooth® technology lets you connect to smartphones or tablets for music, movies, and calls

• Big sound in a small package – sound isolating buds for rich stereo

• Headset battery meter automatically shows on screen for iPhone® and iPad®

• Download the Plantronics MyHeadset™ app for a battery headset meter on Android 3.0 tablets, and Android™ 4.0 phones and tablets

Pairing the Back Beat Go BlueTooth headphones is a cinch!

For more info on the BackBeat Go headphones click here

CTIA 2012: Video Intel Android Powered Orange “Santa Clara” Phone

Back in February at Mobile World Congress it was announced that Orange would be one of the first, if not the first, to bring an Intel powered Android device to market. Presently just Lenovo and Orange have Android phones with Intel’s Z2640 processor ready to go.

We saw the first Intel reference design in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and now we’re starting to see the phones emerging from that design.

Orange has been packaging phones under their own brand for years. Now they are looking to release a few smartphones under the Orange label. Orange has turned to Intel to power a new phone called the Orange “Santa Clara” smartphone.

More after the break
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Patent Wars: Samsung Accused Of Destroying Evidence

The judge in the Apple vs Samsung patent case has been throwing the book at the Korean manufacturer. They recently went under fire for failing to turn over source code pertaining to a work-around that Samsung has used to protect itself from a patent Apple holds for “overscroll-bounce”.

Samsung didn’t give that source code up in the allotted time frame and Apple asked the presiding Judge Paul Grewal to essentially disqualify any work around source-code from Samsung’s patent defense. Grewal granted that Apple request, laying down these sanctions:

Samsung shall be precluded from offering any evidence of its design-around efforts for the ‘381, ‘891 and ‘163 patents, and shall not argue that the design-arounds are in any way distinct from those versions of code produced in accordance with the court’s order. Samsung must instead rely solely on the versions of code that were produced on or before December 31, 2011

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NY Startup: Fancy Attracts Silicon Valley Backers For Social, Reverse Groupon Platform

If you like something, fancy it? Feeling kind of British? Well it’s not a British thing it’s an internet thing and it’s a new startup in New York that’s attracting some investors from the Valley.

Even though he didn’t get Instagram, that hasn’t stopped Twitter (and Square) co-founder Jack Dorsey from investing in an innovative disruptive new social platform. It’s also attracted the likes of Chris Hughes( Facebook) and Maynard Web of Ebay.

Although he hasn’t invested yet, Fancy has struck the Fancy of Ashton Kutcher. Kanye West, Bar Rafaeli and Selma Hayek have all become celebrity activists of this new kind of e-commerce platform.

So what is it? Fancy is part store, blog, magazine and wishlist. Anyone can join Fancy and when they do they can share the things they love and like with others. When their social friends across Fancy, like something, merchants can step in and offer a “Groupon in reverse type deal”. This is going to create a new, disruptive and competitive e-commere market place.

Fancy has 500,000 users across their web app, iOS app and recently introduced Android app. It’s great for users because they can see all the things their social friends like. It’s great for merchants because they know what’s in demand.

Fancy is free to join and get started. As Fancy tells Nibletz.com everything that you see on Fancy is either for sale or can be for sale.

Linkage:

Check out Fancy here at their website

Nibletz is the voice of #startups “everywhere else” check out these new stories

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Israeli Startup: “Pops” Makes Android Notifications Pop

Remember when downloading ringtones was the hottest thing on the planet? Then after that ringback tones became popular. Well at one time Ringtones was a $7 billion dollar industry world wide. Now, it’s less than a billion. They just went out of style I guess.

Israeli startups have been really good at harnessing the power of the mobile device. Recently we featured SellARing which is an Israeli company that is selling the ringback tone as advertising. Rather than listen to 10 seconds of ringing, you get to hear an ad, get a discount and engage.

This Israeli startup called “Pops” is making notifications more interesting by bringing all kinds of customizable content to notifications. Pops allows you to customize any kind of Android notification that you could possibly have and use content you like to pop up, wake your phone up and alert you of your new message, Gtalk, Text, email or a host of other notifications.

When we talked with the co-founder he told us in addition to major brands like Rovio Mobile’s “Angry Birds”, they are in negotiations with record companies to produce customized “Pops” from users favorite artists.

Pops is free in the Google Play store. Their monetization is through a customized app store where you pick your pops content. A lot of the “pops” are free but there are some premium “pops” available now.

Check out the video below:

Linkage:

Find Pops in the Google Play Store here

Nibletz is the voice of #startups “everywhere else” check out these new stories

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Startup Interview: Meshin’s CEO Chris Holmes, Plus You Could Win An iPad!

Most app developers and development companies have been going to iOS before the Android platform. Trends are showing that’s starting to change. One of the companies that has released to Android before iPhone is Meshin.

Meshin’s co-founder Kristen Galliani explained to Nibletz.com that Apple doesn’t allow apps to call into other apps, that was one of the main reasons they needed the more open architecture of Android to build Meshin, an email and message aggregator, and Meshin Recall. Meshin Recall syncs with Evernote and helps organize your notes by using dates from your calendar. There is a lot more in store for Meshin Recall. The Meshin team is on the tip of the iceberg of the contextual intelligence space.

Meshin is about to unveil their Meshin Recall product for iOS and they are currently looking for Beta Testers to sign up. If you sign up for the iOS beta and refer the most people you could win one of those flash “New iPads” go here to do that.

Meshin came out of the Palo Alto Research Center with their biggest chunk of funding coming from Xerox (remember that little company that makes copiers and fathered the Mac?). PARC needed someone to bring Meshin to life and that someone is Chris Holmes.

With more than 25 years in the tech start up arena and some huge accomplishments under his belt he was the perfect fit.

Check out the interview after the break

What’s In Your Bag: Colby Brown

In this episode of What’s In Your Bag we get up close and personal with a good friend of mine in Colby Brown. We’ve covered him more than anyone else with numerous Beyond The Lens features. He’s that much of an interesting interview so I couldn’t help it. He has been on the road and was able to take the time to inventory his gear along with sending a couple of photos…

NY Startup GiddyUp Launches Social Mobile App For Short Term Planning

GiddyUp Co-Founder Elliott Goldwater asks a very relevant question these days, of the last 10 social apps that you downloaded how many do you still use right now. So I did an inventory. I’ve downloaded 36 apps that fit in the social mobile space. Here are the ones that I still use, at least in some kind of moderation: Hootsuite (all the time), Facebook (all the time), Instagram (quite frequently), Path (moderately), Pinterest (minimally), Sonar (moderately), Glancee (moderately), Trover (a little more than moderately). I’ve dumped countless others including Highlight.

So why bother with another social mobile app. Well as Goldwater points out, Giddy Up is a social mobile app in the truest form. The app allows you to plan and attend events and then communicate through the app using your actual friends regular contact info, novel huh.

Event hosts must sign up for Giddy Up however their friends don’t have to. While Giddy Up has integration with Facebook, and Twitter (with Privacy Controls) the foundation for the event is built upon actual contacts in your contact list. The user creates an RSVPable event.

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Mini Review: HTC One S for T-Mobile

HTC sent us their latest device for T-Mobile (announcement is coming shortly from NYC) the One S. This device is part of “the new HTC” a return to form by the Taiwanese company after a devastating 4Q 2011. After an onslaught of very similar models across the “high-end” of the Android OS market the brand was becoming diluted. Last year saw (in the US) the launch of Thunderbolt 4G, Evo Shift 4G, Droid Incredible 2, Merge, Sensation 4G, Evo 3D, Status, MyTouch 4G Slide, Rhyme, Hero S, Wildfire S, Amaze 4G, Evo Design 4G, Vivid, and lastly the Rezound. 16 phones, nearly half of which were considered high-end devices. HTC Chief Financial Officer Winston said “We simply dropped the ball on products in the fourth quarter.” Q1 2012 was a huge disappointment as our sister site TheDroidGuy reported two weeks ago.

So, how about the One is it “the one“?

Hardware

Beginning with the first touch I thought, this feels like their mid to low-end devices – SPECTACULAR. I mean that in all sincerity. I loved the quality and construction of both the Status AND the Radar 4G (Windows Phone 7) devices. They were constructed out of solid pieces of aluminum. I was baffled why two of the best devices were made of this amazing metal but not the “halo” devices like Sensation 4G, Amaze 4G, or Evo 3D. The screen is a 4.3″ SuperAMOLED qHD (960×540) resolution*. It comes with Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Sense 4.0 HTC’s custom UI overlay. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 CPU, 1GB DDR2, and it operates on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ (42 Mbps) network. It also comes with Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-FI 802.11 b/g/n, and HDMI via MHL connector (not included). The storage is non-expandable 16GB (available space is split into 2.2 GB system and 9.9 GB external partitions). HTC has teamed with Dropbox to provide an additional 25 GB of “free” storage – if you don’t include data usage, that is.

The battery, which you cannot remove, is 1650 mAh. This is significantly smaller than the Motorola Droid Razr 1780 mAh (another device without a removable battery). It remains to be seen if this was a mistake or a HUGE mistake on the part of HTC. I’ve never personally owned a HTC device without owning at least one additional battery for it.

Visual/Audio

One of the top selling points for this reviewer is the new HTC ImageSense which “improves every part of the camera including the lens, the sensor, the software, and integrates a new custom HTC ImageChip. Inside it has an 8MP lens with f/2.0 aperture capture. The Rezound shipped with a f/2.2 aperture (smaller is “better”). The camera can be used to simultaneously shoot both video and still shots which I’ve tested extensively. It works amazingly well and is flawless during video playback.

HTC also focused on the sound output in the One S using Beats By Dre Audio to handle the processing of audio. Unlike the Rezound the One S did not come with Beats headphones. The Beats audio has been made available across the range of listening situations that I have used it for. The Rezound’s Beats output was limited to HTC Music and HTC watch. I was severely disappointed with that experience on the Rezound and appreciate that HTC addressed that issue.

Software

HTC launched the One series with Android’s latest 4.0.3 ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) and their custom UI Sense 4.0. I somewhat jokingly and somewhat seriously commented about my feelings regarding (the unofficial) Sense 3.6 leak for the Sensation 4G a few months back in this video (no need to watch, honestly). I won’t lie – I hated it. I still have a very strong dislike of Sense 3.6 but I’ve come to love Sense 4.0.

Sense 4.0 has followed the lead set by ICS yet still maintains a very familiar feel to the Sense that people have grown accustomed to. When you first turn on the device and the home screen loads the ubiquitous HTC Sense Clock widget greets you at the top of the screen. It looks, refreshed, almost different but isn’t. Well, it is ever so slightly different, it is now using the Roboto font (I believe) – if it is not Roboto then it is a different font than it always has been. The full suite of widgets are pre-loaded from HTC.

So far I’ve truly enjoyed the HTC One S in the short time that I have had it. I only received it on Monday so I cannot, in good conscience, give a full review. I will say that this is one of the fastest phones I’ve used to date, both in benchmarks and in real-world use. There have been very few cases of the phone ever stuttering or seeming to be unresponsive, swiping from home screen to home screen is fast and fluent. Music playback is great, I have yet to playback any video, web browsing is quick. It’s impossible to judge battery life in such a short period of time and to do so would be unfair because of the amount of use it gets. I will say that I have been relatively impressed with battery life so far. I used it a lot yesterday and I only needed to put it on charge one time towards the end of the day.

Mini Review thoughts:

Strengths:

Gorgeous design

Weight and Thinness are nearly perfect (clearly personal opinion)

Camera is spectacular (incredible in low-light situations)

Weaknesses:

Non-expandable memory

Non-removable battery

Extremely slippery

*INTERESTINGLY the resolution shows up as 540×888 in my favorite app for system information Elixir 2 – this application has NEVER been wrong before, so I’ve pinged the developer for some insight. Also it is a PenTile display: The use of a SAMOLED screen means that my biggest gripe with the Galaxy Nexus (though less noticeable here, surprisingly) is the use of the pentile matrix for the pixel layout. I’ll do a separate post regarding PenTile displays tomorrow.