Technology Effect

Thinking of picking up one of those new Verizon iPhones? Take a look at this infographic first. Here’s a comparison of two Verizon-bound smartphones recently introduced at CES 2011, with Verizon’s iPhone 4 rolled out last week sandwiched in between. Created by one of Skatter Tech‘s student reporters, it’s remarkably comprehensive. When you compare the Motorola Droid Bionic and HTC Thunderbolt to the iPhone 4, the iPhone starts to look like last year’s model. Well, that’s because it is. However, the iPhone 4′s screen resolution is still higher than the other two, and then there’s that iTunes App Store App Store with 300,000 choices for the iPhone, as opposed to the Android Market’s 200,000 apps (and counting fast) for the other two phones (sorry, kid, but you got that number wrong in your infographic). What we really wanted to see in this comparison was the darling of CES, the Motorola Atrix 4G, that R2-D2-like smartphone that’s powerful enough to be the brains of a laptop, plugging...

The power of HTC and 4G speed of Sprint, with a killer keyboard thrown in for good measure We couldn't have asked for a better way to review Sprint's new EVO Shift 4G than by battle testing it at CES in Las Vegas. Four days of use among more than 100,000 nerds, in press conference after press conference, with smartphone news breaking every minute (or so it seemed). The Shift, as it's lovingly referred to by Sprint, is Sprint's third 4G-enabled Android smartphone, and the second with a slide-out keyboard. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo but doesn't have all of the whiz-bang specs as some of the other phones we saw announced during CES. And as the second phone in the EVO line (see the original EVO 4G), it has a lot to live up to. So is it worthy of the EVO name? And did it survive the nerd crunch in Las Vegas? Find out, after the break. The EVO Shift 4G hardware Sprint's already done 4.3- and 4-inch phones with the original EVO 4G and the Sa...

U.S. Cellular is giving all its customers an early Valentine’s Day treat by way of a buy-one-get-one-free sale, starting now - yes you read it right NOW until Feb. 17. So, if you’ve been planning to score a new Android phone from U.S. Cellular, you have until Feb. 17 to do so. Take note, you’re not only getting one but two of those Android phones, with the other one for free. Now, that’s a great offer, right? How good? Well how about if we tell you that aside from Android phones such as Samsung Mesmerize and Galaxy S, you’ll be able to score a Galaxy Tab as well? Make that two Samsung Galaxy Tabs. What’s the deal? Well, for the Samsung Mesmerize, you can score this nice Android phone for only $149.99 and get another one for free after mail-in rebate. As for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, you can score this Android tablet for only $399.99 after $100 mail-in rebate and get another one for free. All you need to do is to sign-up for U.S. Cellular’s $54.99 Belief Plan on both devices....

If recent reports are to be believed, Apple’s second generation iPad will begin shipping somewhere around the end of February 2011, which is around 100 days from now. Initial shipments will range between 400,000 and 600,000 units from Foxconn, which is Apples manufacturer for the iPad 2. Still unconfirmed, but the report claims that mass production of the iPad 2 was expected for January 2011, but has now been pushed back to February as Apple is still testing the iPad 2′s firmware . Apple devices are said to be undergoing more rigorous testing since the highly publicized defect of the iPhone 4 , which is now more popularly known as the Antennagate . The delay is specified to issues with the iPad 2 firmware, which could mean that Apple is eliminating final issues out of the new software whilst also depleting inventory of the current generation iPad. Speculation has indicated that the iPad 2 will include a front-facing FaceTime camera, Retina Display and a gyroscope, all very...

  Hot off the CES PlayBook whirlwind DevCon Asia is just getting started. To start things off RIM has just announced the availability of the BlackBerry WebWorks SDK (beta) for tablet OS as well as some new services for smartphones. The WebWorks SDK will allow developers to use web development tools with which they are already familiar and implement them on the BlackBerry tablet OS. The WebWorks SDK will provide: RIM's powerful WebKit web rendering engine (which is at the core of WebWorks) supporting the latest web technology standards including HTML5, CSS and JavaScript Deep access to device capabilities and components such as native dialogs, application invocation and system information A simple command-line tool that allows developers to use their favorite web development environment to develop WebWorks applications The capability to automatically transform a W3C widget archive file containing w...

The Samsung S5830 Android 2.2 smartphone seen a couple of days ago is actually called Samsung Galaxy Ace – not Galaxy S Mini, as I previously thought. An official image of the Galaxy Ace has just appeared over at EuroDroid. Although the image is small, there’s no doubt that the Ace is the S5830, so it should feature a HVGA (480 x 320 pixels) touchscreen display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 5MP camera. Another unannounced Android handset that EuroDroid is showing is the Samsung Galaxy Suit S5670, of which we don’t know much about – it seems to be another mid to low-end device anyway. Both the Galaxy Ace and the Galaxy Suit should be officially unveiled by Samsung at MWC 2011 next month, alongside the Galaxy Mini S5570 and the Galaxy S2. We’ll be there to check them all out!

Motorola Droid 2 A new, somewhat less-than-shocking study has been done involving the major carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon) and device manufacturers. The results were taken from 2009 though 2010. The study examines how many devices were updated to Android 2.2, and how long it took to receive the update. The study also took into account the devices that are still waiting to receive the froyo update. According to the study HTC has delivered more 2.2 updates than any other wireless handset manufacturer, coming in at 50% of it’s handsets. Don’t count Motorola out just yet though, they were the fastest to get updates out to their handsets. The updates were sent by Motorola just 54.5 days after froyo was announced. As far as the aforementioned mobile carrier – Verizon is king – taking only an average of 58 days to push 2.2. Rounding out the list was Sprint, T-mobile and AT&T. The report also states that AT&T did not upd...