World’s first dual-core smartphone: Android-powered LG Optimus 2X.

LG just fired the starter pistol for the trend that’ll almost undoubtedly rule 2011: phones with dual-core processors. Claiming the title as the world’s first dual-core smartphone: the Android-powered LG Optimus 2X.

Now, at this point this thing is about as secret as Julian Assange’s hair color — but up until now, it was known by its internal name: the “Star”. Ready for a spec-fest? Peek behind the jump for the full details.

The Tech Specs:

• 1Ghz Dual-Core Processor (Nvidia Tegra 2)
• 4 inch WVGA screen
• 8 gigs of memory (though it supports up to 32 GB via microSD)
• 1500mAh battery
• 8 megapixel rear camera and 1.3 megapixel front camera
• HDMI mirroring (read: what’s on the screen is what’s piped out over HDMI. In other words, how HDMI-out should work)
• 1080p MPEG-4/H.264 playback and recording
• microUSB
• DLNA
  for wireless content sharing

Look for this thing to hit Korea next month (running the ever-so-slightly out-of-date Android 2.2, though LG is promising Gingerbread updates), then the rest of Asia and Europe shortly thereafter. As for North America.. your guess is as good as ours.

Android :Code-free app-creation tool

Google announcing

that the code-free app-creation tool is now open to anyone with a desire to create apps (and a Google Account).
Obviously, the apps created by the service won’t be as powerful as apps coded lovingly by hand, but, with access to hardware like the camera and GPS, you can still do some pretty amazing things with it.
If you’re as keen to get going as I am, you can access the App Inventor here

You can also see what other people have created in the App Inventor User Forums, here

.

Android Offers Alternative App Browsing Method

12 Dec 2010

Parallel app markets are beginning to spring up all over the Android platform, what with special app packs and stores for carriers and manufacturers, and devices like the Nook Color coming out that specifically limit functionality. But if you’re on a plain ol’ Android phone, you’re generally going to be going to the plain ol’ Android Market for your apps. And although the newly-announced changes

to the interface make it more attractive, it’s still not the best for discoverability.

I’ve found AppShopper to be a useful tool on my iPad for seeing a random sample of weird and price-shifted apps, and Appsfire might — might — be the equivalent of that on Android, if they can get their interface under control.

The main screen is a constantly shifting set of app conveyor belts ostensibly showing off what’s new, what’s popular, and so on. But without names or descriptions, the icons are almost meaningless, except for ones whose graphics you recognize, and in that case you probably already know about the app. The Discover tab shows much of the same stuff but in a list format, and is similarly information-rich, with many controls and arrows and instructions. My impression is that the casual Android user will be mystified by the busy UI.

For the seasoned user, though, there is a lot of handy information. Being able to favorite a few apps to wait for a price drop, or bulk install/uninstall a few to try out are great, and quite easy to do.

AppsFire is promising, but at the moment, the interface is too busy to do what it needs to be doing: show off the apps themselves. You should be able to download it on Monday via this link

. Recommended for power users who want a more robust app tracking engine than what Google has provided.

Update :Android Market UI, Reduces Refund Window to 15 Minutes

Google

10 Dec 2010

Google announced today on their Android Developer’s Blog that over the next two weeks they’ll be rolling out an update to the Android Market for all Android devices running v1.6 and above.

The update is a fairly major one, with a major overhaul to the UI, including a new “carousel” showing off the featured apps on the front page, and a rework of the app page so that all the info is now on one page, rather than split across three tabs.

Other changes include the addition of “Live Wallpapers” and “Widgets” categories.

But it’s not all UI changes: Google have now dropped the refund window for app purchases down to 15 minutes, from the previous 24 hours. This is presumably to stop people downloading games, finishing them within 24 hours, and then refunding them.

Another change sure to please game developers is an increase in the maximum allowed size for apk’s (the format that Android applications are distributed in). Before this update, the biggest apk that could be distributed through the market was 25MB. This has now been doubled to 50MB.

Previously, developers that wanted to have an app greater than 25MB in size have had to deliver a stripped-down apk to the Market, then, after a user has downloaded it, have them download the remainder of the app from the developer’s own servers. So this really is good news for a lot of developers.

The market app will update itself automagically over the next two weeks, and you’ll immediately be able to upon opening the app if you’ve been updated or not. There is no sure-fire way to force an update, so just hang tight and be patient.

[via Android and Me

]

Android Map App:Get 3D Buildings,CompassOrientation,OfflineCapabilities

The Google Map App on Android phones will soon get a major upgrade which will allow it to render map images a lot faster, incorporate 3D buildings, offer offline caching, and use the compass to orient the map. In a talk this evening at the D Mobile conference, Android chief Andy Rubin gave a sneak peak of the new app.

At the heart of the new app is a dynamic map rendering engine which draws maps as you use them, and offers smoother transitions when zooming in and out of different levels. The dynamic rendering will also make it possible to start to show 3D buildings as you zoom into the street-level view. The touch screen will allow you to tilt and rotate the map and buildings.

The new maps load faster because they require 100 times less data each. Instead of downloading the entire map image for each level, the app downloads meta data which describes the entire map at all different levels and then renders the appropriate sector on the fly. This will start to give Google Maps offline capabilities on mobile phones. It may be possible to cache a map of an entire city on the phone. And for people who use the turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, when the new app comes out it will be able to recalculate the route even without a data connection.

The Google Maps app will also use the built-in compass on Android phones to automatically flip the orientation of the map to the person holding the phone. That orientation feature will come in handy when you are coming out of a subway station in an unfamiliar stop, or exiting a building.

Google Launched An Official Latitude iPhone App

I guess Google really is in a feisty mood tonight. After the Chrome Web Store, Chrome OS, some leaked Google +1 information, and a Google Groups re-launch, we’ve just gotten word that Google has launched an official Latitude app for the iPhone. But oddly, it’s only available right now in the Japanese version of the iTunes Store. But we suspect that will change shortly. (Update below: Looks like Google quickly pulled it before it got any farther.)

Back in May, Google told us that they were evaluating building a native iPhone app with the launch of iOS 4.0, which allowed for background location (a core feature of Latitude). Latitude has technically been available on the iPhone since July of 2009, but only as an HTML5 app, not a native experience. This hampered it for a number of reasons — the top one being that it could not run in the background.

Shortly after the web app launch, Google quietly clarified why it was a web app and not a native app: because Apple said so. In other words, Google was led to believe that Apple would reject their app if they tried to release a native one.

But that was in the middle of the Google Voice fiasco. Times have changed. For example, we now have a native Google Voice iPhone app.

If you happen to be in Japan, you can find the Latitude app here. The rest of the world should probably look for it shortly in the iTunes Store. After all, a number of third-party Latitude apps already exist worldwide. Plus, all the screenshots are in English — with most of the locations in the United States…

Oh, and the app description is also in English:

With Google Latitude, see where your friends are right now. Latitude lets you stay in touch with your friends and family by making it easy to share where you are and see each other on a map.

With Latitude, you can:

* See your friends on a map – find out who’s nearby and meet up.

* Share your location continuously with whomever you choose – help friends and family stay in touch with you, even when you can’t take out your phone.

* Control your privacy – share only city-level location, hide your location, or turn off background updating at any time.

Latitude lets you share your location in the background, even when the app is closed or your device screen is locked. Background updating requires an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 with iOS 4 or above.

You can also enjoy Latitude from your computer at google.com/latitude to see where your friends are or turn on optional apps such as Google Location History for a personal history dashboard.

Latitude has existed as a core part of Google’s Android operating system for a while. It will be interesting to see how it fares in the location wars now that it’s natively on the iPhone as well…

Update: And it looks like Google may have pulled the app for now. It was likely an accident that it went live in the first place. If they can figure out a way to more officially launch it in the next few days, my guess is we’ll see it then. Of course, this post may have changed things…

White iPhone Coming Spring 2011

06 Dec 2010 05:52 AM PST

Huzzah and alarums! Apple’s in-store signage is pointing to a Spring 2011 arrival of the legendary white iPhone

, a device fraught with so much mystery that it is now akin to the dangerous yet loyal pink unicorn of ancient myth.

As you recall, production problems plagued white iPhone manufacturing (mostly because the button, back, and front weren’t the same color) but Apple’s team of scientists have cracked the riddle and are now setting their sights on less important breakthroughs like curing those weird white things that end up in your mouth sometimes and taste horrible when you bite them and, additionally, creating a new form of Trucoat

that isn’t too expensive and can be applied by the consumer at home.

Note that there is no mention of the Verizon iPhone, if that’s what you were after with this.

Amosu IPhone 4 Diamond Spider

The iPhone 4 Diamond Spider, for the Nigerian Prince in your life

Simon Chester on December 7, 2010

Luxury phones, eh? There’s something peculiar about the idea that glueing bits of shiny mineral to a phone increases its worth by 25x.

I mean, I know that diamonds are rare, and I know that they are representative of your social status, but I just can’t comprehend the value in shelling out £15,000 for a device that otherwise costs £599.

Ok, so they throw in a cool phone number (they give the example of 07XXX 111111), and also a 24hr global concierge service, and hey, you can even snag one in white…

…but don’t you already have a phone number? Or some other concierge service (or a PA willing to go the extra mile)? And the white iPhone will be here soonish, too, so, do you really like shiny things that much?

You do? Oh.

But £15,000 is still £15,000.

What!? You earn how much every day?

Never mind then.

The phone is available in the UK, Monaco, United Arab Emirates, and Nigeria through Alexander Amosu.

For those of you that don’t earn enough to purchase this on a whim, you should check the promo video below to be sure of what you’re getting.

Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance

Video And Screenshots Of Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance
by Devin Coldewey on December 7, 2010

The video of Andy Rubin’s talk at the Dive Into Mobile event is up, and you can watch the juicy bit above, where he takes out the prototype Motorola tablet and toys with it for all to see, demonstrating the new Google Maps and “accidentally” teasing video chat capability and some other things.

The pad looks bigger than 7″, the size we heard about, but I can’t swear to it. If I had to take a guess at the screen resolution, I’d go with 8-9″ at 1024×600. It looks thin and rather unadorned right now, but this likely isn’t the final industrial design, so let’s just not worry too much about that. He seemed proud that it had no buttons on it, though, so I’m guessing that’s final.

Rubin mentions toward the beginning of his Maps demo that it’s running a dual-core NVIDIA GPU. So there’s that. I wonder what the CPU is — not an ARM SoC, since the graphics wouldn’t be discrete like that. A new dual-core Atom? Or something new, something custom? He does say a “new” processor, and for that matter a “new” screen, so it could be anything, and the screen might be different from the current crop. (as commenters point out, it’s likely that this it is running a Tegra 2 and Rubin was simply not describing it well)

Here are a few screenshots from the video. Sorry they aren’t very clear, but they’re better than the blurry ones from before.

As for the price? TBD. Unless you want to buy the prototype, about which Rubin said “literally, this thing is probably like ten thousand dollars.”