Carrier IQ, Samsung, And HTC All Facing Class Action Lawsuits

To say that Carrier IQ has been going through a lot is a bit of an understatement, and it looks like things are only getting worse. PaidContentreports that two class action lawsuits — one from Missouri and the other from Illinois — have been filed against the Mountain View-based company for supposedly violating the Federal Wiretap Act.
They’re not the only ones either: handset manufacturers HTC and Samsung have also been named as defendants in one lawsuit each.
For those that have missed the drama until now, Carrier IQ is a “mobile intelligence” firm that provides logging software for carriers and devices OEMs for use in their devices. Carrier IQ claims that they deliver information “on the performance of mobile devices and networks to help the Operators provide optimal service efficiency,” but Android security researcher Trevor Eckhart discovered that CarrierIQ was capable of tracking data that’s more fine-grained than what would be expected for simple diagnostic feedback.
The lawsuits allege that the defendants “intercepted, recorded and collected information concerning the substance, purport, or meaning of the electronic communications transmitted without the authorization of the parties to those communications.” Carrier IQ (obviously) doesn’t agree with this statement; they issued an updated statement last night that states the software “does not record, store or transmit the contents of SMS messages, email, photographs, audio or video.”
And what is it that the plaintiffs of these class action suits want? Cold hard cash for all users who have Carrier IQ’s logging software installed on their devices. The text of the Missouri suits filing calls for Carrier IQ and HTC to pay statutory and punitive damages that would reach into the millions.
Meanwhile, Carrier IQ continues to deny that they have violated any laws — according to the company’s updated media release, “Carrier IQ is aware of various commentators alleging Carrier IQ has violated wiretap laws and we vigorously disagree with these assertions.”
To wit, one of those commentators was Senator Al Franken (D-MN), who yesterday called on Carrier IQ to answer a number of questions regarding what they are and aren’t able to monitor on users’ devices. It seems like Carrier IQ’s claims of being beholden to the whims of the carriers has struck a chord with the senator, as he also issued the same set of questions to AT&T, Sprint, HTC, and Samsung. Senator Franken has given each company in question until December 14 to issue a response, and we’re looking forward to seeing what they come up with.
Strangely, none of the carriers involved were named in either of the lawsuits, though I expect that will soon change. If you want to find out if you your device has Carrier IQ installed on it, check out our article on how to find it and what to do with it.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/02/carrier-iq-samsung-and-htc-all-facing-class-action-lawsuits/

Galaxy S II Skyrocket rides in on a white horse for AT&T on December 4th

This just in: Unicorns are real. After cropping up earlier this summer, Sammy's beast phone with an LTE twist is now officially Skyrocketing anew into AT&T's arms on December 4th. And this go 'round, it's been stripped of its Darth Vader-y hue -- much to our afternoon delight. Bell and T-Mobile will also be sharing in the bleached looks, though those variants haven't yet been locked down to official releases. So, what say you? Fancy a fling with a smartphone as white as snow? Well, sit tight -- Sunday's right around the bend.
Source:http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/galaxy-s-ii-skyrocket-rides-in-on-a-white-horse-for-atandt-on-dece/

Samsung's mSATA PM830 is eight grams of pure SSD

The newest member of Samsung's 6Gb/s PM830 family of SSDs is designed to sit inside the Ultrabooksof 2012, which means it's had go through some slimming down. The mSATA drive uses 20 nanometer NAND for face-melting speed, but is crammed into a 50.95 x 30 x 3.8mm package, weighing only eight grams. The drive will comfortably read 500MB/s and write 260MB/s on a clear day, six times faster than a comparable HDD. It'll allow Windows to boot in under ten seconds and transfer "five DVD files" (roughly 45GB) in around a minute. The drives also come with 256-bit AES for those moments when your Ultrabook gets stolen, or more likely, floats away in the wind. 64GB, 128GB and 256GB variants will roll out to OEMs shortly but we expect a consumer version to be announced shortly for everyone with some courage and a screwdriver.

Source:http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/samsungs-msata-pm830-is-eight-grams-of-pure-ssd/

The White Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket Will Hit AT&T Shelves December 4

White phones can be hit or miss. The white BlackBerry Pearl, for example, is an ugly phone. Period. But some white phones can be sexy little beasts, as is the new snow-white Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. That’s right, just a few weeks after hitting AT&T shelves in black, a white version of the phone will be made available on December 4.
If you happened to forget, the Skyrocket is one of AT&T’s very first 4G LTE-capable phones, though you’ll have to be in one of the blue carrier’s 14 LTE markets to access those speeds.
The Skyrocket sports a 4.5-inch 480×800 Super AMOLED Plus display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. You’ll find an 8-megapixel camera on the back capable of video capture in 1080p, along with a 1.3-megapixel front-facing shooter for video chat.
The phone will cost $249.99 on-contract.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/01/the-white-samsung-galaxy-s-ii-skyrocket-will-hit-att-shelves-december-4/

Review: The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 Is Just Right

Short Version
The Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a nearly perfect size and weight and, thanks to a few user experience updates, it is an excellent vehicle for Android Honeycomb 3.2. In many cases the dreaded Android lag is gone and 8.9 screen size is, like the Baby Bear’s porridge, just right.
Features:

• 8.9-inch screen
• Android Honeycomb 3.2
• 16GB storage
• Front and rear cameras
• $479 with free phone

Pros:

• Thin and light
• TouchWiz UI Improves Honeycomb
• 9 hour battery life

Cons:

• No expandable storage
• $50 less than the 10.1
• LTE version is bundled with contract

The Galaxy Tab 8.9, announced earlier this month, is now available on AT&T’s LTE network. This model is part of a package that comes with a Galaxy S II – probably one of the best Android phones I’ve used yet – and requires a service plan. These are the first things to consider before looking deeper into this particular device.
Purchasing considerations aside, how does this 1.5Ghz Qualcomm MSM8660 dual-core device perform? I’m happy to report that it runs quite admirably, hitting 9 hours of battery life on a single charge and acceptable performance on AT&T’s LTE and 4G networks.
What Is It?
The device has, as the name implies, an 8.9-inch screen and is amazingly thin and light. At 15.8 ounces it is one ounce heavier than the Kindle Fire and much lighter than the 22 oz iPad 2. The screen, a 1,280×800 pixel 16:9 PLS TFT LCD, is bright and the touchscreen responsive and this is probably the first Android tablet that felt “fluid” in terms of user experience and app speed.
There is no removable storage and you get about 12GB available for your own media. It has a front 2-megapixel camera and a rear 3-megapixel camera with auto-focus. The shots, as expected, are not Ansel Adams quality but, in their own way, acceptable.

There is a power button on the top left, audio controls next to that button, and a headphone jack. There is a small SIM card slot on the right top edge and two speakers on the bottom that offer slightly muffled audio, especially when the device is laid along its bottom edge (the part where the Samsung logo is embossed).
The Good
The device does everything acceptably well. Video playback is smooth and it supports 3GP, MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, and MKV playback as well as your standard audio files. I gave it a quick Netflix playback test and got about 5 hours of straight streaming – two movies worth – before the battery was catastrophically low. On board playback sees about 8 hours although your milage may vary.
As for the screen size, I quite like it. It’s thin, light, and the screen is bright and readable. It was fine outdoors, but it’s obviously not ideal for outdoor use. It makes an excellent e-reader, as well, especially since it is lighter than many similarly-priced tablets.
The TouchWiz UI adds little in the way of improvement to the standard Honeycomb experience but it does add a few simple tools that make the tablet easier to use. For example, there is a small arrow along the bottom edge that brings up a set of widgets like Calendar, Task Manager, and Calculator. These open as modal windows over the actual apps running in the background and allow for easier multi-tasking.
In the end the 8.9 reminds me, in a good way, of the old single-purpose PMPs of yore. It does quite a bit right and not much wrong and is an interesting and useful bedside, travel, and couch-surfing companion.
The Bad
First, this device is completely self-contained and does not support battery swapping or the addition of storage. Although you get a healthy 9 hours out of it.
Another software problem I experienced was the failure for many Youtube video to load in the standalone app. The player would load a few seconds and then repeat.
Other than that, there was little to disuade me from recommending this device, let alone reviewing it. You’re obviously going to be stuck with AT&T if you pick this up and you’re best served by living in a location with LTE access, but that’s the price you pay for progress.
If this were the Wi-Fi only model I’d find even more to love. The 16GB, non-AT&T version costs $399and the 32GB is $549.
Bottom Line
I believe that there is such a thing as tablet fatigue and that it set in once the run up to the Motorola Xoom left everyone panting at CES last year. We don’t review a lot of Android tablets simply because we find many of them derivative at best. However, I believe that this device does its best to avoid the pitfall of fatigue. It is uniquely-sized, surprisingly responsive, and well-made. Purists will complain about the lack of removable storage and the overall pricing scheme because, if you’ll remember, this model comes bundled with a phone, the highly capable Galaxy S II.
You’re obviously going to have to compare this device with the Gal Tab 10 (and any smaller member of the Gal Tab family) as well as the cavalcade of Android devices out there. However, in looking at many devices over the past few months – including tablets of various stripes, both Android and Win7, and some lesser devices in the low $100s – I find this one to be superior to most. I feel that this is a strong, capable device that, if you’re looking to upgrade on AT&T, obviously, can make for a usable and exciting tablet.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/29/review-the-samsung-galaxy-tab-8-9-is-just-right/

Acer VP: 'We're never gonna give netbooks up, let them down, run around and desert them'

Acer's no stranger to netbooks: it knows the rules and so does vice president Scott Lin, who has said thata full commitment's what he's thinking of. It comes in the wake of Samsung running around and deserting baby-laptops for ultrabooks, but Acer's never gonna say goodbye. Well-off westerners might be obsessed with slates, but emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia prefer the cheaper units. The company's plan is simple -- what it doesn't make in profit on individual units, it'll make back in the sheer volume of units sold. Last quarter Acer sold one point seven million of the things, comfortably ahead of second-placed ASUS and third placed Samsung -- the latter decided it wasn't gonna play the game anymore. 

Source:http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/29/acer-vp-were-never-gonna-give-notebooks-up-let-them-down-ru/

Samsung Wave 3 crashes onto French shores

Samsung's new Bada flagship has just docked into our illustrative French port. Announced back in thesummer, the Wave 3 arrives on the refreshed Bada 2.0 OS, powered by a 1.4GHz processor and packing a four-inch 800 x 480 Super AMOLED display. Storage matches the watery iteration, with 3GB of memory baked-in, with expansion possible through microSD. Meanwhile, an auto-focus five megapixel shooter will do its best to fill all that space. Not content with France (where Bada-powered handsets have established a niche fanbase), the HSPA-connected smartphone is also penned to hit Germany, Russia and Italy before the end of the year.

Source:http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/28/samsung-wave-3-crashes-onto-french-shores/

Galaxy Note gets LTE turned on in South Korea, ready to cross the Pacific?

Many of us are smitten with Samsung's Galaxy Note, in no small part because of its stunning 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen. It's also enticed us with the inclusion of an LTE radio on spec sheets, and now Sammy has flipped the switch on that high speed capability, giving us another reason to drool over the jumbo handset. According to a Google translated press release, the Note is destined to ride waves of domestic LTE, though we certainly hope it'll bring such capabilities to the US. Speaking of, some shots have surfaced of a suspiciously Note-like device sans a tactile home button, favoring four Android capacitive buttons instead. Could Sammy be taking a page out of its Galaxy S II playbook and applying it to the stylus-packing superphone? We can't say for sure, but there's more at the source so you can draw your own conclusions.
Source:http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/28/galaxy-note-gets-lte-turned-on-in-south-korea-ready-to-cross-th/

China Beats U.S. In Q3, Becomes Largest Smartphone Market By Volume

While smartphone adoption continues to pick up steam here in the U.S., new research from Strategy Analytics shows that China is hungrier for smartphones than we are. For the first time ever, China has pulled ahead of the United States in terms of the number of smartphones shipped.
Those expecting a huge blowout may be a bit disappointed by the results: while 23 million smartphones were shipped in the United States during Q3 2011, China squeeked by with nearly 24 million units sold. With that, China has become the world’s largest smartphone market by volume. Given that China has the most cell phone users in the world, it may not come as a huge shock, but companies looking to break into the mobile space have yet another reason to consider China carefully.
Strategy Analytics also took a look at the manufacturer break down, and for the most part the winners are who you would expect. The two top vendors in the United States are HTC and Apple, who together account for almost half of all smartphones sold in the country during Q3. Meanwhile in China, Nokia and Samsung take the top two spots, with each company accounting for 28.5% and 17.6% of the market respectively.
Nokia in particular had a good quarter in China, as they shipped more units (6.8 million) than anyone else. The big question for Nokia is whether or not that momentum will continue once they complete their transition to Windows Phone. Microsoft has been eyeing the Chinese market for a while now, and their forthcoming Tango version of Windows Phone is reportedly meant to break into China and other emerging markets.
China’s smartphone boom also helps explain why their app downloads have gone through the roof; recent data from Flurry indicates that China is also experiencing a huge uptick in the number of apps downloaded, although the existence of multiple independent app stores certainly doesn’t hurt.
Manufacturer market share is great, but what I’d really like to see is a breakdown of mobile OS usage. Strategy Analytics Director Tom Kang notes that the Chinese smartphone surge is thanks in large part to “the aggressive subsidizing by operators of high-end models like the Apple iPhone, and an emerging wave of low-cost Android models from local Chinese brands such as ZTE.” I would imagine that those low-end Android devices are beginning to supplant the feature phone as the device of choice for first-time users, but Apple’s smartphones enjoys considerable popularity (even if many of them are being used unofficially).
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/china-beats-u-s-in-q3-becomes-largest-smartphone-market-by-volume/

China Beats U.S. In Q3, Becomes Largest Smartphone Market By Volume

While smartphone adoption continues to pick up steam here in the U.S., new research from Strategy Analytics shows that China is hungrier for smartphones than we are. For the first time ever, China has pulled ahead of the United States in terms of the number of smartphones shipped.
Those expecting a huge blowout may be a bit disappointed by the results: while 23 million smartphones were shipped in the United States during Q3 2011, China squeeked by with nearly 24 million units sold. With that, China has become the world’s largest smartphone market by volume. Given that China has the most cell phone users in the world, it may not come as a huge shock, but companies looking to break into the mobile space have yet another reason to consider China carefully.
Strategy Analytics also took a look at the manufacturer break down, and for the most part the winners are who you would expect. The two top vendors in the United States are HTC and Apple, who together account for almost half of all smartphones sold in the country during Q3. Meanwhile in China, Nokia and Samsung take the top two spots, with each company accounting for 28.5% and 17.6% of the market respectively.
Nokia in particular had a good quarter in China, as they shipped more units (6.8 million) than anyone else. The big question for Nokia is whether or not that momentum will continue once they complete their transition to Windows Phone. Microsoft has been eyeing the Chinese market for a while now, and their forthcoming Tango version of Windows Phone is reportedly meant to break into China and other emerging markets.
China’s smartphone boom also helps explain why their app downloads have gone through the roof; recent data from Flurry indicates that China is also experiencing a huge uptick in the number of apps downloaded, although the existence of multiple independent app stores certainly doesn’t hurt.
Manufacturer market share is great, but what I’d really like to see is a breakdown of mobile OS usage. Strategy Analytics Director Tom Kang notes that the Chinese smartphone surge is thanks in large part to “the aggressive subsidizing by operators of high-end models like the Apple iPhone, and an emerging wave of low-cost Android models from local Chinese brands such as ZTE.” I would imagine that those low-end Android devices are beginning to supplant the feature phone as the device of choice for first-time users, but Apple’s smartphones enjoys considerable popularity (even if many of them are being used unofficially).
Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/23/china-beats-u-s-in-q3-becomes-largest-smartphone-market-by-volume/