Motorola X-Phone release in mai?

There already had been rumors about a new superphone that Google develops with Motorola. Now it got more concrete: The so-called "X-Phone" has a 5" display, a quad-core CPU and Android 5.0. It is going to be announced Art Google I/O in Mai. We will test as soon as it is out.

Sony Announces Xperia Z and ZL!

The Japanese electronic giant introduced the Z and ZL also known as Yuga and Odin. They are said to have 1.5 GHz S4 Pro , 2 Gigs of Ram and a Full HD 5 inch phone. The differences between the two are almost the same. The Z is made out of glass and is waterproof and dust proof while the Xperia ZL has none of that but has an IR Blaster. Its dimension is also smaller than that of the Galaxy SIII. ZL is said to have a Poly carbonate shell. The ZL also has a Notification LED like the one found on the Xperia J and Miro and its front facing camera is located on the bottom right  , much like the Nokia N9

Tegra 4 announced

At CES in Las Vegas Nvidia showed us their new processor for mobiles, the Tegra 4.
It is based on ARM's cortex A15, it has the well-known 4+1 cores.
Apart from that it has 72 GPU cores, which makes it six times faster than the Tegra 3.

Ubuntu for Android - The Great Divide is Closing

At 18:00 GMT on the 2nd January 2013, Ubuntu are announcing something very interesting which could have a huge impact on the world of mobile computing. Allow me to explain with a personal flashback...

Four and a half years ago after losing my beloved PDA to a concrete catastrophe, I remember scouring the market for the best handsets available as a replacement. There was one device from HTC that stuck out, the Touch Diamond Pro. Marveling at it’s rich Touch FLO interface that has evolved into today's HTC Sense, it’s beefy hardware and beautiful screen (remember this was back when the phone of choice for many was a Nokia with Snakes) there was one feature hidden away that few were talking about but made my insides quiver with excitement, TV out. The possibility to have a mobile phone that was potentially powerful enough to render a full desktop web page to an external display seemed the start of a truly mobile age freeing us from large laptop bags and huge desktop boxes.

Fast forward to today and that ideological revolution has gathered pace and taken huge leaps into reality. The latest HTC, Nokia, Apple and Samsung handsets all have processors running at speeds that sound remarkably similar to those found on laptops and netbooks. True 1080p HD displays that rival specifications of many living room televisions. And ecosystems that have become so established that you’ll probably find a mobile option for any desktop task you can think of. All the latest devices have some form of screen mirroring / video out capability, either dedicated HDMI or micro USB ports, or wireless mechanisms that incorporate DLNA and the WiFi Direct standards such as Miracast or AirPlay. Adding to that, external mouse and keyboard support has been directly built into the core of all the major operating systems over the last few incremental releases, and you have the foundations of a an incredibly versatile system.

So, are we at the point of true portability and mobile computing? In a word, no. The “simplified” touch interfaces developed over the years for our thumbs and fingers scaled up on a 42” living room TV or 22” desktop monitor are fine for basic browsing and showing your mates a clip from YouTube. But when we think of productivity, we still think of the established desktop standards, multiple windows, a bountiful user interface, the ability to run powerful applications, and multitasking. The hardware is capable, but the software just hasn’t caught up.

The recent releases by Microsoft, including Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT, are possibly the beginnings of the very mobile utopia I’ve been waiting for. The fact that they all run the same core hints at that very convergence, but the layers above that core are still limited by their separation - you cannot run full Windows on an ARM processor - Apple is starting to piece together all the elements for mobile computing, but is apparently still behind Microsoft in the development of such a system.

Step forward Linux, and more specifically Ubuntu for Android. The idea here being that the two user environments can coexist on the same device with a level of integration that is so discreet, the user wouldn’t even notice it. It’s effectively what many had hoped for in the early days of the Windows 8 rumours before we discovered that Windows RT won't support legacy applications. Because of the similarities and shared resources between Android and Ubuntu, you will be able to take your mobile handset, plug it in to any external display, and the switch to a full Ubuntu desktop mode starts, simple. But will it be? Take a look at the videos below to find out more...

There have been various attempts at this kind of amalgamation before, Archos allowing their devices to dual-boot Android and Linux straight out of the box, and various ways of running Ubuntu inside of Android on a number of devices, but nothing so seamless that provided the functionality of Ubuntu for Android. The information you already have and use on your phone will be silently carried over and ready to use in the Ubuntu environment, and this integration is key to the success of the project. Whilst the majority of people are familiar with either Windows or iOS, there are less that would feel comfortable hopping onto Linux machine in the same way. If our emails and personal information are already there, it makes the transition and learning curve for new users much, much easier to tackle.

Android for Ubuntu was originally scheduled for release in 2014, but the recent teasers on the Ubuntu home page hint at the beginnings of its’ future. In terms of truly mobile computing, Ubuntu for Android could well take the lead ahead of Microsoft and Apple. I for one am excited at the possibilities, roll on 18:00 GMT! Oh, and did someone say Google and Motorola are working on an “X” phone for 2013, hmm? In the meantime let us know what you all think about it below in the comments.

Best android tablets 2012

Here we present you the tablets that are our top 5 of the year 2012. We tested cost-performance, usability, battery performance and general hardware performance.
Rank 5 goes to Asus's Transformer pad TF 300, because it is quite fast(tegra 3 quad-core) and it also was the first tablet with Nvidia's tegra 3.
On the fourth place we have Samsung's Galaxy note 10.1. Its performance is quote good, but not as good as quad-core tablets. We didn't like the quality, because it feels like cheap plastic.
Rank 3 is the Nexus 10,which is manufactured by Samsung, too but it is a Nexus device, this means you will get the fastest firmware updates and you have a stock android UI. Its display also has the highest resolution you can find on the market, even higher than the iPad 4's Retina display.
Rank 2 is the Asus TF700 Infinity, because it has the fastest clocked tegra 3 chip set, this means it is one of the fastest tablets on the market. The resolution is very high, too. It has a resolution of 1900*1200, which is HD resolution.
And rank 1 goes to Google's Nexus 7, which is also manufactured by Asus. Its pricing is really cheap. It only costs 199$ with 16gb storage. For this price you get a 7" tablet with HD resolution, a tegra 3 quad-core cpu , GPS,NFC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It also gets the fastest android updates you can get, because software support is done by Google itself. The quality is very good as well. This makes it our favorite tablet of the year 2012.
Let's hope we see many cool tablets and phones this year, too. Happy new year everybody!

Help the web to stay free and open!

As you might know, governments try to license and control the world wide web again and again. If this would happen, you wouldn't find free information on the web. You also wouldn't be allowed to say what you think, even if it's against the government. They could get your private data from sites like Facebook or Google. This means they are able to find out who you are, what you like and where you live. We already had this in Germany(DDR), but this was different. Today you can get much more information about people on the Internet. Help to keep the world wide web free and independent at: https://www.google.com/takeaction/

[Virus Warning] People seeking for Usb drivers for windows 8 to run their Androids are being targeted with malware !

Cybercriminals have started targeting Android device owners looking to connect and modify their smartphones and tablets. They are using searches for phrases like “Windows Android drivers” and everything in between to serve up malware for Windows computers as well as malware for Android devices distributed via fake Google Play stores.One such Yahoo search result is for the Samsung Galaxy GIO S5660 but naturally it is very likely cybercriminals are targeting more than just one device and on more than just one search engine.

Nevertheless, visiting the Russian URL in question automatically downloads a file called install.exe, detected by GFI as as Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT.The Trojan modifies Internet Explorer’s homepage to a sign-up page for a Russian “escort” site. Yet the scam doesn’t stop there. If a user accesses the same site via an Android device, he or she is led to various different malicious sites.One of them takes the user to Russian sites containing fake search results. All the links on the search pages direct users to one of five fake Google Play stores:

GFI says:
“Thinking that they’re on the actual Google Play website, it is highly likely that users may end up downloading malware onto their mobile devices.” We don’t think it’s “highly likely,” especially given that the searcher set out looking for USB drivers, but it wouldn’t be the first time Android users are duped by fake Google Play stores.Either way, there are two kinds of Android Trojan premium SMS apps being distributed on these fake stores, both detected as Trojan.AndroidOS.Generic.A. Like the majority of Android malware, these malicious apps sends expensive international text messages to earn their creators revenue. Some variants even connect to a Command & Control (C&C) server to send and retrieve data, as well as await further instructions.

GFI offers the following advice:
These fake markets are looking more and more sleek and professional, so extra care is advised. Only visit and download genuine apps from the real Google Play website by keying in play.google.com to the address bar of your mobile or PC internet browser. This ensures that you will not be directed to sites that merely look like the actual site. This also ensures that the readily available apps you wish to download are not malicious.Yet GFI has forgotten about the other side of the story. Windows users looking for Android USB drivers should heed the same advice: only navigate to official sources to download tools for your phone. These include the site for your phone’s manufacturer as well as your carrier’s site.