Near Orbit Vanguard Alliace 3 which is the sequel to Gameloft’s 2012 title N.O.V.A 2: The Hero Rises has been officially announced. N.O.V.A 3 should prove to have much better graphics and some added features. The N.O.V.A series has thus far been praised as one of the best First Person Shooter’s available on mobile devices.
There is little information available about the new N.O.V.A title although is said to be powered by the Unreal Engine. This being said we can go ahead and assume that the hardware requirements will be up there (dual-core or better we suspect). Gameloft has promised to release more information shortly so only time will tell.
The video above shows Kal Wardin the lead character in N.O.V.A crash landing as he enters Earth’s atmosphere trying to get to San Fransisco. It shows us nothing of gameplay features although Gameloft does tend to do a very good job with action trailers. N.O.V.A 3 will be releasing for both Android and iOS.
The next Asus Transformer Pad will be released by the end of May this year with the name Asus Transformer Pad TF300T. While this is a new device it will be released as the more cost effective Transformer Prime. At the time of its launch it will be available to only one retailer in the UK with the keyboard dock included for around £399 or $483 USD and should prove a good selling device for Asus.
Asus Transformer Tab TF300T Features:
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
NVidia Tegra 3 CPU
10.1″ Display
16 GB Internal Storage
8 MP Camera
UK Press Release about the Transformer Pad TF300T:
United Kingdom (April 23, 2012) – Announced at Mobile World Congress in February, the new ASUS Transformer Pad is a powerful, yet affordable, tablet with a host of features onboard. Available in three stylish colors, the ASUS Transformer Pad is aptly named thanks to the mobile dock that allows it to transform from a tablet into a notebook. When docked, total battery life is rated up to 15 hours, while also increasing productivity with a full QWERTY keyboard, multi-touch touchpad and USB/SD Card ports. Housed in the Transformer Pad is a powerful NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 Quad-core CPU, ASUS SonicMaster technology for an incredible audio experience and an 8MP auto-focus camera that shoots crystal clear photos. The Transformer Pad is running the AndroidTM 4.0 operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich) that is upgradable and features exclusive software for added productivity.
The Transformer Pad comes in three stylish colors: Royal Blue, Iceberg White and Torch Red. It also boasts an elegant concentric patterned finish that hints at the ASUS Zen philosophy found in the ZENBOOKTM and Transformer Pad Prime. With a profile that’s 9.9mm thin and 635g light, the Transformer Pad can easily be carried around all day, and when combined with the ASUS exclusive Mobile Dock, it turns into a productivity workstation. A QWERTY keyboard and multi-touch touchpad offers a true notebook experience, while a USB port and SD card slot provide additional storage options.
Powering the Transformer Pad is NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 4-PLUS-1TM quad-core CPU with an integrated 12-core GeForce® GPU that provides superior performance, multi-tasking, smooth Full HD 1080p video playback and console-quality gaming. The “PLUS-1″ is an extra battery-saver core in the CPU that handles low-power tasks like active standby, music and video, and is transparent to the OS and applications. It offers the best combination of ultra-performance with low power consumption – up to 10 hours on the Pad and extended up to 15 hours when combined with the Mobile Dock.
According to a few reputable Android sources customers of Sprint could see the release of the EVO 4G LTE May 18th. With AT&T just announcing the release of the HTC One X on May 6th its good to see Sprint may be keeping up. With the EVO line being one of the most popular Android line ever and Sprints only real flagship device the “Now Network” should see a lot of love from the release of the EVO 4G LTE.
The EVO 4G LTE will be supported by a 28mm Snapdragon S4 processor and an HD screen. The EVO LTE will also be Sprints device to compete with not only AT&T’s HTC One X but also Sprints own Galaxy Nexus releasing next week. The EVO LTE like the Galaxy Nexus will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich although with the popularity of the EVO line on Sprint we will assume the LTE will win this battle for them at least.
Samsung has sent out the invitations to media for its Samsung Galaxy S III unveiling May 3rd. The unveiling event will be in London via the Samsung Unpacked 2012. While nothing specifies Galaxy S III it says “Next Galaxy” with the II out we can assume III is next. If you didn’t get invited you can view Samsung’s live stream during the event at facebook.com/samsungmobile.
During the event we will see the Galaxy S III although there will hopefully be a release date mentioned as well. With London being the event location we will assume Europe will get the primary launch followed by the US a bit after. We will keep you updated on the Galaxy S III after the event.
Many Sony Xperia smartphones are getting the Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich updates right now. The Xperia devices will be slowly receiving the updates until early summer and at that time should be done rolling out. The first countries that will see the updates that are currently pushing out are Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Norway.
Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich Updates are expected for:
Xperia arc
Xperia Play
Xperia neo
Xperia mini
Xperia mini pro
Xperia pro
Xperia active
Android-power Walkman
While it may take until summer to get the ICS update to your Sony device it is nice to see Sony making the effort to get Android 4.0.3 on all of their devices so quickly. Sony has even offered Beta builds for those that want it before the official rollout. Keep in mind that the Beta builds can void your warranty if installed though.
We aren’t going to see Google’s Nexus Tablet now until July in an attempt to cut the tablets cost. The information was gathered over at The Verge who originally had announced that the Nexus was to be released in May. Google says that the launch is being delayed in a last minute attempt to tweak the highly anticipated Google branded Nexus tablet.
By working on tweaking the Android tablet Google hopes that they can reduce the cost of the tablet even lower than the originally announced $249. The tablet itself is being produced by Asus to be branded by Google and compete directly with the Amazon Kindle Fire. Since the Kindle Fire has a $199 price tag Google wants to get a little closer to that.
The Google Nexus tablet is to be a 7 inch Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet with a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. There are also talks that the tablet will be easily updated to Android 5.0 Jellybean as soon as the OS is available.
When Amazon originally started working on their Kindle Fire they mentioned that they were working on two Android tablets. The first tablet released was the Kindle Fire that is popular and widely used today. The Kindle Fire quickly became one of the most owned and largest player in the Android tablet market. Soon after its release there was mention of a 10 inch Amazon Kindle Fire but never came out.
The 10 inch Kindle Fire is said to run Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor and was supposed to release in Q1 of this year. With Q1 ending in only a few days we can assume that the date we all hoped for is not correct. Amazon and Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos are very good at keeping secrets as we saw with the release of the current Kindle Fire.
While Amazon hasen’t mentioned anything about the 10 inch Kindle Fire it was reported by Digitimes that Amazon has ordered a chasis for a new Amazon Tablet from Catcher Technology in Taiwan. Catcher Technology is one of the chasis manufacturers Apple uses for their iPad and was used for the original Kindle Fire as well. Digitimes reported:
Catcher will supply the chassis to Amazon from its plants in Taizhou, China with estimated gross margin to be more than 40%, the sources noted.
We aren’t sure what this means exactly when it comes to Amazon ordering although its a pretty good indicator that they will be releasing a new tablet very soon. If all goes well and this order is for their 10 inch version of the Kindle Fire we could see them announced by the end of Q2 of this year.
Toshiba confirmed their Excite 10 LE previously known as the Toshiba X10 will release today to stores throughout the US. This tablet is being released as a Wi-Fi only version with 16GB of internal storage for around $529. There is however a larger 32GB model that will be on sale as well for around $599.
Toshiba Excite 10 LE Features:
Android 3.2, Honeycomb (upgradeable to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich)
10.1-inch diagonal LED Backlit widescreen Corning Gorilla Glass display with IPS technology and 10-finger multi-touch support
Gyroscope, Accelerometer, GPS, eCompass and Ambient Light Sensor
Stereo speakers with sound enhancements by Toshiba and SRS Labs
Built-in 25 watt-hour rechargeable lithium ion battery
10.1” (W) x 6.9” (D) x 0.3” (H)
1.18 pounds (535g)
We aren’t sure with all of the Android tablets available today that the price points of $529 and $599 will be enticing to Android users although it is a very high end tablet for sure. We will try to get our hands on one (without purchasing it) to demo all of its features in the coming days.
The Toshiba Thrive which comes in a 7 inch and 10 inch version will be getting the Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich update by the end of Spring 2012. There has been no official word but the announcement was made via Eric Paulsen’s Twitter account saying the update will hit the Toshiba Thrive by the end of Spring (so by June).
Since Toshiba does not have that many Android devices to keep up with we would assume that the update would have already been here. If your an Android manufacturer pushing out a high end Android device this Ice Cream Sandwich update should not take this long. Devices that are supported well tend to do much better in the market these days as users want a device they know will not have to be replaced year after year to stay up to date.
South Korea’s Electronic Time News stated that the Samsung Galaxy S III will be one of the worlds thinnest, if not the thinnest smartphone when it releases. They claim that Samsung’s newest flagship phone the Galaxy S III will get all of the newest technologies packed into a 7mm thick phone. Thats a 1.5mm reduction from its previous model making it the thinnest device to date.
Some Samsung Galaxy S III Features:
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
Quad-core processor
2 GB RAM
8 MP rear facing camera
2 MP front facing camera
Super AMOLED plus display
7mm thin body
Some of the specs stated above are rumored but seem to come from a source that has been hitting dead on in the past. The previous rumored release date was some time in April this year but from what we have heard now it will be May. We have also mentioned before that the much anticipated device will not be announced at Mobile World Congress this year but its own event after.
Subscribe to our RSS Feed via Feedburner