First-gen Motorola DROID to get an update?

At a time when most smartphones have been retired by their owner, stuffed away in a drawer never to see the light of day again, the 2-year old Motorola DROID continues to be a useful smartphone. Last updated with Froyo, the handset credited with kicking off the current run of Androidmania could be getting a firmware update from Motorola.

An email sent from the Motorola Feedback Network asks original Motorola DROID owners if they would like to be involved in a project. You must be a member of the Motorola Owners Forum to participate. While the project, which is called confidential in the email, is not revealed, this type of email is usually sent out after a soak test which implies that a firmware update is coming to the device.

Will it be Gingerbread? Ice Cream Sandwich? Something else? Considering the age of the phone, Motorola DROID owners will most likely welcome any update with open arms. Many buyers of the original DROID are looking to upgrade to the Motorola DROID RAZR, the HTC Rezound or the Samsung GALAXY Nexus and while updating the firmware won't change the aged processor on the phone, it might make users more comfortable using the model until a decision to upgrade is made.

Motorola DROID RAZR specs leak out: thinnest LTE phone, “faster than the iPhone 4S”

The Motorola DROID RAZR has only appeared in leaks and rumors, but it's a captivating device and now rumors claim to know its main highlights including the fact that it “will be faster than the iPhone 4S” and the thinnest LTE phone to date.

But with no further ado, here is what BGR has heard about the Motorola DROID RAZR specs:

Thinner and “faster than the iPhone 4S”,

1GB of RAM,

1.2GHz dual-core processor,

4G LTE, to be the thinnest LTE phone,

4.3-inch screen.

An impressive spec sheet, but the main thing about the RAZR is said to be the quality build. Motorola allegedly markets the device as “faster, thinner, smarter, stronger.”

A video about a device unveiling coming October 18th was posted by Moto earler we have all reasons to believe it was about the RAZR. For once, a razor was showed in the video and some reinforced materials, which were previously said to be a feature of the new phone. How do you like what you see so far?

Samsung Galaxy W Coming To T-Mobile As Exhibit II 4G

Some of our readers will remember the new Samsung Galaxy W that was announced recently, and went up for pre-order here in the UK, it looks like its is headed to T-Mobile in the US and it will be called the Samsung Exhibit II 4G.

The Samsung Exhibit II 4G will have similar specifications to the European Samsung Galaxy W, and it will come with a 3.7 inch multi-touch touchscreen Super LCD display, and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Other specifications on the Samsung Exhibit II 4G include a single core 1.4GHz processor, 4GB of built in storage, a 5 megapixel camera which can record HD video in 720p and a microSD card slot that comes with a 4GB card., plus HSPA+, Bluetooth and WiFi.

More information's:
http://pocketnow.com/android/samsung-galaxy-w-for-t-mobile-first-press-shots

Samsung Galaxy S X:

Samsung forced to "upgrade" some Galaxy smartphones in Europe over Apple lawsuit

The Samsung-Apple legal dispute is a global affair with lawsuits filed in various countries starting from the States and ending with Japan, but it’s at the heart of the Old Continent, the Netherlands, where a court has issued injunction on Samsung devices. Which ones you might wonder? The most successful ones - the Samsung Galaxy S II, the original Galaxy S and the Samsung Galaxy Ace.

Now, the Dutch court ruling actually found that the Koreans have infringed only one pattern related to viewing and navigating photos. The phone maker is now “upgrading” the affected devices and will soon start offering them again in the European country.

It’s not revealed what exactly is in the upgrade, but it’s definitely interesting to see what method Samsung has come up for watching photographs.

The Koreans haven’t given a timeline for when the new handsets will appears on shelves, but we bet they’d do their best to have them back soon. “We’ve fixed the technological problem and upgraded products to address the issue. They will be shortly available for sale,” Samsung said.

Samsung expanding the software division as its next step to compete in the mobile industry

Samsung will be increasing the ratio of software engineers from 50:50 to 70:30 in the army of employees in its mobile division. It already stepped up efforts by hiring Cyanogen and looking at other ROM modding groups.

Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung Electronics, rallied his lieutenants recently by saying that the power in IT is shifting from hardware to software, and Samsung needs to be prepared.

That's an almost 50% boost in software engineering power from the current about 25 000 coders, which Samsung is about to undertake, and only showing that it is very serious on executing. If we are about to witness better TouchWiz, Samsung's own cloud project or other goodies, we'd say bring it on.

Apple iPhone 4S gets stacked with an iPhone 4, Samsung could sue on the antenna design

A Vietnamese newspaper has gotten a hold on the iPhone 4S, and has snapped a few photos of it stacked up with an iPhone 4 to illustrate the design differences. They are subtle, but changes in the outer chassis do exist, and will most likely lead to new cases needed for the iPhone 4S, since the dimensions of the new iPhone are slightly different than those of the fourth generation.

The biggest change besides the slightly taller chassis of the iPhone 4S (4.54" vs 4.5") are the notches in the steel band surrounding the iPhone 4S. Apple's engineers have redesigned the reception area after the "you're holding it wrong" drama last year, and have moved the notch from near the headphone jack on top of the iPhone 4, to above the mute button on the left side of the iPhone 4S. Since the new iPhone sports new dual antenna design, there is one more notch above the microSIM slot on its right side, making them four in total.

This new antenna design, however, could run Apple into legal trouble with Samsung, should the Koreans decide to pursue its patents on technology that "intelligently switches between multiple antennas", which they bought from Aalborg University in 2007. Professor Gert Pedersen there says that Apple's statement about the antenna sounds an awful lot like what his team sold to Samsung four years ago. "Improving on the innovative stainless steel external, dual-antenna design of iPhone 4, iPhone 4S is the first phone to intelligently switch between two antennas to send and receive”, said Phil Schiller when he took the stage during the iPhone 4S announcement.