The final hurdle in Google’s acquisition of Motorola has been jumped – China and its antitrust authorities signed off on the deal. Both the European Commission and U.S. Department of Justice signed off back in February, but for whatever reason, China needed more time. Thanks to this final approval, the deal is expected to close within the next week.

What does this mean now? Well, probably not a whole lot in the short term. Google has continued to stand by their “Motorola is completely separate from Google” remarks, so for at least this year, we may not see anything change. Could Google eventually start to produce their own Motorola/Google branded products? Of course they could, but would that scare off many of their other partners in the Android ecosystem?

Via:  WSJ

Cheers Scott!

It’s week two of DL and NVIDIA’s celebration of TegraZone’s first birthday. We had a really awesome turn out last week, so let’s keep the ball rolling and give everyone another shot at winning an awesome prize pack from NVIDIA and ASUS. As a reminder, NVIDIA is also hosting their own separate giveaways over at TegraZone, so make sure you enter those for even more chances to win a brand new ASUS tablet. After today’s giveaway, you still have next week to win as well, so good luck to everybody. 

Image courtesy of Mr. Kover! 

It wasn’t a fun week for most Verizon customers, as Big Red is starting to get everyone comfortable with the idea of taking away unlimited data. They have mentioned that when the time gets closer, that they will lay the options out on the table for their customers to make sure they know exactly what they’re getting themselves into if they choose to sign a new contract. We knew the day would come when they decided to stick us all on tiered data, but it still sucks.

• Verizon’s CFO spills beans on end of unlimited data for all Verizon customers.
• Verizon officially clarifies the end of unlimited data.
• Google to open Nexus program to multiple manufacturers at a time.
• The Galaxy SIII has been rooted. Need we say more?
• Motorola updates Ice Cream Sandwich roll out timeline.
• Opinion – Be a fanboy of good technology.
• New DROID Bionic firmware leaks, still not ICS.
• Review: Acer Iconia A510.
• Review: HTC EVO 4G LTE.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

The Samsung Galaxy SIII has apparently been rooted by famed hacker Chainfire. As you know, the phone isn’t even out yet, but this is good news for those planning to pick up the device in the coming weeks. He isn’t able to release the “insecure” kernel yet as it may be traceable back to the source, so you’ll just have to take his word for it. Knowing his track record with Samsung devices, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Obviously, this root method has been done to the international version of the phone and not the U.S. variants, since they haven’t even been announced yet. When those do arrive though, we’re sure someone will figure it out there as well.

Via:  XDA

(Feel free to click around the Lytro image if you are bored.)

This morning, our boy Ron wrote up his opinion on the “fanboy” situation that plagues almost every tech community. Whether you own an iOS or Android or Blackberry device, someone is bound to call you a fanboy because you chose one over the other. At one time, Apple users were pegged as being the worst fanboys, but since, it has grown to include other platforms as well. Hell, even in the Android game you are starting to see groups of users band together as “Nexus fanboys” and/or “Motorola fanboys.” It really doesn’t matter what piece of technology is in your hand or on your desk, someone is bound to have a problem with it and thus refer to you as biased or as a fanboy.

But during his piece, Ron talked about removing the blinders and embracing “good” technology overall rather than siloing yourself into one platform or brand. I’ll just say that as someone who runs an Android site and has dedicated his life to the platform, even I find myself branching out to other areas of tech until I find something I truly love. For example, my favorite tablet to this day is still probably the Blackberry Playbook. Had that sucker actually had an app ecosystem, I probably still be using it. On a computer level, brace yourself, I use an iMac and a Macbook Pro. I’ve been through every version of Windows since the early 90s and in the last year made the switch to OSX. So far, it has been a breath of fresh air.

So I’m just curious, since I know that many of you own iPads and other non-Android products, what your mix of technology is. Windows or Mac? iPad or Android tablet? Anything else?

Back at CES, Verizon told us that select 4G LTE devices like the LG Spectrum and DROID 4 would eventually become “global” phones thanks to international radios embedded deep inside. According to our sources, there may be more than just those two devices and the change to make them global could be happening very soon. As you can see in the info sheet for the HTC Rezound that is on display, it has a new “global feature” on the way that will give it access to use in an additional 185 countries. They aren’t stopping there though, as stores are being told to print out new info sheets for the RAZR and DROID 4 as well that include similar notes for global features.

Your LTE smartphone will soon be a world traveler.

Cheers ___!

Popular device manufacturer Samsung is having a fantastic beginning to 2012, accounting for about 40% of all Android device sales. For comparison, other manufacturers such as Motorola and HTC could hardly account for 10% of devices sold. And to only re-affirm their mobile dominance, Samsung has given word that pre-orders for the Galaxy SIII have reached 9 million and counting. When can we say Moto has ever done something like that?