HTC is out to reinvent their brand this year after they struggled during 2011. To kick off 2012 the right way, they have presented their newest flagship device, the HTC One X. We have already published our full review of the unlocked Tegra 3 variant of this phone, but this one is branded with an AT&T logo and is powered by a Snapdragon S4 chip to support their 4G LTE network. Could this be the device that saves HTC in the US handset market? Let’s take a look. 

First, if you haven’t checked out our full review of the AT&T HTC One X, then you will want to do that. After doing that, let’s go ahead and start the conversation about benchmarks between the AT&T, Snapdragon S4 version and the Tegra 3, unlocked version of the phone.

With NVIDIA not having LTE modems for their quad-core processors just yet, carriers that want this phone with LTE capabilities are having to swap out the Tegra 3 in favor of the dual-core Snapdragon S4. Both processors are beasts in their own right, so we thought, “What better way to see if we can find a difference than through a handful of tests?” For those that hate benchmarks and think they mean nothing, we would agree with you to a point. We would have to disagree in that these at least give us something to compare against. We can flip through home screens all day long, open and close apps, look for stutters, etc., but in the end, you need to have numbers. Benchmarks give us numbers.  

Boy, do we miss the days when Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha would jump on their quarterly earnings calls and start rambling about phones on the horizon and other products that weren’t supposed to be spoken of publicly. Those times are long gone though, as Google tries to wrap up their acquisition of the company and Jha’s standing remains in question (is he in or out?). Moto and Google no longer hold calls to talk about the company and the releases aren’t any fun with losses being reported on the regular.

For Q1 2012, Motorola shipped 5.1 million smartphones (shipped, not sold) and brought in revenues of $3.1 billion with an operating loss of $121 million. This of course, comes on the heels of Samsung’s record quarter where they took over the #1 mobile phone maker in the world title from Nokia.

As far as that acquisition is concerned, Google and Motorola hope to finalize everything by the end of the the first half of this year. We are still waiting for China to sign off on it.

The full earnings statement can be found at Motorola’s investors site.

For fans of the space shooter genre, another great addition has been placed on the Google Play Store. It’s called SCAWAR Space Combat and features some really high quality graphics, along with kicking gameplay. After calibrating your device, you control your ship with tilt controls and one onscreen control to fire your gun. Object is simple – fly around and destroy all of the alien scum. There are a ton of levels to beat and it isn’t a game that will only last you a day or two – it’s epic and free. 

The IDC posted a report this morning with their estimates for global smartphone shipments for Q1 of 2012 and the numbers might shock you. We already know that Samsung took over the top spot from Nokia as number one mobile manufacturer in the world, but this gives us a visual representation of their dominance.

In Q1, Samsung shipped 42.2 million smartphones across the globe, topping everyone including Apple who totalled 35.1 million. In Q1 of last year, Samsung only shipped 11.5 smartphones, which is a quarter of this year’s Q1 numbers and a 267% change year-over-year. The most shocking number though, might be the comparison to HTC’s quarter which shows a shipment of 6.9 million phones, a number 6x lower than Sammie’s. Or to top even that comparison, we could point out that Motorola and LG aren’t even on the list. Yikes.

So going into 2012, the smartphone battle is a two horse race. Samsung has started to reach Apple-status, with ridiculous amounts of buzz and rumor leading up to the release of this year’s Galaxy model, similarly to what happens when a new iPhone is on the way. It’s exciting to see an Android OEM turn into such a behemoth, but then again, we like competition. Do work Moto and HTC.

Via:  IDC

Big day for custom ROM users, as the Android Open Kang Project team has released Milestone 5 for all supported devices. The list of supported devices is humongous and chances are, your device is certainly one of them. Milestone 5 brings mostly a ton of fixes and should make your device’s operation as smooth as butter. With AOKP, there are always tons of theme options and customizations that are just not possible on a stock build. If you want to give it a look over and download, then follow the source links down below.

Via: AOKP | Rootzwiki

Cheers Ostensibly!

When Apple unveiled iCloud last June, I actually laughed out loud. As an Android and Google user, we had been using the “cloud” for our contacts, calendars, apps, books, feed readers, etc. for years, but didn’t realize that users of iOS were so far behind. Today’s newly released Galaxy Nexus/Android commercial highlights that idea. You don’t need some fancy “cloud” service add-on to your Android or Google world, you just need an account. Simply sign-in to your Google account in your Android phone and you have access to it all – email, contacts, calendars, browser info, and more. Stop using Verizon’s Backup Assistant or some other 3rd party app and let Google handle it all.