As if the HTC One hasn’t seen enough setbacks already before its launch, a new court ruling against HTC in the Netherlands looks to make it even worse. Nokia has been awarded a preliminary injunction against the HTC One centering around high-amplitude microphones that are found in the phone. The microphones found inside the One are the exact same as the mics found in the Lumia 720, and that is no good for HTC. 

The same company makes the microphones for HTC and Nokia, but Nokia says that the components of these mics in particular were made specifically for Nokia. While this could be a mistake on HTC’s part, it could have been the fault of the microphone manufacturer in this case. In the meantime the One is facing more setbacks.

HTC says they are “disappointed” in the decision from the court and that they will “explore alternate solutions immediately.”

Via: Engadget

Nokia Wins Preliminary Injunction Against HTC One Over Duplicated Microphones is a post from: Droid Life

Wireless charging, while slow to have been adopted by the industry, is a technology that once you have, you really never want to live without. Thanks to devices like the Nexus 4 (neither of these work with the N4 after testing), DROID DNA, and Nokia’s new Lumia 920 it’s becoming more of a standard. But now that it’s a little more mainstream, we figured it was time to talk about some of the charging options out there. Thanks to Nokia doing their part to push the technology forward, we have two new options worth taking a look at – the Fatboy Pillow and the charging plate, both from Nokia (both built to the Qi standard, so yes they work with Android phones). 

Update:  A few readers pointed out in the comments that the charging plate and pillow may not work all that well with the Nexus 4. I have not had a chance to fully test their charging abilities, so stay tuned for that. Will report back in a couple of days with my findings.

Update 2:  I ran my battery down to 75% and then tossed my phone back on the charging pad and came up empty. The device attempted to charge and then just kept the phone awake and actually ran battery. The pillow seems to be doing the same thing. For whatever reason, these are either built to some other Qi standard or the Nexus 4 has issues – I’m going with the latter. Feel free to watch the video and gaze at the fancy chargers, however, if you have a Nexus 4, you may want to stay away. Will test the DNA and report back.

Update 3:  Both chargers seem to wirelessly charge the DROID DNA with no issues. Clearly the Nexus 4 just isn’t a fan of them.

Nokia Fatboy Charging Pillow

The Fatboy charging pillow is probably going to be the most popular of the wireless chargers released this year, simply because it’s a pillow and carriers a fun-to-say name. It’s exactly as you would picture it – a big fat pillow that your phone lays on. Inside the pillow you have a soft, squishy outer rim that holds your phone ever-so-softly, while the plate in the middle takes care of the charging business. It has an extra long cord so you can drape it all over a room and still have it reach your destination. It comes in a few colors:  yellow, blue, white, red, and black. You can find it at Verizon and AT&T stores for around $60.

As expected, you simply drop your wireless-ready phone in the middle and it begins to charge. There are no beeps or notifications, so you may want to double check to make sure it’s charging before walking away from it.

Nokia Wireless Charging Plate

The charging plate from Nokia is the least sexy of the two, however, it may be my choice if I had to make one. It’s small, does the trick, and also comes equipped with the extra long power cable. It also comes in blue, yellow, red, white and black, while retailing for around $50. I favor this over the pillow mostly because of the size. This plate isn’t much bigger than a hockey puck, and it’s also not a giant fluffy pillow, for those who care about the appearance of their desk.

To charge, you simply lay your phone on it, centered over the Nokia logo. It’s that simple. It also has a rear light that notifies you that your phone is charging.

Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Android Wireless Charging Options: Nokia Fatboy Pillow and Others (Updated) is a post from: Droid Life

With all the smack talk that Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop does about Android, you wonder if there is any time left in the day to worry about his own ecosystem. During the conference to discuss Nokia’s Q4 earnings, Elop couldn’t help but name drop Android and speak his mind about the situation lately.

Elop said that Android’s case of fragmentation is being counteracted by Google’s “efforts to turn an open ecosystem into something that’s quite a bit more closed as you’ve seen quite recently.” Elop is still parading the “fragmentation” buzzword around while also insinuating that Google is actively trying to close their Android ecosystem.

Pretty harsh words coming from a CEO towards the competition during their own conference to talk about profit numbers. Google and Android seem to be doing fairly well for themselves at the moment, maybe Elop can find some time to bring Nokia back into the competitive market instead of slinging insults.

Via: The Verge

Nokia CEO: Google Closing the Doors on Android’s Open Ecosystem is a post from: Droid Life

Hot off the heels of the Galaxy Nexus getting slapped with an injunction, the Nexus 7 is now under attack based on another patent dispute. Nokia is claiming that neither ASUS nor Google asked to use a WiFi patent that the company owns. One would think that the move is more for Nokia to get a cut from the sales of the Nexus 7 rather than a ban on its sale, but that’s tough to tell until things become a bit more official.

Neither Google nor ASUS have responded to the accusation yet, but you can imagine that it isn’t going to go over well. With the Nexus 7 already giving them almost no profit per device, shelling out cash to Nokia won’t be fun. We know many of you are planning on getting a Nexus 7, could you stand to see another Nexus device banned?

Via: Engadget

Nokia Claims Nexus 7 Infringes Upon Some of Their Patents, Will it Ever End? is a post from: Droid Life

Cameras and mobile phones have been linked for a long time now, but recently companies have started to put more of a focus (no pun intended) on the cameras built into them. All of this leading up to Nokia blowing the doors off the trend in releasing the 808 Pureview, a Symbian phone that has a 41 megapixel sensor on the back of the device.

Up until recently, Nokia was quiet on whether the phone would be available in the US, but now has announced that Amazon will be carrying the phone unsubsidized for $699. We have seen HTC raise the bar on contract phones with the One X and manufacturers are likely to follow.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Tuesday Poll: Would You Pay Extra For a 41MP Smartphone Camera? is a post from: Droid Life

Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop has been quite the figurehead as the company’s near collapse was saved by the Windows Phone 7 boat. Now that his company is all-in with Microsoft, his latest comments aren’t that surprising. In an interview with a Chinese news outlet, Elop said that he thought that dual and quad-core processors are not all that useful. He went on to say that they were just a waste of battery for the consumer. Strong words indeed.

What is interesting about this is that Windows Phone 7 as it is now only supports single-core but is gearing up for the step to dual-core. It was widely rumored that Microsoft was testing the Qualcomm MSM8960 CPU chipset, which is dual-core, for the release in a Windows Phone at some point down the road. And while single-core may be alright for WP7 and it’s Metro UI, Android definitely benefits from the boost of a dual-core or quad-core processor. Yes the battery drain is a drag but it can be managed as well. Thoughts? Will you own a quad-core phone or stay away for fear of the battery drain?

Via: Pocket-Lint, Unwired View

Nokia CEO: Dual-Core and Quad-Core Chips Simply Drain Batteries, Aren’t All That Useful is a post from: Droid Life

So this story from Pocket-Lint is floating around the web today that quotes Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop. Not that this should surprise anyone coming from the guy that is betting the bank on Windows Phone 7, but he of course referenced Android and this mythical fragmentation problem it has. He is quoted as saying that he doesn’t want fragmentation “being introduced” to Windows Phone because “we are” starting to see it “become a problem” in a “certain other eco-system.”  And time for a rant… 

I could go into how idiotic the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world sounds when making this argument, but I’ll instead just throw some numbers at you and let them do the talking. According to January’s Android distribution chart, 86% of Android users are running two variations of the operating system:  Gingerbread and Froyo. The other 14% is a mix of pre-Froyo phones that are 2-3 years old and will soon vanish from the face of the Earth along with Honeycomb that will also disappear since this version of Android essentially will no longer be supported going forward. All Honeycomb tablets will be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich making the 3.0+ category in this distribution chart go bye-bye.

So within the next 6 months, you could in theory see 2.1 and below phones and their 10% share shrink even more now that most of the people with them are ready for upgrades. Those people will then upgrade to a newer Android phone, adding to the piece of the pie that includes Gingerbread or Ice Cream Sandwich, since Froyo phones are pretty hard to come by these days. So then we are looking at most Gingerbread phones receiving updates to Android 4.0, some sticking behind permanently at 2.3, and then another soon-to-be-dying set at 2.2. By the end of the year, we could be sitting on a chart that really only has 3 versions of Android on it, the majority at 4.0 and 2.3.

Is that really fragmentation? Even Apple can’t keep all of its iPhones and iPod Touches on the same version of iOS these days, yet we aren’t hearing these arguments directed at them. And then we could go into Elop’s Windows Phone 7. Even their newly released phones enter with a newer OS than previous models, who then have to wait to receive updates. This is simply how the mobile industry works. Actually, this is how the entire tech world works. You introduce a new product, it likely has a newer OS than the one you released 6 months prior. But I digress.

Elop seems adamant that Android is suffering from some major problem that we are struggling to find. When we look at say, yesterday’s Nielsen numbers, Android’s “fragmentation” allowed it to grow to 46.3% of the overall smartphone share in the U.S. And during that time, his Windows Phone 7 OS that is apparently not fragmented, was barely able to make the same chart, coming in at 1.3%, which just so happens to be lower than Windows Mobile at 4.6%.

What I’m trying to say is, that Android may have had a “fragmentation” issue back in 2009 when apps weren’t compatible with different versions of the OS, and when manufacturers were so new to the game that they struggled to release updates in a timely manner. In 2011 and 2012 though, you can no longer talk fragmentation. And if you want to call whatever it is that Android is doing a “problem,” I would suggest that a dying platform like WP7 look into said “problem” to decide if it can help their cause. This argument is over.

Nokia’s Stephen Elop is Clueless and Living in 2009, Still Talking Android Fragmentation is a post from: Droid Life

Reporting on numbers of Android handsets sold as compared to Apple’s has always been something not really worth talking about since well, there is just one Apple device each year and hundreds that run our favorite OS.  We always stuck to comparing OS activations since that is the true measurement.  When one company sneaks up though and could potentially take down both Apple and Nokia in a single quarter, we thought we’d give it some run as that is quite the accomplishment.

According to analysts, Samsung is expected to announce for Q2 that it sold anywhere from 18 to 21 million smartphones (Nokia 16.7 million, Apple 20.3 million) which is pretty remarkable seeing as they haven’t even released a U.S. version yet (our review).  Once the Galaxy S II hits our shores, you can almost guarantee that these numbers will spike again as one of the most anticipated devices of the year.

Android has certainly come a long way…

Via:  Bloomberg

Cheers tjhrulz!

Samsung Possibly Outsells Both Apple and Nokia in Q2 Without a U.S. Galaxy S II is a post from: Droid Life